CHAPTER IV
CONSTANTINE AND HIS COLLEAGUES
While Constantine thus peacefully succeeded his father in the command of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, Italy was the scene of continued disturbance and of a successful usurpation. We have seen how Severus, an officer of the eastern army and a trusted friend of Galerius, had been chosen to take over the command which Maximian so unwillingly laid down at Milan. He was proclaimed Cæsar, with Italy and Africa for his portion, and the administration passed into his hands. But he preferred, apparently, to remain on the Illyrian border rather than shew himself in Rome, and, in his absence, Maxentius, a son of Maximian, took the opportunity of claiming the heritage of which he considered himself to have been robbed.
No single historian has had a good word to say for Maxentius, who is described by Lactantius as “a man of depraved mind, so consumed with pride and stubbornness that he paid no deference or respect either to his father or his father-in-law and was in consequence hated by both.”[[30]] He had married a daughter of Galerius, but had been thrust on one side at the choosing of the new Cæsars, and Severus and Maximin Daza had been preferred to him. He owed his elevation to the purple to a successful mutiny on the part of the Prætorians at Rome, and to the general discontent of the Roman population. It is evident that Rome watched with anger and jealousy the loss of her old exclusive and imperial position. The Emperors no longer resided on the Palatine, and ignored and disdained the city on the Tiber. Diocletian had preferred Nicomedia; Maximian had fixed his Court at Milan. The imperial trappings at Rome were becoming a mockery. When, in addition to neglect, it was ordered that Italy should no longer be exempt from the census, and that the sacred Saturnian soil should submit to the exactions of the tax-gatherer, public opinion was ripe for revolt.
Lactantius affects to see in the extension of the census to Rome a crowning example of Galerius’s rapacity. He speaks of the Emperor “devouring the whole world,” and declares that his madness carried him to such outrageous lengths that he would not suffer even the Roman people to escape bondage. But Galerius was thoroughly justified in the step he took. The immunity of Rome from taxation had been a monstrous piece of fiscal injustice to the rest of the world, designed merely to flatter the pride and purse of the Roman citizen. Galerius, moreover, had disbanded some of the Prætorians—who were at once the Household Troops and the permanent garrison of the capital; but now that the Emperor and the Court had quitted Rome, their raison d’être was gone. The vast expenditure on their pay and their barracks was money thrown away. Galerius, therefore, abolished the Prætorian camps. Such an act would give clear warning that the absence of the Emperors was not merely temporary, but permanent, that the shifting of the capital had been due not merely to personal predilections, but to abiding political reasons.
That the Prætorians themselves received the order with sullen anger may well be understood. For three centuries they had been the corps d’élite of the Roman army, enjoying special pay and special advantages. They had made and unmade Emperors. They had repeatedly held the fortunes of the Empire in their hands. The traditions of their regiments fostered pride and arrogance, for they had seen little active service in their long history, and the severest conflicts they had had to face were tumults in the imperial city. Now their privileges were destroyed by a stroke of the pen, and needing but little instigation to rebellion, they offered the purple to Maxentius, who gladly accepted it. Nor, it is said, were the people unfavourable to his cause, for Maxentius’s agents had already been busy among them, and so, after Abellius, the præfect of the city, had been murdered, Maxentius made himself master of Rome without a struggle. His position, however, was very precarious. He had practically no army and he knew that neither Galerius nor Severus would recognise his pretensions. The latter had already taken over the command of the armies of Maximian, and was the nominee of Galerius, who at once incited his colleague to march upon Rome. Maxentius saw that his only chance of success was to corrupt his father’s old legions, and with this object in view he sent a purple robe to Maximian, urging him to resume his place and title of Augustus. Maximian agreed with alacrity. He had been spending his enforced leisure not in amateur gardening and contentment, like his colleague at Salona, but in his Campanian villa, chafing at his lost dignity. Hence he eagerly responded to the summons of his son and resumed the purple, not so much as Maxentius’s supporter, but as the senior acting Augustus.
Severus marched straight down the Italian peninsula and laid siege to Rome, only to find himself deserted by his soldiers. According to Zosimus, the troops which first played him false were a Moorish contingent fresh from Africa. Then, when the treachery spread, Severus hastily retired on Ravenna, where he could maintain touch with Galerius in Illyria, and was there besieged by Maximian and Maxentius. Doubtless, if he had waited, Galerius would have sent him reinforcements or come in person to his assistance, for his own prestige was deeply involved in that of Severus. But the latter seems to have allowed himself to be enticed out of his strong refuge by the plausible overtures of his rivals. He set out for Rome, prepared to resign the throne on condition of receiving honourable treatment, but on reaching a spot named “The Three Taverns,” on the Appian Road, he was seized and thrown into chains. The only consideration he received from his captors was that they allowed him to choose his own way of relieving them of his presence. He opened his veins. So gentle a death in those violent times was considered “good.”[[31]]
This victory over Severus, gained with such astonishing ease, speaks well for the popularity of Maximian with his old soldiers. Galerius prepared to avenge the defeat and murder of his friend and invaded Italy at the head of a large army. He too, like Severus, marched down the peninsula, but he got no nearer to Rome than Narnia, sixty miles distant. There he halted, despite the fact that no opposition was being offered to his advance. Why? The reason is undoubtedly to be found in the attitude of Constantine, who had mobilised his army upon the Gallic frontier and was waiting on events. There was no love lost between Constantine and Galerius. If Constantine crossed the Alps and followed down on the track of Galerius, the latter would find himself between two fires. Galerius is represented by Zosimus as being suspicious of the loyalty of his troops; it is more probable that he decided to retreat as soon as he heard that Constantine had thrown in his lot with Maximian and Maxentius. Maximian had been sedulously trying to secure alliances for himself and his son. He had made overtures to the recluse of Salona. But Diocletian had turned a deaf ear. Even if he had hankered after power again, he would hardly have declared himself in opposition to the ruler of Illyria, while he was dwelling within reach of Galerius. With Constantine, however, Maximian had better success. He gave him his daughter Fausta in marriage and incited him to attack Galerius, who at once drew his troops off into Illyria, after laying waste the Transpadane region with fire and sword.