DIOCLETIAN AND MAXIMIAN

Constantine was born on 27 February soon after the year 270 (probably 272 or 273). He saw the light of day near Naissus, a military city on the Danube.His father, Flavius Constantius, appears to have been a native of the region later known as the province of Dacia Ripensis, while his mother, Helena, was a woman of humble origin from Drepanum in Bithynia.Constantius' original social standing is unclear, but by the time of his son's birth he was an officer in the Roman army: he fought in Syria under Aurelian and had risen to become governor of Dalmatia in 284/5 when the proclamation of a new emperor offered the opportunity for further promotion. By 289 Constantius was the emperor Maximian's praetorian prefect in Gaul, and on I March 293 he himself entered the imperial college as a Caesar. At the age of twenty or twenty-one, therefore, Constantine, as a Caesar's son, automatically became a candidate for future appointment as emperor, and he soon proceeded to the court of Diocletian, where he resided as an heir presumptive to the throne.

By that time, Constantius had divorced Helena. His second wife matched his newly acquired social and political prestige. She was Theodora, the daughter of Maximian, and Constantius married her before 289 while praetorian prefect of her father. No fewer than six children are known from this marriage, of whom one, scarcely born later than 300, bore the significant name Anastasia. The Jewish and Christian overtones of the name point unmistakably to the religious sympathies of Constantius.

Diocletian, Maximian, and Constantius, together with the Caesar Galerius, formed a college of four emperors which Diocletian created in 293 to buttress and enhance his own position as Roman emperor. Like the regime which it supplanted, the regime of Diocletian arose from usurpation. Diocletian had been born about 244, probably at Salonae in Dalmatia. His original name was Diocles, which he changed when emperor to the more impressive Diocletian, and so low was his original status in Roman society that hostile writers claimed that his father was a scribe, or the freedman of a senator. The first four decades of Diocletian s life are totally obscure: he burst upon the stage of history in 284 as commander of the bodyguard of the emperor Numerianus, whose father had himself seized power only two years earlier.

In 282 M. Aurelius Carus, praetorian prefect of the apparently secure emperor Probus, gathered an army in Raetia and Noricum and rose in rebellion. The army of Probus, who was at Sirmium, declined to fight against Carus, mutinied, and killed their commander. The new Augustus Carus immediately elevated his sons Carinus and Numerianus to the rank of Caesar and began to plan a campaign against Persia. In 283 Carinus, the elder son, received charge of Illyricum, Gaul, and Italy; he went to Gaul, restored the Rhine frontier and announced a German victory, and perhaps suppressed a revolt in Britain. Meanwhile, Carus took Numerianus with him and exploited an opportunity offered by civil war in Persia. The Roman army advanced to Ctesiphon without encountering serious opposition, and Carus, Carinus, and Numerianus all assumed the title Persici maximi in celebration. But then disaster struck: Carus was killed near Ctesiphon, allegedly by lightning, and his army retired to Roman territory.

On their father s death, the Caesars Carinus and Numerianus became Augusti, and by January 284 Carinus was in Rome, awaiting the return of his brother and their joint triumph. Numerianus, however, did not hasten westward, perhaps being loath to surrender his father s court and entourage to his elder brother. In March 284 Numerianus was still in Syria; in November, still in Asia Minor. He suffered from a disease of the eyes and traveled in a closed litter. When the army reached Bithynia, Numerianus did not appear in public for several days, and it was discovered that he was dead. His generals and tribunes then held a council at which they chose Diocles, the commander of Numerianus bodyguard, as emperor. The choice of the leaders was rat)fied by the army. On 20 November 284, on a hill three miles outside Nicomedia in Bithynia, the soldiers saluted the new Augustus, who as Valerius Diocletianus assumed all the normal titles pertaining to the imperial office.

Diocletian acted at once to consolidate his position. He swore upon oath that Numerianus had died through no oversight or plot of his: the true culprit was the praetorian prefect Aper, who (Diocletian asserted) had both perpetrated and concealed the emperor s death. In full view of the army, Diocletian drew his sword and plunged it into Aper. The public execution was followed by a happier ceremony. Carus and Numerianus had been accompanied on their eastern expedition by a number of distinguished senators, as was the custom when emperors spent long periods away from Rome. Among the comites of Numerianus was L. Caesonius Ovinius Manlius Rufinianus Bassus, a member of a senatorial family from Campania who had earlier been consul, proconsul of Africa for three years, and chosen by Probus for a signal distinction. Diocletian chose Bassus as his consular colleague, and the two men assumed the fasces as consuls in place of Carinus and Numerianus.The gesture had a double sign)ficance. Diocletian did not desire to become emperor with Carinus as a senior colleague: he took a consular colleague of his own choosing in order to advertise his total rejection of the existing regime. But he selected a prominent senator, not a general: he needed the support of the Senate, or at least its neutrality, since he proposed to liberate Rome from what he depicted as a tyrannical oppression.

Diocletian was not the only rival who threatened Carinus. Northern Italy and Pannonia were under the control of one M. Aurelius Julianus, described before his rebellion both as a corrector and as Carinus praetorian prefect. But Julianus presented no great military danger, and Carinus suppressed him easily with a swift march through northern Italy. Diocletian, to whom the eastern provinces rapidly swore allegiance, represented a peril of a different order.

In the spring of 285, the armies of East and West advanced cautiously until they faced each other across the River Margus in Moesia, between the Mons Aureus and Viminacium. Carinus led the stronger army, but its loyalty was vulnerable. Subsequently it was alleged that Carinus had not only maltreated the Senate and its womenfolk but also seduced the wives of his officers. Even if that charge was false, Carinus had certainly alienated men on whose support his success depended. When battle was joined, assassination decided the outcome: Carinus was killed by a soldier under his command, and Diocletian became undisputed ruler of the Roman Empire.

After his victory Diocletian marched to Italy, perhaps even visited Rome, and established his rule on a solid basis. The prefect of the city of Rome was dismissed and replaced by the Bassus who had been Diocletian s consular colleague. Bassus himself soon left office, perhaps because of illness or death, and his successor (also consul in 286) is a mere name. But the next prefect, Pomponius Januarianus, who entered office on 27 February 288 and was also ordinary consul in that year, had been prefect of Egypt under Numerianus: he had presumably transferred his allegiance to the new regime with alacrity and performed useful services. Diocletian was generous to servants of the former government, some of whom may secretly have aided his cause before the battle at the Margus. Ti. Claudius Aurelius Aristobulus was the praetorian prefect of Carinus and consul with Carinus in 285; Diocletian maintained him in both functions. declared a general amnesty, and continued most of Carinus' officials and governors in their posts.

Recent history, however, showed the vulnerability of a single emperor, and Gaul was troubled by both a peasant uprising and seaborne raids from the north while the Danubian frontier was restive. Diocletian needed a lieutenant whom he could trust. His choice fell on Aurelius Maximianus, a man aged about thirty-four from the vicinity of Sirmium who had served for many years in the Roman army, gradually rising through promotion. Maximian was an old friend of Dioclietian, to whom he had doubtless displayed conspicuous loyalty during the campaign against Carinus. Probably on 21 July 285 at Milan, Diocletian appointed Maximian Caesar and dispatched him to Gaul.

Having arranged the government of the West, Diocletian returned to the East. He marched slowly down the Danube, encountering and defeating Sarmatian raiders in the autumn. The winter he spent in Nicomedia, which he had chosen as one of his permanent residences. During the summer of 286 he visited Palestine, then turned westward and presumably spent the winter at Nicomedia. A rebellion in the East may have occurred, because early in his reign Diocletian brought settlers from Asia to people deserted farmlands in Thrace. In 287, perhaps by threatening to fight, Diocletian scored a diplomatic triumph: the king of Persia sent to him envoys laden with precious gifts, professed friendship, even invited Diocletian to visit him, and acknowledged Roman suzerainty over territory to the west and south of the Tigris. At the same time the Persian monarch ceased to claim Armenia as a province of his empire, and a Roman nominnee was installed as ruler of its western districts. In 252/3, when the Persians overran Armenia and made it into a Persian province, the royal infant Tiridates had been removed to a refuge in the Roman Empire, he was now restored as ruler of part of his ancestral domains.

Maximian was less successful than Diocletian in accomplishing his imperial duties. A brisk campaign sufficed to quiet the interior of Gaul: the Bagaudae, though they might put up a pretender to the imperial throne, were no more than a disorganized rabble, ill-equipped and ill-trained rustics against practiced legionaries. But Maximian did not suppress the peasant uprising before it had prvoked a barbarian raid. Two marauding armies, one of Burgundians and Alamanni,the other of Chaibones and Heruli, crossed the Rhine and broke into Gaul. Maximian let the first army perish of hunger and disease; the second intercepted and defeated. Already, however, so it seems, Maximian had made a decision which ultimately had profound consequences. He put another in charge of operations against the Frankish and Saxon pirates who were harassing northwestem Gaul; then he retired to Milan for the winter.

The commander chosen was Carausius, a Menapian who had distinguished himself against the Bagaudae. At Bononia, probably in the autumn of 285, Maximian comissioned him to build a fleet and clear the sea of pirates. Carausius performed the task entrusted to him with efficiency, but not without dishonesty. He took some of the recaptured booty for himself instead of returning it all to the provincials or surrendering it to the imperial treasury. These actions soon provoked a crisis. Maximian, raised from Caesar to Augustus on I April 286, was at Mainz on 21 June and probably proceeded from there toward the theater of war. Carausius feared the advent of the emperor, who was reported to have ordered his death. He preferred rebellion to trial, execution, or murder, and he proclaimed himself Augustus. In the autumn of 286, not only Britain but also much of northwestern Gaul renounced allegiance to the central imperial government.

Maximian could not suppress Carausius. And danger still threatened from beyond the Rhine. While the emperor was celebrating his assumption of the consular fasces on I January 287, the ceremonies were disrupted by news of a barbarian raid. Maximian laid aside his toga, donned his breastplate, and sallied forth. The raiders were suitably chastised, and Maximian returned in triumph and celebrated a victory. Yet to repel a raiding party was not enough to secure the frontier. Maximian devoted the whole of the campaigning season of 287 to a German expedition, crossing the Rhine and parading Roman strength far beyond the imperial frontier.

In the following spring, serious preparations began for the suppression of Carausius, with the building of fleets on every river which could serve to transport troops against the rebel. Diocletian lent his aid: he marched up the Danube to Raetia and invaded Germany from the south. The strike added territory to the empire, and the two Augusti conferred before Diocletian again withdrew to the eastern provinces.Maximian once more entrusted a vital task to another: Flavius Constantius, his praetorian prefect and already the husband of his daughter Theodora, undertook an expedition against the Franks, with whom Carausius appears to have allied himself. Since they controlled the estuaries of the Rhine, they could in effect protect the rebel from attack by sea. Constantius advanced, spreading slaughter, and soon reached the shores of the North Sea. The Franks sued for peace and came before Maximian in a body; he confirmed Gennoboudes as their king and settled them on deserted land near Trier.

On 21 April 289, the orator Mamertinus, who perhaps held the post of magister memoriae, delivered a panegyric to Maximian in which he confidently predicted the defeat of Carausius. However, a storm at sea destroyed the imperial fleet. Carausius, now secure, sought to legitimize his position and presented himself no longer as a rival to Diocletian and Maximian, but as their colleague. There is no reason to believe that the two established Augusti ever admitted the claim, however long they failed to assert their supremacy.

His failure to suppress Carausius made Maximian feel insecure. In 290 he toured the cities of Gaul receiving homage; but beneath the adulation rendered to Maximian his subjects perhaps harbored grave doubts about his capacity as emperor. Maximian had probably ceased to lead troops on active campaign; his army fought now under the command of Constantius, who prosecuted warfare on the Rhine with vigor and perhaps with ostentation. At some date between 289 and 293, the praetorian prefect captured a barbarian king and laid Germany waste from Mainz south to the headwaters of the Danube.

The Augustus crossed the Alps into Italy in late December 290 in order to meet Diocletian in Milan. The meeting was a solemn and impressive occasion with much pomp and pageantry. Political decisions were doubtless made, but they were made in secret. And the Roman Senate took the opportunity to renew its contacts with emperors whom it never normally saw: a deputation from Rome attended on the emperors and may have heard news of future imperial policy. After the conference, Maximian returned to Gaul and perhaps made a last feeble attempt to expel Carausius from Gaul. Otherwise, his activities cannot be documented until 1 March 293, when he invested Constantius with the imperial purple, probably in Milan, which probably now became his principal residence.

Diocletian could see the dangers inherent in the existing situation. His colleague had permitted a usurper to seize control of a large part of his domain and to retain it for several years. Moreover, Diocletian found increasing difficulty in attending to every emergency himself. In 288 he had invaded Germany and conferred with Maximian, in 289 he needed to repel an invasion of Dacia and reestablish the Danube frontier, and in 290 the eastern frontier required his attention. The Saraceni being restive, Diocletian went to Syria and quickly restored order; then he traveled westward to confer with Maximian, and after their meeting in Milan in late December 290 or January 291, he took up residence on the Danube, probably at Sirrnium. Here, in the course of the next two years, Diocletian formulated a plan for restructuring the Roman state.

On 1 March 293, two Caesars were appointed, junior in rank to the Augusti but members of the imperial college and possessing most of the privileges of their senior colleagues. The senior of the pair was Constantius, who was to take charge of the military operations which Maximian had bungled: he was assigned Gaul and Britain, and he immediately set about his task. The junior Caesar was Galerius Maximianus, a man perhaps not much older than thirty, and perhaps the praetorian prefect of Diocletian. He received Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, with responsibility for the defense of the eastern frontier.

The Roman Empire was in theory an elective monarchy: the Senate or the preceding emperor would appoint a new emperor solely on the basis of his fitness to rule. In practice, however, succession was always hereditary: no emperor whose rule was secure had ever excluded his sons from the succession, and emperors who appointed heirs not of their blood customarily adopted them in a formal ceremony. In 293, therefore, Diocletian and Maximian, who, as Augusti, styled themselves brothers, adopted Galerius and Constantius as their sons. The Augusti and the Caesars were also linked by marriage: Constantius had married Theodora, the daughter of Maximian, at least as early as 289, and it must be suspected that Galerius' marriage to Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian, also antedates his elevation to the purple.

These alliances by marriage did more than bind the four reigning emperors to one another. They advertised to the world the identity of their prospective heirs. In 289 the panegyric of Mamertinus had looked forward to the education of Maximian's young son Maxentius as his father's successor. The proclamation of two Caesars in 293 did not diminish the status of Maxentius or impede his prospects. On the contrary, his standing was enhanced, at an unknown date, by his marriage to Galerius' daughter, the only legitimate child of the Caesar. Moreover, Diocletian may have summoned Maxentius to his court to groom him for the throne. The adult son of Constantius was the other obvious candidate for the imperial succession. Constantine was soon summoned to Diocletian's court, and a mosaic in the banquet room of the imperial palace at Aquileia depicted his departure from the West in a scene with Fausta, the young daughter of Maximian, offering him a plumed helmet which gleamed with gold and precious jewels.

In 293, therefore, the prospects for the succession seemed clear enough: only two of the emperors had sons, and each of these sons was expected to marry another emperor's daughter. But the oldest of the reigning emperors had not yet turned fifty. There might be no new emperors for many years, and who could foresee what might occur before any of the present imperial college died Constantius' second marriage proved unusually fertile. The prospects of Constantine and Maxentius, bright enough in 293, might dim with the passage of time.

Each of the four emperors had his own count After 293 Maximian resided in northern Italy, while Constantius occupied Maximian's former capital of Trier. Between 293 and 296 Diocletian spent much of his time traveling or on campaign, but Sirmium can be identified as his preferred place of residence, and Galerius probably chose Antioch as his capital. Each emperor also had a praetorian prefect, a coun, administrative officers for the transaction of routine business, and a standing army. Each of these four armies (some alleged) exceeded in size the army of any earlier emperor who had ruled alone.

Diocletian saw that the larger army required a more efficient collection of taxes and supplies, and he reorganized the administrative structure of the Roman Empire with this end in view. Nonhern Italy was put on the same administrative level as the provinces, and Diocletian divided the existing provinces into smaller units, doubling their number from fifty to almost one hundred. The new provinces were grouped in twelve dioceses, and a new type of official, described as a deputy of the praetorian prefects (vicarius or vices agens praefectorum praetorio), was created to govern the new dioceses. Moreover, the vicarii and the praesides of the new provinces had functions different from most provincial governors of the early empire. Whereas earlier governors commanded troops and administered justice while procurators supervised taxation, under the new system, at least in theory, vicarii and governors were responsible
for both justice and taxation, while duces independent of the civil administration were in charge of troops other than the four central armies. Reducing the size of provinces and creating the vicarii implied a devaluation of the status of governors, and few senators were interested in serving as the praeses of one of the new provinces. Some provinces, however, continued to be governed by senators, who were still willing both to hold an annual proconsulate of Africa, Asia, or even Achaea and to serve as a corrector in an Italian province.

Diocletian greatly increased the number of financial officials in the provinces. Far more rationales and magistri privatee are attested under Diocletian than before; their function was not only to manage imperial properties but to supervise closely the collection of badly needed revenue. Diocletian's new administrative structure enabled a closer surveillance of the empire and a more systematic exaction of the goods and services the government needed. Diocletian also reformed the monetary system through which the taxes collected were turned into coin to pay the armies and the bureaucracy. For the first years of his reign he minted on the debased standard inherited from his predecessors. In 294 new mints were opened, and a large and uniform coinage was issued in three metals.

Furthermore, it was probably Diocletian himself who inspired the jurists Gregorius and Hermogenianus to provide imperial officials with up-to-date legal guidance in the exercise of their duties. Before 293, the handbooks of jurisprudence available belonged to the Severan age or earlier and did not reflect the conditions of the later third century. Gregorius published a collection of imperial rescripts from the time of Hadrian down to 292, and Hermogenianus supplemented this Codex Gregorianus with a collection, probably complete, of rescripts issued by Diocletian in 293 and 294 which later received some haphazard additions. Shortly after 293 Hermogenianus compiled comprehensive Iuris Epitomae, while in the West there appeared a compendium known as the Sententiae Pauli, which survives in an abridged form; both served as handbooks to instruct governors in the administration of criminal law.

Diocletian's reforms were bold and imaginative, but reality sometimes resisted his neat formulas. It was a small matter that some of his provincial divisions needed revision, either very soon after 293 or early in the fourth century. More serious was his inability to control the monetary system established in 294, which was undermined by a sharp rise in the market price of gold. Since gold coins circulated at their value as bullion, the ratios on which Diocletian's reform rested were destroyed. On I September 301, therefore, Diocletian abruptly doubled the value of the silver and bronze coinages in order to restore the original ratios.Perhaps partly as a result, the inflation of prices became worse, and in late November or early December 301 Diocletian issued an edict fixing maximum prices for an enormous range of goods and services. The long preamble explains and just)fies his actions.

With the help of the immortal gods (Diocletian declares), the emperors have rescued the Roman Empire from foreign invasion and have restored peace and tranquillity But the avarice of a few imperils the well-being of all, and the emperors must intervene to establish the justice which mankind cannot provide for itself. If the emperors have done nothing yet about prices despite many years on the throne, it is because they charitably expected a natural amelioration of an intolerable situation. Now, however, prices are rising so quickly that avarice and rapacity must be checked by imperial action. Worst of all, the safety of the empire is imperiled because soldiers cannot afford to buy the necessities of life: a single trivial purchase (Diocletian complains) consumes all their normal pay and bonuses. The emperors decree, therefore, that a maximum price shall be set, valid throughout every province of the Roman Empire, for all normal articles used in everyday life and for a wide range of services. Since audacity and greed have caused the trouble, it shall be a capital offense to sell (or buy) above the prices stated in the lists which follow the emperors' pronouncement.

The edict with its attached schedule of maximum prices was published throughout the eastern empire, prominently displayed on public buildings or walls in the centers of cities. Fragments survive from more than forty different cities, as well as the letter in which the governor of Phrygia and Caria ordered the publication of the price edict in his province: he praised the foresight of the emperors in laying down a fair price for all goods and services by means of a law which would last forever. No fragments have ever been found, however, of any copy published in the West: although Diocletian issued the edict in the name of all the emperors and speaks as if legislating for the whole empire, it is clear that Maximian and Constantius never even promulgated it in their domains.

The price edict probably had a far more restricted purpose than its rhetoric and widespread publication imply. Diocletian set a limit to what the administration would pay for goods and services: the circumstances in which he acted indicate that the rise in prices was sudden and recent and that his central concern was to procure adequate supplies for the army and the court. According to one witness, despite the price edict much blood was shed, prices rose still higher, goods disappeared from the marketplace_and the law was soon abrogated.

The ideology of the ``Tetrarchy," as well as a vivid sense that the accession of Diocletian marked a new age, are reflected in official pronouncements, on coins and monuments, and in the surviving oratory of the period. Panegyrists might occasionally salute an emperor as a god on earth, hailing Diocletian as Jupiter and Maximian as Hercules but officially the emperors themselves no longer laid claim to divine status. They were not gods, but the chosen instruments of the gods, their deputies on earth, and in some sense their sons. Diocletian was considered to be under the special protection of Jupiter, and Maximian under that of Hercules; relations between the two emperors were held to reflect the divine order: Diocletian commanded; his faithful helper put his wishes into effect. A more complicated scheme was needed to accommodate the Caesars and other prospective successors. From 293, therefore, there was both a Jovian and a Herculean dynasty. Constantius, though the senior Caesar, was Herculius, for it was Maximian who invested him with the purple, while Galerius took the sobriquet Iovius from his adoptive father.

Yet Constantius and Galerius also had their own patron deities. As the imperial coinage shows, the Caesars were under the protection of Mars and Sol Invictus, also identified as Apollo. But the correlation of the Caesars and their tutelary deities was not rigid; indeed, a contemporary poet likened Diocletian and Galerius when they went forth to war to Jupiter and Apollo setting out from Crete and Delos. On the most precise definition, however, just as Jupiter and Hercules were the conservatores of the Augusti, so Mars was the conservator of Galerius, who declared that he was fathered by Mars, and Sol or Apollo was the conservator of Constantius.

Many of Diocletian's subjects were grateful for the blessings of his reign. Effusive orators spoke of the golden age being reborn and gave detailed reasons for their optimism. Peace ruled everywhere. The Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates again formed secure frontiers guarded by Roman troops. Defeated barbarians had been assigned to recover deserted farmland for cultivation. Plowed fields replaced forest, the granaries were filled, there was almost too much produce to harvest. Cities long overgrown with vegetation or abandoned to wild animals were being rebuilt, restored, and repopulated. Men lived longer and reared more children. How different from the preceding epoch! Then famine and plague stalked the empire, and people died in enormous numbers. Nor had the imperial govemment then been able to protect its subjects from robbery and murder. Under Gallienus the empire had been mutilated. The Persians claimed superiority, the Palmyrenes equality. Egypt and Syria rebelled. Raetia was lost, Noricum and Pannonia ravaged. Italy itself grieved at the sack of many of its cities. And in the reign of Probus a band of Franks roamed the Mediterranean with total impunity. They seized ships on the Black Sea, raided Greece and Asia, landed in Africa, captured Syracuse, and then sailed unmolested out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Diocletian and Maximian (their panegyrists averred) had changed the situation completely. Italy, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and the Danubian provinces all felt secure. The emperors had often raided the territory of the Alamanni and Sarmatians, had often defeated Juthungi, Quadi, and Carpi in battle, had constrained the Goths to seek peace, and had induced the Persian kings to show a proper respect for Rome. The credit for all this could be assigned to the rulers: forgetful of their own comfort, they surveyed the world to see what needed their attention; they passed their days and nights in incessant concem for the safety of all.

Admiration, however, was not universal. A contemporary Christian writer has left a very different assessment of the emperors. He presents Diocletian as avaricious and timid. He complains that Diocletian so multiplied the army and administration that fammers deserted their fields because they could not pay their taxes, that he plundered the provinces to transform Nicomedia into a new capital which was to equal Rome, and that he frequently had his subjects unjustly condemned so that he could confiscate their villas or famms. Yet even this hostile critic admits that Diocletian possessed great political sagacity, for he had the enviable ability to garner for himself the credit for actions which proved popular while saddling others with the responsibility for failures or mistakes. Maximian, according to the same observer, shared Diocletian's basic attitudes but differed from him in being more open and more interested in enjoying the sensual prerogatives of his position. The Caesars differed totally, both from the Augusti and from each other. Galerius had an animal quality. He was huge of stature and stout like a giant, brutal, arrogant, and ambitious. Hence, though an adherent of the traditional religion, he struck the cultured classes as alien and semibarbarian. Constantius, in contrast, practiced the traditional moral virtues and sought always to remain on good terms with the established aristocracy while at the same time showing himself sympathetic to Christianity.

The writer who provides these vivid vignettes of Diocletian and his colleagues, L. Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, was an African who came to Nicomedia in the reign of Diocletian to teach Latin rhetoric. In Nicomedia, Lactantius was converted to Christianity while it was not only fashionable but also safe. In 303 he lost or resigned his chair and began to compose works of Christian apologetic. He appears, however, to have completed his Divine Institutes, in seven lengthy books, not in Bithynia or elsewhere in the East, but somewhere in the West, perhaps in his native Africa while the usurper Domitius Alexander ruled (308/9 ). Lactantius then became the tutor of Constantine's eldest son. When persecution of the Christians ended in 313, he probably became entitled to resume the chair which he had forfeited ten years earlier, and it seems that he resumed to Nicomedia.

Between 313 and 315 Lactantius composed a pamphlet entitled On the Deaths of the Persecutors, which he dedicated to Donatus, a confessor who had spent six years in prison in Nicomedia.' The work has a violent and aggressive tone, with no attempt to disguise its author's bias, his profound admiration for Constantine, his deep loathing of Constantine's political adversaries. Lactantius' prejudices and strong opinions foster the suspicion that he must have tailored the facts to suit his thesis. It has further been held that he wrote as a mere propagandist for Constantine, subserviently disseminating a version of his rise to power which the emperor had deliberately falsified. But coins, inscriptions, and papyri confimm innumerable details of the narrative. Moreover, the theories of falsification assume that Lactantius wrote On the Deaths of the Persecutors in Gaul between 318 and 321, and hence that he must intend to mislead when he depicts Constantine and Licinius as allies acting in harmony, because Licinius, ruler of the whole of the eastem empire from 313, went to war with Constantine not long after the latest event which Lactantius describes.
But those theories demonstrably err in assuming that Constantine and Licinius fought for the first time in October 314: when the war is correctly dated to 316/7, then the case against Lactantius collapses.

Lactantius wrote On the Deaths of the Persecutors while Constantine and Licinius were still at peace with each other, and he wrote it in Nicomedia as a subject of Licinius, not of Constantine. He may be regarded, therefore, as an independent observer whose earlier reception at the court of Constantine need not impair the value of his testimony. On the contrary, if Lactantius was in Nicomedia in 305 and in Gaul before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, then he was in a position to know what standing Constantine enjoyed at the court of Diocletian and what legal privileges Constantine granted to his Christian subjects in Gaul before his conversion. Lactantius affirms in explicit terms that in 305 Constantine was regarded as heir presumptive to the throne and that in 306, when proclaimed emperor, Constantine immediately released the Christians of Britain, Gaul, and Spain from any form of persecution and granted them full freedom of worship. He deserves to be believed.