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The Dominate or late Roman Empire was the "despotic" later phase of government, following the earlier period known as the "Principate", in the ancient Roman Empire. It may be considered to begin with the beginning of the reign of Diocletian in 284 after the Third Century Crisis of 235–284, and to end with the collapse of the Western Empire in AD 476, or with the reign of Justinian I (527 to 565) or of Heraclius (610 to 641). In the Eastern half of the Empire, and especially from the time of Justinian I, the system of the Dominate evolved into autocratic absolutism. The term is derived from the Latin dominus, which translates in English to ''lord'' or ''master.'' This form of address—already used by slaves to address their masters—was used for emperors from the Julio-Claudian (first) dynasty on, but inconsistently – Tiberius in particular is said to have reviled it as sycophancy. It became common under Diocletian, who is therefore a logical choice as the first ruler of the "early" dominate, since he dropped the earlier titles of ''Imperator Caesar'' for the new ones of ''Dominus Noster''. Historian David Potter describes the transformation of government under Diocletian when describing the shifts in imagery the Emperor used to display his power (in this case the building of a huge new palace at Sirmium): The style of Government so memorably described by Marcus, whereby the emperor sought to show himself as a model of correct aristocratic deportment, had given way to a style in which the emperor was seen to be distinct from all other mortals. His house could no longer be a grander version of houses that other people might live in: it, like him, had to be different. In contrast to the situation in the Principate however, emperors in the Dominate could not be deified as it was, excepting the two initial decades, the Christian period of the Roman Empire. == Transition from the Principate == During the Principate, the constitution of the Roman Republic was never formally abolished. It was amended in such a way as to maintain a façade of Republican government. Generally speaking, emperors of the Principate emulated Augustus in his fiction of a republican government, concentrating various civil and military offices upon one individual while nevertheless hiding autocratic connotations behind institutions of the old Republic, such as the preservation of the Senate and the annual paired consulship. This ended following the Crisis of the Third Century (235–284), during the reign of emperor Diocletian. Diocletian abandoned the appearances of Republic for the sake of control. He introduced a novel system of joint rule by four monarchs known as the Tetrarchy. It consisted of two co-emperors (augusti) and two respectively subordinate junior emperors (caesars). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dominate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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