Diocletian would not have been called to Carnuntum, or, if called, he would scarcely have undertaken so tedious a journey, had there not been affairs of the highest moment to be discussed. We know of only one certain result of this strange council of Emperors. It is that a new Augustus was created by Galerius without passing through the intermediate stage of being a Cæsar. He was found in Licinius, to whom was assigned the administration of Illyria with the command of the Danubian legions, and the status of second rank in the hierarchy of the Augusti, or rather of the Augusti in active life. Galerius, we may infer, was sensible of the approaching breakdown of his health and wished his friend Licinius to be ready to step into his place. Apparently, a genuine attempt was made to restore to something like its old position the system of Diocletian. Perhaps as reasonable a supposition as any is that it was decided at the conference that Diocletian and Maximian should again be relegated to the ranks of retired Augusti, that Galerius and Licinius should be the two active Augusti, and Constantine and Maximin the two Cæsars. Maximian had unquestionably gone to Carnuntum with the hope of fishing in troubled waters and Lactantius[33] even attributes to him a wild scheme for assassinating Galerius. It is, at any rate, certain that he left the conference in a fury of disappointment. The ambitious and restless old man had received no encouragement to his hopes of again being supreme over part of the Empire. ----- Footnote 33: _De Mort. Persec._, c. 29. ----- But what then of Maxentius, who was in possession of Italy and Africa? If the theory we have propounded be right, he must have been studiously ignored and treated as a usurper, to be thrown out—just as Carausius had been—at a favourable opportunity. There is a passage in Lactantius which seems to corroborate this suggestion. That author says that Maximin Daza, the Cæsar of Egypt and Syria and the old protégé of Galerius, heard with anger that Licinius had been promoted over his head to be Augustus and hold the second place in the charmed circle of Emperors. He sent angry remonstrances; Galerius returned a soft answer. Maximin an even more aggressive bearing (_tollit audacius cornua_), urged more peremptorily than ever his superior right, and spurned Galerius’s entreaties and commands. Then,—Lactantius goes on to say,—overborne by Maximin’s stubborn obstinacy, Galerius offered a compromise, by naming himself and Licinius as Augusti and Maximin and Constantine as Sons of the Augusti, instead of simple Cæsars.