friendly to them, and Licinius had never been an active persecutor;
whereas Maximin was a cruel and malicious enemy, and Maxentius,
standing as he did for Rome, could not but be hostile to them. So
Maxentius was to crush Constantine, and Maximin to deal with Licinius.
Constantine did not wait to be crushed. Breaking up his camp at Colmar, he pushed rapidly across the Alps. In a cavalry fight near Turin, the Gauls overcame the formidable cataphracti—horse and rider clad in mail—of Maxentius. Then straight to Verona, where in Ruricius Pompeianus he found a foeman worthy of his steel. Right well did Pompeianus defend Verona; and if he escaped from the siege, it was only to gather an army for its relief. Then another great battle. Pompeianus was killed, Verona surrendered, and Constantine made straight for Rome. Still Maxentius gave no sign. He had baffled invasion twice before by sitting still in Rome, and Constantine could not have besieged the city with far inferior forces. At the last moment Maxentius came out a few miles, and offered battle (28 Oct. 312) at Saxa Rubra. A skilful flank march of Constantine forced him to fight with the Tiber behind him, and the Mulvian bridge for his retreat. His Numidians fled before the Gaulish cavalry, the Praetorian Guard fell fighting where it stood, and the rest of the army was driven headlong into the river. Maxentius perished in the waters, and Constantine was master of the West.
This short campaign—the most brilliant feat of arms since Aurelian’s time—was an epoch for Constantine himself. To it belongs the story of the Shining Cross. Somewhere between Colmar and Saxa Rubra he saw in the sky one afternoon a bright cross with the words Hoc vince, and the army saw it too; and in a dream that night Christ bade him take it for his standard. So Constantine himself told Eusebius, and so Eusebius recorded it in 338; and there is no reason to suspect either the one or the other of deceit. The evidence of the army is in any case not worth much; but that of Lactantius[1] in 314 and of the heathen Nazarius in 321 puts it beyond reasonable doubt that something of the sort did happen. But we need not therefore set it dowilUfr a miracle. The cross observed may very well have been a halo, such as Whymper saw when he came down after the accident on the Matterhorn in 1865—three crosses for his three lost companions. The restus no more than can be accounted for by Constantine’s imagination, inflamed as it must have been by the intense anxiety of the unequal contest. Yet after all, the cross was not an exclusively Christian symbol. The action was ambiguous, like most of Constantine’s actions at this period of his life. He was quite dear about monotheism; but he was not equally dear about the difference between Christ and the Unconquered Sun. The Gauls had fought of old beneath the Sun-god’s cross of light: so while the Christians
- ↑ Lactantius is not discredited by the similar vision he gives to Licinius. Why should not Licinius take a hint from Constantine, and have a vision of his own?
