The two decades of Diocletian's reign saw the re-establishment of political, military and economic stability after half a century of chaos, at the price of a more absolutist monarchy, a greatly expanded army and bureaucracy and a more oppressive tax regime. Probably in 286 or 287, a new feature of the imperial collegiality emerged. Diocletian and Maximian began respectively to use the adjectival epithets Iovius and Herculius, bringing themselves into some sort of relationship with the cognate deities, Jupiter and Hercules. The years 287-90 had also seen important developments in the eastern half of the empire, to which Diocletian had repaired after the appointment of Maximian and perhaps a campaign against the Sarmatians in the autumn, reaching Nicomedia in Bithynia by 20 January 286. Iovius for Diocletian and Galerius, Herculius for Maximian and Constantius, epithets survived in the naming of new provincial divisions in Egypt some years after the end of the first tetrarchy.