FRAGMENT OF 4TH CENTURY EGYPTIAN POTTERY BOWL SHOWING AN EARLY PORTRAIT OF CHRIST, WITH BUSTS OF THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE AND THE EMPRESS FAUSTA. (FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM.) ] Such is the story of Lactantius; it could scarcely be more circumstantial. But if this had been the manner of Maximian’s death, it is hardly possible that the other historians would have passed it by in silence. Eusebius, in his _Ecclesiastical History_, simply says that Maximian strangled himself; Aurelius Victor that he justly perished (_jure perierat_). The author of the Seventh Panegyric declares that, though Constantine offered him his life, Maximian deemed himself unworthy of the boon and committed suicide.[37] Eutropius, evidently borrowing from Lactantius, remarks that Maximian paid the penalty for his crimes. There is little doubt, therefore, that Constantine ordered his execution and gave him choice of death, just as Maxentius had given similar choice to Severus. Officially it would be announced that Maximian had committed suicide. At the time, public opinion was shocked by the manner of his death, though it was generally conceded that his life was justly forfeit. ----- Footnote 37: _Nec se dignum vita judicavit, cum per te liceret ut viveret._—_Pan. Vet._, vii., 20. ----- [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] CHAPTER V THE INVASION OF ITALY The tragic end of his old colleague must have raised many disquieting thoughts in the mind of Diocletian, already beginning to be anxious lest his successors should think that he was living too long. While Galerius flourished he was sure of a protector, but Galerius died in 311. In the eighteenth year of his rule he had been stricken with an incurable and loathsome malady, into the details of which Lactantius enters with a morbid but lively enjoyment, affecting to see in the torture of the dying Emperor the visitation of an angry Providence. He describes minutely the progress of the cancer and the “appalling odour of the festering wound which spread not only through the palace but through the city.” He shews us the unhappy patient raising piercing cries and calling for mercy from the God of the Christians whom he had persecuted, vowing under the stress of physical anguish that he would make reparation; and, finally, when at the very point of death (_jam deficiens_), dictating the edict which stayed the persecution and gave the Christians full liberty to worship in their own way. It will be more convenient to discuss in another place this remarkable document, the forerunner, so to speak, of the famous Edict of Milan. It was promulgated at Nicomedia on the thirtieth of April, 311, and a few days later Galerius’s torments were mercifully ended by death.