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Since Plato, death has been a recurring theme in the history of philosophy and the Hellenistic schools of thought. The "death" subject became a daily reflection particularly in Epicureanism and in Stoicism, from which not only the term meditatio mortis comes from, but an entire literature, including the writings made in the medieval times that had the final moment of life as their central point. Thus, in the 16th century, the period when Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) lived his life, meditation on death was a rhetorical topos. Nevertheless, his Essays approach the theme of death not only from a literary standpoint, but as a daily meditation, as a spiritual exercise. In this perspective, this article suggests that Montaigne, far beyond a rhetorical approach, attempts to recover the most original meaning that the Hellenistic schools of thought gave to meditatio mortis, taking this concept as a preparation for life itself, as a constant way of observing the present, faced with an imminent scenario of various deaths, such as the Black Death epidemic and the civil war in Montaigne troubled times.

This paper discusses the medieval theological and political history, and the difference between blue and red blood. The popular phrase blue blood had a special significance during the Middle Ages, and its echo has been present in our culture ever since. One might think that such an abstract concept is only an insignificant legend that emerged from the oral folk tradition without any roots in theory and literature. The author's intention is to present the concept of blue and red blood as a part of fictional genre theory. The fictional genre discourse becomes especially evident when the king's simultaneously natural and supernatural bodies, or more simply, the notion that the king possesses a superbody, are discussed. In the given period the concept of blue blood, which referred to the king's dignity, was coined. Thomas Hobbes, in his famous work Leviathan, develops the social contract theory, which is used to explain the development of the modern political community. Blue blood becomes red when an ordinary citizen becomes involved in politics, as this paper confirms. ; Ovaj rad tematizira srednjovjekovnu teološku i političku povijest, kao i razliku između plave i crvene krvi. Poznati izraz plava krv bio je posebno važan u srednjemu vijeku, a njegov odjek prisutan je u kulturi sve do danas. Mogli bismo pomisliti da je tako apstraktan koncept tek beznačajna legenda, proizašla iz usmene predaje bez ikakvih začetaka u teoriji i književnosti. Namjera je autora predstaviti koncept plave i crvene krvi kao dio teorije fikcijskoga žanra. Diskurs fikcijskoga žanra postaje vidljiv u razmatranju kraljeva istovremenog posjedovanja prirodna i natprirodna tijela, odnosno ideje da kralj posjeduje supertijelo. U danome razdoblju stvoren je koncept plave krvi koji se odnosio na kraljevo dostojanstvo. Thomas Hobbes u svojemu slavnom djelu Levijatan razvija teoriju društvenoga ugovora kojom objašnjava razvoj moderne političke zajednice. Kao što prikazuje ovaj rad, plava krv postaje crvena kada običan građanin postane aktivan ...

Autor u radu donosi prikaz dviju vladarskih crkava iz IX. st. slična ustroja s westwerkom. Uz obje crkve pronađeni su ulomci kamene plastike s dedikacijskim natpisom, od kojih jedan spominje župana a drugi kraljicu. Na Klisu je pronađena ploča s reljefom na temu Majestas Domini. Obje crkve spadaju u privatne crkve, tzv. eigenkirche, što upućuje na novi način franačke organizacije teritorija s utvrđivanjem feudalnog posjeda (Ordensburgen). ; The remains of churches that have been found and are discussed in the text can reliably be ascribed to the chapel of the long-sought Trpimir residence at Klis and the pre-Romanesque stratum of the church dedicated to the BVM at the cemetery of the village of Blizna Gornja in the Trogir hinterland. The find of sculpture and texts written on the altar screens show that in both cases these were churches of members of the medieval ruling elite: the church in Blizna Gornja can be connected with the župan of the županija of Drid, and the chapel in Klis directly with the ruler of Croatia. The existence of a medieval church at Klis is strongly supported by investigations of the walls, which showed that a large number of marble fragments of ecclesiastical stone architectural decoration from the 9th to the 12th century were incorporated into the building of the mosque. Among the fragments there are pilasters, plutei and the trabeation of an altar screen from the early Middle Ages, while the whole of the medieval material is built into the walls of the mosque above its floor level. In the western wall four marble fragments of architraves of an altar screen with parts of an inscription were found, one fragment of a marble architrave of a pluteus and a pilaster with the base of a pillar of the screen. All the fragments of this carving were made of Proconesian marble and were incorporated in such a way that the decorations and inscriptions were not to be seen. The fragments belonged to the septum and contain typical pre-Romanesque interlacing motifs, pretzels, and the parts of an inscription are carved on a ribbon of the trabeation of the altar screen below the characteristic hook decoration. Fragments of the trabeation contain parts of an inscription about a ruler that mentions the royal family, and on an architrave of the altar screen of the church in Klis that has been found, for the first time the title of queen is mentioned. The parts of the altar screen found with interlacing ornamentation of the 9th century belong to a pilaster with interlacing and an architrave of the pluteus with interlacing ornamentation and four fragments of the architrave of the altar screen with parts of a royal inscription. The fragments contain wording with the royal formula: ORUM FILIU(S)., MEA DOM(N)A S(C)LAVA REGINA. Although these are detached pieces, it is very clear that they are part of a single inscription in which the wife of the ruler or king is mentioned. It is clear in this part of the text that the wife of the ruler is called regina, from which it can be concluded that her husband, the subject of the inscription, is a ruler who bears the title of rex. It is important to point out also that she is addressed as domna, and that analogously to this her husband must have been addressed as dominus. From these titles, the votive inscription of the church in Klis might have belonged to a ruler of the middle of the 9th century, probably to Trpimir himself, the only ruler of that time who is mentioned together with the title of king, probably attained through victory in the war with the nation of the Greeks, as reported by the Saxon Gottschalk. And the fragment of the first part of the inscription contained this very title of the ruler (REX SCLAV)ORUM FILIU(S). This would be supported by the inscription in the Cividale Gospel, where Trpimir is signed as »domno Trepimiro«, and the title of his wife really could have been DOMNA SCLAVA REGINA, as this is read from the wording on the architrave of the altar screen. As well as the described parts of the septum, during works on the renovation of the Church of St Vitus a slab with a relief was found built flat as a building stone in the annular wall of the tambour. This fragment of early medieval figural sculpture of Proconesian marble shows Christ in Glory. Preserved from the composition featuring the topic Majestas Domini in the Klis relief is the central figure of Christ in a mandorla and an angel on his right hand side. Christ is shown down to the waist, his right hand raised in blessing, while in the left hand he holds a scroll with the Gospels. The relief from the Klis Church of St Vitus, though modest in its dimensions, might have belonged to the lintel of a portal of an early medieval church, although according to the mortise on the upper part it could equally well be supposed to have been a fragment of some stone furnishing that consisted of pillars and beams. The visual treatment of the relief of the linearly grooved surfaces that suggest folds of clothing, the manner of treatment of the figures with single incision of the features with expressive underlined eyes, the hatched curls of the hair and the particularly characteristic handling of the nose reveal the hand of the skilled mason who made the relief. As for the origin of the relief of the church in Klis, the finding of the medieval royal church in the foundations of the Church of St Vitus and the confirmation of the existence of a fortified royal court at the site of Klis Fort are sufficient warrant that it originally came from Klis. From this it could well be hypothesised that the relief of Christ from the church in Klis belongs to a separate sculptural unit, directly related to this site. Extensive archaeological and conservation-restoration excavations in 1999-2000 preceded the thoroughgoing renovation of the Church of St Mary in Blizna Gornja. Against expectations, the pre-Romanesque architecture of a ruler from the 9th century was found in them, belonging through their form among the few specimens of pre-Romanesque churches with external buttresses of semicircular cross-section. Like similar examples, the Church of St Saviour at the source of the Cetina and the church at Lopuška glava, Biskupija, by Knin, the Church of St Mary in Blizna had a forecourt in front of the main elevation. An external staircase led to the first floor, over which there was probably a tower, as in examples of similar churches with a westwork. In the forecourt of the church the lid of a Roman period sarcophagus used as a gravestone was found. The find of the sarcophagus lid and many fragments of stone sculptural decoration of the 9th century in marble and limestone show that the Church of St Mary was richly endowed and equipped. One of the fragments contains the name and title of the donor: .ANVSIV[panv]S, for which reason it is assumed to have belonged to an altar screen put up by a Croatian magnate, mostly likely a župan. Numerous fragments of trabeation have been found, the beams of which were marble, while the arched tegurium was made of limestone. Fragments of marble plutei and pilasters of the altar screen, as well as pillars with capitals found around the church belong in their form to the sculptural art of the 9th century. Fragments found are enough for the reconstruction of the original appearance of the screen and for an understanding of the inscriptions in the field of the lower part of the gable and the architraves. The inscription is a typical intercession, in which the prayer is addressed to Our Lady and to St John the Baptist, asking for their intercession with Christ, for the salvation of his soul, and the following reading can be proposed: .[pe]R I[nte]RCOESSIONEM BEATE ET GLORIO[se matri]S D[e]I GE[netricis apud Christum satvatOREm SCTAe Mariae] ET BEATI IO[hannis Baptistae] OP[vs] E[dificavit] pro animae suae[reme]DIO V[otum complevit Prod]ANVS IV[ppanu]S. According to the inscription on the septum the church would have been dedicated to St Mary like many of the churches of that time in the early of medieval Croatia, in Golubić, Ostrovica, Biskupija, Gradec, Pađeni and Lepuri. But the inscription relates it in a particular way via the intercession of Mary and John to Christ, to whom the intercession is addressed. The permeation of the contents by the theme of the Madonna's intercession (i.e. the Deisis), typically Byzantine iconography on the one hand and the Sanctus written in the spirit of the revived Roman liturgy on the screens of churches in Trogir as well as the churches of the Croatian župans in the hinterland and on the islands suggest something of their specific political position in the second half of the 9th century at the border between the tradition of the East and the new influences coming from the West. The question arises as to who the donor of the church of St Mary in Blizna Gornja was. Only the ending of the name and the beginning of the title in the letters IV[ppanu]S are in existence. From this it can be assumed that the church was put up by a župan, and his name, which ends with the letters.ANUS, might be Stephanus or, more likely, it was part of some Croatian name that is borne in the documents by the župans, like Branus or Prodanus. According to the results of the most recent research, St Mar in Blizna is a votive church of a Croatian magnate put up in the middle of the 9th century on the remains of an ancient villa that was part of his estate. Analysis of the architecture confirms this. The oldest archaeological stratum found at the site is the remainder of a wall of the later Roman period, probably from the 6th century, in front of the forecourt of the church. This stratum is insufficiently investigated, but it belonged to a building of much greater size than the pre-Romanesque Church of St Mary. The early medieval stratum, of the 9th century, lays claim to the foundations of the church, of a simple rectangular ground plan with semicircular buttresses, and the shallowly founded apse on the bedrock might be a building of later time. A very good state of preservation is exhibited by the walls of the pre-Romanesque building that bound the ground plan, the beginning of the staircase of the atrium, its western and southern doors, while in the interior of the atrium, in front of the façade of the church, a cylindrical sarcophagus lid has been found. The two-storey court, the chapel of the pre-Romanesque church and its undoubtedly funerary purpose in the ground floor part are known in the literature as westwork, and their finding at the site of Blizna Gornja suggests there was a very strong influence from the Carolingian court on the Croatian ruling and aristocratic stratum of the 9th century, to which, along with the actual rulers, it was primarily the župans that belonged. The Church of St Mary on the current graveyard of the village of Blizna Gornja was, then, the church of a magnate, who in his name has the ending anus, most probably Prodan (Prodanus?) or Bran (Branus?) rather than Stjepan (Stephanus), a župan of the županija of Drid of the middle of the 9th century, for at that time along with the titular functions of the Croatian župans their Slavic names were regularly given. This is a typical example of a private church (Eigenkirche), a new legal institution of the Frankish type, put up on the foundations of a renovated Roman period villa, the feudal property of the lord, who used it for ceremonial purposes, as well as a private funeral chapel for him and the members of his immediate family, and hence it was forbidden to bury members of the community at large in its vicinity. Among the process that took hold of Europe in the post-Carolingian period an important place is occupied by the construction of fortified manors, which from the 9th to the 12th century totally changed the image of early medieval Europe. The Croatian ruler, who was at first directly subject to Aquileia, the Frankish ecclesiastical centre in Friuli, must have been directly impressed by the construction of the fortified estates of the marquisate of Friuli, for it was from here that Frankish missionaries arrived in Croatia. Its connection with Frankish church centre even after the abolition of the marquisate in 828 is shown by the pilgrimages of Croatian dukes and their families to the Benedictine monastery of Cividale during the whole of the 8th century. Einhard's Annales mentioned Borna's forts in Dalmatia, into which the duke retreated before the attack of Ljudevit Posavski. Trpimir's royal residence is mentioned in a deed of gift of his of 852. There is an obvious difference in the name of the ruler's residence of Trpimir's time, as mentioned in two texts: one mentions villa nostra, the other curte nostra. The mentioned curtis in the document is called Clusa, which implies the name of the fortress of Klis, which for the whole of its history was in strategic control of the approach to the sea, to ancient Salona and the city of Split. Unlike Klis, which is called a curtis, the name of the villa from the Gottschalk text is not recorded, and it might be to do with some residential complex in the Salona area, or perhaps some place very close to Klis, such as Rižnice, in which Trpimir, wishing to make contrition for his sins, built a monastery and church after the war, at the time of the normalisation of relations with the Romans. The fact is that the concepts of villa and curtis appear at the same time in the mid-9th century in the context of the formation of feuds and manors, although there may be some fundamental difference concealed in them. One and the other may be related to the ruler's residence. The concept of curtis in this sense can be found afterwards, among many examples of the 11th century, when the king's curtis of Rogovi on the lower slopes of the hill by Biograd, or the curtes of the imperial protospatar and ban Stjepan Uitula, Nova sella and Butina ues, as well as many others related to the names of their owners, like that of Vlkomir and Preda in Žrnovnica or Tješen on Brač. Still, in the light of the new research, the curte nostra, quae Clusan dicitur mentioned in Trpimir's deed of gift should be looked at in a completely different context, not only as an estate but also as the residential complex of a feudal ruler.

U studiji se, nasuprot uvriježenim mišljenjima, dokazuje da su blokovi sjevernog dijela Dioklecijanove palače bili izvorno projektirani i izvedeni za potrebe gineceja kojemu se u Notitia Dignitatum spominje nadstojnik (Procurator gynaecii lovensis Dalmatiae -Aspalato). Opskrbljivao ga je akvedukt kapaciteta 1500 1/sec. = 129.600 m3 na dan. Problem obilnog ispiranja riješen je odgovarajucim kanalizacijskim sistemom koji je postojao samo duž ulica sjevernog dijela Palače u kojem su se nalazili pogoni carskih tkaonica. Tehnologija je (uz sustav bazena arheološki uočenih u prizemlju Papalićeve palače) ukljucivala sumporavanje, za što su bili na raspolaganju brojni izvori sumporne vode uz samu Palaču. Čitava građevina savršeno se uklapa u dugački niz tetrarhijskih javnih radova. Bila bi to izvorna, osnovna funkcija građevine u koju se Dioklecijan povukao nakon što je 305. g. bio prisiljen na abdikaciju. ; In scholarly literature, the term "city" was first mentioned by Lj. Karaman, talking of the beginnings of medieval Split in Diocletian's Palace, and then by Andre Grabar in his Martyrium (I: 232-233).2 Noel Duval, in a series of studies he wrote, asks whether Diocletian's residence should be classified as palatium, villa, castrum, urban settlement or some special type of architecture, considering that in comparison with genuine imperial palaces like those in Constantinople, Antioch, Philippopolis and Ravenna, it was wanting a number of "attributes": proposed the term "chateau".3 -5 The term was thoroughly investigated by Slobodan Čurčić, discussing late antique palatine architecture, showing convincingly that the urban character of these residences was undoubted (of Antioch , Nicomedia, Salona, Constantinople, Split) - although the miniature municipal quarters in them had an only slightly more than symbolic significance.6 Diocletian's building in Split really does not have the external look of a Roman imperial villa. In Split, in particular with respect to the two architectural masses in the northern part of the building, we note, its innate anti-landscape character, both the internal and the external disposition of the architectural elements, which is almost inorganically formalised. Not even in the narrow residential area, within which the halls are interconnected only via the "cryptoportico" having no direct contacts with the surrounding landscape, we do not find any of the characteristics that in the nature of things we would expect in a residence in which, it was always considered, the emperor intended to while away his final years. The Split edifice is really primarily an example of fortification. But here too we can be surprised. The sentry patrol corridor should be on the top of the walls and should be protected with a parapet, while here it is on the first floor, perforated with hardly defensible apertures (3 x 2m). The building was clearly primarily motivated by the desire to impress the surroundings, with its emphatic delineation of military presence and power. The Golden and Silver Gates and the great apertures of the sentry corridor on the three sides of the walls onto the mainland must have been walled up before the Byzantine-Gothic wars of the 530s.7 But it would seem that we can understand its form - so very particular that it evades the usual, in some sense fossilized, terminology – only through some new reading of the original meaning and purpose of the building itself. In author's opinion, this is proffered by a very simple question. The aqueduct that brought water into the palace from the source of the river Jadro was, in the design and execution of the imperial architects, undoubtedly related to the construction of his final dwelling place. Although it is a rare specimen of a Roman monument of this kind that is still being used today (reconstructed in 1878), in the literature and in research it has been almost entirely neglected, and has certainly never been interpreted in the original context. The aqueduct provided 1500 l/ sec. (129.600 m3 a day), which in terms of our standards would be enough for a population of 173,000. 8,9 The sheer amount of water inevitably leads to the question of what it was meant for, because it far exceeded the needs of the relatively modest bath complexes in the Palace. The answer might be hidden in an almost neglected item of information from Notitia Dignitatum OC XI 48 (ed. 0 . Seeck, 150) where there is a mention of the Procurator genaecii Iovensis Dalmatiae - Aspalato- warden of the imperial weaving shop for the production of woollen clothing for the army that worked in Split, under the title of Jupiter. So far it has always been thought, on the rare occasions when this fact has been mentioned at all (and then only by-the-bye) that this gynaeceum was only after Diocletian's death "inscribed" into the Palace, which was for the whole of the 5th century a kind of pensiopolis of dethroned emperors or pretenders to the throne. It has been considered that the northern part of the Palace was reserved for the Imperial Guard, for stables and the like. 10,11 Notitia Dignitatum, a long list of all the senior offices in the Empire, civilian and military, is certainly of a composite character. The basic text was created probably in about 408 (in partibus Occidentis changes were recorded up to 420), but it conceals a lot of information about the periods before the revision of the basic copy, mirroring the order that Diocletian had brought into the state, which certainly relates to the Split gynaeceum, which alone of the 14 such complexes located in the most important cities of the empire bears the characteristic predicate Iovense: it must in itself constitute a terminus post quem non to do with the origin of the factory of military uniforms of wool in the building in Split. 12,13,15 Although the gynaecea were never mentioned in the context of Diocletian's reforms, it is generally accepted that they were created at the time of the first Tetrarchy. The concentration of the labour force, the range of specialised jobs, the degree of organisation and their connection with urban centres makes them, in the judgement of historians, the closest to the modern industrial factory. State factories (fabricae) were set up in the late Empire to eliminate or at least to alleviate the difficulties concerning the supply of the state and the army with certain products. It was necessary to clothe the approximately half a million soldiers that Diocletian 's army reforms had raised, as well as no small number of clerks. Archaeology, however, has never made any direct contribution to the understanding of their internal organisation, except in the case of the otherwise well documented gynaeceum in Carthage, which lay in the heart of the city, on the edge of the celebrated Circular Harbour. 16,17 The state operated, through the comes sacrarum largitionum, a number of weaving mills, both for woolen and linen fabrics, and dyeworks 18 The Split gynaeceum should have probably been in some kind of complementary relationship with the gynaeceum moved to Salona, perhaps for security reasons, from Bassiana (Donji Petrovci, Pannonia Inferior) also noted by Notitia Dignitatum, XI, 46 (Procurator gynaecii Bassanensis Pannoniae Secundae translati Salonis). In Salona, thus, there was a large cloth dyeworks (In Not. dign. the Procurator bafii Salonitani Dalmatiae was also mentioned) and weaving mill. At Five Bridges in Salona artisan workshops were actually found, probably a dyer's workshop, and fulling mills for cloth and the dyeing of cloth. Also to be seen is the reservoir from which the water to drive the mills ran, and a building for the habitation of the workers. 19 In one inscription in Salona, a magister conquilarius is mentioned (CIL III 2115 + 8572), clearly the head of the state workshops in which purple was extracted from shellfish, perhaps for the gynaeceum in Aspalathos. 22 Another inscription found in Salona mentions a certain Hilarus, who was the purpurarius, dyer of red garments or, perhaps, negotiator artis purpurae. 23 That the Salona baffeum and the Split gynaeceum were mentioned only in the Notitia Dignitatum, says that their production was a strictly channelled state monopoly, and that the products from them did not make their way to the general market as other goods did. The army was supplied directly, without the agency of merchants. Although not all the technological details of the gynaeceum, the fullonica and the baffeum have been revealed, we can conjure up in the northern half of the Palace an image of the whole system of pools in which the fabrics were washed, softened and finished by being trampled on with bare feet in a solution of potash , fuller's earth, human and animal urine. Here then there was a very large demand for water.28 Garments were rubbed with chalk, and fumigated with sulphur. It is particularly important to remember that the technology included, among other things, sulphur treatment (sulfure sulfire ), for which there were the many springs of sulphurous water alongside the Palace itself, which were used for the washing and bleaching of cloth right up to the first half of the 20th century, by St Francis church on the Shore.29 The problem of copious rinsing was solved by the extraordinarily handled sewage system that existed only along the the cardo and decumanus and the perimeter streets of the northern part of the Palace , in which the mentioned plant was located. Among other things, the extreme western part of the sewer under the decumanus, at the exit from the Palace, has been explored. It passed under the western gate (Porta ferrea), and moved in a gentle arc towards the south-west, finishing some forty metres further in a stone portal (below the kitchen of today's Hotel Central). Thence in an open channel all this water flowed into the bay of the sea, in the immediate vicinity of the grandest corner of the Palace.30 The monumental cross-section of this sewage system corresponds perfectly to the cross-section of the aqueduct. We should underscore the fact that the sewage system was located only along the streets of the northern part of the Palace, while we might expect it to be primarily in the residential southern part, which also shows that it was constructed for the purpose of the production inside the gynaeceum. Unfortunately, there are practically no archaeological records of the small finds from investigations of the northern part of the Split building. But, during excavations of the crossing place of the cardo and decumanus (in order to establish the original level of the street and the Peristyle) M. Suić in 1974 did observe, "a very thick layer of fine sediment of a markedly red colour of non-organic origin", which had been deposited in the cloaca, and which had retained its intensity for centuries. This must prove the existence of fullonica, which must have been located within the gynaeceum.31, 32, 55, 56 Gynaeciarii, like other craftsmen, were associated into corporations or collegia, but were not able to leave their work, being nexu sanguinis ad divinas largitiones perlinenles, which makes the construction of the northern part of the Palace, in which they lived alongside their workshops even more logical. 36 - 4 0 Their patron saint in 5th c. might have been, as I have already speculated, St Martin - patron of soldiers and weavers -to whom the little church in the sentries' walk over the Golden Gate, walled-in very early on, was dedicated. 41 All this also suggests that Christianity was alive in the Palace from day one. Along with the bishop and the praetorians, the weavers were probably that industrial revolutionary guard of the time. It is not at all surprising that a martyr like St. Anastasius - a fullo, the co-patron of Split, should have come precisely from the milieu of the fullers, probably working in the baffeum in Salona. In Split, Diocletian's gynaeceum was probably reliant upon a manufacture that already existed, one linked with the sulphurous water and perhaps on the broom, genisla acanlhoclada, from which a colouring agent for dying the cloth was obtained, and according to which, it is believed, Aspalathos actually obtained its name.43 There was raw material in Dalmatia within reach. Immediately following the Second World War there were about one million sheep in the central hinterland of the Adriatic coast. Delm or Dalm in Old Illyrian means shepherd, herder, flock, and hence Delminium means the place of pasture, and delme- dalme still today in Albanian means sheep.44 - 49 Evidence of the organised weaving industry in Roman Dalmatia can be seen in the form of the weaving industry around Split, which all the way through the Middle Ages and until quite recently was different from that in the other regions. 51 The Gynaeceum iovense might have been special precisely in the fact that this was not a remodelled and expanded production area already in existence, the expropriation of some extant minor complexes (as is assumed to have happened in Carthage), but a green field project, an exemplarily constructed industrial unit. And for this reason, of all such establishments, it was the only one to have such a flowery dedication and name. At the end one should also draw attention to an almost neglected reference concerning the palace, that is, the first description of it, uttered by the most authoritative mouth of all. In the Oralio ad Sanclorum coelum which he delivered in Antioch in 325, Emperor Constantine said that the colossal pile of the palace was a "loathed dwelling" in which the Emperor Diocletian shut himself up after this abdication: "After the massacre in the persecutions, after he had condemned himself by depriving himself of power, as a man of no utility, acknowledging the damage he had done with his imprudence, he remained hidden in his really contemptible dwelling place". 61 This surprising statement of Constantine might be an allusion to the fact that Diocletian had to spend his last days in a building that in spite of all the sumptuousness of its centre and the residential quarters looking onto the sea- must also have had the features of a military factory, to which the form of the castrum must have been in all respects much more suitable than to a charming imperial residence. The whole of the building fits perfectly in with the long series of tetrarchic public works. It is important to stress the autonomy of the cardo and the decumanus (12 metres broad) with their own lastricatus and their own porticatus, independent of the blocks that they hid. I would even say that the form of the castrum is more logical for a gynaeceum than it is for a palace. What should be actually highlighted is the surprising pragmatism, as well as the great social focus of the lllyrian emperors, who really did want to renew the "fervent patriotism and iron duty in the evil days" (Syme). Probus in Egypt worked on an important improvement of the navigation of the Nile; temples, bridges, porticoes, palaces, all were put up by the army. Galerius himself was a devotee of public works, and undertook an operation worth of a monarch, says Gibbon, diverting the excess of water from Lake Pelso (Balaton) to the Danube, at the border with Noricum. He had the endless woods all around cleared, and gave the whole reclaimed area between the Drava and the Danube to his Panonian subjects to be cultivated, naming it Valeria after his wife. 65, 66 Most of the buildings that Diocletian put up were of a utilitarian purpose, such as mints and the factories that Lactantius mentions, or border forts, roads and bridges. Dozens of extant inscriptions tell us of the dedications of new and restored temples, aqueducts, nymphea and public buildings - "vetustatu con lapsum" or "Ionge incuria neglectum"- dilapidated from age and long neglect. 67 According to Lactantius's writing, Diocletian had an infinitam cupiditatem aedificandi, an infinite desire to build. 68 Today we are apt to count mostly the imperial palaces in connection with this statement, and to forget the whole framework of comprehensive public works that were undertaken during the first tetrarchy. Twenty years of relaxation from civil wars and barbarian invasions, and the gradual suppression of local unrest, led to the renovation of the prosperity in cities all round the Empire, hence the major number of public dedications, the revival of overall construction activity. The Tetrarchan New Deal - with Diocletian as the Roosevelt of the ancient world - is often understood in a formalist way, as a series of legislative and political attempts to halt inflation, overlooking exploits like Galerius's round Balaton, or this one in Split. The construction of the Split Palace, then, no kind of imperial Xanadu, as it is often held to be, justified its investment. More than that: its existence enabled antiquity in Dalmatia, even after the 7th century catastrophe, not to be extinguished with a sudden death, but over long centuries to be merged into the modern age, remaining until this day a lesson in and criterion for every creative architectural operation into the tissue of the city, which developed organically within the precise, almost dry geometry of the Emperor's palace-cumfactory. * The article was published in English, in: Das Imperium zwischen Zentralisierung und Regionalisierung: Palaste- Regionen- Volker (ed. A. Demand, A. Goltz und H. Schlange-Schoningen), Berlin - New York 2004: 141-162.