CHAP. LXXI. DIOCLETIAN'S ERRORS. 581 CHAPTER LXXI. Division of the empire after Diocletian.-Constantine, son of Constantius, saluted emperor by his soldiers.-His contest with Maxentius.- Battle of the Milvian bridge.-Edict of Milan, and toleration of the Christians.Constantine forms an alliance with Licinius.-Jealousy between them.— Constantine's position towards the Christian Church.-Councils at Rome and at Arles.-Persecution of the Donatists.-The Circumcelliones.Quarrel between Constantine and Licinius.-Defeat and death of Licinius. -Constantine sole emperor.-His increasing favor towards the Christians. -He puts to death his son Crispus.-Council of Nicæa.—Foundation of Constantinople.-Constantine's baptism, on his death-bed, and deification by the Pagans. (A.D. 305-337.) NOTWITHSTANDING the ability which Diocletian had displayed in the government of the realm, the distribution of power he affected to make on his own abdication seems to indicate caprice and weakness, and was speedily followed, as might have been expected, by fresh disturbances. He had insisted on the retirement of Maximian. Whatever means he may have had of enforcing this sacrifice, he could not fail to irritate his reluctant colleague, and to sow thereby the seeds of future troubles. But he made even a worse blunder than this, for instead of inviting the two Cæsars who remained in power to step into the superior place of Augusti, and associate each with himself a prince of his own choice, he had allowed his son-in-law and favorite Galerius to nominate both the new candidates. Galerius appointed his nephew, Daza, originally an. Illyrian shepherd, to be the Cæsar of the East, with the provinces of Egypt and Syria, under the name of Maximinus, or the still grander title of Jovius. At the same time, passing over the manifest claims of Constantine, the son of Constantius, he forced upon the Western Augustus another Cæsar in the person of one Flavius Severus, a favorite perhaps with some of the legions, and put him at the head of the administration of Italy. Constantius, ruler of the Gaulish provinces, was at the time far distant in Britain, and was moreover reported to be lying sick. Galerius expected his death, or ventured to overlook him in his absence, and hoped, by calling creatures of his own to the succession, to secure supreme authority over the whole empire for himself. But the moderation of Constantius, which had made him an object of dislike and jealousy to his unscrupulous col A.D. 306-312. leagues, endeared him to his own subjects, and gave him favor in the eyes of the Christian population throughout the provinces. Great multitudes of the new faith had taken refuge under his sway, and had enjoyed his protection. The soldiers admired him for his victories over the Alemanni and the Caledonians; at the moment of his death they proclaimed his son Constantine emperor in their camp at York, and the nomination was received with enthusiasm by all classes throughout the West. Galerius did not venture to oppose this demonstration of feeling. He suffered his new rival, thus irregularly appointed, to exercise authority in the place of his father, but claimed the right, as the eldest and first of the four associated princes, of assigning him only the fourth rank among them, with the subordinate title of Cæsar. Constantine affected to be satisfied, and continued for six years to confine himself to the administration of the Northern provinces. During this period he carried out his father's policy in every particular. He chastised the barbarians in the North of Britain, and put the Roman possessions in the island in a complete state of defence against them. He established the provincial government, which had been overthrown by Carausius, on a secure basis. Thence he flew to the succor of the garrisons on the Rhine, which, on the death of Constantius, had been promptly assailed by fresh incursions of the Germans, and completed the great victory of Noviomagus (Neumagen, on the Moselle) by a terrible massacre of his captives. At the same time towards his subjects he displayed the utmost moderation and clemency, tolerating and protecting the Christians, and remitting the fiscal burdens which had pressed so hard upon the population of Gaul. Though personally indifferent, it would seem, to every form of religion, he was keenly alive to the common superstition of worshipping all rising powers. He had the acuteness to perceive that Christianity, which had survived so many persecutions, was the spiritual power of the future; his ardent imagination was doubtless kindled by the claims it advanced, the claims it actually realized; his vigorous understanding convinced him that, whether its authority were divine or human only, it rested at least on a foundation of moral energy and intelligence, that the Christians were the best husbands and fathers, the most honest dealers, perhaps the bravest of soldiers, certainly the most loyal of subjects. Whatever might be the relative numbers of the Christians and the Pagans-and undoubtedly the Christians were in a minority in the East, in a very small minority throughout the West-their effective force for all social ends was indefinitely multiplied by their superior zeal and earnestness, and by the admiration their long sufferings had extorted. Combined against the shattered CHAP. LXXI. DEATH OF MAXIMIAN. 583 fragments of a thousand sects the Church might seem all-powerful. While watching his time for raising himself to the highest place in the empire Constantine was perhaps already meditating terms of alliance with the greatest moral influence of the period. Meanwhile the Senate also, the centre of heathenism, exhibited for a moment fresh signs of vitality. Affecting indignation at the entire postponement of the claims of its late ruler Maximian to those of Galerius, it had taken on itself to confer on his son Maxentius the title of Augustus. Maximian himself, defying the remonstrances of the aged Diocletian, issued from his retirement, and reassumed authority, under pretence of lending the weight of his name and experience to the cause of his son. He gave his daughter Fausta in marriage to Constantine, and thus cemented, as he hoped, an alliance between the ruler of Gaul and the claimant to Italy. But no sooner did Maxentius taste of power than he drove his own father out of his dominions; and Constantine suffered his father-in-law to find an asylum in Gaul only on condition of resigning a second time all share in the imperial government. The later career of this restless adventurer is recorded with some apparent admixture of exaggeration and fiction. He is said to have made divers attempts to regain a splendid position, to have sought in vain to engage Diocletian himself to resume the purple, to have succeeded once more in obtaining favor from Constantine, but to have repaid his indulgence by raising his standard against him in the south of Gaul, while he was occupied with an expedition in the opposite quarter. The enthusiasm of Constantine's soldiers is said to have been displayed in the forced marches they willingly underwent to surprise the traitor at Marseilles, where he was finally delivered up by his own followers. Again he was pardoned; again he contrived a plot against his benefactor, and a romantic story is told of the attempt he made to assassinate him in the arms of his consort, Fausta, and the artifice by which Fausta and Constantine combined to outwit him. Then at last he met with the death which he had merited by so many treacheries. Constantine, indeed, still refrained from laying violent hands upon his own wife's father, but required him to choose his own means of suicide. A.D. 310. The death of Maximian was followed, in the year 311, by that of Galerius, whose loathsome disease was by the Christians ascribed with grim satisfaction to a divine visitation. On his death-bed, indeed, he repealed the edict of persecution which he had extorted from Diocletian, but this tardy reparation did not avail to soften the detestation in which his name continued to be held by the believers whom he had so signally oppressed. Severus had died few years earlier, and Galerius had supplied his place by appointing a to the Illyrian provinces an officer of his own, by birth a Dacian peasant, named Licinius. For a short time the empire was shared by five sovereign princes, but on the decease of Galerius Licinius took possession of the East, and the four rulers, Licinius and Maximin, Constantine and Maxentius, divided the Roman world between them, nor would any one of them surrender the superior title of Augustus. Licinius and Constantine were both able and ambitious, while their two colleagues were haughty, indeed, but indolent. Licinius had the discretion to enter into an alliance with Constantine, but he contrived to leave his new confederate to conduct hostilities against Maxentius alone, while he watched himself from a distance the issue of the contest. Scarcely, indeed, was Galerius dead before the rulers of Gaul and Italy rushed into deadly conflict with one another. Constantine was the prompter and more vigorous. He was the first to cross the Alps, and he gained three brilliant victories in rapid succession, at Turin, at Verona, and lastly at the Milvian bridge, three miles from Rome. Maxentius, routed utterly in this final engagement, was drowned in recrossing the Tiber, which he had imprudently placed in his rear. Constantine entered Rome towards the end of the year 312. He was received with acclamations, due more to the popular hatred of the late tyrant than to any special admiration for the conqueror. He was acknowledged as chief of the empire by Italy and Africa, as well as by the provinces comprised in his own government. He had already issued from Milan the famous decree which gave the imperial license to the religion of the Christians, and assured them of his favor as well as his protection. At a later period he announced, confirming his assertion with a solemn oath, that on his march from Gaul he had beheld the vision of a brilliant cross in the heavens, inscribed with the legend, "By this conquer." Doubtless Constantine was a man of strong imagination, exalted by wonderful successes. It is not necessary to believe that the vision he related was either a miracle or an imposture. A.D. 312. Constantine had little sympathy for the name of Rome or for the Senate which represented it, to both of which he had been through life an entire stranger. Nevertheless, on entering in triumph the ancient home of the Cæsars, he affected to restore the consideration of the illustrious order. He conformed to the traditions of the empire by assuming the place of Chief Pontiff of the old national religion; on the arch of triumph which he erected in the city he placed statues of some of the deities of Olympus, while he enveloped his own personal faith in studied ambiguity by representing his victory to have been gained by the "inspiration of divinity." He took vigorous measures to prevent the city from CHAP. LXXI. CONSTA RTHROWS LICINIUS. 587 HIST ected, their churches em, Constantine of Pagan sest." 586 men. In order into the rank in cases for the nch it is alinviting the ever again giving laws to the guards, and destroying their institution the imperial power the seat of government was from wherever the emperor chose to se dence. Constantine had accepted the had given him his daughter in marria set his seal to the edict of Milan. Galer his successor was indifferent to all relig suaded to sanction the policy of his confe him the conviction that that form of be seemed most successful. The allied soverei leged, a further confirmation of their joint pow old veteran of Salona to express his approval of it sy his presence; and when he excused himself on account of his age and infirmities, they accused him of a combination with their rival Maximin, and actually induced him to starve himself through fear. But it is hard to suppose that the countenance of the discrowned recluse could have been worthy of their consideration. Maximin, indeed, was an easy conquest. Licinius undertook alone the charge of overthrowing him. Bearing with him to the East the edict of Milan, and placarding it on the walls of Nicomedia, he carried the applause and support of the Christian party, and promptly broke the power of his adversary in three battles in Thrace and Asia Minor. Maximin fled to Tarsus, and there poisoned himself. Licinius persecuted the friends and family of the vanquished Augustus with exceeding barbarity, which he is said to have extended even to the widows of Galerius and Diocletian. It may be feared that he sought to recommend himself to the triumphant Christians by these sanguinary reprisals. A.D. 313. Constantine already viewed the successes of Licinius with jealousy. He pretended to discover an intrigue against himself, and suddenly rushed across the Alps with no large force to take him by surprise. A battle ensued on the plains of Mardia in Thrace. The event was undecided, and the rivals came once more to an agreement, by which Licinius surrendered Illyricum, Macedonia, Greece, and part of Mæsia, thus placing the boundary of the Western empire farther eastward than the later and more permanent division. The compact thus effected remained unbroken for nine years, during which Constantine was actively engaged in consolidating the forces of his vast dominions, while his colleague or adversary was losing the respect of his people and the favor which he had recently gained with the Christians. Constantine reorganized his army, breaking up its force into a great number of small divisions, and reducing the strength of the legion to 1500 |