Prostitutes, long licensed by the Roman Empire…

Prostitutes, long licensed by the Roman Empire and duly taxed, suffer excommunication by the Christian church in 305, on moral grounds.

Despite the religious ban, the well-established institution will continue to flourish and provide an important source of tax revenue to the imperial state.

Diocletian, having saved the empire from disintegration by establishing strong central control and a bureaucracy, abolishing the last Roman republican institutions, has aged prematurely through illness.

Of his own volition, he decides to entrust the affairs of the empire to younger men and returns first to Nicomedia, where he abdicates on May 1, 305.

Perhaps he has decided that, after twenty years of reign, his abdication is also “fateful.”