Maximin fled from the scene of carnage as though he had been pursued by all the Cabiri. Throwing aside his purple and assuming the garb of a slave—it is Lactantius, however, who is speaking—he crossed the Bosphorus, and, within twenty-four hours of quitting the field, reached once more the palace of Nicomedia—a distance of a hundred and sixty miles. Taking his wife and children with him, he hurried through the defiles of the Taurus, summoned to his side whatever troops he had left behind in Syria and Egypt, and awaited the oncoming of Licinius, who followed at leisure in his tracks. The end was not long delayed. Maximin’s soldiers regarded his cause as lost, and despairing of clemency, he took his own life at Tarsus. His provinces passed without a struggle into the hands of Licinius, who butchered every surviving member of Maximin’s family.
Nor had the victor pity even for two ladies of imperial rank, whose misfortunes and sufferings excited the deepest compassion in that stony-hearted age. These were Prisca, the wife of Diocletian, and her daughter Valeria, the widow of the Emperor Galerius. On his death-bed Galerius had entrusted his wife to the care and the gratitude of Maximin, whom he had raised from obscurity to a throne. Maximin repaid his confidence by pressing Valeria to marry him and offering to divorce his own wife. Valeria returned an indignant and high-spirited refusal. She would never think of marriage, she said,[[57]] while still wearing mourning for a husband whose ashes were not yet cold. It was monstrous that Maximin should seek to divorce a faithful wife, and, even if she assented to his proposal, she had clear warning of what was likely to be her own fate. Finally, it was not becoming that the daughter of Diocletian and the widow of Galerius should stoop to a second marriage. Maximin took a bitter revenge. He reduced Valeria to penury, marked down all her friends for ruin, and finally drove her into exile with her mother, Prisca, who nobly shared the sufferings of the daughter whom she could not shield. Lactantius tells us that the two imperial ladies wandered miserably through the Syrian wastes, while Maximin took delight in spurning the overtures of the aged Diocletian, who sent repeated messages begging that his daughter might be allowed to go and live with him at Salona. Maximin refused even when Diocletian sent one of his relatives to remind him of past benefits, and the two unfortunate ladies knew no alleviation of their troubles. When the tyrant fell, they probably thought that the implacable hatred with which Maximin had pursued them would be their best recommendation to the favour of Licinius. Again, however, they were disappointed, for Licinius, in his jealous anxiety to spare no one connected with the families of his predecessors in the purple, ordered the execution of Candidianus, a natural son of Galerius, who had been brought up by Valeria as her own child. In despair, therefore, the two ladies, who had boldly gone to Nicomedia, fled from the scene and “wandered for fifteen months, disguised as plebeians, through various provinces,”[[58]] until they had the misfortune to be recognised at Thessalonica. They were at once beheaded and their bodies thrown into the sea, amid the pitying sympathy of a vast throng which dared not lift a hand to save them.
Constantine and Licinius now shared between them the whole of the Roman Empire. They were allies, but their alliance did not long stand the strain of their respective ambitions. Each had won an easy victory over his antagonist, and each was confident that his legions would suffice to win him undivided empire. We know very little of the pretexts assigned for the quarrel which culminated in the war of 316. Zosimus throws the blame upon Constantine, whom he accuses of not keeping faith and of trying to filch from Licinius some of his provinces. But as the sympathies of Zosimus were strongly pagan and as he invariably imputed the worst possible motive to Constantine, it is fairest and most reasonable to suppose that the two Emperors simply quarrelled over the division of the Empire. Constantine had given the hand of his half-sister Anastasia to one of his generals, named Bassianus, whom he had raised to the dignity of a Cæsar. But for some reason left unexplained—possibly because Constantine granted only the title, without the legions and the provinces, of a Cæsar—Bassianus became discontented with his position and entered into an intrigue with Licinius. Constantine discovered the plot, put Bassianus to death, and demanded from Licinius the surrender of Senecio, a brother of the victim and a relative of Licinius. The demand was refused; some statues of Constantine were demolished by Licinius’s orders at Æmona (Laybach) and war ensued.
The armies met in the autumn of 316 near Cibalis, in Pannonia, between the rivers Drave and Save. Neither Emperor led into the field anything approaching the full strength he was able to muster; Licinius is said to have had only 35,000 men and Constantine no more than 20,000. From Zosimus’s highly rhetorical account of the battle[[59]] we gather that Constantine chose a position between a steep hill and an impassable morass, and repulsed the charge of the legions of Licinius. Then as he advanced into the plain in pursuit of the enemy, he was checked by some fresh troops which Licinius brought up, and a long and stubborn contest lasted until nightfall, when Constantine decided the fortunes of the day by an irresistible charge. Licinius is said to have lost 20,000 men in this encounter, more than fifty per cent. of his entire force, and he beat a hurried retreat, leaving his camp to be plundered by the victor, whose own losses must also have been severe.
A few weeks later the battle was renewed on the plain of Mardia in Thrace. Licinius had evidently been strongly reinforced from Asia, for, though he was again defeated after a hotly contested battle, he was able to effect an orderly retreat and draw off his beaten troops without disorder—a rare thing in the annals of Roman warfare, where defeat usually involved destruction. Constantine is said to have owed his victory to his superior generalship and to the skill with which he timed a surprise attack of five thousand of his men upon the rear of the enemy. Yet we may be certain that he would not have consented to treat with Licinius for peace had he not had considerable cause for anxiety about the final issue of the campaign. However, his two victories, while not sufficiently decisive to enable him to dictate any terms he chose, at least gave him the authoritative word in the negotiations which ensued, and sealed the doom of the unfortunate Valens, whom Licinius had just appointed Cæsar. When Licinius’s envoy spoke of his two imperial masters, Licinius and Valens, Constantine retorted that he recognised but one, and bluntly stated that he had not endured tedious marches and won a succession of victories, only to share the prize with a contemptible slave. Licinius sacrificed his lieutenant without compunction and consented to hand over to Constantine Illyria and its legions, with the important provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Moesia, and Dacia. The only foothold left him on the Continent of Europe, out of all that had previously been included in the eastern half of the Empire, was the province of Thrace.
At the same time, the two Emperors agreed to elevate their sons to the rank of Cæsar. Constantine bestowed the dignity upon Crispus, the son of his first marriage with Minervina. Crispus was now in the promise of early manhood, and had proved his valour, and won his spurs in the recent campaign. Licinius gave the title to his son Licinianus, an infant no more than twenty months old. These appointments are important, for they shew how completely the system of Diocletian had broken down. The Emperors appointed Cæsars out of deference to the letter of that constitution, but they outrageously violated its spirit by appointing their own sons, and when the choice fell on an infant, insult was added to injury. It was plain warning to all the world that Constantine and Licinius meant to keep power in their own hands. When, a few years later, three sons were born to Constantine and Fausta in quick succession, the eldest, who was given the name of his father, was created Cæsar shortly after his birth. No doubt the Empress—herself an Emperor’s daughter—demanded that her son should enjoy equal rank with the son of the low-born Minervina, and the probabilities are that Constantine already looked forward to providing the young Princes with patrimonies carved out of the territory of Licinius. However, there was no actual rupture between the two Emperors until 323, though relations had long been strained.
We know comparatively little of what took place in the intervening years. They were not, however, years of unbroken peace. There was fighting both on the Danube and the Rhine. The Goths and the Sarmatæ, who had been taught such a severe lesson by Claudius and Aurelian that they had left the Danubian frontier undisturbed for half a century, again surged forward and swept over Moesia and Pannonia. We hear of several hard-fought battles along the course of the river, and then, when Constantine, at the head of his legions, had driven out the invader, he himself crossed the Danube and compelled the barbarians to assent to a peace whereby they pledged themselves to supply the Roman armies, when required, with forty thousand auxiliaries. The details of this campaign are exceedingly obscure and untrustworthy. The Panegyrists of the Emperor claimed that he had repeated the triumphs of Trajan. Constantine himself is represented by the mocking Julian as boasting that he was a greater general than Trajan, because it is a finer thing to win back what you have lost than to conquer something which was not yours before. The probabilities are that there took place one of those alarming barbarian movements from which the Roman Empire was never long secure, that Constantine beat it back successfully, and gained victories which were decisive enough at the moment, but in which there was no real finality, because no finality was possible. Probably it was the seriousness of these Gothic and Sarmatian campaigns which was chiefly responsible for the years of peace between Constantine and Licinius. Until the barbarian danger had been repelled, Constantine was perforce obliged to remain on tolerable terms with the Emperor of the East.
While the father was thus engaged on the Danube, the son was similarly employed on the Rhine. The young Cæsar, Crispus, already entrusted with the administration of Gaul and Britain and the command of the Rhine legions, won a victory over the Alemanni in a winter campaign and distinguished himself by the skill and rapidity with which he executed a long forced march despite the icy rigours of a severe season. It is Nazarius, the Panegyrist, who refers[[60]] in glowing sentences to this admirable performance—carried through, he says, with “incredibly youthful verve” (incredibili juvenilitate confecit),—and praises Crispus to the skies as “the most noble Cæsar of his august father.” When that speech was delivered on the day of the Quinquennalia of the Cæsars in 321, Constantine’s ears did not yet grudge to listen to the eulogies of his gallant son.
But there is one omission from the speech which is exceedingly significant. It contains no mention of Licinius, and no one reading the oration would gather that there were two Emperors or that the Empire was divided. Evidently, Constantine and Licinius were no longer on good terms, and none knew better than the Panegyrists of the Court the art of suppressing the slightest word or reference that might bring a frown to the brow of their imperial auditor. But even two years before, in 319, the names of Licinius and the boy, Cæsar Licinianus, had ceased to figure on the consular Fasti—a straw which pointed very clearly in which direction the wind was blowing.
Zosimus attributes the war to the ambition of Constantine; Eutropius roundly accuses[[61]] him of having set his heart upon acquiring the sovereignty of the whole world. On the other hand, Eusebius[[62]] depicts Constantine as a magnanimous monarch, the very pattern of humanity, long suffering of injury, and forgiving to the point of seventy times seven the ungrateful intrigues of the black-hearted Licinius. According to the Bishop of Cæsarea, Constantine had been the benefactor of Licinius, who, conscious of his inferiority, plotted in secret until he was driven into open enmity. But it is very evident that the reason of Eusebius’s enmity to Licinius was the anti-Christian policy into which the Emperor had drifted, as soon as he became estranged from Constantine. A more detailed description of Licinius’s religious policy and of the new persecution which broke out in his provinces will be found in another chapter; here we need only point out Eusebius’s anxiety to represent the cause of the quarrel between the Emperors as being in the main a religious one. He tells us[[63]] that Licinius regarded as traitors to himself those who were friendly to his rival, and savagely attacked the bishops, who, as he judged, were his most bitter opponents. The phrase, not without reason, has given rise to the suspicion that the Christian bishops of the East were regarded as head centres of political disaffection, and Licinius evidently suspected them of preaching treason and acting as the agents of Constantine. We have not sufficient data to enable us to draw any sure inference, but the bishops could not help contrasting the liberality of Constantine to the Church, of which he was the open champion, with the reactionary policy of Licinius, which had at length culminated in active persecution.