On the Deaths of the Persecutors

The Lord has heard your prayers, dearest Donatus, which you poured out in his sight every hour, day after day, and the prayers of the rest of our brothers, who by a glorious confession have won for themselves an everlasting crown as the reward of their faith.

See: all the adversaries have been destroyed, peace has been restored throughout the world, and the church, lately struck down, rises again, and the temple of God, which the ungodly had overthrown, is being built up with greater glory by the Lord's mercy.

For God has raised up rulers who have rescinded the wicked and bloody commands of the tyrants and have provided for the human race, so that now, as if the cloud of a most grievous time had been scattered, a pleasant and serene peace gladdens the minds of all.

Now, after the violent whirlwinds of a black storm, a calm sky and the longed-for light have shone again; now God, appeased by the prayers of his servants, has lifted up with heavenly help those who lay prostrate and afflicted; now, the conspiracy of the ungodly being extinguished, he has wiped away the tears of those who mourned.

Those who had insulted God lie low; those who had overthrown the holy temple have fallen with a greater ruin; those who had butchered the righteous have poured out their guilty souls under heavenly blows and deserved torments.

Late indeed, but heavily and fittingly. For God had put off their punishment in order to display in them great and wonderful examples, from which those who come after might learn both that God is one and that he, the same God, as judge inflicts fitting punishments on the ungodly and the persecutors.

It has seemed good to me to bear witness to their end, so that all who were far away, or who will live hereafter, may know how the most high God has shown his power and majesty in extinguishing and destroying the enemies of his name. Yet it is not out of place if I set out from the beginning, from the time the church was founded, who were its persecutors and with what punishments the severity of the heavenly judge took vengeance on them.

In the last times of Tiberius Caesar, as we read in writing, our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified by the Jews, after the tenth day before the Kalends of April, when the two Gemini were consuls.

When he had risen on the third day, he gathered his disciples, whom fear at his arrest had put to flight, and remaining with them forty days he opened their hearts and interpreted the Scriptures, which until that time had been obscure and wrapped in mystery; and he ordained and instructed them for the preaching of his teaching and doctrine, setting in order the solemn discipline of the new covenant.

When this task was fulfilled, a storm-cloud wrapped him about, and, withdrawn from human sight, it carried him up into heaven.

And from there the disciples, who were then eleven, having taken Matthias and Paul in place of Judas the traitor, were scattered through all the earth to preach the gospel, as their Master the Lord had commanded them, and for twenty-five years, until the beginning of Nero's reign, they laid the foundations of the church through all the provinces and cities.

And when Nero was already reigning, Peter came to Rome, and by performing certain miracles, which he did by the power of God himself, a power given him by God, he converted many to righteousness and set up for God a faithful and stable temple.

When this was reported to Nero, and he noticed that not only at Rome but everywhere a great multitude was daily falling away from the worship of idols and, condemning the old, going over to the new religion, then, being the accursed and harmful tyrant he was, he sprang forward to cut down the heavenly temple and to destroy righteousness, and, first of all men to persecute the servants of God, he fastened Peter to a cross and killed Paul. Yet he did not go unpunished.

For God looked upon the affliction of his people. And so the tyrant, powerless, cast down from the height of empire and tumbled from the summit, suddenly vanished, so that not even a place of burial for so evil a beast was to be seen on earth.

Hence some crazed people believe that he was carried away and kept alive, since the Sibyl says that a fugitive matricide will come from the ends of the earth, so that, because he was the first to persecute, he may also be the last to persecute and may precede the coming of Antichrist; but it is wrong to believe this. Just as certain holy men declare that two prophets were carried away alive to the last times, before the holy and everlasting reign of Christ, when he begins to descend, so in the same way they think that Nero too will come, to be the forerunner of the devil and go before him as he comes to lay waste the earth and overthrow the human race.

After him, when some years had passed, another tyrant no less than he arose, Domitian. Although he exercised a hated domination, he still lay heavy on the necks of his subjects for a very long time and reigned in safety, until he stretched out his impious hands against the Lord.

But after he was stirred up by the prompting of demons to persecute the righteous people, then he was handed over into the hands of his enemies and paid the penalty. Nor was it enough for vengeance that he was killed in his own palace: even the memory of his name was erased.

For although he had built many wonderful works, although he had made the Capitol and other famous monuments, the senate so persecuted his name that it left no trace of his statues or his inscriptions, and by the gravest decrees branded him even after death for his everlasting disgrace.

And so, the acts of the tyrant having been rescinded, the church was not only restored to its former state but shone out far more brightly and flourishingly; and in the following times, when many good emperors held the helm and government of the Roman empire, suffering no assaults from enemies, it stretched out its hands to the east and the west, so that there was now no corner of the earth so remote that the religion of God had not reached it, and no nation, finally, living with manners so savage that it did not grow gentle for the works of righteousness by receiving the worship of God. But afterwards the long peace was broken.

For after very many years there arose an accursed animal, Decius, to harass the church: for who persecutes righteousness but an evil man?

And as if he had been raised to that imperial height for this very purpose, he at once began to rage against God, so that he at once fell.

For having set out against the Carpi, who had then occupied Dacia and Moesia, he was at once surrounded by the barbarians and destroyed with a great part of his army, and could not even be honoured with burial, but, stripped and naked, as befitted an enemy of God, he lay as food for wild beasts and birds.

Not long after, Valerian also, seized by a like frenzy, aimed his impious hands against God and shed much righteous blood, though in a short time. But God struck him with a new and singular kind of punishment, so that he might be a lesson to posterity that the adversaries of God always receive the wages their crime deserves.

Captured by the Persians, he lost not only the imperial power he had used insolently but also the liberty he had taken from others, and he lived most shamefully in slavery.

For the king of the Persians, Sapor, the one who had captured him, whenever he wished to mount his carriage or his horse, used to order the Roman to bend down and offer his back, and, setting his foot on his back, would say with a laugh, taunting him, that this was the truth, not what the Romans painted on tablets or walls.

So, most deservedly triumphed over, he lived for some time, so that for a long time the Roman name was a mockery and a laughing-stock to the barbarians.

This too was added to his punishment: though he had a son who was emperor, he found no avenger of his captivity and utter slavery, nor was he ever demanded back.

But after he had ended his shameful life in that disgrace, his skin was stripped off, and the hide, torn from his flesh, was dyed with red colour, so that it might be placed in the temple of the barbarian gods as a memorial of a most glorious triumph and always be shown to our ambassadors, so that the Romans might not trust too much in their own strength when they saw the spoils of a captured emperor among the Persians' gods.

Since God, then, exacted such punishments from the sacrilegious, is it not astonishing that anyone afterwards dared not only to act but even to plan against the majesty of the one God, who rules and holds together all things?

Aurelian, who was by nature mad and headlong, though he remembered Valerian's captivity, nevertheless forgot his crime and its punishment and provoked the wrath of God by cruel deeds. But he was not even allowed to accomplish what he had planned; he was cut off at once, at the very beginning of his frenzy.

His bloody edicts had not yet reached the more distant provinces, and already he himself lay bloodied on the ground at Caenophrurium, a place in Thrace, killed by his friends on some false suspicion.

By such and so many examples the later tyrants ought to have been restrained; yet they were not only not frightened but acted against God even more boldly and confidently.

Diocletian, who was the inventor of crimes and the contriver of evils, while he was ruining everything, could not keep his hands even from God.

He overturned the world both by avarice and by timidity. For he made three men sharers of his rule, the world being divided into four parts, and armies were multiplied, since each of them strove to have a far greater number of soldiers than former emperors had had when they governed the state alone.

The number of those receiving began to be so much greater than the number of those giving that, the resources of the farmers being exhausted by the enormity of the levies, the fields were deserted and cultivated land turned into forest.

And so that everything might be filled with terror, the provinces too were chopped into pieces: many governors and more offices weighed on each region and almost on each city, likewise many finance officers and masters and deputies of the prefects, among all of whom civil business was very rare, but condemnations and confiscations were frequent, exactions of countless things, I will not say frequent, but continual, and in the exactions injuries not to be borne.

Those things too cannot be borne which concern the levying of soldiers. The same man, from insatiable avarice, never wished his treasury to be diminished, but always heaped up extraordinary funds and gifts, so as to keep what he stored away whole and untouched.

The same man, when by various iniquities he had brought about an immense rise in prices, attempted to set by law the prices of goods for sale.

Then for small and cheap things much blood was shed, and out of fear nothing appeared for sale, and the dearness blazed up far worse, until after the ruin of many the law was set aside by sheer necessity.

To this was added a certain boundless passion for building, and no less an exaction from the provinces in supplying workmen and craftsmen and wagons and everything needed for constructing the works.

Here basilicas, here a circus, here a mint, here an arms factory, here a house for his wife, here one for his daughter. Suddenly a great part of the city is cut away. Everyone moved out with wives and children, as if the city had been taken by enemies.

And when these had been completed with the ruin of the provinces, “They have not been done right,” he would say; “let them be done another way.” They had to be pulled down again and changed, perhaps to fall once more. So he was forever raving, striving to make Nicomedia equal to the city of Rome.

I pass over how many perished for the sake of their estates or wealth; for this was usual and, by the custom of evil men, almost lawful.

But in this his special trait was that wherever he had seen a better-cultivated field or a more ornate building, at once a false charge and capital punishment were prepared for the owner, as if he could not seize another's property without blood.

What of his brother Maximian, who was called Herculius? He was not unlike him; for they could not have held together in so faithful a friendship unless there had been in both one mind, the same thinking, an equal will, a like judgement.

They differed only in this: in the one there was greater avarice but more timidity, in the other less avarice but more spirit, not for doing good, but for doing evil.

For since he held Italy, the very seat of empire, and the wealthiest provinces, Africa and Spain, lay under him, he was not so careful in guarding wealth, of which he had an abundant supply.

And whenever there was need, there was no lack of very wealthy senators who could be said, by suborned informations, to have aimed at the throne, so that the lights of the senate were continually being put out.

A most bloodstained treasury overflowed with ill-gotten wealth. Moreover, the lust in that pestilent man went not only to the corrupting of males, which is hateful and detestable, but also to the violating of the daughters of leading men. For wherever he had travelled, maidens torn from their parents' arms were at once at his disposal.

In these things he judged himself happy; in these he thought the prosperity of his reign consisted, if he denied nothing to his lust and evil desire.

I pass over Constantius, since he was unlike the others and worthy to hold the world alone.

But the other Maximian, whom Diocletian had taken as his son-in-law, was worse not only than these two whom our own times have felt, but than all the evil men who ever lived.

There was in this beast a native barbarism, a savagery foreign to Roman blood; no wonder, since his mother, a woman from beyond the Danube, had fled into New Dacia across the river when the Carpi were raiding.

His body too matched his character: tall of stature, a huge mass of flesh spread out and swollen to a horrible size.

In short, by his words, his deeds, and his look he was a terror and a dread to all. Even his father-in-law feared him very sharply; and the cause of this fear was this.

Narses, king of the Persians, spurred on by the example of his own house, his grandfather Sapor, was eagerly aiming with great forces to seize the East.

Then Diocletian, fearful in every disturbance as he was, and low in spirit, fearing at the same time the example of Valerian, did not dare go to meet him, but sent this man through Armenia, himself staying in the East and waiting to catch the outcome.

He, using an ambush, overwhelmed without difficulty the barbarians, whose custom is to go to war with all their households, hampered by their numbers and encumbered with baggage; and having put King Narses to flight, he returned with booty and enormous spoils, bringing pride to himself and fear to Diocletian.

For after this victory he was raised to such arrogance that he now scorned the name of Caesar; and when he heard it in letters addressed to him, he would exclaim with a savage face and a terrible voice, “How long Caesar?”

From then on he began to behave most insolently, wishing to seem and be called begotten of Mars, as a second Romulus, and he preferred to defame his mother Romula with adultery so that he himself might appear sprung from gods.

But I put off speaking of his deeds so as not to confuse the times. For after he received the title of emperor, his father-in-law having been stripped of it, then at last he began to rage and to despise everything.

Diocles (for so he was called before his reign), while he was overturning the state with such counsels and such partners, and though for his crimes there was nothing he did not deserve, nevertheless reigned with the highest good fortune so long as he did not defile his hands with the blood of the righteous.

But what cause he had for persecuting, I will set out.

While he was staying in the regions of the East, since from fear he was a searcher into the future, he was sacrificing cattle and seeking what was to come in their livers.

Then certain of his attendants who knew the Lord, as they stood by him while he sacrificed, set the immortal sign on their foreheads; and when this was done the demons were put to flight and the rites were thrown into confusion. The haruspices were alarmed; they did not see the usual marks in the entrails, and as if the sacrifice had not been accepted, they sacrificed again and again.

But the victims slain time after time showed nothing, until that master of the haruspices, Tagis, whether from suspicion or from something he saw, said that the rites were not answering because profane men were present at the divine ceremonies.

Then, raging with anger, he ordered not only those who served at the rites but all who were in the palace to sacrifice, and, if they refused, to be punished with scourging; and sending letters to the commanders he directed that the soldiers too be compelled to the wicked sacrifices, so that those who had not obeyed should be discharged from the army.

So far his fury and anger went, and he did nothing further against the law or religion of God.

Then, after some time had passed, he came into Bithynia to spend the winter, and at that same time Maximian the Caesar also arrived, inflamed with wickedness, to urge the foolish old man, who had already made a beginning, to persecute the Christians. I have learned that the cause of his fury was this.

His mother was a worshipper of the mountain gods. Being an exceedingly superstitious woman, she offered sacrificial feasts almost daily and gave banquets to her villagers. The Christians abstained, and while she feasted with the heathen, they persevered in fasting and prayers.

From this she conceived hatred against them, and with womanly complaints she stirred up her son, no less superstitious, to do away with these people.

So they held counsel together through the whole winter, no one being admitted, and everyone thought that the highest affairs of state were being discussed. For a long time the old man resisted his fury, pointing out how ruinous it would be to disturb the world and shed the blood of many; that those people were accustomed to die gladly; that it was enough if he forbade only the palace staff and the soldiers from that religion. Yet he could not turn aside the madness of the headstrong man.

It was decided, therefore, to try the opinion of his friends.

For this was his malice: when he had decided to do something good, he did it without counsel, so that he himself might be praised; but when something evil, since he knew it would be blamed, he called many into counsel, so that whatever he himself had done wrong might be ascribed to the fault of others.

A few magistrates, then, and a few military men were admitted and questioned in order of rank. Some, from their own hatred of the Christians, gave their opinion that the enemies of the gods and foes of the public religions should be done away with; and those who thought otherwise, having understood the man's wishes, either from fear or wishing to please, agreed in the same opinion.

Not even so was the emperor moved to give his assent, but he decided above all to consult the gods, and sent a haruspex to Milesian Apollo. He answered as an enemy of the divine religion.

So he was drawn away from his purpose, and since he could resist neither his friends nor the Caesar nor Apollo, he tried to keep to this moderation: he ordered that the business be carried out without bloodshed, whereas the Caesar wanted those who refused to sacrifice to be burned alive.

A suitable and lucky day was sought for carrying out the business, and the Terminalia was chosen above all, which falls on the seventh day before the Kalends of March, so that a terminus, as it were, might be put to this religion. “That day was the first cause of death, the first of evils,” which befell both them and the whole world.

When that day dawned, the two old men holding the consulship, the one for the eighth and the other for the seventh time, suddenly, while the light was still dim, the prefect came to the church with commanders, tribunes and treasury officials; the doors were torn off and the image of the god was searched for; the Scriptures that were found were burned; plunder was given to all; there was seizing, panic, running about.

But they themselves, from a lookout (for the church, set on high ground, could be seen from the palace), argued long between themselves whether it ought rather to be set on fire.

Diocletian's view prevailed, as he was wary lest, if a great fire were made, some part of the city should burn; for many large houses surrounded it on every side.

So the praetorian guards came in battle order with axes and other iron tools, and, let loose on every side, within a few hours they levelled that lofty shrine to the ground.

The next day an edict was posted providing that people of that religion should be deprived of every honour and rank; that they should be subject to torture, from whatever order or grade they came; that every action at law should be valid against them, while they themselves could not bring an action for injury, for adultery, or for property taken; in short, that they should have neither liberty nor voice.

A certain man, though not rightly, yet with great courage, tore down this edict and cut it up, saying mockingly that victories over the Goths and Sarmatians were being posted.

At once he was brought in and not only tortured but, in due legal form, roasted, and with admirable patience at last burned to death.

But the Caesar was not content with the terms of the edict; he prepared to work on Diocletian another way.

For to drive him to the purpose of a most cruel persecution, he had the palace set on fire by secret agents; and when some part of it had burned, the Christians were accused as public enemies, and with enormous hatred the Christian name burned together with the palace: it was said that they, having taken counsel with the eunuchs, had planned to destroy the emperors, and that the two emperors had nearly been burned alive in their own home.

He himself sat and tortured innocent people with fire; so did all the magistrates, and in short all the officials who were in the palace tortured them, having been given authority.

They vied with one another to be first to discover something; nothing was found anywhere, since no one tortured the Caesar's household. He himself was present and pressed on, and did not allow the anger of the thoughtless old man to burn itself out.

But after fifteen days he contrived another fire. But it was noticed more quickly, and yet the author was not discovered.

Then the Caesar, having prepared to set out in midwinter, rushed off the same day, protesting that he was fleeing so as not to be burned alive.

But Diocletian, who always wished to seem shrewd and intelligent, could suspect nothing, but inflamed with anger ordered all his household to be butchered at once.

So the emperor raged now not only against his household but against everyone. And first of all he compelled his daughter Valeria and his wife Prisca to be polluted by sacrifice.

The once most powerful eunuchs, through whom the palace and he himself had previously stood, were put to death; presbyters and ministers were arrested and, without any proof or confession, condemned and led away with all their households.

People of every sex and age were seized for burning, and not one by one, since there was so great a multitude, but in herds, a fire being set around them, they were encircled; the servants of the household were drowned in the sea with millstones tied to their necks.

And no less violently did the persecution fall on the rest of the people. For magistrates, dispersed through all the temples, compelled everyone to sacrifice.

The prisons were full; unheard-of kinds of torture were devised; and so that justice should not be given to anyone without care, altars were placed in the judges' chambers and before the tribunal, so that litigants should first sacrifice and so plead their cases; thus people approached the judges as if they were gods.

Letters had also gone to Maximian and Constantius, that they should do the same; their opinion in matters so great had not been waited for. And indeed old Maximian, a man not very merciful, gladly obeyed throughout Italy.

For Constantius, so as not to seem to disagree with the orders of his seniors, allowed the meeting-houses, that is, walls that could be restored, to be pulled down, but the true temple of God, which is in human beings, he kept unharmed.

So the whole earth was harassed, and except for the Gauls, from east to west three most savage beasts raged.

“Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths and a voice of iron could I encompass all the forms of crime, or run through all the names of the punishments” which the magistrates throughout the provinces inflicted on the righteous and the innocent.

But what need is there to tell these things, especially to you, dearest Donatus, who more than the rest have experienced the storm of that turbulent persecution?

For when you fell into the hands of Flaccinus the prefect, no petty murderer, then of Hierocles, promoted from deputy to governor, who was the author and adviser of the persecution, and lastly of Priscillianus his successor, you gave to all an example of unconquered fortitude.

For nine times, subjected to tortures and various torments, nine times you conquered the adversary by a glorious confession; in nine battles you defeated the devil with his henchmen; by nine victories you triumphed over the world with its terrors.

How delightful that spectacle was to God, when he saw you a victor, yoking to your chariot not white horses or huge elephants, but the very triumphers themselves!

This is the true triumph, when the masters are mastered. For they were conquered and subdued by your courage, since, scorning the wicked command, you routed with steadfast faith and strength of mind all the apparatus and bugbears of tyrannical power.

Against you scourges availed nothing, claws nothing, fire nothing, the sword nothing, the various kinds of torture nothing: no force could take away your faith and devotion.

This is to be a disciple of God, this is to be a soldier of Christ, whom no enemy can storm, no wolf snatch from the heavenly camp, no snare entrap, no pain conquer, no torment overwhelm.

Finally, after those nine most glorious fights, in which the devil was conquered by you, he did not dare to engage with you further, having learned by so many battles that you could not be overcome.

And though the victor's crown was ready for you, he ceased to challenge you further, so that you might not now take it; and although you have not received it at present, it is nevertheless kept intact for you in the kingdom of the Lord for your virtues and merits. But let us return to the order of events.

When this crime had been committed, Diocletian, since good fortune had now departed from him, went at once to Rome to celebrate there the day of his twentieth anniversary, which was to fall on the twelfth day before the Kalends of December.

When these solemnities had been celebrated, since he could not bear the freedom of the Roman people, impatient and sick at heart he broke out of the city as the Kalends of January approached, on which his ninth consulship was to be conferred on him.

He could not endure thirteen days so as to enter on his consulship at Rome rather than at Ravenna; but, setting out while winter raged, battered by cold and rain, he contracted a slight but lingering illness, and, troubled throughout the whole journey, he was carried mostly in a litter.

So, the summer having passed, by a circuit along the bank of the Danube he came to Nicomedia, the disease now growing serious; and though he saw himself oppressed by it, he was nevertheless brought out to dedicate the circus he had built, a year after the twentieth anniversary had been completed.

Then he was so overcome by weakness that prayers were offered to all the gods for his life, until on the Ides of December there was suddenly mourning in the palace, grief and tears among the magistrates, alarm and silence in the whole city.

They were already saying that he was not only dead but buried, when suddenly next morning a report spread that he was alive, and the faces of the household and the magistrates changed to cheerfulness.

There were those who suspected that his death was being concealed until the Caesar should come, lest the soldiers perhaps attempt some revolution.

This suspicion was so strong that no one believed he was alive until he came forth on the Kalends of March, scarcely recognizable, since he had wasted away with sickness for almost a whole year.

And he, lulled into death on the Ides of December, had recovered his life, yet not wholly. For he had become deranged, so that at certain hours he was insane and at others came to his senses.

Not many days later the Caesar arrived, not to congratulate his father but to force him to give up the throne. He had lately clashed with old Maximian and had frightened him by raising the fear of civil war.

So he approached Diocletian, at first gently and in a friendly way, saying that he was now old, now less strong and unfit to administer the state; that he ought to rest after his labours. At the same time he brought forward the example of Nerva, who had handed over the empire to Trajan.

But he said that it would be both unseemly, if after such brilliance of lofty eminence he should fall into the darkness of a humble life, and less safe, since in so long a reign he had earned the hatred of many;

and that Nerva, having reigned a single year, since from age or inexperience he could not bear the weight and care of such great affairs, had cast aside the helm of state and returned to the private life in which he had grown old. But if he desired to obtain the name of emperor, nothing prevented all of them from being called Augusti.

But he, who in hope had already seized the whole world, since he saw that either nothing but the name or not much would come to him, replied that Diocletian's own arrangement ought to be preserved forever: that there should be two senior rulers in the state to hold supreme power, and likewise two junior ones to assist them; between two, concord could easily be kept, between four equals in no way.

If he himself refused to give way, he would look after himself, so as no longer to be the junior and the last. Fifteen years had already passed in which, banished to Illyricum, that is, to the bank of the Danube, he had been struggling with barbarian nations, while others ruled in comfort within more spacious and quieter lands.

When he heard this, the feeble old man, who had already received a letter from old Maximian writing whatever the other had said to him, and had learned that he was increasing his army, said in tears, “Let it be, if this pleases you.”

It remained that the Caesars should be chosen by the common counsel of all. “What need is there of counsel, since whatever we two have done must necessarily please those two?” “Just so. For their sons must be named.”

Now Maximian had a son, Maxentius, the son-in-law of this very Maximian, a man of pernicious and evil mind, so proud and stubborn that he was not accustomed to pay homage either to his father or to his father-in-law, and for that reason he was hated by both.

Constantius too had a son, Constantine, a most upright young man and most worthy of that eminence, who by his distinguished and comely bearing, his military energy, his upright character, and his singular courtesy was loved by the soldiers and desired by private citizens too. And he was then present, having long since been made a tribune of the first order by Diocletian. “What then shall be done?”

“He,” he said, “is not worthy. For one who despised me as a private man, what will he do when he has received power?” “But this one is both lovable and will so rule that he will be judged better and more merciful than his father.” “So it will turn out that I cannot do what I want. So those must be named who are in my power, who fear, who do nothing except at my command.”

“Whom then shall we make?” “Severus,” he said. “That dancer, that drunkard, that sot, for whom night is day and day night?” “He is worthy,” he said, “since he has commanded soldiers faithfully; and I have sent him to Maximian to be invested by him.”

“So be it. Whom will you give as the other?” “This one,” he said, pointing to Daia, a certain half-barbarian young man, whom he had recently ordered to be called Maximinus after his own name. For Diocletian too had partly changed Galerius's own name, for the sake of the omen, because Maximian had shown loyalty with the utmost devotion.

“Who is this you are offering me?” “My relative,” he said. And the other, groaning: “You are not giving me men to whom the guardianship of the state can be entrusted.” “I have tested them,” he said. “You will see to it, since you are about to take up the government of the empire.

I have laboured enough and have taken care that while I reigned the state stood unharmed. If anything adverse happens, it will not be my fault.”

When these things had been settled, they went forth on the Kalends of May. Everyone was looking at Constantine; there was no doubt. The soldiers who were present, and the leading soldiers chosen and summoned from the legions, intent on him alone, were rejoicing, wishing, and making vows.

There was a high place about three miles outside the city, on whose summit Maximian himself had taken the purple, and there a column had been set up with a statue of Jupiter.

There they went. An assembly of the soldiers was called. The old man began with tears and addressed the soldiers: he was infirm; he sought rest after his labours; he was handing over the empire to stronger men and appointing other Caesars. The expectation of all was at its height, what he would announce.

Then suddenly he proclaimed Severus and Maximinus Caesars. All were stunned. Constantine was standing up on the tribunal. They wondered among themselves whether Constantine's name had been changed, when, in the sight of all, Maximian, stretching his hand backwards, drew Daia forward from behind, thrusting Constantine back, and, having stripped off his private dress, set him in the middle. All wondered who he was, where he came from.

Yet no one dared to protest, all being confused by the novelty of the unexpected event. Diocletian put on him his own purple, which he took off himself, and became Diocles again.

Then they descended, and the old king was carried out through the city in a carriage and dismissed to his homeland; while Daia, lately taken from the herds and the forests, at once a guardsman, straightway a bodyguard, soon a tribune, the next day a Caesar, received the East to trample and crush, since he knew neither soldiering nor statecraft, now a shepherd not of cattle but of soldiers.

Maximian, after he had achieved what he wanted by expelling the old men, now considered himself sole master of the whole world. For although Constantius had to be named first, he despised him, because he was both gentle by nature and hampered by bodily ill-health.

He hoped that he would soon die, and if he did not die, it seemed easy to strip him of power even against his will. For what could he do if he were compelled by three to lay down the empire?

He himself had Licinius, a friend of old comradeship and intimate from his first military service, whose counsels he used in governing everything; but he did not wish to make him Caesar, so as not to call him son, so that afterwards in the place of Constantius

he might name him Augustus and brother; and then he himself would hold the first place, and having raged through the world at his pleasure he would celebrate his twentieth anniversary, and, having appointed as Caesar his son, who was then nine years old, he too would lay down power; so that, while Licinius and Severus held the supreme power and Maximinus and Candidianus the second title of Caesars, he, surrounded by an impregnable wall, might spend a secure and tranquil old age.

To this his plans were tending. But God, whom he had made his enemy, broke up all his designs.

Having obtained supreme power, then, to harass the world,

which he had opened for himself, he bent his mind. For after the Persians were conquered, whose rite and custom it is to give themselves into slavery to their kings, and for kings to treat their people as a household of slaves, this wicked man wished to bring this custom into the Roman land; and from the time of that victory he praised it without shame.

And because he could not command it openly, he acted so that he too might take liberty away from people. First of all he took away honours. Not only town councillors but even the leading men of the cities, men of eminent and most perfect rank, were tortured by him, and that in trivial and civil cases. If they seemed worthy of death, crosses stood ready; if not, fetters.

Freeborn and noble mothers of families were dragged into the weaving-house. If anyone was to be flogged, four stakes stood fixed in the stable, to which no slave had ever been accustomed to be stretched.

Why should I tell of his sport or his pleasures? He had bears most like himself in ferocity and size, which he had collected through the whole time of his reign. Whenever he felt like being amused, he ordered one of them to be brought by name.

To these men were thrown, not so much to be eaten as to be swallowed; and when their limbs were torn apart, he laughed most pleasantly, and he never dined without human blood. For those without rank, the punishment was fire.

He had first allowed this against the Christians by enacting laws that, after torture, the condemned should be burned with slow fires.

When they had been bound, a gentle flame was first put under their feet, until the soles of the feet, shrivelled by the fire, were torn away from the bones.

Then torches, lit and put out, were applied to each limb, so that no place on the body was left untouched. And meanwhile the face was drenched with cold water and the mouth moistened, lest, the throat drying out, the breath be given up quickly;

which happened at last when, after a long day, all the skin having been roasted, the force of the fire had penetrated to the inmost organs. Then a pyre was made and the bodies, already burned, were burned.

The bones were gathered, ground to powder, and thrown into rivers and the sea.

What he had learned, then, in torturing Christians he practised by force of habit against everyone.

No punishment with him was light: not islands, not prisons, not the mines; but fire, the cross, and wild beasts were for him daily and easy.

Servants and officials were corrected with the lance. In a capital case, execution by the sword was granted as a favour to very few, who for old services had obtained a good death.

Now these things were light compared with those: eloquence was extinguished, advocates removed, jurists either banished or killed, and letters were counted among evil arts, and those who knew them were trampled down and cursed as enemies and foes.

Licence in all things was assumed, the laws being set aside, and given to the judges. Military judges, ignorant of humane letters, were sent into the provinces without assessors.

But what brought public calamity and common grief to all was the census sent at one time into the provinces and cities. The census-takers were spread everywhere and harried everything; there were scenes of an enemy onslaught and of horrible captivity.

Fields were measured clod by clod, vines and trees counted, animals of every kind registered, heads of people recorded. In the cities the urban and rural populace were gathered together; all the forums were crammed with herds of households; each person was present with children and slaves; tortures and floggings resounded; sons were hung up against their parents; all the most faithful slaves were tormented against their masters, wives against their husbands.

If all this failed, they were tortured against themselves, and when pain had won, things they did not have were written down against them.

No excuse of age or health was allowed. The sick and disabled were brought in; the ages of each were estimated; years were added to little children and taken from the old. Everything was full of grief and sorrow.

What the ancients had done to the conquered by the law of war, he dared to do to Romans and Roman subjects, because his forefathers had been subjected to the census which Trajan, as victor, had imposed on the Dacians as a punishment for their constant rebellions.

After this, money was paid for heads, and a price was given for life. Yet the same census-takers were not trusted, but others were sent after others, as if to find more, and the assessments were always doubled, not because they found anything, but because they added as they pleased, so as not to seem to have been sent in vain.

Meanwhile the animals decreased and people died, and nonetheless taxes were paid for the dead, so that it was no longer permitted to live, or even to die, for free. Only beggars remained, from whom nothing could be exacted, whom misery and misfortune had made safe from every kind of injury.

But the pious man took pity on them, so that they should not be in want. He ordered them all to be gathered, carried out in boats, and drowned in the sea. So merciful a man, who provided that no one under his rule should be miserable!

So, while he took care that no one should escape the census by pretending to be a beggar, he killed a multitude of the truly wretched against every law of humanity.

Now the judgement of God drew near him, and the time followed in which his affairs began to slip and flow away.

He had not yet turned his mind to overthrowing or driving out Constantius, while he was occupied with the things I have set out above; and he was waiting for his death, but did not think he would die so quickly.

He, being gravely ill, had sent a letter asking him to send back his son Constantine to see him, whom he had long since asked back in vain.

But he wanted nothing less. For he had often attacked the young man by ambushes, since he dared nothing openly, lest he stir up civil war against himself and, what he feared most, the hatred of the soldiers; and under pretext of exercise and sport he had thrown him to wild beasts,

but in vain, since the hand of God protected the man, who delivered him from his hands at the very turning-point. For, having been asked many times, when he could no longer refuse, he gave him the seal as the day was already declining and ordered him to set out the next morning after receiving his instructions, intending either to detain him on some pretext himself or to send letters ahead so that he would be held by Severus.

When he foresaw this, while the emperor was resting after dinner he hurried to leave, and, carrying off all the public horses at many posting-stations, he flew away.

The next day the emperor, having deliberately slept until midday, ordered him to be called. He was told that he had set out right after dinner. He began to be indignant and to roar. He demanded the public horses, to have him dragged back. He was told that the public post had been stripped bare. He could scarcely hold back his tears.

But he, travelling with incredible speed, reached his father, who was already failing; and he, having commended him to the soldiers, handed the empire over to him with his own hands. And so he received the rest of life in his own bed, as he had wished.

Having taken up the empire, Constantine Augustus did nothing before restoring the Christians to their worship and their God. This was his first enactment for the restoration of the holy religion.

A few days later his laurelled portrait was brought to the evil beast. He deliberated long whether to accept it.

It very nearly came to his burning both it and the man who had brought it, had not his friends turned him from that frenzy, warning him of the danger that all the soldiers, against whose will unknown men had been made Caesars, would accept Constantine and run to him with the greatest eagerness if he came armed.

So he accepted the portrait, quite unwillingly, and sent him the purple, so that he might seem to have taken him into partnership of his own accord.

Now his plans had been thrown into confusion, and he could not name another beyond the number, as he had wished.

But he devised this: he named Severus, who was older, Augustus, and ordered that Constantine be called, not emperor, as he had been made, but Caesar together with Maximinus, so as to push him down from second place to fourth.

His affairs seemed now in some measure settled, when suddenly another terror was brought to him: that his son-in-law Maxentius had been made emperor at Rome. The cause of this uprising was this.

Having resolved to devour the world by instituting censuses, he leapt to such madness that he did not want even the Roman people to be exempt from this captivity. Census-takers were already being appointed to be sent to Rome to register the populace.

At about the same time he had also abolished the praetorian camp. So the few soldiers who had been left in the camp at Rome, seizing the opportunity, killed certain magistrates, with the consent of the people, who had been stirred up, and invested Maxentius with the purple.

When this news was brought, he was somewhat disturbed by the novelty of the event, yet not too frightened. He both hated the man and could not make three Caesars.

It seemed enough to have once done what he did not wish. He summoned Severus, urged him to recover the empire, sent him with Maximian's army to crush Maxentius; and he sent him to Rome, where those soldiers, having very often been received with the greatest luxuries, wished not only that the city be safe but to live there.

Maxentius, conscious of so great a deed, although by right of inheritance he could bring his father's soldiers over to himself, yet thinking it possible that Maximian his father-in-law, fearing this very thing, might leave Severus in Illyricum and come himself with his own army to attack him, was seeking how to protect himself against the impending danger.

He sent the purple to his father, who was staying in Campania after laying down the empire, and named him Augustus a second time. And he, both eager for revolution and having laid down power unwillingly, gladly seized it.

Severus meanwhile advanced and approached the walls of the city in arms. At once the soldiers took up their standards, departed, and surrendered to the man against whom they had come.

What remained for the deserted man but flight? But Maximian, having resumed the empire, was already coming to meet him; at his approach he fled to Ravenna and shut himself up there with a few soldiers.

When he saw that he would be handed over to Maximian, he surrendered himself and gave back the purple robe to the very man from whom he had received it.

By doing this he obtained nothing but a good death. For his veins were cut and he was forced to die gently.

But Herculius, knowing Maximian's madness, began to think that, on hearing of Severus's death, inflamed with anger, having taken up enmity, he would come with an army, perhaps joined by Maximinus and with doubled forces, which could in no way be resisted; so, having fortified the city and carefully provided everything, he set out for Gaul, to win Constantine to his side by marriage with his younger daughter.

Meanwhile he, having gathered an army, invaded Italy and approached the city to destroy the senate and slaughter the people; but he found everything closed and fortified. There was no hope of breaking in; an assault was difficult; there were not enough troops to surround the walls, since he had never seen Rome and supposed it was not much larger than the cities he knew.

Then certain legions, detesting the crime that a father-in-law should attack his son-in-law and Roman soldiers Rome, transferred their standards and abandoned his command.

And the rest of the soldiers were already wavering, when he, his pride broken and his spirit cast down, fearing the fate of Severus, threw himself at the soldiers' feet and begged not to be handed over to the enemy, until by huge promises he swayed their minds; and he turned back his standards and in alarm took to flight, in which he could very easily have been overwhelmed if anyone had followed with a few men.

Fearing this, he gave the soldiers leave to scatter as widely as possible and plunder or spoil everything, so that anyone who wished to pursue would have no supplies.

So that part of Italy through which that pestilent column marched was laid waste: everything pillaged, women corrupted, virgins violated, parents and husbands tortured to give up their daughters, their wives, their wealth. Flocks and herds were driven off as booty, as if from barbarians.

In this way he withdrew to his own seat, having as an enemy harassed everything, once a Roman emperor, now the ravager of Italy.

Long before, indeed, as soon as he had received the name of emperor, he had professed himself an enemy of the Roman name, whose title he wished to change, so that it should be called not the Roman but the Dacian empire.

After his flight, when the other Maximian had returned from Gaul, he held the empire in common with his son. But the young man was obeyed more than the old, since the son's power was prior and greater, as he had even given back the empire to his father.

The old man bore it ill that he could not freely do what he wished, and he envied his own son with childish rivalry. So he planned to drive out the young man, so as to claim for himself what was his: which seemed easy, because the soldiers who had deserted Severus were his.

He called together the people and the soldiers as if to hold an assembly on the present evils of the state. When he had said much about them, he turned his hands against his son, and, saying that he was the author of the evils and the source of the calamities the state was suffering, he tore the purple from his shoulders.

Stripped of it, he flung himself headlong from the tribunal and was caught by the soldiers. By their anger and uproar the impious old man was thrown into confusion and driven from the city of Rome like a second Superbus.

Returning again to Gaul, where he stayed for some time, he set out to his son's enemy Maximian, as if to discuss with him the settling of the state; but in reality to kill him on the occasion of reconciliation and to hold his realm, being shut out from his own wherever he had gone.

Diocles was there, lately summoned by his son-in-law, so that what he had not done before he might do in his presence: give the empire to Licinius, put in Severus's place. And so it was done with both present. So at one time there were six.

His plans thus hindered, old Maximian contrived a third flight too. He returned to Gaul full of evil thought and wickedness, to entrap by treachery the emperor Constantine, his son-in-law and the son of his son-in-law; and so as to be able to deceive him, he laid aside his royal dress. The nation of the Franks was in arms.

He persuaded him, suspecting nothing, not to take his whole army with him, as the barbarians could be defeated with a few soldiers, so that he himself might have an army to seize, and the other might be overwhelmed because of the fewness of his soldiers.

The young man believed him as an experienced older man and obeyed him as a father-in-law; he set out, leaving behind the greater part of the soldiers. The other waited a few days, and when he reckoned that Constantine had already entered the barbarians' territory, suddenly took the purple, seized the treasuries, and gave largesse as he usually did; he invented things about Constantine which at once fell back on his own head.

What had happened was quickly reported to the emperor. With astonishing speed he flew back with his army. The man was overwhelmed unexpectedly, not yet sufficiently prepared.

The soldiers returned to their own emperor. He had seized Massilia and barred the gates. The emperor came nearer and addressed him as he stood on the wall, not harshly or as an enemy, but asked what he had meant, what he had lacked, why he was doing what least of all became him. But he hurled curses from the walls. Then suddenly behind him the gates were unbarred and the soldiers let in.

The rebel emperor, the impious father, the faithless father-in-law, was dragged before the emperor. He heard the crimes he had committed; his robe was stripped off, and after a rebuke he was granted his life.

So, having lost the honour of emperor and of father-in-law, impatient of his humiliation, he contrived another plot, since he had once got off unpunished.

He called his daughter Fausta and, now by entreaties, now by flatteries, tempted her to betray her husband, promising another, worthier husband; he asked her to allow the bedroom to be left open and more carelessly guarded.

She promised to do it and at once reported to her husband. A scene was arranged by which the crime might be caught in the act. A certain worthless eunuch was put in the bed to die in place of the emperor.

He rose in the dead of night and saw everything favourable for the plot. The guards were few and those at some distance; yet he told them he had seen a dream which he wanted to tell his son. He went in armed, and, having cut down the eunuch, sprang out boasting and declared what he had done.

Suddenly Constantine showed himself on the other side with a band of armed men. The corpse of the slain man was brought out of the bedroom. The murderer, caught in the act, was stuck fast and stood dumb and dazed, “as if he were hard flint or Marpesian rock”; he was rebuked for his impiety and crime. Finally he was granted the choice of his own death, and “from a high beam he tied the knot of an ugly death.”

So that greatest emperor of the Roman name, who after a long interval of time had celebrated with immense glory the vows of twenty years, ended his detestable life with a shameful and ignominious death, his most proud throat crushed and broken.

From him God, the avenger of his religion and his people, turned his eyes to the other Maximian, the author of the wicked persecution, so as to show in him also the power of his majesty.

He too was now thinking of celebrating his twentieth anniversary; and, having long since afflicted the provinces by imposing levies of gold and silver, so as to pay what he had promised, he struck them also with a second axe in the name of the anniversary.

With what harassment of the human race the exaction, above all of the grain supply, was carried out, who can worthily tell? Soldiers of all the offices, or rather executioners, clung to each person. Whom to satisfy first was uncertain; there was no mercy for those who had nothing. Manifold tortures had to be endured unless what did not exist was produced at once.

Hemmed in by many guards, one had no chance to breathe, no respite at any time of year, however slight. Frequently there was fighting over the same people, either between the magistrates themselves or between the magistrates' soldiers. No threshing-floor without a tax-collector, no vintage without a guard, nothing left to the labourers to live on. Although these things are intolerable, that the food gained by labour should be snatched from people's mouths is still bearable in some way, or by hope of the future. But what of clothing of every kind? What of gold?

What of silver? Must not these be bought from the sale of produce? From where, then, most insane tyrant, shall I supply them, when you take away all the produce and violently snatch everything that grows?

Who, then, was not overturned from his possessions, so that the wealth that was under his rule might be scraped together for a vow which he was not going to celebrate?

When Licinius, then, had been named emperor, Maximinus was angry and did not wish to be called Caesar or to be named in third place.

So he often sent envoys to him, begging him to obey, to keep his arrangement, to yield to age and pay honour to grey hairs.

But he raised his horns more boldly and fought with the plea of priority in time: he ought to be first, who had first taken the purple; he scorned his entreaties and commands.

The beast grieved and bellowed, that though he had made a nobody Caesar precisely so that he would be obedient to him, he nevertheless, forgetting so great a kindness, impiously resisted his will and entreaties.

Overcome by his obstinacy, he abolished the name of Caesars and called himself and Licinius Augusti, and Maximinus and Constantine sons of the Augusti. Maximinus afterwards wrote as if announcing that at the recent review on the Campus Martius he had been named Augustus by the army. He received this sadly and in grief and ordered all four to be named emperors.

Now the eighteenth year was running when God struck him with an incurable blow. An evil ulcer arose on him in the lower part of the genitals and spread more widely.

The physicians cut, they treat. But when a scar had already formed, the wound split open, a vein burst, and blood flowed to the point of danger of death. Yet the bleeding was barely stopped. Treatment had to begin again from the start. At last it was brought to a scar.

Again by a slight movement of the body he was wounded: more blood ran down than before. He turned white and, his strength consumed, wasted away; and then indeed the stream of blood was checked.

The wound began not to respond to medicine: a cancer invaded all the parts nearby, and the more it was cut round, the more widely it raged; the more it was treated, the more it grew. “The masters gave up, Chiron son of Philyra and Melampus son of Amythaon.” Famous physicians were dragged in from everywhere: human hands achieved nothing.

They fled to the idols: Apollo and Asclepius were prayed to, a remedy was demanded. Apollo gave a treatment: the evil grew much worse.

Now destruction was not far off and had seized all the lower parts. The bowels rotted outwardly and the whole seat dissolved into corruption. Yet the unhappy physicians did not stop fomenting and treating, even without hope of overcoming the evil.

Driven back by remedies, the evil fell back inward and seized the internal organs; worms were bred within. The stench went through not only the palace but spread through the whole city. No wonder, since the outlets of excrement and urine were now confused.

He was eaten by worms, and his body dissolved into rottenness with unbearable pains. At the same time “he raises horrible cries to the stars, like the bellowing when a wounded bull flees the altar.”

Cooked and warm animals were placed at the running seat, so that the heat might draw out the worms. When these were opened, an incalculable swarm swarmed forth; and yet the fertile destruction of the rotting bowels had generated a far greater supply.

Now by the different disease the parts of his body had lost their shape. The upper part down to the wound had dried up, and with wretched emaciation the livid skin had sunk deep between the bones. The lower part, without any shape of feet, swollen like wineskins, had become separated.

And these things went on for a whole year, until at last, subdued by his sufferings, he was compelled to confess God. At intervals of the new pain pressing on him, he cried out that he would restore the temple of God and make amends for his crime. And, already failing, he sent out an edict of this kind:

“Among the other measures which we always arrange for the advantage and benefit of the state, we had previously wished to set everything right according to the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans, and to provide that the Christians too, who had abandoned the way of life of their own ancestors, should return to a good mind;

since, for some reason, such self-will had seized these same Christians and such folly had taken hold of them that they did not follow those institutions of the ancients which perhaps their own ancestors had first established, but, according to their own judgement and as they pleased, made laws for themselves to observe, and gathered various peoples in different places.

Finally, when our order of this kind had been issued, that they should betake themselves to the institutions of the ancients, many were subjected to danger, and many were even ruined.

And since very many persisted in their resolve, and we saw that they neither offered due worship and reverence to the gods nor observed the God of the Christians, in consideration of our most gentle clemency, and having regard to our constant custom by which we are accustomed to grant pardon to all people, we have believed that our most ready indulgence should be extended to these too, so that they may again be Christians and may rebuild their meeting-places, provided that they do nothing contrary to discipline. By another letter we shall indicate to the magistrates what they are to observe. Therefore, in accordance with this indulgence of ours, they will be bound to pray to their God for our safety and that of the state and their own, so that the state may be kept unharmed on every side and they may be able to live securely in their homes.”

This edict was posted at Nicomedia on the day before the Kalends of May, in the consulship of Galerius himself for the eighth time and of Maximinus for the second.

Then, the prisons being opened, dearest Donatus, you were freed from custody with the other confessors, after the prison had been your home for six years.

Yet by this act he did not receive pardon for his crime from God; but after a few days, having commended his wife and son to Licinius and handed them into his care, when the limbs of his whole body were already

dissolving, he was consumed by a horrible putrefaction; and this became known at Nicomedia on the … of the same month, when his twentieth anniversary was to fall on the approaching Kalends of March.

When this news was heard, Maximinus, having arranged relays from the East, flew to seize the provinces and, while Licinius delayed, to claim everything for himself as far as the Strait of Chalcedon; and entering Bithynia, to win favour for himself for the present, he abolished the census, to the great joy of all.

There was discord between the two emperors and almost war. They held opposite shores in arms; but on fixed conditions peace and friendship were arranged, and on the strait itself a treaty was made and right hands joined.

He returned secure and became what he had been in Syria and Egypt. First of all, he took away the indulgence granted to the Christians by the common decree, having suborned delegations of cities to petition that Christians not be allowed to build meeting-places within their cities, so that he might seem to do under persuasion, compelled and driven, what he was going to do of his own accord.

Assenting to them, he made, in a new fashion, high priests in each city, one from among the leading men, to offer sacrifices to all their gods daily and, supported by the service of the old priests, to take care that the Christians should neither build meeting-places nor assemble publicly or privately, but that they should by their own authority arrest them and compel them to sacrifice or bring them before the magistrates.

And this was not enough, unless he also set over the provinces, from a higher grade of rank, individuals as a kind of pontiffs; and he ordered both kinds to go about adorned with white cloaks.

He was preparing to do what he had long since done in the regions of the East. For while he professed clemency in outward show, he forbade the servants of God to be killed but ordered them to be maimed.

And so the confessors' eyes were gouged out, hands cut off, feet chopped off, noses or ears cut away.

While he was undertaking these things, he was deterred by a letter from Constantine. So he dissembled; and yet if anyone fell into his hands, they were secretly drowned in the sea. Nor did he give up his custom that sacrifices should be offered in the palace every day.

And he was the first to devise that all the animals he ate should be slaughtered, not by cooks, but by priests at altars, and that nothing at all should be set on the table unless it had been offered in libation or sacrificed or sprinkled with wine, so that whoever was invited to dinner came away from it defiled and impure.

In the rest, too, he was like his master. For if Diocles or Maximian had left anything over, this man scraped it off, taking everything without any shame.

And so the granaries of private persons were closed, the storehouses sealed, and debts exacted for future years. Hence famine while the fields bore, hence unheard-of dearness.

Herds of cattle and flocks were seized from the fields for the daily sacrifices; with these he had so corrupted his own men that they scorned the ration. And he poured out wealth everywhere without discrimination or measure, discharging all his attendants, whose number was huge, with costly garments and gold coins, giving silver to common soldiers and recruits, honouring barbarians with every kind of largesse.

As for his either taking away the property of the living or giving it as a gift to his own people, as each had asked for another's goods, I do not know whether I should think he should be thanked, because, in the manner of merciful robbers, he took spoils without bloodshed.

But that was his capital vice, beyond all who have ever been: his lust for seduction! I do not know what to call it except blind and unbridled; and yet the thing cannot be expressed in these words as its outrage deserves: the magnitude of the crime has overcome the function of the tongue. Eunuchs and pimps searched everything out.

Wherever there was a more comely face, fathers and husbands had to withdraw. Noble women and likewise virgins were stripped of their clothes and inspected limb by limb, lest any part of the body be unworthy of the royal bed. If any woman refused, she was drowned, as if under that adulterer chastity were a crime of treason.

Some men, when their wives, whom they held most dear for their chastity and faithfulness, had been violated, could not bear the grief and even killed themselves. Under this monster there was no chastity left intact, except where striking ugliness kept off his barbarous lust.

Finally he had introduced this custom, that no one should marry a wife without his permission, so that he himself might be the foretaster in all marriages; he gave freeborn virgins, once deflowered, to his slaves as wives.

But his companions too, under such a prince, imitated his debaucheries and violated the beds of their hosts with impunity; for who would punish them? They carried off the daughters of people of middling rank, as each pleased. Women of the first rank, who could not be carried off, were asked for as favours, and it was not permitted to refuse when the emperor signed the request; one must either perish or accept some barbarian as son-in-law.

For almost no one of his bodyguard was at his side except from the nation of those who, driven from their lands by the Goths at the time of the twentieth anniversary, had given themselves to Maximian, the bane of the human race, so that those who fled slavery to barbarians might lord it over Romans.

Surrounded by these attendants and guards, he made a mockery of the East.

Finally, since he had given his lusts this law, to think lawful whatever he desired, he could not restrain himself even from the Augusta, whom he had lately called mother.

After the death of Maximian, Valeria had come to him, thinking she would live more safely in his territory, especially because he had a wife. But the wicked animal at once burned with passion.

The woman was still in black garments, the time of mourning not yet complete. Sending envoys ahead, he asked her in marriage, intending to cast off his wife if he obtained his request. She answered freely, as she alone could:

first, that she could not treat of marriage in that funeral dress, while the ashes of her husband, his father, were still warm; next, that he was acting impiously in repudiating a faithful wife, and he would certainly do the same to her; finally, that it was wrong for a woman of her name and station to try a second husband, without custom, without precedent.

What she had dared was reported to the man. His lust turned to anger and fury. At once he proscribed the woman, seized her goods, took away her companions, killed her eunuchs under torture, banished her with her mother, not to a fixed place but driving her headlong hither and thither with mockery, and condemned her friends on a trumped-up charge of adultery.

There was a woman of the highest rank who already had grandchildren from her young sons. Valeria loved her as a second mother; by her counsel he suspected that he had been refused. He commissioned the governor Eratineus to put her to death with dishonour.

Two others equally noble were joined with her, one of whom had left a daughter at Rome, a Vestal virgin, and was then secretly an intimate of Valeria; the other had a senator for a husband and was not very close to the Augusta. But both were put to death for their outstanding beauty of body and their chastity.

The women were suddenly seized, not for a trial but for a robbery; for there was no accuser. A certain Jew was found, accused of other crimes, who was induced by hope of impunity to lie against the innocent. The fair and careful judge led him out of the city under guard, lest he be overwhelmed with stones. This tragedy was being enacted at Nicaea. Tortures were applied to the Jew; he said what he had been ordered to say.

The women, so that they might not speak against it, were checked with fists by the torturers. The innocent were ordered to be led away. There was weeping and lamentation, not only of the husband who was present for his well-deserving wife, but of all whom the shameful and unheard-of affair had drawn together.

And so that they might not be snatched from the executioners' hands by the onrush of the people, cavalry armed in military fashion, mailed horsemen and archers, followed them. So they were led to punishment in the midst of the wedges of armed men.

And they would have lain unburied, their households having fled, had not the secret compassion of friends buried them. Nor was the promised impunity paid to the adulterer; but, fastened to the gibbet, he disclosed the whole secret and, with his last breath, testified to all who saw him that the women had been killed innocent.

The Augusta, banished to certain desert wastes of Syria, made her father Diocletian aware of her calamity through secret messengers.

He sent envoys and asked that he send his daughter back to him: he achieved nothing. Again and repeatedly he pleaded: she was not sent back.

Finally he sent a certain relative of his, a military and powerful man, to entreat him, reminding him of his favours. He too, his embassy unfulfilled, reported that the entreaties were in vain.

At the same time, by Constantine's order, the statues of old Maximian were being pulled down and his portraits, wherever he was painted, were being removed. And because the two old men were mostly painted together, the portraits of both were taken down together.

So Diocletian, seeing in his lifetime what had never happened to any emperor, afflicted with a double grief, decided that he must die. He tossed himself this way and that, his soul seething with pain, taking neither sleep nor food. Sighs and groans, frequent tears, continual rolling of the body, now on the bed, now on the ground.

So the emperor who had been most fortunate for twenty years, cast down by God to a humble life, trampled by insults and brought to hatred of life, was at last worn out by hunger and anguish.

One of the adversaries of God, Maximinus, now remained, whose end and ruin I will now add.

Since he felt rivalry towards Licinius, because he had been preferred to him by Maximian, although he had lately confirmed friendship with him, yet when he heard that Constantine's sister had been betrothed to Licinius, he thought that this alliance of the two emperors was being joined against him.

He too sent envoys secretly to the city to request alliance and friendship with Maxentius. He even wrote in friendly terms. The envoys were kindly received; friendship was made; the portraits of both were set up together.

Maxentius gladly embraced it as if it were divine help; for he had already declared war on Constantine, as if to avenge his father's death. From this a suspicion had arisen that that deadly old man had feigned the quarrel with his son so as to make a way for himself to cut down the others, and, when they were all removed, to claim the empire of the whole world for himself and his son. But that was false.

For his purpose was, when both his son and the others had been destroyed, to restore himself and Diocletian to rule.

Now civil war had broken out between them. And although Maxentius kept himself at Rome, because he had received an oracle that he would perish if he went outside the gates of the city, yet the war was carried on through capable generals.

Maxentius had more forces, because he had both received his father's army from Severus and had lately drawn out his own from the Moors and Gaetulians.

Battle was joined, and Maxentius's soldiers prevailed, until afterwards Constantine, his spirit strengthened and ready for either outcome, moved all his forces nearer to the city and encamped opposite the Milvian Bridge.

The day was approaching on which Maxentius had taken power, which is the sixth day before the Kalends of November, and his five years were coming to an end.

Constantine was admonished in his sleep to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields and so join battle. He did as he was commanded, and by the letter X turned sideways, with its top bent round, he marked Christ on the shields.

Armed with this sign, the army took up the sword. The enemy advanced to meet them without their emperor and crossed the bridge. The lines clashed with equal front; there was fighting with the utmost force on both sides: neither side knew flight.

There was a riot in the city, and the leader was reviled as a deserter of the public safety; and when he was seen, suddenly the people (for he was giving circus games on his birthday) shouted with one voice that Constantine could not be conquered.

Dismayed by this cry, he rushed out, called certain senators, and ordered the Sibylline books to be consulted; in them it was found that on that day the enemy of the Romans would perish.

Led by this reply to hope for victory, he went out and came to the battle line. The bridge was cut behind him. At this sight the fighting grew fiercer, and the hand of God was over the battle line. Maxentius's army was routed; he himself, turned to flight, hurried to the bridge, which had been broken, and, pressed by the multitude of fugitives, was thrown down into the Tiber.

When the most bitter war was at last ended, the emperor Constantine, received with great joy by the senate and people of Rome, learned of Maximinus's treachery: he found the letters, he discovered the statues and portraits.

The senate, in recognition of his valour, decreed to Constantine the title of the first name, which Maximinus claimed for himself; and when the news of the victory and liberation of the city was brought to him, he received it no differently than if he himself had been conquered.

Then, when he learned of the senate's decree, he so burned with resentment that he openly professed enmity and uttered insults mixed with jests against the senior emperor.

Constantine, having settled affairs in the city, went to Milan the following winter. Licinius came there too, to receive his wife.

When Maximinus understood that they were occupied with the wedding festivities, he moved his army from Syria while winter was at its fiercest, and with double stages he hastened into Bithynia with a weakened column.

For by the heaviest rains and snows and mud and cold and toil, beasts of burden of every kind were lost, and their pitiful slaughter along the road announced to the soldiers the appearance of the coming war and a like disaster.

Nor did he stay within his own borders, but, crossing the strait at once, he approached the gates of Byzantium in arms. There were garrison soldiers there, placed by Licinius for such an event. He first tried to entice them with gifts and promises, then to terrify them by force and assault; yet neither force nor promises availed at all.

Eleven days had now been spent, during which there was time to send messengers and letters to the emperor, when the soldiers, distrustful not in loyalty but in their small numbers, surrendered themselves. From there he advanced to Heraclea, and there, held up in the same way, lost some days' time.

And Licinius, by a hurried march, had already come with a few men to Hadrianople, when he, having received Perinthus in surrender and delayed somewhat, advanced to a station eighteen miles on: for he could go no further, since Licinius already held the second station, the same number of miles distant.

He, having collected from nearby as many soldiers as he could, went to meet Maximinus, more to delay him than with the intention of fighting or hope of victory, since the other led an army of seventy thousand armed men, while he himself had gathered scarcely thirty thousand.

For the soldiers had been scattered through various regions, and the shortness of time did not allow them all to be united.

As the armies drew near, then, a battle now seemed about to take place very soon.

Then Maximinus made a vow to Jupiter of this kind: that if he gained the victory he would extinguish and utterly destroy the Christian name.

Then on the following night an angel of God stood by Licinius as he slept, warning him to rise quickly and pray to the most high God with all his army: the victory would be his

if he did so. After these words, when it seemed to him that he rose, and the one who was warning him stood by, he then taught him how and with what words he should pray.

Then, shaking off sleep, he ordered a secretary to be summoned and dictated these words just as he had heard them:

“Highest God, we pray to you; holy God, we pray to you. All justice we commend to you; our safety we commend to you; our empire we commend to you. Through you we live; through you we are victorious and fortunate. Highest, holy God, hear our prayers; we stretch out our arms to you; hear us, holy, highest God.”

These words were written in many copies and sent through the commanders and tribunes, so that each might teach his own soldiers. Everyone's courage grew, believing that victory had been announced to them from heaven.

The emperor fixed the battle for the day of the Kalends of May, which completed the eighth year of his proclamation, so that he might be conquered precisely on his anniversary, as the other had been conquered at Rome.

Maximinus wanted to strike earlier: on the day before, in the morning, he drew up his line, so that on the next day he might celebrate his anniversary as victor. It was reported in camp that Maximinus had moved. The soldiers took up arms and went out to meet him. Between them lay a barren, bare plain which they call Serenus.

Both lines were now in sight. The soldiers of Licinius laid down their shields, took off their helmets, stretched out their hands to heaven, their officers leading them, and said the prayer for the emperor. The line that was about to perish heard the murmur of those praying.

They, having said the prayer three times, now full of courage, put their helmets back on their heads and raised their shields. The emperors came forward to a parley.

Maximinus could not be brought to peace; for he despised Licinius and thought he would be deserted by his soldiers, because he was tight-fisted in giving, while he himself was lavish; and he had started the war with this purpose, that, taking over Licinius's army without a fight, he might at once proceed against Constantine with doubled forces.

So they drew nearer; the trumpets sounded; the standards advanced. Licinius's men charged and fell on the enemy. But they, terrified, could neither draw their swords nor throw their weapons.

Maximinus went round the line and tried to win over Licinius's soldiers, now by entreaties, now by gifts. He was heard nowhere. An attack was made on him and he fled back to his own men. His line was cut down with impunity, and so great a number of legions, so great a force of soldiers, was mown down by a few.

No one mindful of his name, no one of his valour, no one of his old rewards: as if they had come to a devoted death and not to battle, so the most high God subjected them to their enemies to be slaughtered. Now a huge multitude lay strewn. Maximinus saw that the thing was going otherwise than he had thought.

He threw away the purple, put on a slave's clothing, fled, and crossed the strait. In the army, half was laid low, and half either surrendered or was put to flight; for the deserter emperor had taken away the shame of deserting.

And he, on the Kalends of May, that is, in one night and one day …, reached Nicomedia on the next night, though the place of battle was a hundred and sixty miles away; and seizing his children and wife and a few companions from the palace, he made for the East.

But in Cappadocia, having gathered soldiers from the flight and from the East, he halted. So he put on his robe again.

But Licinius, having received and distributed part of the army, took his army across into Bithynia a few days after the battle, and, entering Nicomedia, gave thanks to God by whose help he had conquered; and on the day of the Ides of June, when Constantine and he himself were consuls for the third time, he ordered a letter of this kind concerning the restoration of the church, addressed to the governor, to be posted:

“When I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, had happily met at Milan and were considering all things that pertained to the public advantage and security, we believed that among the other things which we saw would benefit most people, those matters in which reverence for the divinity was contained should be ordered first of all: that we should give both to the Christians and to all a free power of following whatever religion each wished, so that whatever divinity there is in the heavenly seat may be appeased and propitious to us and to all who are placed under our authority.

And so we believed that this plan should be undertaken on a sound and most right principle: that we should think that the opportunity should be denied to no one at all who had given his mind either to the observance of the Christians or to that religion which he himself felt was most fitting for him, so that the supreme divinity, whose religion we follow with free minds, may be able to show us in all things its accustomed favour and benevolence.

Therefore it is fitting for your Devotedness to know that it has pleased us that, all conditions whatever being removed which were contained in the letters previously given to your office concerning the Christian name, and which seemed wholly harmful and foreign to our clemency, these be removed, and that now each one of those who share the wish to observe the religion of the Christians may freely and simply strive to observe it, without any disturbance or annoyance to himself.

We have believed that these things should be made known most fully to your Solicitude, so that you might know that we have given to these same Christians a free and unrestricted opportunity of practising their religion.

And when you perceive that this has been granted by us to them, your Devotedness understands that to others too the power of their own religion or observance has likewise been granted, open and free, for the peace of our time, so that each may have free opportunity in worshipping what he has chosen. This has been done by us so that nothing may seem to have been taken away by us from any honour or any religion.

And moreover we have decided that this must be established in respect of the Christians: that if any appear to have bought, in the past, either from our treasury or from anyone else, those places where they had previously been accustomed to meet, concerning which a definite rule had also been laid down before in letters sent to your office, they are to restore them to the Christians without payment and without any demand of price, all evasion and ambiguity being set aside;

those who have received them as a gift are likewise to give them back to the same Christians as quickly as possible; and if either those who bought them or those who received them as a gift ask anything of our benevolence, let them apply to the deputy, so that they too may be provided for by our clemency. All these things must be handed over to the body of the Christians at once through your intervention and without delay.

And since these same Christians are known to have possessed not only those places where they were accustomed to meet, but others also belonging to the right of their body, that is, of the churches, not of individual persons, you will order all these, under the law we have stated above, to be given back without any ambiguity or dispute to the same Christians, that is, to their body and their assemblies, the above-mentioned principle being observed, that those who restore them without price, as we have said, may hope for indemnity from our benevolence.

In all these matters you ought to show the most effective intervention for the above-mentioned body of the Christians, so that our command may be fulfilled as quickly as possible, so that in this also, through our clemency, the public peace may be provided for.

Thus it will come about, as has been stated above, that the divine favour towards us, which we have experienced in such great matters, will continue through all time to prosper our successes together with the public happiness.

And so that the form of this enactment and of our benevolence may come to the notice of all, it will be fitting for you to publish these writings by your proclamation, to post them everywhere, and to bring them to the knowledge of all, so that the enactment of this our benevolence may not be hidden.”

When this letter had been posted, he also exhorted by word of mouth that the meeting-places be restored to their former state. So from the overthrow of the church to its restoration there were ten years and about four months.

As Licinius followed with his army, the fugitive tyrant withdrew and again made for the passes of Mount Taurus. There, building fortifications and towers, he tried to block the road; and, driven from there as the victors broke through everything, he finally fled to Tarsus.

There, when he was now pressed by land and sea and hoped for no refuge, from anguish of mind and fear he fled to death as a remedy for the evils which God had heaped on his head.

But first he stuffed himself with food and gorged himself with wine, as those are accustomed to do who think they are doing this for the last time, and so drank poison. Its force, repelled by the full stomach, could not take effect immediately, but turned into an evil languor like the plague, so that, his breath being drawn out longer, he might feel torments.

Now the poison had begun to rage in him. When his vitals raged with its force, he was carried by unbearable pain to the point of madness, so that for four days, driven by insanity, he devoured earth scooped up in his hands as if starving.

Then, after many grievous torments, as he dashed his head against the walls, his eyes leapt from their sockets. Then at last, having lost his sight, he began to see God judging him, with attendants clothed in white.

So he cried out, as those who are tortured are accustomed to do, and said that not he but others had done it. Then, as if driven by tortures, he confessed, repeatedly praying to Christ and imploring him to have mercy on him.

So, amid groans which he uttered as if he were being burned, he breathed out his guilty spirit by a detestable kind of death.

In this way God vanquished all the persecutors of his name, so that neither stock nor root of them remained.

For Licinius, having gained supreme power, ordered first of all that Valeria be put to death, whom Maximinus in his anger had not dared to kill even after his flight, when he saw he must perish; likewise Candidianus, whom Valeria, because of her barrenness, had adopted, though he was born of a concubine. Yet the woman, when she learned that he had conquered,

had changed her dress and mingled with his retinue, to watch the fortune of Candidianus; he, because he had presented himself at Nicomedia and seemed to be held in honour, fearing nothing of the kind, was killed. And she, hearing of his end, fled at once.

The same man put to death Severianus, the son of Severus, already of mature age, who had followed the fleeing Maximinus from the battle, having subjected him to capital sentence as if he had thought of taking the purple after his death.

All of these, fearing Licinius long since as an evil, had preferred to be with Maximinus, except Valeria, who, though she had refused to Licinius, who wanted it, the right to all Maximian's property which was hers by inheritance, had refused the same to Maximinus.

He also destroyed the son of Maximinus himself, who was eight years old, and his daughter of seven, who had been betrothed to Candidianus. But first their mother was thrown into the Orontes: there she had often ordered chaste women to be drowned.

So all the ungodly, by the true and just judgement of God, received the same things they had done.

Valeria too, having wandered through various provinces for fifteen months in common dress, was at last recognized at Thessalonica, arrested with her mother, and paid the penalty.

So the women were led to execution amid a huge spectacle and pity at so great a fall; their heads were cut off and their bodies thrown into the sea. So their chastity and their rank proved their ruin.

All these things I have believed should be committed to writing faithfully (for I speak to one who knows) just as they were done, so that the memory of such great events might not perish, and so that, if anyone wished to write a history, he might not corrupt the truth by keeping silent either about their sins against God or about God's judgement against them.

We ought to give thanks to his eternal kindness, that he has at last looked upon the earth, that he has deigned to restore and gather again his flock, partly laid waste by ravening wolves and partly scattered, and to root out the evil beasts which had trampled the pastures of the divine flock and destroyed its folds.

Where now are those magnificent surnames of Jovii and Herculii, famous among the nations, which were first insolently assumed by Diocles and Maximian and afterwards passed to their successors and flourished? Surely the Lord has blotted them out and erased them from the earth.

Let us therefore celebrate the triumph of God with exultation; let us throng the victory of the Lord with praises; let us celebrate it with prayers day and night; let us celebrate it, so that he may establish forever the peace given to his people after ten years.

You above all, dearest Donatus, who deserve to be heard by God, entreat the Lord that he may keep his mercy, propitious and gentle, towards his servants also; that he may ward off all the snares and assaults of the devil from his people; that he may guard the lasting peace of the flourishing church.