lted her
safety by a hasty flight, and, still accompanied by her mother Prisca,
they wandered above fifteen months through the provinces, concealed
in the disguise of plebeian habits. They were at length discovered at
Thessalonica; and as the sentence of their death was already pronounced,
they were immediately beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the sea.
The people gazed on the melancholy spectacle; but their grief and
indignation were suppressed by the terrors of a military guard. Such
was the unworthy fate of the wife and daughter of Diocletian. We lament
their misfortunes, we cannot discover their crimes; and whatever idea we
may justly entertain of the cruelty of Licinius, it remains a matter
of surprise that he was not contented with some more secret and decent
method of revenge.

The Roman world was now divided between Constantine and Licinius, the
former of whom was master of the West, and the latter of the East. It
might perhaps have been expected that the conquerors, fatigued with
civil war, and connected by a private as well as public alliance, would
have renounced, or at least would have suspended, any further designs
of ambition. And yet a year had scarcely elapsed after the death of
Maximin, before the victorious emperors turned their arms against each
other. The genius, the success, and the aspiring temper of Constantine,
may seem to mark him out as the aggressor; but the perfidious character
of Licinius justifies the most unfavorable suspicions, and by the faint
light which history reflects on this transaction, we may discover a
conspiracy fomented by his arts against the authority of his colleague.
Constantine had lately given his sister Anastasia in marriage to
Bassianus, a man of a considerable family and fortune, and had elevated
his new kinsman to the rank of Caesar. According to the system of
government instituted by Diocletian, Italy, and perhaps Africa, were
designed for his department in the empire. But the performance of the
promised favor was either attended with so much delay, or accompanied
with so many unequal conditions, that the fidelity of Bassianus was
alienated rather than secured by the honorable distinction which he had
obtained. His nomination had been ratified by the consent of Licinius;
and that artful prince, by the means of his emissaries, soon contrived
to enter into a secret and dangerous correspondence with the new Caesar,
to irritate his discontents, and to urge him to th