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Constantine entered Rome for the first time as an emperor on 29 October 312, the day after his victory over the emperor Maxentius.1 This was most likely not his first visit to the imperial capital.
Diocletian's Itinerary, 303–305
In late February 303, while at Nicomedia, the Augustus Diocletian issued an edict intended to suppress Christianity. The praetorian prefect went with soldiers to the church in Nicomedia and burned copies of the Bible, and they leveled the building. Soon afterward part of the imperial palace was set on fire.2
The Caesar Galerius was also in Nicomedia, and over the winter he had been preparing for a new military campaign along the lower Danube. In the previous year he had declared victories for campaigns against the Carpi and Sarmatians. In March he set out again.3 Diocletian also had experience on the Danube frontier, having led campaigns against the Sarmatians and Carpi during the 290s, and he may have followed Galerius' new expedition north. In early June Diocletian was on the lower Danube.4 During his journey he continued the harassment of Christianity, issuing a second edict during spring or summer ordering the imprisonment of clerics, and a third edict granting release if clerics performed traditional sacrifices.5
The persecution of nonconformist religions reinforced the authority of emperors who had identified with traditional Roman deities. Their unconventional college of four emperors, two senior Augusti and two junior Caesars, is now known as the Tetrarchy, and a congratulatory landmark was near. In November the emperors would celebrate the beginning of the twentieth year of the reigns of Diocletian and Maximian (their vicennalia) and its (contrived) correlation with the tenth anniversary of the reigns of Constantius and Galerius (their decennalia). Galerius' contribution to the commemoration would be the declaration of another victory over the Carpi and the consequent adoption of a new victory title.6
Diocletian and Galerius may also have celebrated a new imperial monument that memorialized recent victories and imminent anniversaries. On a bulky arch at Thessalonica, now known as the Arch of Galerius, the decorative panels commemorated victories over the Persians. While several panels glorified Galerius' leading role in the campaigns, one panel depicted the four emperors surrounded by various deities. Another...