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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 3846573, member: 83956&quot;]That&#039;s an interesting question. Perhaps events moved so rapidly that Constantine was recognized as a member of the imperial college before he had to spend too much time holding usurper status. Your query sent me to Timothy Barnes’s most recent Constantine biography, which is a formidable product of great erudition. Barnes stresses that Constantine was never fully a usurper since he was appointed Augustus by his dying father, but Galerius ratified Constantine’s entrance into the imperial college not as Augustus, but as Caesar. It seems Constantius and Galerius then were haggling a bit over the status of Constantine’s title shortly prior to Constantius’s death. Perhaps coins weren’t struck with Constantine as Augustus in 306 because Constantine sought formal approval from Galerius for his title upgrade once he had been acclaimed by his father’s troops. Barnes:</p><p><i> </i></p><p><i>“By the spring of 306 Constantius was ailing, and it was presumably his medical condition that compelled him to remain in York into the campaigning season of 306. Before he died, however, he exercised his right as the senior of the two Augusti to appoint a new emperor to the imperial college--or at least he was widely believed to have exercised it before he expired, which in political terms amounted to the same thing, as Galerius was quick to recognize. … In 306 the new senior emperor Galerius accepted Constantine as a legitimate member of the imperial college, though only at the lower rank of Caesar.</i></p><p><i>&nbsp;</i></p><p><i>Constantius had co-opted his son into the imperial college as an Augustus, disallowing the automatic promotion of his unlucky Caesar Severus to the higher imperial rank which he expected, and as soon as Constantius was dead his appointment of his son was ratified by his troops, who saluted Constantine as Augustus. The new ruler of Britain, Gaul and Spain immediately sent the customary laureled letter to Galerius in which he both announced his appointment by his father and his salutation as Augustus by his father&#039;s army and requested recognition from the new senior Augustus as his father&#039;s successor. Galerius, who was perhaps on campaign on the Danube, as he so often was in the first decade of the fourth century, was implacably opposed to recognizing as his equal in rank one whom he had excluded from the imperial college fifteen months earlier. But what could he do? He was in no position to dispute Constantine&#039;s claim that his father had appointed him to the imperial college. Constantine was in undisputed command of his father&#039;s army …&nbsp; Lactantius reports that Galerius hesitated long … Whatever his hesitations, he had no choice but to accept the new military and political reality established on 25 July 306 in distant York. </i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>Galerius offered Constantine a compromise. At a date which fell after the beginning of the new regnal year in Egypt on 30 August 306 … he co-opted Constantine into the imperial college on his own authority, but at the lower rank of Caesar. Constantine made the wise decision to accept this appointment, since it made him a full and undisputed member of the imperial college acknowledged from September 306 as a legitimate emperor throughout the Roman Empire …” </i></p><p><br /></p><p><b>(<i>Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire</i>, pp. 63-64</b>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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