Roman Coins and Roman History pg9

Diocletian divided the empire into eastern and western halves with a senior Augustus and a junior Caesar (see no. 125) in charge of each; this was his famous tetrarchy or rule of four. He also redrew the map of provincial geography, redistributed administrative duties, reconstructed defensive works, and in a series of moves redefined Roman coinage. His most thorough measures were taken in A.D. 294. He minted gold coins at 60 to the pound, silver coins of nearly pure silver--good silver coins at that (see no. 125)--at 96 to the pound, and several sets of bronze coins varying in size and value. The monetary reformation went hand-in-hand with the institution of wage and price controls; the latter were unsuccessful, and although the former did not garner as much confidence as the emperor had hoped, the new coins were almost universally minted throughout the empire. In A.D. 305 Diocletian voluntarily retired, and after a series of power struggles, shared imperial titles, and bloody battles, Constantine the Great reigned supreme as the one and only emperor.

Constantine's position in history is assured by virtue of two extraordinary actions he took, both of which were eminently successful but which were, paradoxically, at odds with one another: he founded Constantinople and moved the imperial headquarters there, but he also made Christianity the de facto religion of the empire. The former act effectively spelled the end of Rome's position at the center of the empire, but the latter effectively initiated the city's role as the center of the Church. To be sure, Julian the Apostate later attempted to restore paganism, as witnesses the bearded, pagan, philosophical portrait on his coins (see no. 129), and even later Theodosius I temporarily reunited the two halves of the empire; but after Constantine the imperial bureaucracy--civil, military, diplomatic, legal, and educational--was headquartered in the east, and the Church, which was both a religious and a cultural entity, held sway in the west, which thereby enjoyed a resurgence of intellectual energy in the persons of Jerome, Augustine, et al., and even the pagan Symmachus. Yet Constantine was also responsible for a major and final innovation in Roman coinage. He struck a lighter aureus at 72 to the pound, which, known as the solidus, became famous as the only coin of the realm which was accepted as payment for taxes. The solidus (no. 128) remained the standard gold coin until the turn of the millennium, 700 years later.

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