Claudius gained a crushing victory over the Goths, whose discomfiture was completed by disease in the year 269. And his successor, Aurelian, in a reign of less than five years, put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain from the Roman usurpers, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, had erected in the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire. The murder of Aurelian in the East (January 275) led to a curious revival of the authority of the senate. During an interregnum of eight months the ancient assembly at Rome governed with the consent of the army, and appeared to regain with the election of Tacitus, one of their members, all their ancient prerogatives. Their authority expired, however, with the death of his successor, Probus, who delivered the empire once more from the invasions of the barbarians, and succumbed to the too common fate of assassination in August 282. Carus, who was elected in his place, maintained the reputation of the Roman arms in the East; but his supposed death by lightning, by delivering the sceptre into the hands of his sons Carinus and Numerian (December 25, 283), once more placed the Roman world at the mercy of profligacy and licentiousness. A year later, the election of the Emperor Diocletian (September 17, 284) founded a new era in the history and fortunes of the empire. It was the artful policy of Diocletian to destroy the last vestiges of the ancient constitution. Dividing his unwieldly power among three other associates--Maximian, a rough, brutal soldier, who ranked as Augustus; and Galerius and Constantius, who bore the inferior titles of Cæsar--the emperor removed the centre of government by gradual steps from Rome. Diocletian and Maximian held their courts in the provinces, and the authority of the senators was destroyed by spoliation and death. _VI.--Reign of the Six Emperors_ For twenty-one years Diocletian held sway, establishing, with the assistance of his associates, the might of the Roman arms in Britain, Africa, Egypt, and Persia; and then, on May 1, 305, in a spacious plain in the neighborhood of Nicomedia, divested himself of the purple and abdicated the throne. On the same day at Milan, Maximian reluctantly made his resignation of the imperial dignity.