De Mortibus Persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors)

De Mortibus Persecutorum, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, is Lactantius's own early fourth century account, written around 315, describing the deaths of the Roman emperors who persecuted Christians and presenting each death as divine judgment. As a primary text by a contemporary Christian writer close to the imperial court under Constantine it is the correct source for what Lactantius himself claimed about each emperor's end. Its limit is that it is openly polemical, written to make a providential argument rather than to give a neutral historical record, so its specific factual claims about individual deaths need to be checked against other, less partisan Roman sources before being treated as established history rather than as Lactantius's own interpretation.