Soon thereafter a decisive battle was fought between Maximinus and Licinius. The former was defeated and took to flight. The friendly relations that had subsisted between =Constantine= and =Licinius= gave way gradually to estrangement and were at last succeeded by open hostility. Licinius by manifesting zeal as a persecutor identified himself with the pagan party, and Constantine threw in his lot with the Christians. In A.D. 323 a war broke out between these two, like a struggle for life and death between Paganism and Christianity. Licinius was overthrown and Constantine was master of the whole empire (§ 42, 2). Eusebius in his _Vita Constantini_ reports, on the basis probably of a sworn statement of the emperor, that during the expedition against Maxentius in A.D. 312, after praying for the aid of the higher powers, when the sun was going down, he saw in heaven a shining cross in the sun with a bright inscription: τούτῳ νίκα. During the night Christ appeared to him in a dream, and commanded him to take the cross as his standard in battle and with it to go into battle confident of victory. In his Church History, Eusebius makes no mention of this tradition of the vision. On the other hand there is here the fact, contested indeed by critics, that after the victory over Maxentius the emperor had erected his statue in the Roman Forum, with the cross in his hand, and bearing the inscription: “By this sign of salvation have I delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant. ” This only is certain, that the imperial standard, which had the unexplained name Labarum, bore the sign of the cross with the monogram of the name of Christ. § 23. CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS OF PAGANISM.