The Roman Empire Struggles...

As the Roman Empire grew, so did the problems with it. 10's of thousands of acres can be a good thing, but also a bad thing at the same time. With that much land came great responsibility, and the Roman Empire had an enormous amount of trouble controlling the borders. The average term of an Emperor at the time was two and a half years, either due to wars or an assassination.
By 284 A.D, a man named Diocletian started to rule the Empire, and he helped bring Rome back to a neutral state. He increased his army to 400,000 men (1/3 bigger than Augustus's time) and he also recruited the newly-conquered barbarians into the army. He also divided the Empire into smaller provinces and his new government had 20,000 officials. (10X more than Augustus). He also collected lots of tax money to help the Empire.
In 300 A.D, there are 60 million people in the Roman Empire, but a few million were Christians. Christianity was very popular among the poor, and there were many of those in the Empire. Diocletian left alone Christianity at first, but he then had a structured method of persecuting every Christian in the Empire.
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In 303 A.D, Diocletian, along with Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius ordered that anyone who believed in Christianity be sacrificed to the gods.  Over time, this was broken down into four edicts. The first edict, Diocletian declared that all Christian temples and churches be destroyed, scriptures be burned, and Christians be deprived from their rights and potentially be tortured or executed. Any Christians who refused to be sacrificed to the gods, would be burned alive. Over time, these punishments became progressively   worse. The second, third, and fourth edicts were announced after a series of rebellions around modern day Turkey and Syria. The second stated that all bishops and priests be arrested and imprisoned. In fact, so many priests and bishops were imprisoned that the Empire was not able to contain all of them.
The third edict involved releasing the overcrowded bishops and priests, so long as they made a sacrifice to the Roman gods. Anyone who refused would be executed.
In 304, the fourth edict ordered that all men, woman, and children who were Christians gather in a public place and do a collective sacrifice. Anyone to refuse would be executed.


Constantine built up the Roman Empire army and in order to pay for his army he introduced a new gold currency. He shared power with other Emperors which were his sons and began building a new Capitol.