Third Century Crisis | The Tetrarchy | Roman History | Extra History | Part 4
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- 📜 History of Rome & The Third Century Crisis - The Third Century Crisis becomes manageable under Diocletian, but the emperor still faces many problems, and not all of them as exciting as assassination. The rampant devaluing of currency and lack of formal tax system makes it very difficult for the state to accumulate wealth. So Diolcletian will overhaul the tax system and that will become his most long-lasting achievement. But his more famous invention is the tetrarcy, Rome's imperial boy band who will work to stabilize the massive empire.
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#ExtraHistory #Rome #History
Based on what I can gather the third century crisis can be summed up as "but wait, there's more!"
2020 in a nutshell
Yup.
Yeah pretty much
@@Jackson-tt8uh with the actor who played black panther dying as if yesterday, rip Chadwick Boseman, i can totally believe that. First kobe, now this guy. This year sucks!
2020 but only in europe
The reforms of diocletian are also in a way the foundation of feudalism. The establishment of a formal hierarchy can really be traced from Diocletian all the way to the 18th and 19th century revolutions
Ascolano Irl literally the most cringe thing I’ve ever read
@ Idk the increased productivity on professional classes is really hard to resist in the west especially with it's cultural influence even on the nobility, the French revolutions just sucks though.
@ For 95%+ of the population, it would be horrible, they'd be the surfs.
@ Shouldn't have given up feudalism or shouldn't have given up formal hierarchys? Cause either way it's awesome to be high up but it sucks major ass if you're on the bottom
@ yeah , we shouldn't have given up on having no civic rights , on having no humans right , on being forced to stay in the territory in which we were born , on being considered expendible ...
“Emperor of the east realizes his new system of governing is falling apart, resigns and becomes the cabbage merchant from Avatar: The Last Airbender”
Shhh! spoilers. :D
Oh my cabbages!
"If you couls see how good are the cabagged im growing, you too would resing the vanity of terrestrial power."
MY CABBAGES!!!
Timestamp??
Rome: “Panic and Collapsing”
China: “Ha nothing like that is ever gonna happen to us!”
U.S.A: amateurs
(gotta say, Chinese Empires had risen and fallen many times, but i thought the joke was funny coz China is actually taking the role of mega-power while USA is in decline.)
"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." China might have some clue on the matter.
By that time the corpse of the han dinasty was already cold
China: “When five thousand years you are, look as good you will not”
Hearing an extra history narrative intro for 2020 gave me chills.
It's pandemic season!
been 3 uyears'@@joyannhua2620
Actually, great idea
Did the Tetrarchy work?
Yesn’t.
I haven't studied this part of history yet, but all I know it. Splitting the empire into four roughly equally powerful sections is prime for civil war.
It fixed the problems it was meant to, then created a whole new one almost immediately.
*non'tn'tn't
Bad real bad idea worked for 10 years
It’s so sad that the place that started all is just tossed aside to slowly become a backwater. A Roman Empire where Rome was just a city.
Well, it was inevitable. What made Rome Rome was senate and people of Rome who were important factors in governance.
Now everyone is Roman, and capitols are where Emperors are. And they have mostly been on fronteers and in cities rich from trade, for more than a century by now. Neither of these two described Rome.
Constantinople and even Diocletian's capitol which was nearby, were sitting on major trade hubs and were close to both Danube and Eastern fronteers. MUCH more relevant than Rome. And this is beside the fact that the East was always richer and more populous and will remain so till late renesance and early Industrial period.
That’s what happens when you make a large empire and try to keep the elites in power.
Doesn't go well with the annoying modern military history buff's fetish for Rome, yes. : D
TathD spitting straight facts
Diocletian be like: There is gonna be a tax for that.
Nice reference
@ Dont Talk to me about Socialism, I live in Colombia, we have lots of Venezuelans here.
@ I'm referring to the fact that Venezuela is a shadow of its former self thanks to Socialism.
@ venezuela is starving to death and you ask why?
But then his father punished him severely
We need more Extra History on money and taxes and related economic concepts. I know there've been a few already, but we need more, more, MORE!
Or maybe just Extra Economics. Anyone else want to watch the hell out of a series like that? I don't even know what all I'd want to see covered in such a series.
History is tame. Every economic video would have a nasty comment fight.
Will be good for anyone making a nation/story
Okay everyone, let's do a little vocal exercise. Ahem...
♫ The pretty decent kingdom split the crown between some heirs,
♪♫ Down went his head and they started throwing chairs...
the bar for being assassinated or betrayed as a king is very low so it being a tetriarchy may not be the root cause
♪ Succession crises lead to civil war ♫
♫ And the pretty decent kingdom was doomed to be no more! ♪
🎵Tetrarchy is now in the bin
And here comes Constantine
He was known as the Great
Adopting the Cross was his fate🎵
Hehehe is this a horrible history song?
@@sarah3796 I forget where it first appeared, but "never split the crown" is kind of one of the recurring lessons that nobody learns in Extra History (along with "don't invade russia during the winter):
th-cam.com/video/k_7lo61DkBM/w-d-xo.html
Diocletian also created the military office called "comes," where we get the word "count." The reformed (Late) Roman Army ultimately replaced the Praetorian Guard with the palatini (who basically did the same job of protecting emperors, imperial palaces, etc). Palatini, meaning "palace troops," is also where we get the word "paladin," used in so many video and rp games.
No joke episodes like this about civics and policies are a thousand times more interesting than yet another episode about a historic battle and army leader. Thanks for this episode!
Diocletian's reforms seemed mostly well-founded, except for the Tetrarchy. Dividing the empire always inevitably resulted in Civil War- doing more damage in the long run than any transient administrative gains.
The expansion of the Bureaucracy and tax reforms were especially needed. Rome had large-scale unemployment in its urban centers, so it's not like there wasn't surplus labor to hire more bureaucrats. But there were a lot of civil and economic needs going unmet- and an expanded Bureaucracy could help see to those...
Prepare yourselves: " My cabbages " memes are coming
NO! NOT MY TETRARCHY!!!
I was thinking the same. Also, WHERE ARE MY CABBAGES!?!?
Constantine: Needing Four to rule, how cute.
I'm about to ruin all of their careers.
"Everything was going to be okay!"
So tune in next week, as the tetarchy falls apart before his eyes.
9:18 Falls apart? (looks at the upcoming title) No, my cabbages!
cabbages seller: I fell you
NOT MY CABBAGES!!!
Plot Twist: Diocletian uses those cabbages to launch them at his enemies before dying
@@a.h.tvideomapping4293 twisting the plot even further: Diocletian is the second Avatar after Korra.
Vaughn Johnson and Diocletian was originally gonna be the main character in “SVPER ROMAN BROS” until Nintendo decided to replace him with some plumber named “Mario”
As the Collapse of the Carolingian Empire showed, seperating an empire amoungs many people never ends well, escpecially a system of political chess, cloak and dagger, and straight up murder that rome became. Also as seen from Charles the first, forced loans never work out.
I remember when they did an episode on that
George Washington payed his army in iou's to win the American Revolution
@@justindie7543 Well, Congress did. Washington was actually annoyed by the IOUs, and gave Congress shit for it. There's actually a series from this channel about the early history of revolutionary US, including the financial woes during this time period.
th-cam.com/play/PLjLK2cYtt-VDhehVBOUiBAZGNkA5nrdR0.html
Yeah, that was a stupid tradition. A continuation of the Carolingian Empire could have been a renaissance of the Western Roman Empire with more Germany in it
BlueflameKing1 Arguably the Tetrarchy was necessary, the empire grew too large for a single emperor to effectively govern and fight on four fronts. Four emperors with four courts and four armies were better capable of ending the crisis in the North, East, West, and South of the empire.
I gotta say, the writing for that teaser in the beginning, GENIUS. I wish I could write that good.
Last time I was this early, Diocletian was still not assasinating his rivals
The Anonymous Redditor It was Walpole.
Are you dumb? It was clearly Not Diocletian and Diocletian avenged the emperor he totes didn’t kill by killing Not Diocletian
Redditor is latin for (the one who will) restore or (you who will) restore. Just thought I'd drop that here. - source: wikipedia
When the hell was that? As far as I know, he never killed anyone
Rome: *Collapses*
China: First time?
Honestly the Chinese Civil wars seem more like Wars of Succession
I remember seeing this statue in San Marco and thinking "WTF is this doing here?!"
Then I remembered 1204
@@francescofontana9707 never forget the fourth crusade
Those goddamn Crusaders and the f-ing dandolo.
hey man, I love stories of taxation reform and other monetary history stories. The South Seas Bubble episodes are my absolute favorite episodes from EH.
2:24 Roman citizen: Yeah dude we citizens literally have ZERO say in who gets to run this mess of a state, just don't tax us up the wazoo ok!
You know...I read of a story on those statues of the Tetrarchy - before they were looted in the 4th Crusade. The market square where the Tetrarchy statues were, Byzantines slowly forgot the story behind the statues and thought the embracing men were brothers, and the people named the square the "Philidelphion": the Place of Brotherly Love.
They had a sequel of this not too long later
Except without plot - armour .
7:20 ゴゴゴ (Menacing)
STAND NAME: ｢EMPIRE OF THE SUN｣
STAND USER: Diocletian
@@obibabobi9065 Or SHIIIIIZAAAAAAAAAAAA!??
Coming up: Martyrs and cabbages
"MY CABBAGES!" screamed the martyr
1:52 This sums up the third century crisis so well.
Am I a giant nerd because I want an “Exciting Problems Require Dull Solutions” t-shirt?
I want one too
Having been in Venice for Carnivale (and Europe) for the first time this February, I had to do a double take when I saw the dates you opened the episode with. It's insane how packed it was until it wasn't, honestly. And that was in the slow season.
My cabbages!
I mean My empire!
-Diocletian a.k.a the cabbage merchant
The tetrarchy did solve the administrative problem by essentially dividing the empire into independent administrative branches. That is very efficient when you have too much to solve in parallel. However, if each major player has a different vision or if major reforms are needed across the board, then each one's agenda or approach could make deciding on a solution remarkably inefficient. Which means this decentralization of power solved their initial challenges while possibly setting up a civil war in the future.
Yes, and then you throw in a little primogeniture dispute and wham.
Constantine arises.
I use Diocletian's edict on maximum prices as a guide for prices in my D&D games
Cool idea.
If you need a culture credit, I recommend looking into a course about Rome. I took one this past semester and am happy I did, besides the lecture being at 8am. It’s great to see covered material in these videos :D
7:48 you... misspelled Caesar? How?
By putting the E before the A.
Who cares how they spell the salad, it's not a cookbook!
spelled it wrong AND pronounced it wrong.
Love your videos I have been watching your videos since the punic wars
last part was simply best " so tune in next week as the tetrarchy falls apart before his eyes " 😂😂😂
"Possibly even doubling the number of bureaucrats" *number of bureaucrats on screen triples*
It's amazing watching this and realizing how more and more these reforms are starting to resemble feudalism and being like "So that's how we ended up there ! "
Idk why, but this video makes me want to eat cabbage dumplings in wonton soup.
Thanks for this incredible series.
a very fun episode full of terms I knew but never knew the origins of till now
Just came back from Venise this week... And yeah this is the moment to go there, especially if you are into photography.... Don't wanna imagine it with loads of tourists....
1:40 someone forgot this is the community that voted to have a series made about the South Sea Bubble over Caesar...
that Duke love moment was too cute
Finally, I am thrusting for content! Thanks :)
It's spelt "Caesar" with "a" before "e" not "Ceasar".
For anyone wondering, it's at 7:40
Except after 'C'?
Who cares, you English people always mispronounce is a See-sar, not Kaiser as it's supposed to be read.
I would love it if you guys covered the napoleonic wars, especially Wellington & Nelson personal stories…..any chances?
I found a small mistake for the Lies episode: it's Caesar, not Ceasar.
That aside, I love your guys work, keep it up!
Man, That Diocleatian face gets me every time.
Been waiting
Me enjoying the episode as always
6:33
Me: :(
So how did Justinian II’s tax reforms impact the reforms Diocletian made?
You guys should do a series on the recent Irish war for independence
sensible subjet... probably better wait another 30 years
Awww my childhood dog was named Duke too!!! But he was named after John Wayne...he was such a good boy!
I hope they're friends in doggy heaven!
This is why my mom always taught me that if you there's a situation where 911 should be called, call it. "It's better for the police to get two reports of a robbery then just assuming, someone else will do it and no one actually calling."
It’s always really shocking to me how long it took for us to understand even basic principles of economics.
What's always shocking to me is how some people may be convinced that our current society shows any understanding of economics... (Spoiler alert : the orthodox economic theories backing up most politics nowadays have been repeatedly shown to be highly biased... and "surprisingly" allways in ways that enable and justify politics that favour the rich...)
A lot of economics is really psychology. When you get right down to it, there is nothing natural about money and wealth. They're all entirely human-created concepts, which means human behavior is a huge part of it. Human behavior, in turn, is one of the hardest, most complex things to understand, so economics by association becomes hard to understand.
Behind every economic crash is a small number of people with a lot of power (whether they know it or not) who take actions based on incorrect assumptions on what people would do. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, for instance, occurred because those in charge assumed the people would simply trust in the Zimbabwe Dollar and treat it like the United States Dollar, when in fact they had no trust in the Zimbabwe Dollar at all.
Note that it's easy to assume people were dumb in hindsight, and the problems of the past and their solutions would look obvious to our eyes in the present, but that's only because we know what happened afterwards. A modern example is the cryptocurrency trade, with economists of 2022 divided over whether it's a bubble or will become a stable system. This will all come down to what people involved in the cryptocurrency trade will do, which can't be easily predicted.
I have a hard time imaging Galerius as a real person. He'll always be a spurdo bear to me...
Hearing maximian described as trusted just feels wierd after dovahhatty
👍 good video
Take a drink every-time they mention the Economic Reform and then side track.
Never knew Stanley Kubrick was a Roman emperor. What a guy!
6:34 haha my first dog was also called Duke
1:46 Yes, thank goodness we don't have Not Diocletian anymore
4:10 all I got from that was: “There’s a Tax for that,”
Omg hi could you guys do a video about austria? Please
Given that it covers persecutions, I hope the next episode touches on Catherine of Alexandria, who defied Maximian to his face and out-argued the massive team of scholars and lawyers he sent against her, despite being only about 17-19 (additionally, at a time when women were treated as second-class citizens, the fact that she beat them all is doubly impressive because it meant that all her arguments had to be doubly persuasive to overcome the bias). Andrew Stratelates, the Christian general that Diocletian had slaughtered along with about 2000 soldiers just for being Christians (despite their glorious and loyal service to Rome) would also be a fascinating figure to cover, at least in passing.
The Christian soldiers who fought for Rome were some of the best
6:28 "The Duck" should be more "the dooks" with the "oo" as in "poor" and an "x" as in "exam"
Or simply like "duke" but with a trailing s
Love your vids . Also have you considered outing more videos on spotify?
Rome: collapses through internal conflict
China: *ameturs*
Samuel Wang: “ameturs”
Me: “amateurs”
Lmfao
@@MerkhVision imagine being a pro at spelling lmao
I can't wait for Aurelian.
Im a genuine believer in the idea that the Roman world underwent more change in the 3rd century than the 5th
Do a series of Marcus Aurelius !!!!
Nobody is gonna talk about the awesome intro?
OK then.
Ceaser : Junior Emperor
Augustus : Senior Emperor
Augustus Ceaser : *confusion noises*
3:15 A huge part of why this economic policy was a failure was that it actually set a maximum wage for each profession
Tax-Reforms actually DO interest me: Isekai-Protags and Timetravelers never ever using their modern knowledge always bothered me but i cant get a handle on this, can you help me? I just cant find some 'objective Rules' for what to do in certain Situations. Does the economy and/or Taxes have no 'When a House is on Fire, what u need is Water' Simplicity?
Pharaonic Egyptians: “Our rulers are divine embodiments on Earth, like unto gods themselves, and thus a part of our pantheon made flesh!”
Diocletian: “Write that down, write that down!”
Learning about this in uni
I miss my oreo cookie(cat) and woofwoof(wolf/husky mix) as you miss your doggo duke ;3; who is an absolute cutie by the way, looks like a good boi protector
0:15 is missing something...
Maybe a thermometer or face shield?
Duke looks like he was a good dog. ❤️
"Martyrs and Cabbages" - will the Cabbage Merchant appear?
fool. Diocletian is the cabbage merchant
izidor zupan
Spoilers
Alright so last week I said I'd step in to comment on Diocletian's failings and, here, EC had given me plenty of room to do so.
So first things first, EC glossed over it but those economic reforms of Diocletian's basically crippled the Empire. The more savvy among you might be aware that the 'maximum price' concept is something we in the modern day call price control. Because Diocletian didn't understand supply and demand he thought the high price of bread was because merchants were gouging. In truth that was just the natural price of bread due to how low the supply was from the Crisis. His Price controls were either ignored or inflicted huge economic harm.
Something that EC does here that I am wholly against is that they didn't mention Diocletian's chief reform in this regard; his institution of Pre-Serfdom. Diocletian made it illegal for you to move away from the land you were born on and made your job hereditary, ending centuries of Roman Social Mobility. This meant that peasants born into poor soil couldn't move to more valuable land where their work would be put to better use and that successful, intelligent peoples couldn't move up the social ladder and could languish. This institution of serfdom ended up basically cutting the legs out from the Empire long-term as the landlords it created would do their best to cheat the Empire out of its best civilians when the recruiters came and would become de-facto Medieval Lords, ushering in early Feudalism.
Maximian was a boob and a moron; him being 'bogged down' as him constantly fucking things up and Diocletian (and later Constantius) needing to rescue him.
The Tetrarchy was a failure only stitched together by the force of the personality of Diocletian and was doomed to end in more Civil Wars.
Essentially, Diocletian enacted directive 10-289. And the Roman Empire STUCK WITH IT.
Plus that serfdom would contribute to chronic manpower shortages (Not enough hereditary soldiers and Landlord would actively stop conscriptions) that led to reliance on Foedarati compounded with broken promises and tensions that led to the fall of Western Empire.
By contrast, East somehow managed to stand.
@@powerist209 Those walls gave the Byzantines a margin of error.
@@powerist209 The East was significantly more rich so took in a lot more tax, even with inefficient systems, and was more worth defending.
To be fair on Diocletian, when society is in constant civil wars, stability is more important than outright productivity.
Tokugawa Ieyasu instituted the same policy of disallowing social mobility and for peasants to move, while it hurt in the long term, it meant farmers were stuck in one place and couldn’t go around starting revolts.
Him: "Taxation and administration isn't as... sexy as assassination-"
Me: "Taxcollector's Creed *WHEN*"
(I... I've never played an AC game.)
make a series on the fall of rome
Speaking of episode 1. What was the melody in the song from. It sounded so familiar.
So wait, are you trying to say that COVID is God's long-delayed vengeance for Venice sacking Constantinople?
Or that they can no longer catch COVID, and that is why they are not socially distancing.
At this point in my life, it feels weird hearing about Venice on youtube without Blue.
A very interesting video. A small point , though, you misspelt Caesar. It's not Ceasar!
Diocletian saw the issues of the bloated expanse that was Rome and the issue of a non standardized succession.
The "Republic" had been dead for a long looonnngg time. The EMPIRE had been rolling on inertia for a while. The Senate had been rubber stamping decisions for some time.
He did a damn good job of stabilizing the empire considering what he had to work with. I mean, hell, when you are the only Emperor to step down ALIVE per his own rules.
Kinda dig this guy, alot. Mad respect.
Are you ever gonna put these videos into the Chronological Playlist?
4:45 Oh no elites loosing their wealth and status how terrible! (said with sarcasm)
Only Extra History can make the pandemic seem like a story like that.
How to solve the succession crisis? Quadruple the number of failure points of course!
6:00 great!
There is a lecturer on Roman history on the Great Courses website who recounted a story of visiting Venice stopping to rest for a awhile when it dawned on him that he had sat down next to the Tetrarchy statue without even realizing it. Apparently, it is not in a prominent place despite being the prime example of late Roman public art.
On paper, the Tetrarchy is a solid plan for government for such an enormous empire. In reality... well, history begs to differ.
The Coptic Synaxarium leaves one with the impression they didn't like Diocletian very much.
Liked and shared.
3:20 To be fair to Diocletean (for an autocrat that is..) having a more centralized or *"command economy"* is entirely viable as proven by older civilizations like Egypt and arguably better than basically any form of pseudo-proto-caplitalist kind of economy at the time.
That said, yeah I don't know how they'd have fixed the whole worthless currency issue other than just scraping the whole thing entirely and maybe switching to a more *credit based system,* possibly backed up by silver and gold or even salt.