History of the Roman Empire disputes about the supreme authority, this finally formalised a peaceful succession of the emperor: in each half a "Caesar" would rise up to replace the "Augustus" and select a new "Caesar". On May 1, 305, Diocletian and Maximian abdicated in favour of their "Caesars". Galerius named the two new "Caesars": his nephew Maximinus for himself, and Flavius Valerius Severus for Constantius. The arrangement worked well under Diocletian and Maximian and shortly thereafter. The internal tensions within the Roman government were less acute than they had been. In "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Edward Gibbon notes that this
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire the religion, the art, the technology. Historians of Late Antiquity, a field pioneered by Peter Brown, have turned away from the idea that the Roman Empire fell at all – refocusing instead on Pirenne's thesis. They see a transformation occurring over centuries, with the roots of Medieval culture contained in Roman culture and focus on the continuities between the classical and Medieval worlds. Thus, it was a gradual process with no clear break. Brown argues in his book that: Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire The causes and mechanisms of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire