intelligence and his bravery.  He lodged at a woman’s, who was, they said, a Druidess, and had the prophetic faculty.  One day when he was settling his account with her, she complained of his extreme parsimony:  “Thou’rt too stingy, Diocletian,” said she; and he answered laughing, “I’ll be prodigal when I’m emperor.”  “Laugh not,” rejoined she:  “thou’lt be emperor when thou hast slain a wild boar” (aper).  The conversation got about amongst Diocletian’s comrades.  He made his way in the army, showing continual ability and valor, and several times during his changes of quarters and frequent hunting expeditions he found occasion to kill wild boars; but he did not immediately become emperor, and several of his contemporaries, Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and Numerian, reached the goal before him.  “I kill the wild boars,” said he to one of his friends, “and another eats them.”  The last mentioned of these ephemeral emperors, Numerian, had for his father-in-law and inseparable comrade a Praetorian prefect named Arrius Aper.  During a campaign in Mesopotamia Numerian was assassinated, and the voice of the army pronounced Aper guilty.  The legions assembled to deliberate about Numerian’s death and to choose his successor.  Aper was brought before the assembly under a guard of soldiers.  Through the exertions of zealous friends the candidature of Diocletian found great favor.  At the first words pronounced by him from a raised platform in the presence of the troops, cries of “Diocletian Augustus “were raised in every quarter.  Other voices called on him to express his feelings about Numerian’s murderers.  Drawing his sword, Diocletian declared on oath that he was innocent of the emperor’s death, but that he knew who was guilty and would find means to punish him.  Descending suddenly from the platform, he made straight for the Praetorian prefect, and saying, “Aper, be comforted; thou shalt not die by vulgar hands; by the right hand of great AEneas thou fallest,” he gave him his death-wound.  “I have killed the prophetic wild boar,” said he in the evening to his confidants; and soon afterwards, in spite of the efforts of certain rivals, he was emperor.

“Nothing is more difficult than to govern,” was a remark his comrades had often heard made by him amidst so many imperial catastrophes.  Emperor in his turn, Diocletian treasured up this profound idea of the difficulty of government, and he set to work, ably, if not successfully, to master it.  Convinced that the empire was too vast, and that a single man did not suffice to make head against the two evils that were destroying it,—­war against barbarians on the frontiers, and anarchy within,—­he divided the Roman world into two portions, gave the West to Maximian, one of his comrades, a coarse but valiant soldier, and kept the East himself.  To the anarchy that reigned within he opposed a general despotic administrative organization, a vast hierarchy of civil and military agents, everywhere present,