Maximinus II Daia Roman Emperor 308-312 A.D.
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Authentic Ancient Coin of:
Maximinus II 'Daia'- Roman Emperor: 308-313 A.D. -
Bronze Follis Nicomedia mint: 310-311 A.D.
Reference: RIC 66c (Nicomedia)
IMPCGALVALMAXIMINVSPFAVG - Laureate head right.
GENIOAVGVSTICMH Exe: SMNГ - Nude
Genius standing left, pouring out patera and holding cornucopia.
Maximinus II (Latin: Gaius
Valerius Galerius Maximinus Daia Augustus; c. 20 November 270
July or August 313), also known as Maximinus
Daia or Maximinus
Daza, was Roman
Emperor from 308
to 313. He became embroiled in the Civil
wars of the Tetrarchy between
rival claimants for control of the empire, in which he was defeated by Licinius.
A committed pagan, he engaged in one of the last persecutions of
Christians.
Early career
He was born of Dacian peasant
stock to the half sister of the emperor Galerius near
their family lands around Felix
Romuliana, a rural area then in the Danubian region of Moesia,
now Eastern
Serbia.
He rose to high distinction after joining the army.
In 305, his maternal uncle Galerius became
the eastern Augustus and adopted Maximinus, raising him to the rank of caesar (in
effect, the junior eastern Emperor), and granting him the government of Syria and Egypt.
Civil war
In 308, after the elevation of Licinius to Augustus,
Maximinus and Constantine were
declared filii Augustorum ("sons
of the Augusti"), but Maximinus probably started styling himself after
Augustus during a campaign against the Sassanids in
310. On the death of Galerius in 311, Maximinus divided the Eastern
Empire between Licinius and himself. When Licinius and Constantine began
to make common cause, Maximinus entered into a secret alliance with the
usurper Caesar Maxentius,
who controlled Italy. He came to an open rupture with Licinius in 313;
he summoned an army of 70,000 men but sustained a crushing defeat at the Battle
of Tzirallum in
the neighbourhood of Heraclea
Perinthus on April
30. He fled, first toNicomedia and
afterwards to Tarsus,
where he died the following August. His death was variously ascribed "to
despair, to poison, and to the divine justice".
Persecution of
Christians
Maximinus has a bad name in Christian annals
for renewing their persecution after the publication of the Edict
of Toleration by Galerius, acting in response to the
demands of various urban authorities asking to expel Christians. In one rescriptreplying
to a petition made by the inhabitants of Tyre,
transcribed by Eusebius
of Caesarea, Maximinus
expounds an unusual pagan orthodoxy, explaining that it is through "the
kindly care of the gods" that one could hope for good crops, health, and
the peaceful sea, and that not being the case, one should blame "the
destructive error of the empty vanity of those impious men [that]
weighed down the whole world with shame". In one extant inscription (CIL III.12132,
from Arycanda)
from the cities of Lycia and Pamphylia asking
for the interdiction of the Christian cult, Maximinus replied, in
another inscription, by expressing his hope that "may those [...] who,
after being freed from [...] those by-ways [...] rejoice [as] snatched
from a grave illness".
After the victory of Constantine over Maxentius, however, Maximinus
wrote to the Praetorian Prefect Sabinus that it was better to "recall
our provincials to the worship of the gods rather by exhortations and
flatteries".[6] Eventually,
on the eve of his clash with Licinius, he accepted Galerius' edict;
after being defeated by Licinius, shortly before his death at Tarsus, he
issued an edict of tolerance on his own, granting Christians the rights
of assembling, of building churches, and the restoration of their
confiscated properties.
Eusebius on
Maximinus
The Christian writer Eusebius claims
that Maximinus was consumed by avarice and superstition. He also
allegedly lived a highly dissolute lifestyle:
And he went to such an excess of folly and drunkenness that his mind
was deranged and crazed in his carousals; and he gave commands when
intoxicated of which he repented afterward when sober. He suffered
no one to surpass him in debauchery and profligacy, but made himself
an instructor in wickedness to those about him, both rulers and
subjects. He urged on the army to live wantonly in every kind of
revelry and intemperance, and encouraged the governors and generals
to abuse their subjects with rapacity and covetousness, almost as if
they were rulers with him.
Why need we relate the licentious, shameless deeds of the man, or
enumerate the multitude with whom he committed adultery? For he
could not pass through a city without continually corrupting women
and ravishing virgins.
According to Eusebius, only Christians resisted him.
For the men endured fire and sword and crucifixion and wild beasts
and the depths of the sea, and cutting off of limbs, and burnings,
and pricking and digging out of eyes, and mutilations of the entire
body, and besides these, hunger and mines and bonds. In all they
showed patience in behalf of religion rather than transfer to idols
the reverence due to God.
And the women were not less manly than the men in behalf of the
teaching of the Divine Word, as they endured conflicts with the men,
and bore away equal prizes of virtue. And when they were dragged
away for corrupt purposes, they surrendered their lives to death
rather than their bodies to impurity.
He refers to one high-born Christian woman who rejected his advances. He
exiled her and seized all of her wealth and assets. Eusebius
does not give the girl a name, but Tyrannius
Rufinus calls her
"Dorothea," and writes that she fled to Arabia.
This story may have evolved into the legend of Dorothea
of Alexandria. Caesar
Baronius identified
the girl in Eusebius' account with Catherine
of Alexandria, but the Bollandists rejected
this theory.
See also
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