After the retirement of Diocletian, ambitions, rivalries, and intrigues were not slow to make head; Maximian reappeared on the scene of empire, but only to speedily disappear (A.D.

310), leaving in his place his son Maxentius.

Constantius Chlorus had died A.D.306, and his son, Constantine, had immediately been proclaimed by his army Caesar and Augustus.

Galerius died A.D.311 and Constantine remained to dispute the mastery with Maxentius in the West, and in the East with Maximinus and Licinius, the last colleagues taken by Diocletian and Galerius.

On the 29th of October, A.D.312, after having gained several battles against Maxentius in Italy, at Milan, Brescia, and Verona, Constantine pursued and defeated him before Rome, on the borders of the Tiber, at the foot of the Milvian bridge; and the son of Maximian, drowned in the Tiber, left to the son of Constantins Chlorus the Empire of the West, to which that of the East was destined to be in a few years added, by the defeat and death of Licinius.