‘At last Roman, at last restored to the true light of Empire’

Abstract

This chapter begins by considering what made the late Roman state distinctive from the early Empire, exploring the political developments of the later third century, in particular the military, administrative, and economic reforms undertaken by the tetrarchs. It then explores the presentation of the war between the tetrarchy and the British Empire of Carausius and Allectus (286‒96), taking as its core sources Pan. Lat. X, XI, and VIII. These speeches are unique in the panegyrical corpus, in that two of them (X and XI) were delivered while the usurpation they describe was still under way, the third (VIII) after it was defeated. In this chapter, we see how the British Empire was ‘othered’ as piratical and barbarian, and how conflict with it helped to create the distinctive ideology of the tetrarchy.