00:00A child of low birth, marked by high shadows.
00:05He was born Gaeus Valerius Diocles, not into nobility, but into dust.
00:12Dalmatia's rocky shores shaped him, a land of soldiers, not senators, of survival, not luxury.
00:21His father was said to be a scribe, or perhaps Diocles himself was once a freed slave.
00:26None of the stories agree, because Rome did not notice him.
00:32Until he carried a sword, he learned early that power came not from birthright,
00:37but from ambition sharpened into obedience while he marched under emperors like Aurelian and Probus.
00:44The shadows watched him grow, and in the whispering dark beyond mortal sight,
00:49the Anunnaki architects of Empire's cruelty took interest.
00:53This one, they murmured, has the spine Rome needs, and the heart Rome will corrupt.
01:03I blood, betrayal, and the rise of Diocletian.
01:11History first caught him clearly in AD 282,
01:15when Emperor Charus elevated Diocles to commander of the Protector's Domestici.
01:20Rome's elite cavalry guard, prestige, authority, proximity to power.
01:26But Rome's throne was a furnace of suspicion, when Charus died mysteriously in Persia.
01:33Lightning, some whispered, assassination, others insisted.
01:37His sons inherited the empire.
01:40The Numerian died in a sealed coach, his corpse rotting in secret,
01:44while his father-in-law Aper claimed the emperor still lived.
01:48The army turned to Diocles for judgment.
01:50In the presence of the legions, Diocles pointed his blade at Aper and declared,
01:55You murdered the emperor.
01:58And before doubt could breathe, he executed Aper with his own hand.
02:02The soldiers roared, Augustus, emperor.
02:05Diocles rose.
02:07And the shadows whispered,
02:11Rise, Diocletian.
02:13Glory, emperor, by the sword, not the senate.
02:31The new emperor shed his humble name and took a title forged for dominion.
02:35Diocletian.
02:36He seized Rome not by heritage nor senate decree,
02:39but by military acclamation.
02:41The empire's truest law,
02:44Charinus still ruled the west,
02:45but his authority sagged under vice and cruelty.
02:49When Diocletian met him at the river Margus,
02:51Charinus' own prefect betrayed him.
02:54Charinus fell.
02:55Rome bent.
02:56Where Nero had been a fire of chaos,
02:58Diocletian became a hammer of order,
03:01cold, calculating, relentless.
03:03The kind of ruler Rome wanted in fear.
03:06The kind of ruler the Anunnaki favored
03:08when empire sought to crush the world.
03:14I've the emperor who reshaped the world.
03:19Diocletian was no madman.
03:22He was worse.
03:23He was efficient.
03:24He rebuilt Rome's entire structure,
03:26reorganized provinces into smaller units,
03:30created dioceses,
03:31split military and civil authority,
03:33fortified the frontiers,
03:36expanded the bureaucratic machine,
03:38redesigned taxation to feed armies.
03:42He elevated the emperor into something more than mortal,
03:45a jeweled distant semi-god before whom
03:48all must kneel.
03:51Rome ceased pretending
03:53to be a republic
03:55under Diocletian.
03:59Rome became a machine.
04:04Feed Jupiter's emperor and Hercules' general,
04:11knowing the empire was too vast for one man.
04:17Diocletian built the Tetrarchy,
04:21Diocletian that seniored Augustus for rulers,
04:27an empire, a divine geometry of domination.
04:38Diocletian styled himself Iobius,
04:45Claiming Jupiter's mantle,
04:49Maximian became Hercules'
04:53The strong man of Hercules,
04:57they ruled like gods on Earth.
05:00But the gods they invoked
05:02were only the shadow echoes of fallen Anunnaki.
05:09Behind Diocletian's rise,
05:12the giant's smile.
05:15At first, Diocletian tolerated Christians,
05:21but pressure from Galerius and Pagan priests grew divinations failed.
05:27Oracles blamed Christian officials who refused sacrifice.
05:33And in A.D. 303,
05:35Diocletian unleashed the storm,
05:37churches raised,
05:45churches raised,
05:46scriptures burned,
05:47clergy imprisoned.
05:48Every believer forced to sacrifice to Rome's gods or face torture and death.
05:51This became the great persecution.
05:54The fiercest assault on the followers of the messiah,
05:58since Nero lit human torches in his gardens where Nero was passion.
06:04Diocletian was precision,
06:18cold, systematic, empire as executioner.
06:21In the invisible realm, the Anunnaki rejoiced Rome could not unmake the messiah's victory,
06:27but it could still wage war against his people.
06:34Diocletian became the empire's final great weapon.
06:38The collapse of the tetrarche and the withering of the hammer.
06:42Even hammers break.
06:43Campaigns on the Donub ravaged his health.
06:46His voice failed.
06:47His strength vanished.
06:48Then, unthinkably, in A.D. 305, Diocletian abdicated willingly.
06:54He laid aside the throne that he had reshaped through fear and iron.
06:58Maximian followed him.
07:00The caesars rose.
07:01The tetrarche fractured instantly.
07:03Civil wars ignited.
07:05Ambition split the empire once more.
07:07Diocletian withdrew to his palace in Dalmatia,
07:11overlooking the Adriatic,
07:12a stone monument to the man who once ruled the world.
07:15When asked to return, he replied,
07:17If you saw the cabbages I grow,
07:19you would not ask me to be emperor again.
07:22Whether he died peacefully or by his own hand,
07:24history whispers both.
07:26But the shadow he served, the spirit of Nero, did not die.
07:32Read the legacy of the last persecutor.
07:35Diocletian sought order.
07:37He delivered machinery.
07:39He sought unity.
07:40He delivered fragmentation.
07:42He sought to destroy the children of light.
07:45He delivered the final gasp of Rome's open war against the messiah.
07:50Within a generation, Constantine would rise.
07:54Rome would bow to the cross.
07:55And Diocletian's persecution would collapse into failure.
08:00Yet his legacy endured.
08:01Bureaucracy.
08:03Bureaucracy.
08:05Bureaucracy.
08:07Bureaucracy.
08:09Bureaucracy.
08:13Bureaucracy.
08:18Bureaucracy.
08:22Bureaucracy.
08:26Imperial divinity.
08:27divine right authority absolute control by the state he was Nero's successor and spirit
08:37Rome's last great hammer the emperor who embodied the dying breath of the beast before the light
08:45burst through the cracks and in the cosmic story Diocletian stands as a warning when power bows
08:53to no God but itself it becomes the very shadow it thinks it controls
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