The emperor Maximinus was originally called "Daza", an ancient name with various unknown high distinction meanings in Illyria, where he was born.

When Licinius and Constantine I began to make common cause, Maximinus entered into a secret alliance with the usurper Maxentius, who controlled Italy.

He came to an open rupture with Licinius in 313; he summoned an army of 70,000 men but sustained a crushing defeat at the Battle of Tzirallum in the neighbourhood of Heraclea Perinthus on 30 April.

In one rescript replying to a petition made by the inhabitants of Tyre, transcribed by Eusebius of Caesarea,[16] Maximinus expounds a pagan orthodoxy, explaining that it is through "the kindly care of the gods" that one could hope for good crops, health, and the peaceful sea, and that not being the case, one should blame "the destructive error of the empty vanity of those impious men [that] weighed down the whole world with shame".

[17] After the victory of Constantine over Maxentius, however, Maximinus wrote to the Praetorian Prefect Sabinus that it was better to "recall our provincials to the worship of the gods rather by exhortations and flatteries".

[22] Maximinus would prove to be the last person afforded the traditional titulature of Pharaoh – no Christian Roman/Byzantine emperor, nor Islamic or modern leader, has revived the title since.

He also allegedly lived a highly dissolute lifestyle: And he went to such an excess of folly and drunkenness that his mind was deranged and crazed in his carousals; and he gave commands when intoxicated of which he repented afterward when sober.

He urged on the army to live wantonly in every kind of revelry and intemperance, and encouraged the governors and generals to abuse their subjects with rapacity and covetousness, almost as if they were rulers with him.

For the men endured fire and sword and crucifixion and wild beasts and the depths of the sea, and cutting off of limbs, and burnings, and pricking and digging out of eyes, and mutilations of the entire body, and besides these, hunger and mines and bonds.