Galerius (260-5 May 311) was Roman emperor from 25 July 306 to 5 May 311, succeeding Constantius Chlorus and preceding Maxentius.
Biography[]
Galerius was born in 260 in Serdica in the Roman province of Dardania (now the city of Sofia, Bulgaria), the son of a Thracian father and a Dacian woman. He served under Aurelian and Probus as a soldier, and in 293 he became a caesar of the Roman Empire under his father-in-law Diocletian, whose daughter he had married. He was entrusted with the Balkans, and he fought the Sarmatians and Goths on the Danube River before he was sent to the borders of the empire in Africa, where he fought the rebellious cities of Busiris (Abusir, Egypt) and Coptos (Qift, Egypt). In 294, Galerius was dispatched to Persia, and he sacked the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon with assistance from Diocletian, and he made the Tigris River the new border with Persia. On 25 July 306, he became Augustus on the death of Constantius Chlorus, but fellow tetrarch son Maximian's son Maxentius rebelled in Italia. He could not contain the uprising, and he died in 311 in Serdica.