ROMAN EMBASSIES TO CONSTANTINE. 179 Saone; took some boats at Chalons; and with his legions so unexpectedly arrived at Arles that Maximian considered it his only safety to take refuge in Marseilles. Constantine followed and attacked the city. The garrison gave up Maximian, who, like Severus, was allowed the choice of killing himself or of being put to death. Galerius died in the month of May, A. D. 311. Four of the six emperors now remained, and another apportionment of the eastern dominions was made between Licinius and Maximin. With the latter Maxentius formed an alliance which drew Constantine and Licinius together on the other side. "Maxentius was cruel, rapacious, and profligate,” “a tyrant as contemptible as he was odious." In him it seemed as though the times of Commodus and Elagabalus were returned. In A. D. 308, Marcellus was elected bishop of Rome. "This new bishop wished to avail himself of the calm which religion enjoyed, at the commencement of his pontificate, to ordain rules and re-establish in the church the discipline which the troubles [of the Galerian persecution] had altered. But his severity rendered him odious to the people, and caused divisions among the faithful. Discord degenerated into sedition, and the quarrel terminated in murder." Maxentius blamed Marcellus as being the chief cause of these disturbances, and condemned him to groom post-horses in a stable on the high-road." 66 After about nine months of this service, some priests suc They concealed him in ceeded in carrying Marcellus off. the house of a Roman lady named cers would have taken him again, the faithful assembled under arms to defend him. Maxentius ordered out his guards and dispersed them. He then commanded that Lucilla's house should be converted into a stable, and obliged Marcellus to continue in the office of groom. In January, A. D. 310, Marcellus died, and was succeeded by Eusebius, whom Maxentius banished to Sicily. He died there after a few months, and was succeeded by Melchiades, in the same year, A. D. 310. In A. D. 311, Melchiades wrote a letter to Constantine, and sent it by a delegation of bishops to him at Treves in Gaul, inviting him to come to the relief of the church, and the conquest of Rome. Constantine deliberated, and Maxentius became more and more tyrannical. In A. D. 312, an embassy from Rome went to Constantine at Arles, and in the name of the Senate and people requested him to deliver the city from the despotism of the tyrant. Constantine gladly embraced the opportunity thus offered, and quickly set out toward Rome.14 At Turin he met and destroyed a strong body of the troops of Maxentius; and at Verona after, a considerable siege of the city, and a hard-fought battle in the field, which, beginning in the afternoon, continued through the whole of the following night, he vanquished quite a formidable army. Between Verona and Rome there was nothing to check the march of Constantine. Maxentius drew out his army, and met Constantine on the banks of the Tiber, nine miles from Rome. He crossed the Tiber and set his army in battle array, with the river in his rear. The battle was joined. Maxentius was soon defeated; and his army, broken to pieces, attempted to escape. In the confusion and by the terrible onslaught of Constantine's veterans, thousands of the soldiers of Maxentius were crowded into the river and drowned. Maxentius, endeavoring to escape on his horse across the Milvian bridge, was crowded off into the river, and being clothed with heavy armor, was drowned, October 28, A. D. 312. In the month of March, 313, Constantine and Licinius. met in Milan. Constantine's sister Constantia was given in marriage to Licinius as a bond of friendship between the 14 De Cormenin, "History of the Popes," Marcellus, Eusebius, and Melchiades; Bower, "History of the Popes," Liberius, par. 16; Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," chap. xiv, par. 20. THE EDICT OF MILAN. 181 two emperors. Maximin, on hearing of the death of Maxentius, declared war against Licinius, and started with an army from Syria toward Europe. He crossed the Bosphorus, captured Byzantium, marched onward and took Heraclea. By this time Licinius himself had arrived within eighteen miles of that place, and April 30 a battle was fought, and Maximin was defeated. He himself, however, escaped, and in the month of the following August, his life ended in a manner not certainly known. The edict of Galerius restoring to the Christians the right to worship had had little or no effect upon Maximin. In his dominions and by his direction the persecutions had continued. Before Constantine and Licinius had separated, after their meeting at Milan in March, they jointly issued the celebrated edict of Milan, which acknowledged the right for which Christianity had contended for two hundred and fifty weary and painful years, by confirming "to each individual of the Roman world the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion." That edict is as follows: "Wherefore, as I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, came under favorable auspices to Milan, and took under consideration all affairs that pertained to the public benefit and welfare, these things among the rest appeared to us to be most advantageous and profitable to all. "We have resolved among the first things to ordain those matters by which reverence and worship to the Deity might be exhibited. That is, how we may grant likewise to the Christians, and to all, the free choice to follow that mode of worship which they may wish. That whatsoever divinity and celestial power may exist, may be propitious to us and to all that live under our government. Therefore, we have decreed the following ordinance as our will, with a salutary and most correct intention, that no freedom at all shall be refused to Christians, to follow or to keep their observances or worship. But that to each one power be granted to devote his mind to that worship which he may think adapted to himself. That the Deity may in all things exhibit to us his accustomed favor and kindness. "It was just and consistent that we should write that this was our pleasure. That all exceptions respecting the Christians being completely removed, which were contained in the former epistle that we sent to your fidelity, and whatever measures were wholly sinister and foreign to our mildness, that these should be altogether annulled; and now that each one of the Christians may freely and without molestation pursue and follow that course and worship which he has proposed to himself: which, indeed, we have resolved to communicate most fully to your care and diligence, that you may know we have granted liberty and full freedom to the Christians, to observe their own mode of worship; which as your fidelity understands absolutely granted to them by us, the privilege is also granted to others to pursue that worship and religion they wish. Which it is obvious is consistent with the peace and tranquillity of our times; that each may have the privilege to select and to worship whatsoever divinity he pleases. But this has been done by us, that we might not appear in any manner to detract anything from any manner of religion, or any mode of worship." 21 If all the professors of Christianity had been content with this victory, and had held the tide of events steadily to the principles of this edict,--the principles for which Christianity had so long contended, -the miseries of the ages to come would never have been. Yet in order that we may enter upon the direct history of the perversion of this victory, in such a way that it may be best understood, it is essential that we trace two other lines of events that culminate in Constantine, and which gave the most material force to that important series of movements which made the papacy a success. 21"Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History," book x, chap. v. CHAPTER VII. ANCIENT SUN WORSHIP. N the history of mankind no form of idolatry has been more widely practiced than that of the worship of the sun. It may well be described as universal; for there is scarcely a nation in which the worship of the sun in some form has not found a place. In Egypt, the oldest nation of historic times, under the names of Ra and Osiris, with half a dozen other forms; in Phenicia and the land of Canaan, under the names of Baal, Melkarth, Shamas, Adoni, Moloch, and many other forms; in Syria, Tammuz and Elagabalus ; among the Moabites, under the names of Baal-peor and Chemosh; among the Babylonians and Assyrians, under the names of Bel and Shamas; among the Medes and Persians and other kindred nations, under the name of Ormuz and Mithra; among the ancient Indians, under the name of Mitra, Mithra, or Mithras; in Greece, under Adonis, Apollo, Bacchus, and Hercules; in Phrygia, under the term Atys; and in Rome, under Bacchus, Apollo, and Hercules; -in "The most sacred 1 This is so among the Hindus of India, even to this day. and the most universally used - even to the present day of all Vedic prayers is that composed in the Gayatri meter, and thence called Gayatri, or, as addressed to the vivifying Sun-god, Savitri Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the Divine vivifier; may he enlighten our understanding.'" "Turning toward the Eastern sky, he repeats the Gayatri or Savitri. . . This prayer is the most sacred of all Vedic utterances, and, like the Lord's prayer among Christians, . . must always among Hindus take precedence of all other forms of supplication. The next division of the service is called Upasthana (or Mitro-pasthana) because the worshiper abandons his sitting posture, stands erect with his face toward the rising sun, and invokes that luminary under the name of |