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Dominate
Sign in to saveAlso known as Dominatus Romanus, the Dominate, Roman Dominate
The Dominate was a period traditionally used to describe the Roman Empire beginning with the reign of Emperor Diocletian (). The term Dominate is now rarely used as an analytical model in modern scholarship.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- historical period
- Part of
- history of Rome
- Named after
- Dominus
- Country
- Roman Empire
- Follows
- Principate
Show 7 more facts
- office held by head of state
- Dominus
- OpenStreetMap tag
- historic:period=dominate
- start time
- 0284-00-00
- end time
- 0565-00-00
- different from
- Low Roman Empire
- described by source
- Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia
- culture
- Ancient Rome
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Background
- Historiography
- See also
- References
- Citations
- Bibliography
The Dominate was a period traditionally used to describe the Roman Empire beginning with the reign of Emperor Diocletian (). The term Dominate is now rarely used as an analytical model in modern scholarship.
Proposed in the 19th-century by the German scholar Theodor Mommsen, he contrasted it with the earlier Principate established by Augustus in 27 BC, which he interpreted as a system in which imperial authority was formally embedded within Roman Republican institutions. Mommsen argued that this later period marked a rupture in the constitutional basis of the empire, moving from one legitimised by a republican senate and people to one where the emperor became the state.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Dominate” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.