Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/329

Rh CONS T A N T 1 N E 299 Galerius was greatly incensed, .and threatened to give both the letter and its bearer to the flames ; but more prudent counsels prevailed, and he ventured to indulge his resent ment only so far as to deny the title of Augustus, which was conferred upon Severus, Constantine being acknowledged as Caesar. The latter acquiesced in this arrangement with apparent contentment, and at once set himself as the recog nized inheritor of his father s power to carry out his father s wise and vigorous policy. The barbarians of the north sustained repeated defeats, and were permanently held in check by the building of a line of forts on the Rhine ; and the internal prosperity of the country was promoted by a confinnation of the tolerant policy adopted by Constantius towards the Christians, the persecuting edict of Galerius being treated as a dead letter. The events of the next few years showed clearly the essential instability of the arrangement devised by Diocletian for the partition of the imperial power among Augustuses and Caesars. It was in the very nature of the plan that under it those who were nominally colleagues should be in reality rivals, constantly plotting and counter-plotting for the sole supremacy, Accordingly the history of the empire from the period of the division of the imperial power by Diocletian to that of its reconsolidation under Constantine is mainly a record of the struggle for that supremacy. The narrative is necessarily intricate, and can only be fully given in a general historical article. The state of matters was complicated b}^ a rebellion at Rome against Galerias, which had for its final result the contemporaneous reign of no less than six emperors, Galerius, Licinius, and Maximin in the East, and Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine in the West (308). Maxentius was the son of Maximian, and Constantine was his son-in-law, having married his daughter Fausta at Aries in 307, on which occasion he received the title of Augustus ; but this family relationship did not prevent a conflict of interests. Maxentius claimed to be the sole rightful sovereign of Italy, and being supported by the praetorian guards compelled his father to quit Rome. Maximian, after a brief residence in Illyricum, from which he was driven by Galerius, took refuge at the court of his son-in-law, Constantine, who received him with the respect clue to his rank. For the second time he resigned the purple, and affected to have no longer any desire of power. Very soon after, however, hs was tsmpted, during the absence of Constantine on the Rhine, to reassume the imperial dignity and to enter into a plot with Maxentius for the overthrow of his son-in-law. Constantine, on receiving the news, acted with the necessary promptitude. Tie appeared at once with his troops before Aries, and compelled Maximian to retreat to Marseilles, whither he followed him. The town might have stood a protracted siege, but it preferred to deliver up the usurper, who avoided the execution of the sentence of death pronounced upon him by committing suicide 1 (February 310). The death of Maximian was the first of a series of events which ended in the establishment of Constantino as the sole emperor of the West. It was ssizsd upon by Maxentius as a pretext for hostile measures, which Constantine, unwilling to engage in war, ignored as long as he safely could. When the time came for action, however, he acted, as was his wont, with decision. Maxentius was preparing to invade Gaul, when Constantine, encouraged by an embassy from Rome, anticipated him by entering Italy at the head of a large and well-disciplined army. He had crossed the Cottian Alps (Mont Cenis), and was in the plains of 1 According to Lactantius (De Mort. Persec., c. 29, 30,) Maximian was pardoned for this attempt, and the clemency of Constantine was only exhausted by the discovery of a plot for his assassination in bed, which failed, owing to the conjugal fidelity of Fausta. Gibbon dis credits this story. Piedmont before Maxentius knew that he had set out. A series of successes at Susa, Turin, and Verona culminated in the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge, near Rome (28th October 312), which left the capital open to the invader. In the hurried retreat of the defeated army Maxentius was pressed by the throng over the bridge into the river, and was drowned. The conduct of the conqueror was marked on the whole by wisdom and moderation. The slaughter of the two sons and of the more intimate favourites of the fallen emperor was a measure deemed essential if the fruits of the victory were to be retained, and cannot be imputed to wanton cruelty, especially as Constantine seems to have abstained from the too common practice of an indiscriminate massacre. The final disbanding of the praetorian guards and the destruction of their camp, tin imposition of a poll-tax on the senators, and the assumption of the title of Pontifex Maxrims were the other chief events of Constantine s first residence in Rome, which lasted only a few weeks, a fact in itself significant of the decaying importance of the capital, if not prophetic of the early rise of a Nova Roma. It was in the course of the expedition that ended with the victory of the Milvian Bridge that the celebrated incident occurred, which is said to have caused Constan tine s conversion, the appearance of a flaming cross in the sky at noon-day with the motto Ev TOUTW VLKO. (By this conquer), The story is told by Eusebius, who professes to have had it from the lips of the emperor himself, and also with considerable variation iu the details by Lactantius, Nazarius, and Philostorgius. In order to understand the true relation of Constantine to Christianity, however, it is necessary to consider all the incidents bearing upon that relation together, and this, therefore, along with the others. There is the less violence to chronological order in delaying the critical examination of the story, inasmuch as it was first communicated by Constantino to Eusebius several years later, and as the Labarum, or standard of the cross, made in obedience to the heavenly vision was not exhibited to the army, according to Gibbon, till 323. The conver sion, whatever its nature and whatever its cause, was followed, indeed, by one more immediate result of a significant kind in the important Edict of Milan (March 313), issued by Constantine and Licinius conjointly, restoring all forfeited civil and religious rights to the Christians, and securing them full and equal toleration throughout the empire. By the victory of the Milvian Bridge Constantine became the sole emperor of the West. Very soon after a like change took place in the East. Galerius had died in May 311, and a war ensued between the two surviving emperors in which Maximin was the aggressor and the loser, as Maxentius had been in the West. After a decisive defeat near Heraclea (April 313) he took to flight, and died at Tarsus, probably by his own hand, in August of the same year. Liciuius thus attained the same place in the East as Constantine held in the West. The interests of the two who now divided between them the empire of the world had been apparently identified by the marriage of Licinius to Constantino s sister Constantia, which was celebrated with great pomp at Milan in March 313. But in little more than a year they were engaged in a war, the origin of which is somewhat obscure, though it probably arose from the treachery of Licinius. After two battles, in which the Eastern emperor suffered severely, he was fain to sue for peace, which Constantine granted only on condi tion that Illyricum, Paunonia, and Greece should be trans ferred to his territory. The peace lasted for nine years, a period during which Constantino s position grew stronger while that of Licinius grew weaker, wise and humane legal reforms and vigorous