Editor says, what if Galerius had defeated the Persians? muses Richard Roper. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the March 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.

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Editor says, in this scenario Diocletian cannot humiliate him for losing the battle. As he now gets prestige from his victory, he quickly captures and kills Diocletian and makes himself chief Emperor. Diocletian and his "arrangements" for dividing the Empire, four emperors, a military government and an orderly succession go out the window, the period of civil war in which Constantine comes to power, and subsequent coups and civils wars, particularly in gaul and toops removed from Britain for these coups bu ambitious generals wouls not take place. We are thus faced with the possibilty of the survival of the Western Empire. Diocletian, having set up his system of 2 Augusti - the 2 Emperors, and 2 Caesars - the Assistant Emperors with an order of sucession, then retired with his co-Emperor into private life and initiated his succession system. Civil war followed.Galerius becomes Galerius the Great.
So no Civil wars in the 4th century with multiple competing emperors, no army in nthe Western Empire virtually ceasing to exist because of the, no generals from Britian removing troops to set themselves up,, no intruguing with the barbarians, so no barbarian hordes crossing the frozen Rhine in dec 410. No Adianople and the Hunsaare defeated in Dacia north of the Danube. No loss of the West, so no long Persian wars in the 6th century so no hugely rich Mecca as the neutral power all the trade went through, so no rise of Islam.

Eric Oppen commented on 2012-02-14 19:37:54 ~ History would be very different. Would Christianity as we know it survive?

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H. Torrance Griffin commented on 2012-03-23 20:47:24 ~ If Galerius merely lets them worship openly instead of pushing the power of the throne behind one variant of it? Not a chance.

Christopher Lee commented on 2012-03-25 22:35:35 ~ Two thought soccur to me here. First is the assumption that a victory of this nature would give Galerius enough prestige and support to overthrow Diocletian. I think I've said this before somewhere, might have been on here, but I digress! This is the area in which I did most of my under and postgraduate work. Diocletian is a truly towering figure of the period, he is not some fly-by-night or no-mark like Elagabalus. He was a massive figure. You have to appreciate the full depth of the third century crisis to really grasp how huge his role was. He finally really put the empire back on a solid footing. His methods were not always pleasant or popular but his overall achievement was massive. His splitting of the empire was not a sign of weakness but a necessary response to a situation in which it was impossible for one ruler to oversee all the frontiers and deal with all the threats. The empire did not have the resources or peaceful borders in many places that would allow the sort of frontier set-up of the earlier legions. It was not as simple as just getting a strong man to reunite the empire. It was never Diocletian's intention that the empire split apart, rather that it be structured in a way that allowed sufficient executive presence to hold all the borders together. Defeating the Persians was not in itself a truly major success. Undoubtedly the richest region of the Persian empire was Mesopotamia. This was the region that the Romans tended to target. It was possible for a Roman army to advance into this region and seize the cities. Trajan amongst many, many others did this. The other major region of conflict was in the northern region around Armenia and the southern Caucasus, the focus of later warfare between the Sassanians and Romans. However, the vast bulk of the Persian empire was in the Iranian regions beyond the Zagros mountains. No Roman army ever penetrated that area and the Persians could and did easily retreat into the hinterland. No Romans could ever establish genuine control over Mesopotamia. It was far too distant from their supply hubs (say Antioch) to be realistically controllable, when the Persians had internal lines of communication and huge resources in their own nearby homelands. Any Roman attack into this region was of necessity a raid in force. They would march down the Tigris or Euphrates, seizing loot and engaging any Persian forces that might stray into their path. Persian troops were defeated in the region and Galerius could have easily succeeded in taking the Sassanian capital at Ctesiphon near present day Babylon. However, just as Carrhae was not a decisive defeat of the Romans by the Persians any Roman victory in Mesopotamia was highly unlikely to be decisive. Even had Galerius been able to kill the Shahanshah he would have been replaceable by any of his large family. The Sassanian family was large and also backed up by the major influence of the Zoroastrian clergy. In short Galerius would have gained prestige but I seriously doubt it would have been enough to unseat the monumental figure of Diocletian. Later Julian the Apostate launched a successful advance into Mesopotamia and defeated the Persians in the region but was still murdered and regarded as a failure. Even if he had done so reuniting the empire under one man at this stage was a recipe for disaster, exactly why the brilliant Diocletian had split it in the first place. The empire did not fail because it was split, it failed because it had collapsed economically and demographically and lost its technological edge over the neighbouring barbarians. In the end it ran out of energy and resources. The worst of the civil wars were in the third century with comparatively few in the fourth. Nothing was likely to stop the barbarians after the decline of Roman economic stength.