THE DOWNFALL OF LICINIUS
It will be convenient in this chapter to present a connected narrative
of the course of political events from the Edict of Milan in 313 down to
the overthrow of Licinius by Constantine in 324. We have seen that
Maximin Daza never moved a single soldier to help his ally, Maxentius,
during Constantine’s invasion of Italy, though he soon gave practical
proof that his hostility had not abated by invading the territory of
Licinius. The attack was clearly not expected. Licinius was still at
Milan, and his troops had probably been drawn off into winter quarters,
when the news came that Maximin had collected a powerful army in Syria,
had marched through to Bithynia regardless of the sufferings of his
legions and the havoc caused in the ranks by the severity of the season,
and had succeeded in crossing the Bosphorus. Apparently, Maximin was
besieging Byzantium before Licinius was ready to move from Italy to
confront him.
Byzantium capitulated after a siege of eleven days and Heraclea did not
offer a prolonged resistance. By this time, however, Licinius was
getting within touch of the invader and preparations were made on both
sides for a pitched battle. The numbers of Licinius’s army were scarcely
half those of his rival, but Maximin was completely routed on a plain
called Serenus, near the city of Adrianople, and fled for his life,
leaving his broken battalions to shift for themselves. Lactantius, in
describing the engagement,[56] represents it as having been a duel to
the death between Christianity and paganism. He says that Maximin had
vowed to eradicate the very name of the Christians if Jupiter favoured
his arms; while Licinius had been warned by an angel of God in a dream
that, if he wished to make infallibly sure of victory, he and his army
had only to recite a prayer to Almighty God which the angel would
dictate to him. Licinius at once sent for a secretary and the prayer was
taken down. It ran as follows:
“God most High, we call upon Thee; Holy God, we call upon Thee. We
commend to Thee all justice; we commend to Thee our safety; we commend
to Thee our sovereignty. Through Thee we live; through Thee we gain
victory and happiness. Most High and Holy God, hear our prayers. We
stretch out our arms to Thee. Hear us, Most High and Holy God.”
-----
Footnote 56:
_De Mort. Persec._, c. 46.
-----
Such was the talismanic prayer of which the Emperor’s secretary made
hurried copies, distributing them to the general officers and the
tribunes of the legions, with instructions that the troops were at once
to get the words off by heart. When the armies moved against one another
in battle array, the legions of Licinius at a given signal laid down
their shields, removed their helmets, and, lifting their hands to
heaven, recited in unison these rhythmic sentences with their strangely
effective repetitions. Lactantius tells us that the murmur of the prayer
was borne upon the ears of the doomed army of the enemy. Then, after a
brief colloquy between the rivals, in which Maximin refused to offer or
agree to any concession, because he believed that the soldiers of
Licinius would come over to him in a body, the armies charged and the
standard of Maximin went down.
It is a striking story, and we may easily understand that Licinius,
fresh from his meeting with Constantine and with vivid recollection of
how valiantly this _Summus Deus_ had fought for his ally against
Maxentius, would be ready to believe beforehand in the efficacy of any
supernatural warning conveyed by any supernatural “minister of grace.”
We may note, too, the splendid vagueness of the Deity invoked in the
prayer. Lactantius, of course, claims that this Most High and Holy God
is none other than the God of the Christians, but there was nothing to
prevent the votary of Jupiter, of Apollo, of Mithra, of Baal, or of
Balenus, from thinking that he was imploring the aid of his own familiar
deity.
Maximin fled from the scene of carnage as though he had been pursued by
all the Cabiri. Throwing aside his purple and assuming the garb of a
slave—it is Lactantius, however, who is speaking—he crossed the
Bosphorus, and, within twenty-four hours of quitting the field, reached
once more the palace of Nicomedia—a distance of a hundred and sixty
miles. Taking his wife and children with him, he hurried through the
defiles of the Taurus, summoned to his side whatever troops he had left
behind in Syria and Egypt, and awaited the oncoming of Licinius, who
followed at leisure in his tracks. The end was not long delayed.
Maximin’s soldiers regarded his cause as lost, and despairing of
clemency, he took his own life at Tarsus. His provinces passed without a
struggle into the hands of Licinius, who butchered every surviving
member of Maximin’s family.
Nor had the victor pity even for two ladies of imperial rank, whose
misfortunes and sufferings excited the deepest compassion in that
stony-hearted age. These were Prisca, the wife of Diocletian, and her
daughter Valeria, the widow of the Emperor Galerius. On his death-bed
Galerius had entrusted his wife to the care and the gratitude of
Maximin, whom he had raised from obscurity to a throne. Maximin repaid
his confidence by pressing Valeria to marry him and offering to divorce
his own wife. Valeria returned an indignant and high-spirited refusal.
She would never think of marriage, she said,[57] while still wearing
mourning for a husband whose ashes were not yet cold. It was monstrous
that Maximin should seek to divorce a faithful wife, and, even if she
assented to his proposal, she had clear warning of what was likely to be
her own fate. Finally, it was not becoming that the daughter of
Diocletian and the widow of Galerius should stoop to a second marriage.
Maximin took a bitter revenge. He reduced Valeria to penury, marked down
all her friends for ruin, and finally drove her into exile with her
mother, Prisca, who nobly shared the sufferings of the daughter whom she
could not shield. Lactantius tells us that the two imperial ladies
wandered miserably through the Syrian wastes, while Maximin took delight
in spurning the overtures of the aged Diocletian, who sent repeated
messages begging that his daughter might be allowed to go and live with
him at Salona. Maximin refused even when Diocletian sent one of his
relatives to remind him of past benefits, and the two unfortunate ladies
knew no alleviation of their troubles. When the tyrant fell, they
probably thought that the implacable hatred with which Maximin had
pursued them would be their best recommendation to the favour of
Licinius. Again, however, they were disappointed, for Licinius, in his
jealous anxiety to spare no one connected with the families of his
predecessors in the purple, ordered the execution of Candidianus, a
natural son of Galerius, who had been brought up by Valeria as her own
child. In despair, therefore, the two ladies, who had boldly gone to
Nicomedia, fled from the scene and “wandered for fifteen months,
disguised as plebeians, through various provinces,”[58] until they had
the misfortune to be recognised at Thessalonica. They were at once
beheaded and their bodies thrown into the sea, amid the pitying sympathy
of a vast throng which dared not lift a hand to save them.
-----
Footnote 57:
_De Mort. Persec._, c. 39.
Footnote 58:
_De Mort Persec._, c. 51.
-----
Constantine and Licinius now shared between them the whole of the Roman
Empire. They were allies, but their alliance did not long stand the
strain of their respective ambitions. Each had won an easy victory over
his antagonist, and each was confident that his legions would suffice to
win him undivided empire. We know very little of the pretexts assigned
for the quarrel which culminated in the war of 316. Zosimus throws the
blame upon Constantine, whom he accuses of not keeping faith and of
trying to filch from Licinius some of his provinces. But as the
sympathies of Zosimus were strongly pagan and as he invariably imputed
the worst possible motive to Constantine, it is fairest and most
reasonable to suppose that the two Emperors simply quarrelled over the
division of the Empire. Constantine had given the hand of his
half-sister Anastasia to one of his generals, named Bassianus, whom he
had raised to the dignity of a Cæsar. But for some reason left
unexplained—possibly because Constantine granted only the title, without
the legions and the provinces, of a Cæsar—Bassianus became discontented
with his position and entered into an intrigue with Licinius.
Constantine discovered the plot, put Bassianus to death, and demanded
from Licinius the surrender of Senecio, a brother of the victim and a
relative of Licinius. The demand was refused; some statues of
Constantine were demolished by Licinius’s orders at Æmona (Laybach) and
war ensued.
The armies met in the autumn of 316 near Cibalis, in Pannonia, between
the rivers Drave and Save. Neither Emperor led into the field anything
approaching the full strength he was able to muster; Licinius is said to
have had only 35,000 men and Constantine no more than 20,000. From
Zosimus’s highly rhetorical account of the battle[59] we gather that
Constantine chose a position between a steep hill and an impassable
morass, and repulsed the charge of the legions of Licinius. Then as he
advanced into the plain in pursuit of the enemy, he was checked by some
fresh troops which Licinius brought up, and a long and stubborn contest
lasted until nightfall, when Constantine decided the fortunes of the day
by an irresistible charge. Licinius is said to have lost 20,000 men in
this encounter, more than fifty per cent. of his entire force, and he
beat a hurried retreat, leaving his camp to be plundered by the victor,
whose own losses must also have been severe.
-----
Footnote 59:
Zosimus, ii., 19.
-----
A few weeks later the battle was renewed on the plain of Mardia in
Thrace. Licinius had evidently been strongly reinforced from Asia, for,
though he was again defeated after a hotly contested battle, he was able
to effect an orderly retreat and draw off his beaten troops without
disorder—a rare thing in the annals of Roman warfare, where defeat
usually involved destruction. Constantine is said to have owed his
victory to his superior generalship and to the skill with which he timed
a surprise attack of five thousand of his men upon the rear of the
enemy. Yet we may be certain that he would not have consented to treat
with Licinius for peace had he not had considerable cause for anxiety
about the final issue of the campaign. However, his two victories, while
not sufficiently decisive to enable him to dictate any terms he chose,
at least gave him the authoritative word in the negotiations which
ensued, and sealed the doom of the unfortunate Valens, whom Licinius had
just appointed Cæsar. When Licinius’s envoy spoke of his two imperial
masters, Licinius and Valens, Constantine retorted that he recognised
but one, and bluntly stated that he had not endured tedious marches and
won a succession of victories, only to share the prize with a
contemptible slave. Licinius sacrificed his lieutenant without
compunction and consented to hand over to Constantine Illyria and its
legions, with the important provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Moesia, and
Dacia. The only foothold left him on the Continent of Europe, out of all
that had previously been included in the eastern half of the Empire, was
the province of Thrace.
At the same time, the two Emperors agreed to elevate their sons to the
rank of Cæsar. Constantine bestowed the dignity upon Crispus, the son of
his first marriage with Minervina. Crispus was now in the promise of
early manhood, and had proved his valour, and won his spurs in the
recent campaign. Licinius gave the title to his son Licinianus, an
infant no more than twenty months old. These appointments are important,
for they shew how completely the system of Diocletian had broken down.
The Emperors appointed Cæsars out of deference to the letter of that
constitution, but they outrageously violated its spirit by appointing
their own sons, and when the choice fell on an infant, insult was added
to injury. It was plain warning to all the world that Constantine and
Licinius meant to keep power in their own hands. When, a few years
later, three sons were born to Constantine and Fausta in quick
succession, the eldest, who was given the name of his father, was
created Cæsar shortly after his birth. No doubt the Empress—herself an
Emperor’s daughter—demanded that her son should enjoy equal rank with
the son of the low-born Minervina, and the probabilities are that
Constantine already looked forward to providing the young Princes with
patrimonies carved out of the territory of Licinius. However, there was
no actual rupture between the two Emperors until 323, though relations
had long been strained.
We know comparatively little of what took place in the intervening
years. They were not, however, years of unbroken peace. There was
fighting both on the Danube and the Rhine. The Goths and the Sarmatæ,
who had been taught such a severe lesson by Claudius and Aurelian that
they had left the Danubian frontier undisturbed for half a century,
again surged forward and swept over Moesia and Pannonia. We hear of
several hard-fought battles along the course of the river, and then,
when Constantine, at the head of his legions, had driven out the
invader, he himself crossed the Danube and compelled the barbarians to
assent to a peace whereby they pledged themselves to supply the Roman
armies, when required, with forty thousand auxiliaries. The details of
this campaign are exceedingly obscure and untrustworthy. The Panegyrists
of the Emperor claimed that he had repeated the triumphs of Trajan.
Constantine himself is represented by the mocking Julian as boasting
that he was a greater general than Trajan, because it is a finer thing
to win back what you have lost than to conquer something which was not
yours before. The probabilities are that there took place one of those
alarming barbarian movements from which the Roman Empire was never long
secure, that Constantine beat it back successfully, and gained victories
which were decisive enough at the moment, but in which there was no real
finality, because no finality was possible. Probably it was the
seriousness of these Gothic and Sarmatian campaigns which was chiefly
responsible for the years of peace between Constantine and Licinius.
Until the barbarian danger had been repelled, Constantine was perforce
obliged to remain on tolerable terms with the Emperor of the East.
While the father was thus engaged on the Danube, the son was similarly
employed on the Rhine. The young Cæsar, Crispus, already entrusted with
the administration of Gaul and Britain and the command of the Rhine
legions, won a victory over the Alemanni in a winter campaign and
distinguished himself by the skill and rapidity with which he executed a
long forced march despite the icy rigours of a severe season. It is
Nazarius, the Panegyrist, who refers[60] in glowing sentences to this
admirable performance—carried through, he says, with “incredibly
youthful verve” (_incredibili juvenilitate confecit_),—and praises
Crispus to the skies as “the most noble Cæsar of his august father.”
When that speech was delivered on the day of the Quinquennalia of the
Cæsars in 321, Constantine’s ears did not yet grudge to listen to the
eulogies of his gallant son.
-----
Footnote 60:
_Pan. Vet._, x., 36.
-----
But there is one omission from the speech which is exceedingly
significant. It contains no mention of Licinius, and no one reading the
oration would gather that there were two Emperors or that the Empire was
divided. Evidently, Constantine and Licinius were no longer on good
terms, and none knew better than the Panegyrists of the Court the art of
suppressing the slightest word or reference that might bring a frown to
the brow of their imperial auditor. But even two years before, in 319,
the names of Licinius and the boy, Cæsar Licinianus, had ceased to
figure on the consular Fasti—a straw which pointed very clearly in which
direction the wind was blowing.
Zosimus attributes the war to the ambition of Constantine; Eutropius
roundly accuses[61] him of having set his heart upon acquiring the
sovereignty of the whole world. On the other hand, Eusebius[62] depicts
Constantine as a magnanimous monarch, the very pattern of humanity, long
suffering of injury, and forgiving to the point of seventy times seven
the ungrateful intrigues of the black-hearted Licinius. According to the
Bishop of Cæsarea, Constantine had been the benefactor of Licinius, who,
conscious of his inferiority, plotted in secret until he was driven into
open enmity. But it is very evident that the reason of Eusebius’s enmity
to Licinius was the anti-Christian policy into which the Emperor had
drifted, as soon as he became estranged from Constantine. A more
detailed description of Licinius’s religious policy and of the new
persecution which broke out in his provinces will be found in another
chapter; here we need only point out Eusebius’s anxiety to represent the
cause of the quarrel between the Emperors as being in the main a
religious one. He tells us[63] that Licinius regarded as traitors to
himself those who were friendly to his rival, and savagely attacked the
bishops, who, as he judged, were his most bitter opponents. The phrase,
not without reason, has given rise to the suspicion that the Christian
bishops of the East were regarded as head centres of political
disaffection, and Licinius evidently suspected them of preaching treason
and acting as the agents of Constantine. We have not sufficient data to
enable us to draw any sure inference, but the bishops could not help
contrasting the liberality of Constantine to the Church, of which he was
the open champion, with the reactionary policy of Licinius, which had at
length culminated in active persecution.
-----
Footnote 61:
Eutropius, x., 5: _Principatum totius orbis adfectans._
Footnote 62:
Euseb., _De Vita Const._, i., 50.
Footnote 63:
_Ibid._, i., 56.
-----
[Illustration:
THE WESTERN SIDE OF A PEDESTAL, SHOWING THE HOMAGE OF THE VANQUISHED
GOTHS.
FROM GROSVENOR’S “CONSTANTINOPLE.”
]
But the dominant cause of this war is to be found in political ambitions
rather than in religious passions, and if we must declare who of the two
was the aggressor, it is difficult to escape throwing the blame upon
Constantine. Licinius was advancing in years. Even if he had not
outlived his ambitions, he can at least have had little taste for a
campaign in which he put all to the venture. Constantine, on the other
hand, was in the prime of life, and the master of a well tried,
disciplined, and victorious army. The odds were on his side. He had all
the legions which could be spared from the Rhine and the Danube, and all
the auxiliaries from the Illyrian and Pannonian provinces—the best
recruiting grounds in the Empire—to oppose to the legions of Syria and
Egypt. Constantine doubtless seemed to the bishops to be entering the
field as the champion of the Church, but the real prize which drew him
on was universal dominion.
This time both Emperors exerted themselves to make tremendous
preparations for the struggle. Zosimus describes how Constantine began a
new naval harbour at Thessalonica to accommodate the two hundred war
galleys and two thousand transports which he had ordered to be built in
his dock-yards. He mobilised, if Zosimus is to be trusted, 120,000
infantry and 10,000 marines and cavalry. Licinius, on the other hand, is
said to have collected 150,000 foot and 15,000 horse. Whether these
numbers are trustworthy or not, it is evident that the two Emperors did
their best to throw every available man into the plain of Adrianople,
where the two hosts were separated by the river Hebrus. Some days were
spent in skirmishing and manœuvring; then on July 3, 323, a decisive
action was brought on, which ended in the rout of the army of Licinius.
Constantine, whose tactical dispositions seem to have been more skilful
than those of Licinius, secretly detached a force of 5000 archers to
occupy a position in the rear of the enemy, and these used their bows
with overwhelming effect at a critical moment of the action, when
Constantine himself, at the head of another detachment, succeeded in
forcing a passage of the river. Constantine received a slight wound in
the thigh, but he had the satisfaction of seeing the enemy driven from
their fortified camp and betake themselves in hurried flight to the
sheltering walls of Byzantium, leaving 34,000 dead and wounded on the
field of battle.
Byzantium was a stronghold which had fallen before Maximin after a siege
of eleven days, but we may suppose that Licinius had looked well to its
fortifications with a view to such an emergency as that in which he now
found himself. He placed, however, his chief reliance in his fleet,
which was nearly twice as numerous as that of Constantine. Licinius had
assembled 350 ships of war, levied, in accordance with the practice of
Rome, from the maritime countries of Asia and Egypt. No fewer than 130
came from Egypt and Libya, 110 from Phœnicia and Cyprus, and a similar
quota from the ports of Cilicia, Ionia, and Bithynia. The galleys were
probably in good fighting trim, but the service was not a willing one,
and the fleet was as badly handled as it was badly stationed. Amandus,
the admiral of Licinius, had kept his ships cooped up in the narrow
Hellespont, thus acting weakly on the defensive instead of boldly
seeking out the enemy. Constantine entrusted the chief command of his
various squadrons to his son Crispus, whose only experience of naval
matters had probably been obtained from the manœuvres of the war galleys
on the Rhine. But a Roman general was supposed to be able to take
command on either element as circumstances required. In the present case
Crispus more than justified his father’s choice. He was ordered to
attack and destroy Amandus, and the peremptoriness of the order was
doubtless due to the difficulty of obtaining supplies for so large an
army by land transport only. Two actions were fought on two successive
days. In the first Amandus had both wind and current in his favour and
made a drawn battle of it. The next day the wind had veered round to the
south, and Crispus, closing with the enemy, destroyed 130 of their
vessels and 5000 of their crews. The passage of the Hellespont was
forced; Amandus with the remainder of his fleet fled back to the shelter
of Byzantium, and the straits were open for the passage of Constantine’s
transports.
The Emperor pushed the siege with energy, and plied the walls so
vigorously with his engines that Licinius, aware that the capitulation
of Byzantium could not long be postponed, crossed over into Asia to
escape being involved in its fate. Even then he was not utterly
despondent of success, for he raised one of his lieutenants,
Martinianus, to the dignity of Cæsar or Augustus—a perilous distinction
for any recipient with the short shrift of Valens before his eyes—and,
collecting what troops he could, he set his fleet and army to oppose the
crossing of Constantine when Byzantium had fallen. But holding as he did
the command of the sea, the victor found no difficulty in effecting a
landing at Chrysopolis, and Licinius’s last gallant effort to drive back
the invader was repulsed with a loss of 25,000 men. Eusebius, in an
exceptionally foolish chapter, declares that Licinius harangued his
troops before the battle, bidding them carefully keep out of the way of
the sacred Labarum, under which Constantine moved to never-failing
victory, or, if they had the mischance to come near it in the press of
battle, not to look heedlessly upon it. He then goes on to ascribe the
victory not to the superior tactical dispositions of his chief or to the
valour of his men, but simply and solely to the fact that Constantine
was “clad in the breastplate of reverence and had ranged over against
the numbers of the enemy the salutary and life-giving sign, to inspire
his foes with terror and shield himself from harm.”[64] We suspect,
indeed, that far too little justice has been done to the good
generalship of Constantine, who, by his latest victory, brought to a
close a brilliant and entirely successful campaign over an Emperor whose
stubborn powers of resistance and dauntless energy even in defeat
rendered him a most formidable opponent.
-----
Footnote 64:
_De Vita Const._, ii., 16. τὸ σωτήριον καὶ ζωοποιὸν σημεῖον, ὥσπερ τι
φόβητρον καὶ κακῶν ἀμυντήριον.
-----
Licinius fell back upon Nicomedia. His army was gone. There was no time
to beat up new recruits, for the conqueror was hard upon his heels. He
had to choose, therefore, between suicide, submission, and flight. He
would perhaps have best consulted his fame had he chosen the proud Roman
way out of irreparable disaster and taken his life. Instead he begged
that life might be spared him. The request would have been hopeless, and
would probably never have been made, had he not possessed in his wife,
Constantia, a very powerful advocate with her brother. Constantia’s
pleadings were effectual: Constantine consented to see his beaten
antagonist, who came humbly into his presence, laid his purple at the
victor’s feet, and sued for life from the compassion of his master. It
was a humiliating and an un-Roman scene. Constantine promised
forgiveness, admitted the suppliant to the Imperial table, and then
relegated him to Thessalonica to spend the remainder of his days in
obscurity. Licinius did not long survive. Later historians, anxious to
clear Constantine’s character of every stain, accused Licinius of
plotting against the generous Emperor who had spared him. Others
declared that he fell in a soldiers’ brawl: one even says that the
Senate passed a decree devoting him to death. It is infinitely more
probable that Constantine repented of his clemency. No Roman Emperor
seems to have been able to endure for long the existence of a discrowned
rival, however impotent to harm. Eutropius expressly states that
Licinius was put to death in violation of the oath which Constantine had
sworn to him.[65] Eusebius says not a word of Licinius’s life having
been promised him; he only remarks, “Then Constantine, dealing with the
accursed of GOD and his associates according to the rules of war, handed
them over to fitting punishment.”[66] A pretty euphemism for an act of
assassination!
-----
Footnote 65:
_Contra religionem sacramenti occisus est_, x., 6.
Footnote 66:
_De Vita Const._, ii., 18.
-----
So died Licinius, unregretted by any save the zealous advocates of
paganism, in the city where he himself had put to death those two
hapless ladies, Prisca and Valeria. The best character sketch of him is
found in Aurelius Victor, who describes him as grasping and avaricious,
rough in manners and of excessively hasty temper, and a sworn foe to
culture, which he used to say was a public poison and pest (_virus et
pestem publicum_), notably the culture associated with the study and
practice of the law. Himself of the humblest origin, he was a good
friend to the small farmers’ interests; while he was a martinet of the
strictest type in all that related to the army. He detested the
paraphernalia of a court, in which Constantine delighted, and Aurelius
Victor says that he made a clean sweep (_vehemens domitor_) of all
eunuchs and chamberlains, whom he described as the moths and shrew-mice
of the palace (_tineas soricesque palatii_). Of his religious policy we
shall speak elsewhere; of his reign there is little to be said. It has
left no impress upon history, and Licinius is only remembered as the
Emperor whose misfortune it was to stand in the way of Constantine and
his ambitions. Constantine threw down his statues; revoked his edicts;
and if he spared his young son, the Cæsar Licinianus, the clemency was
due to affection for the mother, not to pity for the child. Martinianus,
the Emperor at most of a few weeks, had been put to death after the
defeat of Chrysopolis, and Constantine reigned alone with his sons. The
Roman Empire was united once more.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]