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It became the nobler ambition of Julius to aggrandize the church, and to reassume the protectorate of the Italian people.
On the 1st of May 305, the day of Diocletian's abdication, he also, but without his colleague's sincerity, divested himself of the imperial dignity at Mediolanum (Milan), which had been his capital, and retired to a villa in Lucania; in the following year, however, he was induced by his son Maxentius to reassume the purple.
After the Civil War the state began to reassume the pivotal position in national politics which has always made its elections second only in interest and importance to those of the nation, and the high political tension emphasized the evils of the " spoils system."