But Maximin was obdurate and wrote saying that his soldiers had taken the law into their own hands and had already saluted him as Augustus. Galerius therefore, in the face of the accomplished fact, gave way and recognised not only Maximin but Constantine also as full Augusti. Such is the story of Lactantius. It will be noted that the name of Maxentius is not mentioned. He is treated as non-existent. There need be no surprise that nothing is said of Diocletian and Maximian, for they were ex-Augusti, so to speak, though still bearing the courtesy title. But if Maxentius had been recognised as one of the “Imperial Brothers” at the conference of Carnuntum, the omission of his name by Lactantius is exceedingly strange. From his account we should judge that the policy decided upon at Carnuntum was to restore the fourfold system of Diocletian in the persons of Galerius, Licinius, Maximin, and Constantine, taking precedence in the order named. When Maximin refused to be content with his old title of Cæsar or to accept the new one of Son of Augustus, and insisted on being acknowledged as Augustus, the system broke down anew. At the beginning of 308, there were no fewer than seven who bore the name of Augustus. And of these Diocletian alone had outlived his ambitions.
Maximian returned to Gaul, where he received cordial welcome from Constantine. He had resigned his pretensions not—as says Lactantius, cognisant as ever of the secret motives of his enemies—that he might the more easily deceive Constantine, but because it had been so decided at Carnuntum. He was thus a private citizen once more; he had neither army, nor official status, nothing beyond the prestige attaching to one who had, so to speak, “passed the chair.” There can be little doubt that his second resignation was as reluctant as the first, but as he was at open enmity with his son, Maxentius, he had only Constantine to look to for protection and the means of livelihood. And Constantine, according to the author of the Seventh Panegyric, gave him all the honours due to his exalted rank. He assigned to him the place of honour on his right hand; put at his disposal the stables of the palace; and ordered his servants to pay to Maximian the same deference that they paid to himself. The orator declares that the gossip of the day spoke of Constantine as wearing the robe of office, while Maximian wielded its powers. Evidently Constantine had no fear that Maximian would play him false.
His confidence, however, soon received a rude shock. The Franks were restless and threatened invasion. Constantine marched north with his army, leaving Maximian at Arles. He did not take his entire forces with him, for a considerable number remained in the south of Gaul—no doubt to guard the frontier against danger from Maxentius, though Lactantius explains it otherwise. Maximian waited till sufficient time had elapsed for Constantine to be well across the Rhine, and then began to spread rumours of his having been defeated and slain in battle. For the third time, therefore, he assumed the purple, seized the State treasuries, and took command of the legions, offering them a large donative, and appealing to their old loyalty. The usurpation was entirely successful for the moment, but when Constantine heard of the treachery he hurried back, leaving the affairs of the frontier to settle themselves.
Constantine knew the military value of mobility, and his soldiers eagerly made his quarrel their own. There is an amusing passage in the Seventh Panegyric[[34]] in which the orator says that the troops shewed their devotion by refusing the offer of special travelling-money (viatica) on the ground that it would hamper them on the march. Their generous pay, they said, was more than sufficient, though no Roman army before this time had ever been known to refuse money. Then he describes how they marched from the Rhine to the Aar without rest, yet with unwearied bodies; how at Chalons (Cabillonum) they were placed on board river boats, but found the current too sluggish for their impetuous eagerness to come to conclusions with the traitor, and cried out that they were standing still; and how, even when they entered the rapid current of the Rhone, its pace scarcely satisfied their ardour. Such, according to the Court rhetorician, was the enthusiasm of the soldiers for their young leader. When, at length, Arles was reached, it was found that Maximian had fled to Marseilles and had shut himself up within that strongly fortified town. His power had crumbled away. The legions, which had sworn allegiance to him, withdrew it again as soon as they found that he had lied to them of Constantine’s death; even the soldiers he had with him in Marseilles only waited for the appearance of Constantine before the walls to open the gates. The picture which Lactantius draws of Constantine reproaching Maximian for his ingratitude while the latter—from the summit of the wall—heaps curses on his head (ingerebat maledicta de muris), or the companion picture of the anonymous rhetorician, who shews us the scaling ladders falling short of the top of the battlements and the devoted soldiers climbing up on their comrades’ backs, are vivid but unconvincing. What emerges from their doubtful narratives is that Marseilles was captured without a siege, and that Maximian fell into the hands of his justly angry son-in-law, who stripped him of his titles but vouchsafed to him his life.
Was Maximian in league with his son, Maxentius, in this usurpation? Had they made up their old quarrel in order to turn their united weapons against Constantine? There were those who thought so at the time, as Lactantius says,[[35]] the theory being that the old man only pretended violent enmity towards his son in order to carry out his treacherous designs against Constantine and the other Emperors.
Lactantius himself denies this supposition bluntly (Sed id falsum fuit) and then goes on to say[[36]] that Maximian’s real motive was to get rid both of Maxentius and the rest, and restore Diocletian and himself to power. Even for Lactantius, this is an extraordinarily wild theory. It runs counter to all that we know of Diocletian’s wishes during his retirement, and it speaks of the “extinction of Maxentius and the rest” as though it only needed an order to a centurion and the deed was done. It is much more probable that Maximian had actually re-entered into negotiations with Maxentius and had offered, as the price of reconciliation, the support of the legions which he had treacherously won from Constantine. The impetuous haste with which Constantine flew back from the Rhine indicates that the crisis was one of extreme gravity.
Maximian did not long survive his degradation. That he died a violent death is certain; the circumstances attending it are in doubt. Lactantius gives a minute narrative which would carry greater conviction if the details had not been so manifestly borrowed from the chronicles of the East. He says that Maximian, tiring of his humiliating position, engaged in new plots against Constantine, and tempted Fausta, his daughter, to betray her husband by the promise of a worthier spouse. Her part in the conspiracy was to secure the removal of the guards from Constantine’s sleeping apartment. Fausta laid the whole scheme before her husband, who ordered one of his eunuchs to sleep in the royal chamber. Maximian, rising in the dead of night, told the sentries that he had dreamed an important dream which he wished at once to communicate to his son-in-law and thus gained entrance to the room. Drawing his sword, he cut off the eunuch’s head and rushed out boasting that he had slain Constantine—only to be confronted by Constantine himself at the head of a troop of armed men. The corpse was brought out; the self-convicted murderer stood “speechless as Marpesian flint.” Constantine upbraided him with his treachery, gave him permission to choose his own mode of dying, and Maximian hanged himself, “drawing”—as Virgil had said—“from the lofty beam the noose of shameful death.”
FRAGMENT OF 4TH CENTURY EGYPTIAN POTTERY BOWL
SHOWING AN EARLY PORTRAIT OF CHRIST, WITH BUSTS OF THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE
AND THE EMPRESS FAUSTA. (FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM.)
Such is the story of Lactantius; it could scarcely be more circumstantial. But if this had been the manner of Maximian’s death, it is hardly possible that the other historians would have passed it by in silence. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, simply says that Maximian strangled himself; Aurelius Victor that he justly perished (jure perierat). The author of the Seventh Panegyric declares that, though Constantine offered him his life, Maximian deemed himself unworthy of the boon and committed suicide.[[37]] Eutropius, evidently borrowing from Lactantius, remarks that Maximian paid the penalty for his crimes. There is little doubt, therefore, that Constantine ordered his execution and gave him choice of death, just as Maxentius had given similar choice to Severus. Officially it would be announced that Maximian had committed suicide. At the time, public opinion was shocked by the manner of his death, though it was generally conceded that his life was justly forfeit.