FOURTH CENTURY. The end of the 3d century saw the revivification of the Roman Empire under Diocletian. He was one- of those strong sons of the poor who exemplify so often in history the fact that it is the man himself and not his heredity that counts. His mother was surely a slave, his father a carpenter, and the future emperor was born at Dioclea in Dalmatia, to which he owes his name. He was chosen emperor by the troops and slew with his own hands the Prefect of the Prwtorians, the murderer of Numerianus, his predecessor. Diocletian owed his position as emperor to his military talents, but it was his genius as an administrator that has given him a lasting place in history. His reign &vas most favorable to the prosperity of the empire, and he re formed legal procedure, reorganized the finances, and made himself a patron of litera ture and the arts and sciences, but just at the beginning of the 4th century he permitted the tenth persecution of the Christians. He is not entirely responsible for this, urged to it by Galerius, whom he had chosen as Caesar, and he feared the growing power of Christianity over the people as lessening the reverence for the emperor. Eusebius, the Christian historian, tells how much the peaceful early years of Diocletian's reign meant for Christianity and for the vast multitudes that flocked to the religion of Christ, and of the spacious and splendid churches erected to replace the very humble structures with which the Christians had been satisfied before. Eusebius notes that their prosperity had brought with it a falling off in fervor among the Christians, but the bitter persecution braced them up, and un doubtedly did much to put the Christian Church in that condition of fervor which so impressed Constantine a little later.
Diocletian at the age of 59, presented to humanity the unusual spectacle of a man giv ing up the highest position in the world and having resigned the Imperial dignity in 305 re tired to live in peace and obscurity for some eight years near his birthplace. Diocletian had chosen three others, Maximian, who received the title of Augustus, and Constantius Chlorus and Galerius with the titles of Czsars, to share his sovereignty of the Roman world, some 10 years before his retirement. As might have been expected with all these rivals for the empire, Diocletian's abdication was followed by a period of confusion, during which there were sometimes six emperors and almost continuous warfare. Out of this confusion, Constantine, the son of Constantius Chlorus, who on the death of his father (306) was proclaimed Caesar by his troops at York, England, emerged as the future emperor of Rome. His first five years as Casar were spent in defending his province against the Germans, and then he found himself compelled to defend his rights and those of the empire against Maxentius who claimed sole authority. Constantine led an army of surely less than 100,000 men into Italy, though Maxentius had at least 200,000, and after annihilating a powerful host at Turin, laid siege to Verona, defeated a force coming to the relief of the city, and compelled its sur render. Then with an army reduced to 20,000
men, Constantine, undaunted, marched on Rome. On the way he had his famous vision of the Cross in the heavens with the words around it, °In hoc signo winces -"In this sign thou shalt conquer?' By his instructions his soldiers, all now bearing this emblem upon their shields, though the majority of them were not Christians, went forward with a new courage. They met the army of Maxentius, nearly five times their number, at the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber and defeated them, Maxentius losing his life in the river (312).
From this event dates the absolute freedom of Christianity. Early in 313, by Constantine's Edict of Milan, Christianity was formally recognized as a religion that his subjects might follow without molestation. He met his col league, Augustus Licinius, and secured his pro tection for the Christians in the East. Licinius married Constantine's sister and the peace of the world and the continuance of favorable con ditions for Christianity seemed assured, but 10 years later Licinius was tempted into further persecutions of the Christians. Constantine took up their defense, and gained a victory by land at Adrianople and by sea at Chalcedon, and then a little later, defeated his rival's land army at Nicomedia, where Licinius was exe cuted. In 325, Constantine, now the master of the Roman Empire, founded a new capital at Byzantium, which he called New Rome, but which came to be called Constantinople after him. The site for the new capital was chosen with great judgment, on an unrivaled harbor in the Golden Horn, at a spot where the commerce of the East and West naturally meet, united with and yet divided from the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus and from the Black Sea by the Propontus. It was an eminently defensible location which afforded splendid opportunity for the erection of a magnificent city. The solemn inauguration of the new capital did not take place until May 330, when the court and govern ment settled permanently there. The choice of the site for this capital is a significant testimony to the practical genius of Constantine. He im mediately proceeded to make the capital as far as possible a rival of old Rome. New public buildings including a senate house, a capitol, forums, circuses, a number of wonderful Christian churches, particularly that of the Holy Apostles, destined to be the burial place of the emperor, were erected, and some of the most beautiful pieces of antique statuary gathered from various parts of the empire, until Constantinople was considered to surpass all the other cities of the time. It was one of the centres of greatest interest in history for the next thousand years and more and has never lost its prestige.