restrain his tears (_Vix lacrimas tenebat_). ----- Footnote 20: _De Mort. Persec._, c. 24. ----- It is a story which does infinite credit to Lactanius’s feeling for strong melodramatic situation. No picturesque detail is omitted—the setting sun, the tyrant plotting vengeance over dinner, his resolve to sleep long, his baffled triumph, the escaping hero, and the butchery of the horses. Yet we question if there is more than a shred of truth in the whole story. Galerius would not have given Constantine the sealed order overnight had he intended to take it back the next morning. A word to the officer of the watch in the palace and to the officer on duty at the city gate would have prevented Constantine from quitting Nicomedia. The imperial post service must have been very much underhorsed if the Emperor’s servants could not find mounts for the effective pursuit of a single fugitive. Galerius may very well have been unwilling for Constantine to go, and Constantine doubtless covered the early stages of his long journey at express speed, in order to minimise the chance of recall, but the lurid details of Lactantius are probably simply the outcome of his own lively imagination. Constantine seems to have found his father at the port of Gessoriacum (Boulogne), just waiting for a favourable wind to carry him across the Channel into Britain. Constantius was ill, and welcomed with great joy the son whom he had not seen for many years. We do not know what time elapsed before Constantius died at York,—apparently it was after the conclusion of a campaign in Scotland,—but before he died he commended to Constantine the welfare of his young half-brothers and half-sisters, the eldest of whom was no more than thirteen years of age, and he also evidently commended Constantine himself to the loyalty of his legions. The Emperor, we are informed both by Lactantius and by the author of the Seventh Panegyric, died with a mind at rest because he was sure of his heir and successor—Jupiter himself, says the pagan orator,[21] stretched out his right hand and welcomed him among the gods. Clearly, the ground had been well prepared, for no sooner was the breath out of Constantius’s body than the troops saluted Constantine with the title of Augustus. Aurelius Victor adds the interesting detail that he had no stouter supporter than Erocus, a Germanic King, who was serving as an auxiliary in the Roman army. Constantine was nothing loth, though, as usual in such circumstances, he may have feigned a reluctance which he did not feel. His panegyrist, indeed, represents him as putting spurs to his horse to enable him to shake off the robe which the soldiers sought to throw over his shoulders, and suggests that it had been Constantine’s intention to write “to the senior Princes” and consult their wishes as to the choice of a successor. Had he done so, he knew very well that Galerius would have sent over to Britain some trusted lieutenant of his