Lactantius The Deaths of the Persecutors
Lactantius full name Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius ca. 260-340 C.E. served as a professor of rhetoric in Diocletian's imperial capital of Nicomedia mentioned in the text and later as private tutor to the Emperor Constantine's son Crispus. Lactantius is best known for his apologetic work Divine Institutes, in which he defended the intellectual and philosophical foundations of Christianity. The Deaths of the Persecutors recounts the horrible and From Lactantius Minor Works, trans. Sr. Mary...
Book One
22 1 The empire, however, was not left ungoverned. Arrayed in his father's own purple robe, Constantine emerged from his father's halls, showing to one and all that, as though revived, his father reigned through him. Then he led the cortege, and with his father's friends about him, he formed the escort for his father. Enormous crowds of people and military guards, some before and some following behind, attended the Godbeloved in full state. All of them honored the Thriceblessed with...
The Origin of Constantine
Although this brief life of Constantine survives only as incorporated into a later sixth-century text, it may, in fact, be the earliest biographical record of the first Christian emperor. References to Constantine's Christian enthusiasm were inserted by a later Christian editor, taken mainly from the early fifth-century History against the Pagans by Orosius, a disciple of Augustine. The original text probably ended with the defeat of Constantine's co-emperor Licinius and the founding of...
Chapter 11 Late Antiquity
The mother of Galerius was a worshiper of the gods of the mountains. Since she was a very superstitious woman, she offered sacrificial repasts almost every day and made donations of the meals to her countrymen. Christians kept away, and while she would be dining with her fellow-pagans, they would redouble fasts and prayers. Therefore, she conceived a hatred for them and, with womanly complaints, she prevailed upon her son, no less superstitious, to get rid of these men. Therefore, secret...