ius and father-in-law of Constantine. He was regarded as a
usurper, and on the capture of Marseilles, he under pressure of
Constantine committed suicide by strangulation, A.D. 310. Galerius did
not long survive, being afflicted with a loathsome disease, the result
of intemperance and gluttony, and died in his palace in Nicomedia, in
Bithynia, the capital of the Eastern provinces. The next emperor who
fell was Maxentius, after a desperate struggle in Italy with
Constantine,--whose passage over the Alps, and successive victories at
Susa (at the foot of Mont Cenis, on the plains of Turin), at Verona, and
Saxa Rubra, nine miles from Rome, from which Maxentius fled, only to
perish in the Tiber, remind us of the campaigns of Hannibal and
Napoleon. The triumphal arch which the victor erected at Rome to
commemorate his victories still remains as a monument of the decline of
Art in the fourth century. As a result of the conquest over Maxentius,
the Praetorian guards were finally abolished, which gave a fatal blow to
the Senate, and left the capital disarmed and exposed to future insults
and dangers.

The next emperor who disappeared from the field was Maximin, who had
embarked in a civil war with Licinius. He died at Tarsus, after an
unsuccessful contest, A.D. 313; and there were left only Licinius and
Constantine,--the former of whom reigned in the East and the latter in
the West. Scarcely a year elapsed before these two emperors embarked in
a bloody contest for the sovereignty of the world. Licinius was beaten,
but was allowed the possession of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt.
A hollow reconciliation was made between them, which lasted eight years,
during which Constantine was engaged in the defence of his empire from
the hostile attacks of the Goths in Illyricum. He gained great
victories over these barbarians, and chased them beyond the Danube. He
then turned against Licinius, and the bloody battle of Adrianople, A.D.
323, when three hundred thousand combatants were engaged, followed by a
still more bloody one on the heights of Chrysopolis, A.D. 324, made
Constantine supreme master of the Empire thirty-seven years after
Diocletian had divided his power with Maximian.

The great events of his reign as sole emperor, with enormous prestige as
a general, second only to that of Julius Caesar, were the foundation of
Constantinople and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of
the Empire.

The ancient Byzantium,