ed of the purple and of his life.
As soon as this obstacle was removed, the tranquillity of the Roman
world was easily restored. The successive defeats of Licinius had
ruined his forces, but they had displayed his courage and abilities. His
situation was almost desperate, but the efforts of despair are sometimes
formidable, and the good sense of Constantine preferred a great and
certain advantage to a third trial of the chance of arms. He consented
to leave his rival, or, as he again styled Licinius, his friend and
brother, in the possession of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt; but
the provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece, were
yielded to the Western empire, and the dominions of Constantine
now extended from the confines of Caledonia to the extremity of
Peloponnesus. It was stipulated by the same treaty, that three royal
youths, the sons of emperors, should be called to the hopes of the
succession. Crispus and the young Constantine were soon afterwards
declared Caesars in the West, while the younger Licinius was invested
with the same dignity in the East. In this double proportion of honors,
the conqueror asserted the superiority of his arms and power. [92]

[Footnote 90: Zosimus, l. ii. p. 92, 93. Anonym. Valesian. p. 713. The
Epitomes furnish some circumstances; but they frequently confound the
two wars between Licinius and Constantine.]

[Footnote 91: Petrus Patricius in Excerpt. Legat. p. 27. If it should be
thought that signifies more properly a son-in-law, we might conjecture
that Constantine, assuming the name as well as the duties of a father,
had adopted his younger brothers and sisters, the children of Theodora.
But in the best authors sometimes signifies a husband, sometimes
a father-in-law, and sometimes a kinsman in general. See Spanheim,
Observat. ad Julian. Orat. i. p. 72.]

[Footnote 92: Zosimus, l. ii. p. 93. Anonym. Valesian. p. 713.
Eutropius, x. v. Aurelius Victor, Euseb. in Chron. Sozomen, l. i. c. 2.
Four of these writers affirm that the promotion of the Caesars was
an article of the treaty. It is, however, certain, that the younger
Constantine and Licinius were not yet born; and it is highly probable
that the promotion was made the 1st of March, A. D. 317. The treaty
had probably stipulated that the two Caesars might be created by the
western, and one only by the eastern emperor; but each of them reserved
to himself the choice of the persons.]

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