The death of Galerius gave another blow to the already tottering system of Diocletian. It had been his intention to retire, as Diocletian had done, at the end of his twentieth year of sovereignty, and make way for a younger man, and there can be little doubt that he would have been as good as his word. Galerius has not received fair treatment at the hands of posterity. Lactantius, his bitter enemy, describes him as a violent ruffian and a hectoring bully, an object of terror and fear to all around him in word, deed, and aspect. Lactantius belittles the importance of his victory over Narses, the Persian King, by saying that the Persian army marched encumbered with baggage and that victory was easily won. He makes Galerius the leading spirit of the Persecution; represents him as having goaded Diocletian into signing the fatal edicts; accuses him of having fired the palace at Nicomedia in order to work on the terrors of his chief; charges him with having invented new and horrible tortures; and declares that he never dined or supped without whetting his appetite with the sight of human blood. No one would gather from Lactantius that Galerius was a fine soldier, a hard-working and capable Emperor, and a loyal successor to a great political chief. Eutropius does him no more than justice when he describes him as a man of high principle and a consummate general.[38] Aurelius Victor fills in the light and shade. Galerius was, he says, a Prince worthy of all praise; just if unpolished and untutored; of handsome presence; and an accomplished and fortunate general. He had risen from the ranks; in his young days he had been a herd boy, and the name of _Armentarius_ clung to him through life. This rough and ready Pannonian spent too energetic and busy a career to have time for culture. He came from a province where, in the forceful phrase of one of the Panegyrists, “life was all hard knocks and fighting.”[39] ----- Footnote 38: _Vir et probe moratus et egregius re militari._ Footnote 39: _In quibus omnis vita militia est._ -----