Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/996

Rh 982 MAXIMIANUS. gradually sunk under the pressure of complicated anxieties. Upon the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian (a. d. 305), an event which is said to have been hastened, if not caused, by his intrigues and threats, Galerius having succeeded in nominating two creatures of his own, Daza and Severus [Max- miNus II. ; Skverus], to the posts of Caesars, now vacant in consequence of the elevation of himself and Constantius to the higher rank of Augusti, began to look forward with confidence to the period when the death of his colleague should leave him sole master of the world. But these hopes were destined to be signally frustrated. The news of the decease of Chlorus was accompanied by the intelligence that the troops had enthu- siastically proffered their allegiance to his son. Galerius, filled with disappointment and rage, found himself in no condition to resist, and although he refused to concede a higher title than that of Caesar to Constantine, was obliged virtually to resign all claim to the sovereignty of Gaul and Britain. This mortification was followed by the more for- midable series of disasters occasioned by the usur- pation of Maxentius which led to the destruction of Severus, to the disgrace of Galerius himself, after a most calamitous campaign, and thus to the loss of Italy and Africa [Maxentius], a. d. 307. From this time forward, however, his life passed more tranquilly, for having supplied the place of Severus by his old friend and comrade Licinius [LiciNius], he seems to have abandoned those schemes of extravagant ambition once so eagerly cherished, and to have devoted his attention to great works of public utility, the draining of lakes and the clearing of forests, until cut off in A. d. 311, by the same terrible disease which is said to have terminated the existence of Sulla and of lierod Agrippa. Of a haughty and ungovernable temper, cruel to his enemies, ungrateful to his benefactors, a stranger to all the arts which soften the heart or refine the intellect, the character of this prince presents nothing to admire, except the valour of a fearless soldier and the skill of an accomplished general. The blackest shade upon his memory is thrown by his pitiless persecution of the Christians, whom he ever regarded with rancorous hostility, insti- gated, we are told, by the furious bigotry of his mother, an ardent cultivator of some of the darker rites of the ancient faith. The fatal ordi- nance of Diocletian, which for so many years de- luged the world with innocent blood, is said to have been extorted by the pertinacious violence of Galerius, whose tardy repentance expressed in the famous edict of toleration published immediately before his death, made but poor amends for the amount of misery which he had deliberately caused. Galerius, by his first wife, whose name is un- known, and whom he was required to repudiate when created Caesar, had one daughter, who was COIN OP MAXIMIANUS II. MAXIMIANUS. married to Maxentius ; by his second, Galeria Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian, he had no children. [Valeria.] (Zosim. ii. 8, 10, 11 ; Zonar. xii. 32, 33, 34 ; Euseb. //. E. viii. 5, 1 7, Vit. Constant. 18 ; Auctor. de Mort. Persec. 18, &c., 33, &c. ; Amm. Marc. xiv. 11. § 10 ; Victor, de Caes. 39, 40, Epit. 39, 40 ; Eutrop. ix. 15, x. 1 — 3 ; Oros. vii. 26, 28 ; Jornandes, de Rebus Get. 21 ; Fragments published by Valesius at the end of his ed. of Amm. Marc. § 3.) [W. R] MAXIMIA'NUS, the poet, whose full name was Cornelius Maximianus Gallus Etrus- cus. In the year 1501, Pomponius Gauricus, a Neapolitan youth of nineteen, published at Venice six amatory elegies, little remarkable for purity of thought or of expression, under the title " Cornelii Galli Fragraenta," with a preface, in which he en- deavoured to prove from internal* evidence that they must be regarded as belonging to the ill-fated Cornelius Gallus, the friend of Virgil and Ovid. [Gallus, Cornelius.] They profess to be written by an old man, and the leading theme is the in- firmities and miseries of age. These, as contrasted with the vigour and joys of youth, form the ex- clusive subject of the first piece ; the second, third, and fourth contain an account of three mistresses who had in succession ruled his heart, Aquilina, Candida, and Lycoris; the two former had been the objects of a transient flame ; the last, long his faithful companion, had at length forsaken him in declining years ; in the fifth he gives the history of a senile passion for a Grecian damsel ; and the sixth, which extends to a dozen lines only, is filled with complaints and lamentations called forth by the near approach of death. The points upon which Gauricus chiefly insisted for the proof of his proposition were: — 1. That we know from Virgil and other sources that Lycoris was the name under which Gallus celebrated the charms and the cruelty of his loved Cytheris. 2. That the author of these poems describes himself as an Etruscan. 3. That the expressions at the beginning of the fifth elegy evid<}ully allude to his office as prefect of Egypt. These reasonings were at first freely admitted ; the elegies were frequently reprinted with the name of Gallus, and subjoined without suspicion to many of the earlier editions of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, as the works of their contemporary. Upon a more critical examination, however, it was soon perceived that the impure Latinity and faulty versification accordid ill with the Augustan era ; that a fictitious name, such as Lycoris, might bo regarded as common property ; that the fact, which is unquestionable, of the author declaring himself an Etruscan, in itself proves that he could not Ix; Cornelius Gallus who was a native of Forum Julii (Frejus) in Southern Gaul ; that the I'epinings at old age were altogether out of place in one who perished while yet in the strength of manhood ; and finally, that the terms in which an allusion is made to his political appointment — Missus ad Eoas legati munere partes Tranquillum cunctis nectere pacis opus, Dum studeo gemini componere foedera regni, Inveni cordis bella nefanda mei, are such as could never have been employed to designate the duties of the imperial prefect in the most important and jealously guarded of all the Roman provhices. But when, in addition to these considerations, it was discovered that the MSS.,