On a wide plain near Nicomedia the army assembled on May 1st, 305, for the unexampled ceremony of the abdication of an Emperor. A little hill in the centre was surmounted by a lofty throne and a statue of Jupiter, and the ageing Emperor—he was in his fifty-ninth year—surrendered the power he had wielded so well for more than twenty years. By a previous arrangement, Maximian was abdicating on the same day at Milan. The two Cæsars became Augusti, and two new Cæsars were appointed. In their selection we recognize the partial and unskilful hand of Galerius. He handed his own Cæsarean dignity to a rustic nephew, Daza—“who had just left his herds in the forest,” Lactantius scornfully says—and sent a loyal and undistinguished friend to receive that of Maximian in Italy. From that selfish act would develop one of the greatest civil wars since the founding of the Empire. In the ranks of the officers by the platform was the tall, handsome, gifted, and disappointed young man who would one day be known as Constantine the Great.
Diocletian retired to Salona, in his native province of Dalmatia, and built, close to the town, what was for the age a magnificent palace. Valeria remained in the palace of Galerius, and it seems that Prisca stayed with her, as we shall presently find her sharing the hard lot of her daughter. Why the mother, at least, chose to remain in Nicomedia is left to our imaginations. The religion they had favoured was cruelly suppressed, and, if we are to believe Lactantius, their virtue must have been outraged by the unbridled license of the new Emperor. He is described as an ogre, dragging the noblest women of Nicomedia from their husbands, feeding his bears on innocent citizens, and “never taking a meal without a taste of human blood.” Yet Valeria clung to her husband even through the painful and repulsive illness which ended his life; and her name was given by him to a part of his Empire. The picture is evidently overdrawn, yet life in the palace, with Galerius and his boorish relatives, cannot have been very congenial, and the temper of Galerius would be soured by the events that followed.
The first mishap was the flight of Constantine. He had been living for some years at the court of Diocletian, and was deeply disappointed and rightly indignant at the choice of the new Cæsars. By birth and ability he had the clearest title to the purple. He was now a tall and manly young officer, handsome, popular, and successful, and anxious to join his father Constantius in Gaul. There is little doubt that he fled during the night, though the romantic story told by Lactantius is now generally regarded as a clumsy piece of fiction. It describes Galerius as failing to take the youth’s life by engaging him in dangerous contests, and at length devising an ingenious scheme. He one night gives Constantine permission to depart after he has seen him in the morning, and warns him that he will be put to death if he is still in Nicomedia at noon. Then the ogre gives orders that he is not to be awakened before noon on the morrow; but the young hero steals all the horses in the stables—there were probably hundreds—cripples all other horses along his route, and flies to his father. The only authentic point is that Constantine fled. He would wade back through a sea of blood. Within a few months his father was dead, Constantine was chosen by the army to succeed him, and Galerius was forced to recognize him as Cæsar.
Galerius gave the title of Augustus, which Constantius had left vacant at his death, to his loyal Severus, but he was soon informed that the troops, the people, and the Senate had chosen another Emperor at Rome. A brief outline of the stirring events that followed will suffice here. The new Emperor was Maxentius, son of the retired Maximian. The father issued from his retreat to join in the fray, and Galerius was bound to support Severus. Diocletian looked on quietly from his gardens at Salona. When Maximian urged him to return to power, he said that if Maximian could see the vegetables he was growing he would not make such a request. Briefly, Severus was treacherously taken by Maximian, and induced to ease the complication by taking his life. Maximian, Galerius, and Diocletian met at Carnuntum, on the Danube, and it was settled that Galerius and Licinius (one of his officers) should be recognized as Emperors, and Constantine and Maximin (Daza) as Cæsars. Maxentius was disregarded, and Maximian was persuaded to retire once more. How the restless and ambitious old man then clung to Constantine, and attempted to murder and displace him, we shall see later.
The expedition of Galerius into Italy proved disastrous, as he returned in bad health and temper to his dominions. He died in 311, of an unpleasant disease, of which the morbid reader may find a luxurious description in Lactantius. Valeria remained with him to the end, and then a new and more romantic chapter opened for her and her mother. The two Emperors of the East made rival offers of their hospitality; for Maximin had exacted an equal dignity with Licinius. Valeria was at that time in her early thirties, and her mourning garments did not detract from her ripe beauty of face and figure. She is represented as weighing the respective immoralities of the two Eastern Emperors, and considering to which of the two it would be the less dangerous to entrust her virtue. Lactantius does not tell us why she was forced to choose at all; why she and her mother did not retire to the luxurious and unsullied palace of Diocletian. The end of his life was approaching, it is true, but the palace would still shelter them. On the other hand, Maximin and Licinius are both very thickly tarred with the brush of Lactantius. We shall see something of the conduct of Licinius later. As to Maximin, if one half of what Lactantius and Eusebius say is true, he must have been known over the whole Empire as an erotic maniac. He may not have been this romantic combination of Nero, Elagabalus, and Carinus, but we know from other writers that he was much more vicious than Licinius. When, therefore, we find Valeria choosing to live in his palace, we cannot repress a suspicion that the beautiful widow was not quite so unworldly as she is represented to have been.
She had not been long in her new home when certain officers came to tell her that Maximin loved her, and was prepared to divorce his wife and wed her. When she refused, the baffled passion turned to rage, and mother and daughter were expelled from the palace. When we learn, from a later passage, that Valeria refused to yield her right to the property of Galerius, the episode seems more human. A story of adultery was invented, a Jew—the villain of early Christian literature—was suborned to give false evidence, and several of Valeria’s friends were implicated. A number of ladies of high rank were publicly executed, and the Empresses, spoiled of their goods, were driven from province to province, until they found themselves lodged in a mean village on the edge of the Syrian desert. Valeria contrived to acquaint her father with their situation, but the rough Maximin rejected his feeble entreaties. They seem to have spent the winter (312–13) in this miserable exile. The only comfort was that they had with them Candidian, a natural son of Galerius, whom Valeria had adopted, and Severian, the son of Severus.
SALONINA
VALERIA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM