The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 Read Online Free PDF Page B

obvious that a single policy should prevail throughout the Empire; at the same time the elderly Licinius was unlikely to feel as well disposed towards Christianity as his fellow-Emperor, and some sort of understanding would have to be reached between them. Finally there came the problem created by the third living Augustus, Maximin Daia.
    This odious young man - the exact date of his birth is unknown, but he seems still to have been in his early thirties - had started making trouble in 310 when, after five years as a Caesar, he had demanded the rank of Augustus. His uncle Galerius, sadly aware that with Constantine, Maximian and Maxentius all having claimed the title in the recent past it was in danger of becoming seriously devalued, had refused point-blank, offering him instead that of Filius Augusti; but Maximin Daia had angrily rejected this belittling alternative and had assumed the Augustan attributes of his own accord. On Galerius's death he had seized the Eastern Empire as far as the Hellespont, from which point of vantage he had made continual trouble for Licinius in Thrace until, in the winter of 3 11—12 on a barge in the middle of the Bosphorus, the two had patched up an uneasy truce. Moreover, he loathed Christianity. He had blatandy ignored his uncle's Edict of Toleration in 311 and was still wallowing in Christian blood - even on occasion sending his soldiers in pursuit of Christian refugees over the imperial borders into Armenia, whose King was consequently on the point of declaring war against him.
    The talks between the two Emperors passed off amicably enough. Licinius seems to have accepted with a good grace that Constantine should keep the territories that he had conquered, and was duly married - according to what rite is unfortunately not recorded - to Constantia.
    313
    Where the Christians were concerned, the new brothers-in-law agreed the final text of a further edict, confirming that of Galerius and granting Christianity full legal recognition throughout the Empire. Before this could be promulgated, however, news reached Milan that brought the meeting to an abrupt and premature end: Maximin Daia had broken the truce of the previous winter, crossed the straits with an army - estimated by Lactantius at 70,000 - and seized the little town of Byzantium on the European shore. Licinius moved fast. Taking the small force that he had with him at Milan, summoning reinforcements to join him in Illyria and Thrace and picking up what further units he could along his route, he left immediately for the East. By late April we find him a few miles from Heraclea Propontis, another small settlement on the Marmara to which Maximin was laying siege; and on the last day of the month the two armies met at a spot known as the Serene Fields, some eighteen miles outside the town.
    Outnumbered though he was, well past his own youth and with his men exhausted from the length and speed of their march, Licinius proved by far the more brilliant general of the two. Maximin's army was ignominiously routed, he himself fleeing from the field disguised as a slave. He finally made his way to Cilicia, where he died the following year - as disagreeably, Lactantius is happy to inform us, as his fellow-persecutors:
    He swallowed poison ... which began to burn up everything within him, so that he was driven to distraction by the intolerable pain; and during a fit of frenzy, which lasted four days, he gathered handfuls of earth, and greedily devoured it. After various excruciating torments he dashed his forehead against the wall, and his eyes started out of their sockets ... In the end he acknowledged his own guilt and implored Christ to have mercy on him. Then, amidst groans like those of one burnt alive, did he breathe out his guilty soul in the most horrible kind of death. 1
    Licinius, meanwhile, had made his triumphal entry into the eastern capital, Nicomedia - where, somewhat belatedly on 13 June, he promulgated the edict on which he and