tetrarchy

The best attempt to escape this was Diocletian's tetrarchy, but that just led to yet another civil war.

His early attempts gave Rome the Tetrarchy and yet more civil wars; essentially his efforts were total failures.

The Roman empire had a tradition of splitting the control of the areas between multiple people at several points starting from Diocletian's tetrarchy onward.

I enjoyed your astute characterisation of this supposed techno-tetrarchy.

You make a good point, but here's how I understand it - and I'll cop that may be wrong Diocletian's reforms did a lot to recentralize the empire, but by the the late 300s during this influx, the nation had been wracked by the wars of the tetrarchy, and a cavalcade of small civil wars instigated by would-be usurpers.

(I think he was the tetrarchy guy, but people are free to correct me if there are real historians out there.) In any case, obviously Rome was heterogeneous, again just going by memory here, but it must have been at least before the first century BC.

It started getting weird with the Third Century Crisis, the Empire breaking up and the Tetrarchy.

He also saved the Empire from total disillusion and established a system that might have led to stability had Constantine not broken up the Tetrarchy.

I think it's fair to call it the transition from Empire to Tetrarchy.