Such was the talismanic prayer of which the Emperor’s secretary made hurried copies, distributing them to the general officers and the tribunes of the legions, with instructions that the troops were at once to get the words off by heart. When the armies moved against one another in battle array, the legions of Licinius at a given signal laid down their shields, removed their helmets, and, lifting their hands to heaven, recited in unison these rhythmic sentences with their strangely effective repetitions. Lactantius tells us that the murmur of the prayer was borne upon the ears of the doomed army of the enemy. Then, after a brief colloquy between the rivals, in which Maximin refused to offer or agree to any concession, because he believed that the soldiers of Licinius would come over to him in a body, the armies charged and the standard of Maximin went down. It is a striking story, and we may easily understand that Licinius, fresh from his meeting with Constantine and with vivid recollection of how valiantly this _Summus Deus_ had fought for his ally against Maxentius, would be ready to believe beforehand in the efficacy of any supernatural warning conveyed by any supernatural “minister of grace.” We may note, too, the splendid vagueness of the Deity invoked in the prayer. Lactantius, of course, claims that this Most High and Holy God is none other than the God of the Christians, but there was nothing to prevent the votary of Jupiter, of Apollo, of Mithra, of Baal, or of Balenus, from thinking that he was imploring the aid of his own familiar deity. Maximin fled from the scene of carnage as though he had been pursued by all the Cabiri. Throwing aside his purple and assuming the garb of a slave—it is Lactantius, however, who is speaking—he crossed the Bosphorus, and, within twenty-four hours of quitting the field, reached once more the palace of Nicomedia—a distance of a hundred and sixty miles. Taking his wife and children with him, he hurried through the defiles of the Taurus, summoned to his side whatever troops he had left behind in Syria and Egypt, and awaited the oncoming of Licinius, who followed at leisure in his tracks. The end was not long delayed. Maximin’s soldiers regarded his cause as lost, and despairing of clemency, he took his own life at Tarsus. His provinces passed without a struggle into the hands of Licinius, who butchered every surviving member of Maximin’s family.