Diocletian, perhaps the only Roman emperor to retire voluntarily (he was the one who first split the empire into East and West), when receiving word that Maximian (his partner, who had been forced to abdicate as per their prior agreement) was urging him to come out of retirement, is said to have written that "if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he had planted with his own hands at Salona, he should no longer be urged to relinquish the enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power." (John Julius Norwich, "Byzantium: The Early Centuries, Knopf, 1988, p.34.) Norwich's trilogy on the Byzantine Empire is truly memorable, by the way.