Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, episode 134, and then there were two.

When Constantine defeated Maxentius in the autumn of 312 AD, the question of who would rule

the Western Empire was settled for a generation, and it would not be until after the death of

Constantine in 337 that it would be raised again. But in the east, the picture was still

cloudy, and it would take another decade of on-again, off-again civil war to clear things

up. As it stood on the morning after Constantine's

triumph, there were two men vying for power in the east, Maximinus Daya and Lykineus.

The two rival Augusta hated each other. Maximinus thought Lykineus an unworthy usurper, and Lykineus

thought Maximinus a British tyrant. It would not take long for the tense peace the two men had

agreed to at the Hellaspont 311 AD to devolve into open war. Following the summit at the Hellaspont,

Maximinus Daya took up residence in Nicomedia, which had become the de facto capital for whoever

was the senior eastern Augustus, which Maximinus most assuredly considered himself to be. He immediately

set himself to the task of consolidating his power base, by issuing edicts, lessening the

tax burden for the citizens of Asia Minor. He already had a firm grip on the far east, but the

provinces of Anatolia were new territory for Maximinus, and he wanted to make sure everyone's

first impression of him was a good one. And, indeed, it was. Everyone likes a tax break.

But this initial generosity was followed up by the return of a policy that just about everyone

had been glad to see retired once and for all. The great persecution.

Maximinus was one of those few people in the empire who had been dismayed when Galerius pulled

the plug on the persecution, as he was in that hardcore minority of advisors who had always wanted

to push the persecution harder and further. Now that he ruled in his own right, Maximinus had no

intention of letting the wish of some dead emperor get in his way, and just months after Galerius had

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