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Diocletian   Listen
Diocletian

noun
1.
Roman Emperor who when faced with military problems decided in 286 to divide the Roman Empire between himself in the east and Maximian in the west; he initiated the last persecution of the Christians in 303 (245-313).  Synonym: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletian.






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"Diocletian" Quotes from Famous Books



... century, in the time of Pope Cornelius there were priests appointed to absolve those who had fallen into idolatry; and they were called Presbyteri Paenitentium. S. Marcellus also, according to Anastasius, after the persecution raised by Diocletian, appointed in Rome titular churches, in which penance as well as baptism were administered by priests, the former sacrament is conferred by the minor penitentiaries. Pope Simplicius in fine, as we learn from the same author, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... Tribe enthusiasts of England. He considered that the world hardly realized how much it owed to his countryfolk; according to his views, Achilles, Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Pyrrhus, Diocletian, Julian the Apostate—they were all Albanians. Yet even towards the end of his life he is obliged ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... said Dr. Maryland, 'that he was an officer, high in trust and command, in the service of the Emperor (Diocletian.). For owning himself a Christian, he was stripped of power and place, delivered into the will of his enemies, to be bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows. There is the human defeat, my dear Hazel. What you see in the face ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... whether doctrinal or historical, could hardly be reconciled with any system of religion ancient or modern. There were Church legends of saints and martyrs versified, fit certainly to make any other form of martyrdom seem amiable to those who heard them, and to suggest palliative thoughts about Diocletian. Finally, there were the romances of Arthur and his knights, which later, by means of allegory, contrived to be both entertaining and edifying; every one who listened to them paying the minstrel his money, and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... suggested by the guide of the catacomb, in his allusion to the legend of Memmius. This man, or demon, or man-demon, was a spy during the persecutions of the early Christians, probably under the Emperor Diocletian, and penetrated into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, with the malignant purpose of tracing out the hiding-places of the refugees. But, while he stole craftily through those dark corridors, he chanced to come upon a little chapel, where tapers were burning before an ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Erasmus, Stella, and others, so much magnify in their books; a paradise, a heaven on earth, if it be used aright, good for the body, and better for the soul: as many of those old monks used it, to divine contemplations, as Simulus, a courtier in Adrian's time, Diocletian the emperor, retired themselves, &c., in that sense, Vatia solus scit vivere, Vatia lives alone, which the Romans were wont to say, when they commended a country life. Or to the bettering of their knowledge, as Democritus, Cleanthes, and those excellent philosophers ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, p. 223 foll. The statues of the virgines vestales maximae, discovered in the Atrium Vestae, all belong to the period of the Empire. They are now in the museum of the Baths of Diocletian. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... days; and few cities have seen greater changes of fortune. In the reign of Diocletian and Maximilian it became the capital of the western empire, and was filled with the temples, baths, theatres, and other monuments which usually adorn royal cities. The tempest which Attila, in the middle of the fifth century, conducted across ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... of the ancient world ends with the Empire of Diocletian and Constantine, which has not only Roman and Greek, but also Oriental features. The history of ancient philosophy ends with the universal philosophy of Neoplatonism, which assimilated the elements ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... the age of seventeen years he took up the profession of arms, and since he was gifted with beauty of person, intelligence, and an exquisite courtesy, he rose rapidly to a considerable military rank. Especially he pleased his imperial master, Diocletian. ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... of Castor and Pollux on the Monte Cavallo are the finest figures in Rome. They are late Roman copies, but probably from Phidias,—not by Lysippus or Praxiteles; and he felt the presence of Michel Angelo in the Baths of Diocletian. It is not long before he goes to the Pincian in the afternoon to play at jack-stones with his ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... maintained by those in the best condition to know the truth, prove how difficult it was for men to believe in a transaction which was then so extraordinary, and how little consonant it was in their eyes with true propriety. It was necessary to ascend to the times of Diocletian, to find an example of a similar abdication of empire, on so deliberate and extensive a scale, and the great English historian of the Roman Empire has compared the two acts with each other. But there seems a vast difference between the cases. Both emperors ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... enumerated in the verses of Tzetzes (Chil. XI. 525), and allusions to them in the mediaeval romances are endless. Thus, in one of the "Gestes d'Alexandre," a chapter is headed "Comment Aristotle aprent a Alixandre les Sept Arts." In the tale of the Seven Wise Masters, Diocletian selects that number of tutors for his son, each to instruct him in one of the Seven Arts. In the romance of Erec and Eneide we have a dress on which the fairies had portrayed the Seven Arts (Franc. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... remainder of other subjects in a blank space, in order to unite them to the scenes painted by Giotto, Simone of Siena, and Antonio of Venice, he there executed in fresco six stories of St Petitus and St Epirus. The first represents the saint as a young man, presented by his mother to the Emperor Diocletian, and appointed general of the armies which were to march against the Christians. As he is riding with his troop Christ appears to him, and showing him a white cross commands the youth not to persecute Him. Another scene ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... straggling their sadness through the ages, the screech owl at windows out of which world-wide conquerors looked. Ask the day of judgment when her crowned debauchees, Commodus and Pertinax, and Caligula and Diocletian, shall answer for their infamy? As men and as nations let us repent, and have our trust in a pardoning God, rather than depend on former successes for immunity! Out of thirteen greatest battles of the world, Napoleon had lost but one before Waterloo. Pride and destruction ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... Zoroaster might easily have superseded the Olympian fables. Again, under the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 A.D.) the revived national faith of the Zoroastrians assumed such vigour that Shapur II, like another Diocletian, could aim at the extirpation of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the persecuted Christians in the East were as terrible as they had ever been in the West; nor was it by the weapons of Roman emperors or by the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... in the course of construction. When I got out of the station I saw a huge brick building across the street, which had been left unfinished as if the workmen had gone on strike. I learned that it was the remains of the Baths of Diocletian. Opening a door I found myself in a huge church, which had a long history I ought to have ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... me, holy brother, for heeding such a loss. But the ring is very old; it has been worn by many of my ancestors, to them it came, and from one who suffered martyrdom in the times of Diocletian.' ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... the 9th of August, 1492, the whole of Rome, from the People's Gate to the Coliseum and from the Baths of Diocletian to the castle of Sant' Angelo, seemed to have made an appointment on this piazza: the multitude thronging it was so great as to overflow into all the neighbouring streets, which started from this centre like the rays ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... dell' Aqua Felice, near the baths of Diocletian, has a fine statue of Moses striking the rock, by Prospero da Brescia, who is said to have died of mortification at the ridicule excited by the figure of the great lawgiver, in which a slight uncouthness is certainly ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... No one, however, who looked upon his suffering martyrs, could suppose for a moment that he honoured their martyrdom. They were but the vehicles for his hate of humanity. He was the torturer, and not Diocletian ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... therefore very great, were so arranged as to provide cross-walls, dividing the aisles, as in the case of the Basilica of Maxentius, and, in the Thermae of Rome, the subdivisions of the less important halls, so that there were no visible buttresses. In the baths of Diocletian, however, these cross-walls rose to the height of the great vaulted hall, the tepidarium, and their upper portions were decorated with niches and pilasters. In a palace at Shuka in Syria, attributed to the end of the 2nd century ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... the Republican forms until the reign of Diocletian; but the will of the Emperors was as uncontrolled as that of the people had been after the victory of the Tribunes. Their power was arbitrary even when it was most wisely employed, and yet the Roman Empire rendered greater services to the cause of liberty ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... a new stage of development, but the embodiment of ideas conceived in his mind, a quantity which under God the greatest Roman had made out of a quantity which he had found. The distinctive features of the Constantinian empire as compared with that of Diocletian, or of the tetrarchy of which he was the head, were not evolved from earlier political principles, but stood out in bold contrast and even in direct opposition to the very fundamentals of antique statesmanship, and so new in politics that even Constantine permitted them to slip away from his grasp ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... the ages from the time when the Emperor Diocletian prescribed a distinct ritual for Aurelius as one of the gods; from the time when the monks of the Middle Ages treasured the 'Meditations' as carefully as they kept their manuscripts of the Gospels, the work has been recognized as the precious life-blood of a master spirit. An adequate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various



Words linked to "Diocletian" :   Roman Emperor, Emperor of Rome, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletian



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