The results of the new measures were like those which we have seen during the last forty years in Europe, where constitutions have been drawn up, which when brought to bear on life and its real business, have worked quite differently from what had been expected. After Diocletian and Maximian’s resignation, Constantius and Galerius succeeded as _Augusti_, and the places of the Cæsars became vacant. As the _Augusti_ were bound to make Milan or Nicomedia their abode, Constantius remained in Gaul, where his court was generally at Treves. In his stead, a Cæsar was to be appointed, who had to rule over Africa and Italy; and Galerius, claiming the right of nomination, made choice of another Illyrian named Severus: over the East he set his own nephew Maximinus Daza, a common soldier, to whom he gave the administration of Syria and Egypt, while he himself remained in Nicomedia, and kept Illyricum, Greece, and Asia Minor. The persecution of the Christians went on at a fearful rate, but without any effect; so that at last it was even obliged to slacken. Diocletian remained quiet during all these changes; but old Maximian did not approve of them. He returned from Lucania to Rome, where he again came forth as an Augustus, and got the senate to proclaim his son Maxentius a Cæsar instead of Severus. Soon afterwards, Constantius died, and the legions proclaimed his son Constantine Augustus; but Galerius, who had formerly plotted against his life, wished to acknowledge him as Cæsar only, and on the other hand, appointed Severus Augustus, and set him on against Maximian and Maxentius. But Severus died in his attempt to invade Italy, and Constantine for the present submitted to the degradation. Constantine was the son of Constantius’ first wife Helena, a woman of low birth from Roussillon, whom her husband had been obliged to put away that he might marry Theodora, a stepdaughter of Maximian. Constantine was thirty-two years old, when his father died. He is a truly great man, and on him the attention of the whole of the then Roman world was directed. Though not an accomplished scholar, neither yet was he an untaught barbarian, as he spoke Greek and Latin.