Maxentius and His Ill-Fated Reign ~ The last pagan emperor to rule from Rome or a usurper and "inhuman beast"?

Background: The four original Tetrarchs: Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius and Constantius I.
Foreground left: Constnatine the Great. Foreground right: Maxentius.

Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius, more commonly known as simply Maxentius, ruled in Rome as a usurper from AD 306 until AD 312. His reign came to an abrupt end when he drowned in the Tiber after being defeated at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge by Constantine the Great.

As usurpers go, Maxentius had some impressive familial connections. He was the son of the emperor Maximian Herculius, who was raised to the status of co-Augustus by Diocletian in AD 286. He was also the son-in-law of the emperor Galerius, whom Diocletian would create Caesar in AD 293 and name as his successor as primary Augustus in AD 305. Finally, he was the brother-in-law of Constantius I, the Caesar of the West, who had married his half-sister, Theodora, the daughter of Maximian. Constantius I was, of course, the father of Constantine the Great.

Though he was connected to three imperial families within Diocletian’s Tetrarchy, Maxentius was apparently not well-liked by anyone. Aurelius Victor, a likely pagan writing in the mid-4th century about 50 years after the events, mentions that Maxentius “was dear to no one at all, not even to his father or father-in-law, Galerius.” [See Epitome De Caesaribus, Chapter 40]

Agreeing with this assessment is Lactantius, a well-educated convert to Christianity who served both at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia and later under Constantine as tutor for the latter’s son, Crispus. In his polemical work of history entitled, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Lactantius gives the following reason for why neither Maximian nor Galerius had any love for Maxentius:

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“Now Maximian Herculius had a son, Maxentius, married to the daughter of Galerius, a man of bad and mischievous dispositions and so proud and stubborn withal, that he would never pay the wonted obeisance either to his father or father-in-law, and on that account he was hated by them both.” [Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Chapter 18]

Later, in the same chapter, Lactantius elaborates on the above, putting words directly into the mouth of Galerius as part of a fascinating dialogue in which Galerius and Diocletian discuss the immediate future of the empire and who shall succeed to the imperial college upon the resignation of Diocletian and Maximian:

“What is to be done?” said Galerius, “for that Maxentius deserves not the office. He who, while yet a private man, has treated me with contumely, how will he act when once he obtains power?”

Diocletian and Galerius eventually ended up setting aside both Maxentius and Constantine, young men with hereditary claims to the empire, in favor of two lackeys of Galerius, namely, Maximin Daia and Severus. This decision would have repercussions which would eventually result in the complete dissolution of the Tetrarchy. Less than a year after this decision, Constantine would be declared emperor by his father’s army at York upon the death of Constantius I in Britain in AD 306. This act was eventually ratified by Galerius, making Constantine a formal member of the Tetrarchy which now included Galerius and Severus as the Augusti, or senior emperors, and Maximin Daia and Constantine as Caesars, or junior emperors.

On the outside looking in, Maxentius began seeking ways to acquire that which he felt had been wrongfully denied to him. Zosimus, a pagan historian writing in the early 6th century, claims that Maxentius was incensed at the good fortune of Constantine and decided to take matters into his own hands. Taking advantage of the newly imposed and extremely unpopular taxes of Galerius on the City of Rome, Maxentius plotted a coup with the assistance of two tribunes of the Praetorian Guard, and a swine merchant. The conspirators assassinated the prefect of Rome, Abellius, and had Maxentius declared Emperor. [See Zosimus, New History, Book 2, Chapter 9]

A bronze follis showing the
fleshy profile of Maxentius.
Click the image to enlarge.

Angered at this usurpation, Galerius ordered his creature Severus to deal with Maxentius. But Maxentius had an ace up his sleeve. He recalled his father to Rome—the retired Maximian Herculius who had ruled as Diocletian’s colleague for twenty years. Maximian had retired unwillingly and had been cooling his heels in southern Italy, so as soon as this opportunity arose for him to regain the purple, he responded eagerly. When Severus arrived in the vicinity of Rome, his army promptly defected to their previous patron and Severus was handed over to be killed. A further campaign by Galerius himself ended in similar ignominy, as the Eastern Augustus fled from Italy before his army could defect to Maxentius and Maximian as well.

Fortune had certainly favored Maxentius to this point, but his situation was still precarious. Not helping matters was that neither he nor his father were men of particularly high character. Maximian soon tired of playing second fiddle and attempted regain his preeminent position by a public denunciation of his upstart son. Lactantius describes the scene:

“He called an assembly of the people of Rome and of the soldiers, as if he had been to make an harangue on the calamitous situation of public affairs. After having spoken much on that subject, he stretched his hands towards his son, charged him as author of all ills and prime cause of the calamities of the state, and then tore the purple from his shoulders. Maxentius, thus stripped, leaped headlong from the tribunal and was received into the arms of the soldiers. Their rage and clamor confounded the unnatural old man and, like another Tarquin the Proud, he was driven from Rome.” [Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Chapter XXVIII]

Though the soldiers and the people resoundingly rejected the father on this occasion, it wasn’t long before they wearied of the son as well. Zosimus commented that Maxentius “conducted himself with cruelty and licentiousness towards all the inhabitants of Italy, and even to Rome itself.” [New History, Book II, Chapter 14]. Eutropius, writing in the later 4th century, says that Maxentius was “spreading death among the nobility by every kind of cruelty.” [Breviarium, Book X, Chapter 4]

Maxentius’s unpopularity at home probably excited a revolt of the African provinces against his rule under an elderly usurper named Alexander in AD 308. As the loss of Africa meant the cutting off of Rome’s grain supply, Maxentius was forced to act, sending an army to crush the rebellion in short order. But he won no love by this victory, going overboard in punishing Africa, as reported by Aurelius Victor:

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“Maxentius, the inhuman beast, made more abominable by his excessive lust, had ordered Carthage, the glory of the world, along with the loveliest parts of Africa to be ravaged, pillaged and burned.” [De Caesaribus, Chapter 40]

Later in the same chapter, Aurelius Victor gives another reason why the people and the nobility came to despise Maxentius:

“He had oppressed them so much that on one occasion he permitted the praetorians to massacre the common people, and was the first, through a most reprehensible edict issued under the pretext of obligatory state taxation, to compel the senators and farmers to contribute money for him to squander.”

An anonymous Latin panegyricist provides a few more details, claiming that Maxentius had used the wealth of Rome to hire henchmen whose purpose was to strip every Roman citizen of his goods, saying:

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“The riches collected from the entire world over the course of 1,060 years that monster had given to gangs of men hired to rob citizens. What is more, indiscriminately granting other men’s wives and the heads of the innocent along with their possessions he bound the murderers in devotion even to death; all who either plotted against him or openly attempted anything for their freedom he afflicted with punishments and subdued by armed force. And while he enjoyed the majesty of the city which he had taken, he filled all Italy with thugs hired for every sort of villainy.” [Nixon: In Praise of the Later Roman Emperors]

Considering Maxentius's misrule, as reported in a multiplicity of ancient sources, it is perhaps not surprising that Constantine was aroused against Maxentius, and that the senate and the people of Rome celebrated when Constantine drew near in AD 312. As reported by Eusebius who knew him personally, Constantine could no longer endure the oppression of Maxentius, saying, “that life was without enjoyment to him as long as he saw the imperial city thus afflicted.” [Eusebius, Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine, Book I, Chapter 26].

What followed was Constantine’s epic campaign to re-take Rome—a campaign that succeeded where those of Severus and Galerius had failed. This effort culminated with the dramatic Battle of the Milvian Bridge on October 28, AD 312.

In more modern times, attempts have been made to rehabilitate the memory of Maxentius. Some have sought to eulogize him as the last pagan emperor to rule from Rome. He is also occasionally lauded as the builder of the so-called Basilica of Maxentius in Rome and is given credit for rebuilding parts of the city that had fallen to neglect while Diocletian ruled the empire from Nicomedia. Others have found reason to praise Maxentius following the amazing discovery of what may have been his imperial insignia, saying that they represented, "the greatness of Maxentius, buried by his loyal people to save something that belonged to him." 

The imperial insignia discovered in Rome in 2006.
Borrowed from: Romeinen Weblog.

Given what the ancients, both pagan and Christian, had to say about him however, it seems clear that the only things truly great about Maxentius were his vices and his atrocities.