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SPALATO
as a town. The important Roman city of this neighbourhood was Salona, now a mass of ruins. Spalato began life as the palace of the Emperor Diocletian, which he built for himself when, at the age of fifty-nine, he renounced the Imperial throne (305), and where he died in 313. He had profoundly modified the conception of the Imperial position ; he was the first Roman Emperor to adopt that sign of regality—the fillet round his brow—and to live in regal pomp and ceremony. The Eastern conception of kingship was already making itself felt at the court of the Roman Emperor before Constantine took his step eastward and created Constantinople. Diocletian was also the first Roman Emperor to share the Imperial throne and the first to abdicate, “qu* primum imperium participavit et posuit”. He conceived the Imperial constitution as a government by two Imperatores Augusti, each with his subordinate Caesar. He chose Maximian as his Imperial colleague; and they were the first Emperors to reside out of Rome in time of peace, Diocletian in Nicomedia and Maximian in Milan. Diocletian was the last Roman Emperor to celebrate 1 triumph in Rome ; and the coarse jests of tl>e Roman populace, exercising their immemorial rigM