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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;OutsiderSubtype, post: 4602544, member: 112457&quot;]My understanding is that under the first Tetrarchy, the geographic responsibilities of the Tetrarchs have been overstated. This is understandable because even near-contemporaries didn&#039;t understand what Diocletian was trying to do.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Tetrarch&#039;s roles were more ad hoc - more task or mission based - rather then geographic. For instance Constantius was appointed Caesar specifically to deal with the usurpers in Britain, Galerius was tasked with dealing with the frontier defenses on the Danube, and so on. The geographic division was incidental and not the point of the system.</p><p><br /></p><p>If Diocletian happened to be in Italy he wouldn&#039;t have refused to weigh in on a legal matter because it was Maximian&#039;s &quot;turf&quot;. One of the reasons Diocletian raised colleagues was that there were huge legal and administrative demands that could only be dealt with by &quot;the emperor&quot;. Diocletian&#039;s solution was to make more emperors, thus lessening the burden on any one of them. Some specific examples of this are that Diocletian issued a ton of edicts from Sirmium and brought Galerius to fight with him in Persia, both of which were cutting across geographic lines.</p><p><br /></p><p>Obviously this all required a lot of trust and consultation among the emperors and after Diocletian&#039;s abdication they probably did start to think more in terms of turf and territory.</p><p><br /></p><p>Source is Williams, S. <i>Diocletian and the Roman Recovery. </i>2000 ed.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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