In A.C. 313 the Emperor Maximin fought the Emperor Licinius; but his forces were defeated, and he soon afterwards died. Some ten years or so later Constantine went to war with his only remaining rival, Licinius, defeated him, and became sole emperor, A.C. 324. That despite his great qualities as a ruler the character of Constantine was not perfect, can be easily seen from the fact that, not content with executing the Emperor Licinius after accepting his submission, he murdered the young Licinius; a boy certainly not over twelve years of age, and according to some authorities two or three years younger than that. He also put his own son Crispus to death, and other relations as well. We are told that Constantine was so tortured by the memory of these and other crimes that he applied to the priests of the Gods of Rome for absolution, but that they bravely said that there was no absolution for such sins, whereupon this worshipper of the Sun-God turned to his friends the Christians and they gave him what he desired.[44] This statement seems somewhat improbable, however, as one would imagine that the Pagan priests, when called upon by one who was Pontifex Maximus and therefore their spiritual superior as well as the supreme emperor, would not have scrupled to invent some purifying rite--if they had none such--warranted to blot out the stain of every crime and thoroughly appease offended heaven. However this may have been, these terrible crimes of Constantine, all committed many years after his alleged conversion to our faith, show how badly advised we are to so needlessly go out of our way to claim as a Christian one who refused to enter the Christian Church till he was dying and possibly no longer master of himself. It is said that this refusal of his to be baptised till he was weak and dying and surrounded by Church officials who would perhaps have spread the report that he had been baptised even if they had not then at last been able to induce him to take the decisive step, was due, not to want of belief, but to excess of belief; Constantine's idea being that the longer he put off the rite in question, the more crimes would it wash out. Or, in other words, that delay would enable him to sin with impunity a little longer. This may possibly have been the case, but it should at the same time be borne in mind that whether Constantine called him Apollo or Christ, it seems probable that it was the Sun-God to whom he referred. For everything tends to show that this astute emperor, who so naturally wished to establish and mould a religion which all his subjects of whatever race or nationality might be reasonably expected to become in time willing to accept, acted during his reign as supreme ruler of the Roman World, if not from first to last, as if the Christ were but another conception of the Sun-God he was brought up to worship as Apollo and all countries venerated under some name or other.