m to prevent the ignominious contest; and as he had held
the sceptre with glory, he would have resigned it without disgrace.

After the elevation of Constantius and Galerius to the rank of Augusti,
two new Csars were required to supply their place, and to complete the
system of the Imperial government. Diocletian, was sincerely desirous
of withdrawing himself from the world; he considered Galerius, who had
married his daughter, as the firmest support of his family and of the
empire; and he consented, without reluctance, that his successor should
assume the merit as well as the envy of the important nomination. It was
fixed without consulting the interest or inclination of the princes of
the West. Each of them had a son who was arrived at the age of manhood,
and who might have been deemed the most natural candidates for the
vacant honor. But the impotent resentment of Maximian was no longer to
be dreaded; and the moderate Constantius, though he might despise the
dangers, was humanely apprehensive of the calamities, of civil war.
The two persons whom Galerius promoted to the rank of Caesar, were much
better suited to serve the views of his ambition; and their principal
recommendation seems to have consisted in the want of merit or personal
consequence. The first of these was Daza, or, as he was afterwards
called, Maximin, whose mother was the sister of Galerius. The
unexperienced youth still betrayed, by his manners and language, his
rustic education, when, to his own astonishment, as well as that of the
world, he was invested by Diocletian with the purple, exalted to the
dignity of Caesar, and intrusted with the sovereign command of Egypt
and Syria. At the same time, Severus, a faithful servant, addicted to
pleasure, but not incapable of business, was sent to Milan, to receive,
from the reluctant hands of Maximian, the Caesarian ornaments, and
the possession of Italy and Africa. According to the forms of the
constitution, Severus acknowledged the supremacy of the western
emperor; but he was absolutely devoted to the commands of his benefactor
Galerius, who, reserving to himself the intermediate countries from the
confines of Italy to those of Syria, firmly established his power
over three fourths of the monarchy. In the full confidence that the
approaching death of Constantius would leave him sole master of the
Roman world, we are assured that he had arranged in his mind a long
succession of future princes, and that he me