The portrait-bust of Maximian might be confused with that of a modern pugilist, but he had, in addition to strength and ambition, a restless disposition to intrigue. To rust in a court full of women--for we may confidently place in the court of Constantine his wife, mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, and three young half-sisters, if not also his concubine--was to him an intolerable experience, and he took the first opportunity of enlivening his surroundings. An inroad of the barbarians in the north drew away the young Emperor with much of his army, and Maximian rebelled. He gave out a report that Constantine was dead, emptied the treasury into the hands of the soldiers, and assumed the purple mantle once more. But Constantine returned with the stride of a giant, and Maximian shut himself in Marseilles, which was presently surrendered. The aged intriguer returned to the palace, tried to corrupt the loyalty of his daughter, and brought upon himself the punishment of his crimes. It is a peculiarity of the time that, the more remote an historian is from an event, the more he knows about it. Eutropius and Zosimus merely know that Fausta revealed her father’s plots to her husband; Zonaras, of the twelfth century, is able to tell us the whole story. Maximian, he says, persuaded his daughter to have the guards removed from the Imperial chamber at night. Then, telling the night-attendants that he wished to relate to Constantine a remarkable dream he had had, he entered the chamber and plunged his dagger into the sleeping figure on the bed. Rushing out to announce the fall of the tyrant, however, he found himself in face of Constantine, Fausta, and the guards. Fausta had been true to her husband, and it was “a vile eunuch” that Maximian had slain in the Emperor’s bed. Whatever truth there may be in this romance, we may accept the statement that Fausta betrayed his plots, and Maximian came to the end of his career. Zosimus sends him into exile, and makes him die a natural death at Tarsus. Lactantius, with a stronger sense of propriety, tells us that he strangled himself, and it is the general belief that Constantine did not permit him to leave Gaul alive.