----- Footnote 34: C. 18. ----- Was Maximian in league with his son, Maxentius, in this usurpation? Had they made up their old quarrel in order to turn their united weapons against Constantine? There were those who thought so at the time, as Lactantius says,[35] the theory being that the old man only pretended violent enmity towards his son in order to carry out his treacherous designs against Constantine and the other Emperors. ----- Footnote 35: _De Mort. Persec._, c. 43. ----- Lactantius himself denies this supposition bluntly (_Sed id falsum fuit_) and then goes on to say[36] that Maximian’s real motive was to get rid both of Maxentius and the rest, and restore Diocletian and himself to power. Even for Lactantius, this is an extraordinarily wild theory. It runs counter to all that we know of Diocletian’s wishes during his retirement, and it speaks of the “extinction of Maxentius and the rest” as though it only needed an order to a centurion and the deed was done. It is much more probable that Maximian had actually re-entered into negotiations with Maxentius and had offered, as the price of reconciliation, the support of the legions which he had treacherously won from Constantine. The impetuous haste with which Constantine flew back from the Rhine indicates that the crisis was one of extreme gravity. ----- Footnote 36: _Nam id propositi habebat, ut et filio et ceteris extinctis se ac Diocletianum restitueret in regnum._ ----- Maximian did not long survive his degradation. That he died a violent death is certain; the circumstances attending it are in doubt. Lactantius gives a minute narrative which would carry greater conviction if the details had not been so manifestly borrowed from the chronicles of the East. He says that Maximian, tiring of his humiliating position, engaged in new plots against Constantine, and tempted Fausta, his daughter, to betray her husband by the promise of a worthier spouse. Her part in the conspiracy was to secure the removal of the guards from Constantine’s sleeping apartment. Fausta laid the whole scheme before her husband, who ordered one of his eunuchs to sleep in the royal chamber. Maximian, rising in the dead of night, told the sentries that he had dreamed an important dream which he wished at once to communicate to his son-in-law and thus gained entrance to the room. Drawing his sword, he cut off the eunuch’s head and rushed out boasting that he had slain Constantine—only to be confronted by Constantine himself at the head of a troop of armed men. The corpse was brought out; the self-convicted murderer stood “speechless as Marpesian flint.” Constantine upbraided him with his treachery, gave him permission to choose his own mode of dying, and Maximian hanged himself, “drawing”—as Virgil had said—“from the lofty beam the noose of shameful death.” [Illustration: