LICINIUS (Valerius Licinianus Licinius), ROMAN EMPEROR. - Born around the year 250 in Dacia Ripensis, that is, in the region south of the Danube which Aurelian had wished to call thus after having had to abandon the true Dacia with its too poorly defended borders north of the great river. It is not at all improbable that his parents were peasants; in his time it was possible to rise very high from the lowest social strata; the most ordinary path was the military. L. was a soldier, and his good fortune placed him near another rough man destined for the highest pinnacles, Galerius, also from Dacia Ripensis and of modest origins (they called him Armentarius) and summoned by Diocletian to the dignity of Caesar. Their shared life led to friendship; having become Caesar, Galerius wanted his old tent-companion with him. The latter was usefully at his side in the difficult war against the Persians, which began badly but then was so fortunate that it could be celebrated with Galerius's triumphal arch at Thessalonica.
After the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian (305), Galerius became Augustus, and when shortly thereafter the other Augustus, Constantius Chlorus, died, he seemed to wish to elevate his old comrade-in-arms to be his colleague. But the matter did not succeed for the moment, because the troops of Britain and Gaul wanted as emperor the son of their deceased Augustus: the young Constantine. This return to the tradition of dynastic successions, which broke the rules laid down by Diocletian for the construction of his tetrarchy, led to the other usurpation of Maxentius, son of Maximian, and to the resumption of the purple by the old Maximian, who had very reluctantly obeyed Diocletian's order to abdicate. The tetrarchy had thus become a hexarchy, and it was necessary for Diocletian to consent to leave his hermitage at Salona and to preside at Carnuntum over a meeting intended to restore order to the troubled Empire. Diocletian still had enough energy and authority to oblige Maximian to abdicate and to proceed with the appointment of a new Augustus in place of Flavius Severus, who had meanwhile died. The two irregulars Constantine and Maxentius were not taken into consideration, and there was appointed
Augustus L. (November 11, 308). The solution, evidently advocated by Galerius, violated the principles already laid down by Diocletian himself, because it disregarded the rights of the Caesar Maximinus Daia, and proposed to him a "homo novus" as L. Not to mention that, when it came to putting into effect the resolutions of the conference of Carnuntum, L., who was supposed to take possession of the entire West, could do nothing against Maxentius and Constantine, and had to content himself with exercising his powers in a very restricted zone between the Alps and the Danube.
A few years later Galerius died (311), and Maximinus Daia, the Caesar of the farthest eastern provinces, believed the moment had come to make up for the rebuff suffered at Carnuntum, and, having proclaimed himself Augustus, rushed to take possession of Asia Minor, bringing his army as far as the Asian shores of the Bosphorus. L. had to resign himself to recognizing his possession of all the Asian provinces and of Egypt, managing to keep Thrace and the Balkan peninsula for himself. Constantine meanwhile with the battle of Saxa Rubra put an end to the Italo-African Empire of Maxentius (October 28, 312), and L., who could have been a friend neither of Maxentius nor of Maximinus Daia, drew close to the victor, met with him at Milan, married his sister and issued with him the edict of freedom for Christianity.
Returning to his part of the Empire, L. found that Maximinus Daia had crossed the Bosphorus and had occupied Byzantium and Heraclea. War could no longer be avoided, and indeed fighting took place in Thrace at Campus Serenus with the full victory of L., followed by a precipitous flight of his rival as far as Tarsus in Cilicia and by his subsequent death (314). L. was master of the entire half of the Empire, but precisely now he gave proof of his nature as a suspicious, impulsive and cruel barbarian. He had all those who might have been able to assert some claim to the throne sought out and killed, not even sparing the relatives of his benefactor Galerius. Moreover, even setting aside the inadequacies of L.'s personality, it was difficult, also for intrinsic reasons of the differing interests of the two parts of the Empire, to make good accord reign between the two emperors left after the failure of Diocletian's tetrarchic system. The divergences kept growing worse from 314 onward and degenerated into open war, in which L. was defeated near Adrianople (323) and then near Chrysopolis (323), and through the intercession of his wife, Constantine's sister, had his death sentence commuted to relegation to Thessalonica. But since he continued even there to weave intrigues, he was subjected to the judgment of the Senate and condemned to death, which he met at the hands of the Goths in an attempt to flee, or by order of Constantine, at Thessalonica (325).
The disagreement between the two emperors had also manifested itself with regard to the treatment of Christians: L. was and remained always a pagan, but he had been able to see the failure of Diocletian's persecution, to note the repentance of Galerius, who had been the fiercest of the persecutors, so that he was tolerant toward Christians, and not only did he sign with Constantine the so-called Edict of Milan, but when he went to war with Maximinus Daia, who had remained an obstinate persecutor, he issued a decree that promised Christian subjects restitution of confiscated property, rebuilding of churches, etc. (June 13, 313). Things began to change when, once Arius's preaching had begun, L. showed himself favorable to it, coming into conflict with Catholic bishops who were exiled, imprisoned, prevented from holding councils. And since Constantine turned to ever more open protection of Christians, L. by contrast took them into hatred, and set about oppressing them in a thousand ways. Such was the man, far inferior to the high dignity which only in these troubled times had it been possible for him to attain.
Bibliography2 works
Vienna 1928; J. Burchardt, Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen, 5th ed., Berlin 1929; M. Besnier, L'Empire romain de l'avènement des Sévères au Concile de Vicée, Paris 1937; A. Solari, Il rinnovamento dell'Impero romano, I, L'unità di Roma (365-476), Milan 1938; R. Paribeni, Da Diocleziano alla caduta dell'Impero d'Occidente, Bologna 1942, pp. 69-79 and passim.