Christian Network
You are visitor: 
In Scotland the time is: 
Christian Network
VI. Of the reign of Diocletian, and how he persecuted the Christians. [286 AD]
CHAP. V. How the Emperor Severus divided from the rest by a rampart that part of
Britain which had been recovered.
In the year of our Lord 189, Severus, an African, born at Leptis, in the
province of Tripolis, became emperor. He was the seventeenth from Augustus; and
reigned seventeen years. Being naturally of a harsh disposition, and engaged in
many wars, he governed the state vigorously, but with much trouble. Having been
victorious in all the grievous civil wars which happened in his time, he was
drawn into Britain by the revolt of almost all the confederated tribes; and,
after many great and severe battles, he thought fit to divide that part of the
island, which he had recovered, from the other unconquered nations, not with a
wall, as some imagine, but with a rampart. For a wall is made of stones, but a
rampart, with which camps are fortified to repel the assaults of enemies, is
made of sods, cut out of the earth, and raised high above the ground, like a
wall, having in front of it the trench whence the sods were taken, with strong
stakes of wood fixed above it. Thus Severus drew a great trench and strong
rampart, fortified with several towers, from sea to sea. And there, at York, he
fell sick afterwards and died, leaving two sons, Bassianus and Geta; of whom
Geta died, adjudged an enemy of the State; but Bassianus, having taken the
surname of Antonius, obtained the empire.
CHAP. VI. Of the reign of Diocletian, and how he persecuted the Christians. [286
AD]
In the year of our Lord 286, Diocletian, the thirty-third from Augustus, and
chosen emperor by the army, reigned twenty years, and created Maximian, surnamed
Herculius, his colleague in the empire. In their time, one Carausius, of very
mean birth, but a man of great ability and energy, being appointed to guard the
sea-coasts, then infested by the Franks and Saxons, acted more to the prejudice
than to the advantage of the commonwealth, by not restoring to its owners any of
the booty taken from the robbers, but keeping all to himself; thus giving rise
to the suspicion that by intentional neglect he suffered the enemy to infest the
frontiers. When, therefore, an order was sent by Maximian that he should be put
to death, he took upon him the imperial purple, and possessed himself of
Britain, and having most valiantly conquered and held it for the space of seven
years, he was at length put to death by the treachery of his associate Allectus.
The usurper, having thus got the island from Carausius, held it three years, and
was then vanquished by Asclepiodotus, the captain of the Praetorian guards, who
thus at the end of ten years restored Britain to the Roman empire.
Meanwhile, Diocletian in the east, and Maximian Herculius in the west, commanded
the churches to be destroyed, and the Christians to be persecuted and slain.
This persecution was the tenth since the reign of Nero, and was more lasting and
cruel than almost any before it; for it was carried on incessantly for the space
of ten years, with burning of churches, proscription of innocent persons, and
the slaughter of martyrs. Finally, Britain also attained to the great glory of
bearing faithful witness to God.
