CHAP. XIV.
morse of his repeated crimes, he strangled himself with his own hands. After he had lost the assistance, and disdained the moderate counsels of Diocletian, the second period of his active life was a series of public calamities and personal mortifications, which were terminated, in about three years, by an ignominious death. lie deserved his fate ; but we should find more reason to applaud the humanity of Constantine, if he had spared an old man, the benefactor of his father, and the father of his wife. During the whole of this melancholy transaction, it appears that Fausta sacrificed the sentiments of nature to her conjugal duties[1].
Death of Galerius.
A.D. 311. May
The last years of Galerius were less shameful and
unfortunate; and though he had filled with more glorv
the subordniate station of Caesar than the superior
rank of Augustus, he preserved, till the moment of his
death, the first place among the princes of the Roman
world. He survived his retreat from Italy about four
years; and wisely relinquishing his views of universal
empire, he devoted the remainder of his life to the
enjoyment of pleasure, and to the execution of some
works of public utility, among which we may distinguish the discharging into the Danube the superfluous waters of the lake Pelso, and the cutting down
the immense forests that encompassed it; an operation
worthy of a monarch, since it gave an extensive country to the agriculture of his Pannonian subjects[2]. His
death was occasioned by a very painful and lingering
- ↑ Zosiraus, 1. ii. p. 82 ; Euineiiius in Panegyr. Vet. vii. 16 — 21. The latter of these has undoubtedly represented the whole affair in the most favourable light for his sovereign. Yet even from this partial narrative we may conclude, that the repeated clemency of Constaniine, and the reiterated treasons of Maximian, as they are described by Lactantius, (de M. P. c. 29, 30.) and copied by the moderns, are destitute of any historical foundation.
- ↑ Aurelius Victor, c. 40. But that lake was situated on the Upper Pan- non:a, near the borders of Noricum; and the province of Valeria (a name which the wife of Galerius gave to the drained country; undoubtedly lay between the Drave and the Danube. Sextus Rufus, c. 9. 1 should therefore suspect that Victor has confounded the lake Pelso with the Volocean marches, or, as they are now called, the lake Sabaton. It is placed in the heart of Valeria, and its present extent is not less than twelve Hungarian miles (about seventy English) in length, and two in breadth. See Severini Pannonia, I. i, c. 9.
