In the event, the strain of trying to re-establish the empire wore Diocletian out, and he retired to the coast of Croatia, to turn his attention to matters that were more enjoyable than affairs of state. ‘I wish you would come to Salona,’ he wrote to one of his former colleagues, ‘and see the cabbages I have planted myself’; they were so impressive, he went on, that ‘one could never be tempted by the prospect of power ever again’.
