Sima Jiong tries to centralize power in his hands but the princes rebel against him: he is defeated by Sima Ai, the Prince of Changsha, and killed in 302.

Sima Ai, the fifth of the eight princes, becomes the effective regent, but in order to reduce opposition, he submits all important matters to Sima Ying, still stationed at Yecheng.

Maximian had returned to the north of Italy after his Mauretanian campaign, living a life of leisure in palaces in Milan and Aquilea, and leaving warfare to his subordinate Constantius.

Maximian is more aggressive in his relationship with the Senate than Constantius, and Lactantius contends that he terrorized senators, to the point of falsely charging and subsequently executing several, including the prefect of Rome in 301/2.

Constantius, in contrast to Maximian, maintains good relations with the senatorial aristocracy and spends his time in active defense of the empire.

He had taken up arms against the Franks in 300 or 301 and in 302—while Maximian is resting in Italy—continues to campaign against Germanic tribes on the Upper Rhine.

Sima Ai, as regent, pays attention to reforming the government, and he sees the importance of formally honoring Emperor Hui while maintaining resemblance to impartial governance.

He continues to try to share power with Sima Ying.

However, in autumn 303, Sima Yong, dissatisfied that his plan had not come to fruition, persuades Sima Ying to again join him against Sima Ai.

While Sima Yong and Sima Ying have overwhelming force, their forces cannot score a conclusive victory against Sima Ai.

Chinese poet Lu Ji leads a Taoist and Buddhist-influenced movement toward a more individualistic and uninhibited literary style.

After Wu’s subjugation by the Jin Dynasty in 280, Lu Ji, a direct descendant of the founders of Eastern Wu and son of the general Lu Kang, had moved with his brother Lu Yun to the capital, Luoyang, where he has become prominent in both literature and politics and has been made president of the imperial university.

According to Achilles Fang, quoted in Eliot Weinberger (ed.

), The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry (New Directions, 2003: ISBN 0811215407), p. 240, “ He was too scintillating for the comfort of his jealous contemporaries; in 303 he, along with his two brothers and two sons, was put to death on a false charge of high treason."

Lu Ji wrote much lyric poetry but is better known for writing fu, a mixture of prose and poetry.

He is best remembered for the Wenfu ("On Literature"), a piece of literary criticism that discourses on the principles of composition.

Diocletian's preference for activist government, combined with his self-image as a restorer of past Roman glory, presages the most pervasive persecution of Christians in Roman history.

Christians have often been scapegoats during the Roman Empire's Crisis of the third century, and when Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century makes this persecution systematic, Christian refugee communities fleeing the chaos and persecution of these times form in Egypt at the edges of population centers, far enough away to be safe from Imperial scrutiny, but still close enough to have access to civilization.

Records from this time indicate that Christians often lived in tombs and trash heaps on the edges of major cities, more or less protected by their obscure status.

Christian hagiography venerates a Christian named George, a soldier of the Roman Empire, who in the manner of the mythical Pers reportedly saved a Libyan princess from a dragon and may have been martyred in Palestine under the persecutions initiated by Diocletian. (He will become one of the most venerated saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches and the patron saint of Canada, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, the cities of Istanbul, Ljubljana and Moscow, as well as a wide range of professions, organizations, and disease sufferers.)

Maximian (although he will long be viewed by future Christians as a persecutor of their religion) seems to have done no more than obediently execute in his part of the empire the first edict of Diocletian, which ordered the burning of the Scriptures and the closing of the churches.

Maximian is disturbed from his rest in 303 only by Diocletian's vicennalia, the twenty-year anniversary of his reign, in Rome.

Some evidence suggests that it was on that date that Diocletian exacted a promise from Maximian to retire together, passing their titles as Augusti to the Caesars Constantius and Galerius.

Constantius' enforcement of Diocletian's edicts against the Christians is deliberately lax; he demolishes some churches but does not execute believers.