Maxentius
c. 278 CE–c. 312 CE · Rome
Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (born c. 283, probably in the East where his father Maximian was then serving; died 312) was the son of the emperor Maximian who seized power at Rome in 306 and ruled Italy and Africa, though the other tetrarchs never recognized him. In his territories he ended the Diocletianic persecution and extended toleration to Christians, and he intervened in a contested election for bishop of Rome, exiling Pope Eusebius and his rival to Sicily (the election fell in 309, the exile in 310). In 312 he was defeated by Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and drowned in the Tiber; Constantine's victory, which Christian tradition credits to a sign of the cross, was followed by the Edict of Milan (313) of Constantine and Licinius, which decriminalized Christianity.
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RomeרומאItaly
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About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
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