Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (54 page)

71Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 54-56. Ibid., pp. 58-59, notes that the Senate retained a certain degree of power, especially as "the institutional springboard for the expression of elite concerns."

72Ibid., pp. 125-26.

73MacMullen, Constantine, p. 11.

76Digeser, Making ofa Christian Empire, pp. 3, 27-28.

77Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 230; the Latin from a panegyric is Diocletiani auctor.

74Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 49; Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, p. 52.

7SEusebius Life 5.4.6-7; on the frieze, see Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 47.

78Digeser, Making ofa Christian Empire, pp. 28-29.

79Johannes Roldanus, The Church in the Age of Constantine: The Theological Challenges (London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 29.

12 Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 164.

'Quoted in Digeser, Making ofa Christian Empire, pp. 36-37.

81Ibid.

83Odah1, Constantine and the Christian Empire, pp. 55, 62.

'Alexander Demandt, Andreas Goltz and Heinrich Schlange-Schoningen, eds., Diokletian and die Tetrarchie: Aspekte einer Zeintenwende (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), p. 41.

'Little is known about Constantine's earlier career. Bits and pieces can be gleaned from later statements of Constantine, Lactantius and Eusebius and from panegyrics and later legends. For summaries of this period of his life, see Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 57-59; Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge, 2004), chaps. 3-4; T. G. Elliott, The Christianity of Constantine the Great (Scranton, Penn.: University of Scranton Press, 1996), chaps. 1-2. D. G. Kousoulas, The Life and Times of Constantine the Great: The First Christian Emperor, 2nd ed. (author, 2007), pp. 157-59, 197-201, is vivid but not always reliable.

3The abundance of important figures with names beginning with "Max-" makes this history even more complicated than it would otherwise be. For clarity, I refer to Maximinus Daia as Daia throughout. His name is also sometimes rendered as Daza.

'The description of the scene is derived from Lactantius Death 19.2-6.

'David S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395, Routledge History of the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 340-41, summarizes the evidence concerning the timing of the decision.

'Ibid., p. 662, n. 36. Mark Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor: The Politics of Legitimation in the Age of Constantine," Journal ofLateAntiquity 1, no. 1 (2008), makes it clear that the Tetrarchy's attitude toward a blood-based dynastic succession is much more ambiguous. The imperial college, after all, did not simply rely on the good faith of the members but rested on the ancient method of intermarriage.

'Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 29.

10Potter, Roman Empire, p. 343.

"Some scholars place his birth a decade later, but Barnes has convincingly argued, from the age of his son Crispus, that Constantine must have been born in the 270s.

"Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 3.

7Lactantius Death 18.12-13, 20.2-4; Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 343-44.

'Potter, Roman Empire, p. 344.

"The story is told in an anonymous Byzantine Life of Constantine, translated in Samuel N. C. Lieu and Dominic Montserrat, eds., From Constantine to, Julian: Pagan and Byzantine ViewsA Source History (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 106-8. Kousoulas (Life and Times, p. 9) is virtually the only contemporary scholar who gives any credence to the story. See also Bill Leadbetter, "The Illegitimacy of Constantine and the Birth of the Tetrarchy," in Constantine: History, Historiography andLegend, ed. Samuel Lieu and Dominic Montserrat (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 74-85, for a discussion of Constantine's illegitimacy.

14Leadbetter, "Illegitimacy," p. 79.

"Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 293-94. Van Dam emphasizes that Constantine associated these memories with the biblical accounts of Moses in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon.

16Translation in Lieu and Montserrat, From Constantine to fulian, p. 43. Eusebius clearly presents Constantine as a Moses figure in his Life, but the exploits recounted in the Origo suggest a closer analogy with David or Jonathan. To say that the Origo employs typology is not to cast doubt on its accuracy. Types work because similar things happen at different times. Galerius could be depicted as Saul to Constantine's David because Galerius was as paranoid as the first king of Israel.

17Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 344-45, analyzes the alternative accounts of his escape. The Origo states that Constantine killed the post horses along the route (Lieu and Montserrat, From Constantine to, ju/ian, p. 43).

18Many scholars have suggested that Constantine was first proclaimed Augustus and later demoted by Galerius to the position of Caesar. The evidence is too sketchy to allow us to know for sure, but it is clear from milestones throughout the Western Empire that Constantine for a time labeled himself nobilissimus Caesar (Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor," pp. 87-88).

"Simon Corcoran, "Before Constantine," in The Cambridge Companion to theAge of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 54, points to the deaths of Licinius and of the relatives of Constantine after Constantine's death in 337.

20Potter, Roman Empire, p. 340, speaks of a "tacit" agreement that the sons of Constantius and Maximian would succeed them.

21Leadbetter, "Illegitimacy," p. 82.

22H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 503, n. 8; Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor," p. 89.

23Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 160.

24For references, see Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor," p. 84, n. 9.

"Ibid., pp. 85-87. See also Alan Wardman, "Usurpers and Internal Conflicts in the 4th Century AD," Historia 33, no. 2 (1984): 220-37.

26potter, Roman Empire, p. 346.

27Ibid., p. 346. Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor," pp. 89-90, makes a strong case for the conclusion that "Constantine and Maxentius were being prepared as potential heirs," pointing out that this helps to explain "why the troops at York so readily transferred their allegiance from the father Constantius to the son Constantine; and why the former western Augustus Maximian was called out of retirement to lend an air of legitimacy to the regime of his son Maxentius. Above all, they explain why dynasty-building became one of the key tactics used by Constantine in his efforts to establish legitimacy over the next six years and beyond."

28Lactantius Death 26.

"Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 30.

30Panegyric 12.4.3, in In Praise ofLater Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, ed. and trans. C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 301.

"Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 170-72; MacMullen, Constantine, p. 62; Kousoulas, Life and Times, pp. 108-82.

32 Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 37. Van Dam points out that Constantine remained north and east through most of his reign: "he never visited the provinces in Spain, Africa, southern Italy and Sicily, Greece, Western Asia Minor, Palestine, or Egypt, and he made only one round trip through central Asia Minor to Antioch in Syria" (p. 38). He also notes that under Maxentius, and then again under Constantine, the importance of Rome revived to some degree; Constantine appointed members of the senatorial class to office, and he spoke to the Senate when he entered Rome after the battle with Maxentius. He returned to Rome for anniversaries as well (pp. 45-46). Still, his conception of the Empire "plainly emphasized the northern frontiers" (p. 52), and while Helena was buried in Rome, Constantine himself was buried in the new Rome of Constantinople (pp. 58-59).

33Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 30. Potter, Roman Empire, p. 349, claims that Maxentius had Severus murdered.

"Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 170.

37Ibid., pp. 90-91.

"Potter, Roman Empire, p. 349; Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor," pp. 91-92; Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, pp. 32-33.

"Potter, Roman Empire, p. 350.

401bid., p. 351.

"Humphries, "From Usurper to Emperor," p. 91.

36Ibid., p. 90.

41Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 174-75. Potter, Roman Empire, p. 352, notes that the actual circumstances of Maximian's death are impossible to know for certain.

42The story is told in Lactantius Death 30; cf. Kousoulas, Life and Times, pp. 193-94.

43For euergetism as imperial policy in general, see Paul Veyne, "Clientele et corruption an service de l'Etat: La venalite des offices clans le Bas-Empire romain," Annales 36, no. 3 (1981).

44Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 82.

45Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 37.

"Linda Jones Hall, "Cicero's instinctu divino and Constantine's instinctu divinitatis: The Evidence of the Arch of Constantine for the Senatorial View of the `Vision' of Constantine," Journal ofEarly Christian Studies 6, no. 4 (1998): 2. I am working from a printout of the article whose pagination does not match the published version.

47Kousoulas, Life and Times, p. 237.

48Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 171; Potter, Roman Empire, p. 355; Oliver Nicholson, "The `Pagan Churches' of Maximinus Daia and Julian the Apostate," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 1 (1994); and see below, chapter 4.

49Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 174.

°°On the Italian campaign, see Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, pp. 101-4; Kousoulas, Life and Times, pp. 231-33; Potter, Roman Empire, p. 357.

S1Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 100.

12Kousoulas, Life and Times, pp. 245-46.

14 See Van Dam, Roman Revolution, pp. 135-36, for the symbolism of decapitation. The title is found on the Arch of Constantine.

'Johannes Straub, "Konstantins Verzicht auf den Gang zum Kapitol," Historia 4, nos. 2/3 (1955), provides the most complete examination of the evidence. R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great," ANRW23 (1980): 962-64; MacMullen, Constantine, p. 81; Kousoulas, Life and Times, p. 249. On Roman triumphs in general, see Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/ Harvard University Press, 2007). Ammianus Marcellinus records this about Constantius's entry into Rome in 357: "Being saluted as Augustus with favoring shouts, while hills and shores thundered out the roar, he never stirred, but showed himself as calm and imperturb- able, as he was commonly seen in the provinces. For he both stooped when passing through lofty gates (although he was very short), and as if his neck were in a vise, he kept the gaze of his eyes straight ahead, and turned his face neither to right nor to left, but (as if he were a clay figure) neither did he nod when the wheel jolted nor was he ever seen to spit, or to wipe and rub his nose or face, or move his hands about, And although this was affectation on his part yet these and various other features of his more intimate life were tokens of no slight endurance, granted to him alone, as was given to be understood" (quoted in Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 123-24).

s5MacMullen, Constantine, p. 81.

53Panegyric 12.16.2, in In Praise ofLater Roman Emperors, ed. Nixon and Rodgers, p. 318.

"Hanson, "Christian Attitude," p. 971.

58Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 97.

1Eusebius used a Mosaic template to organize his entire biography of Constantine; see Anna Wilson, "Biographical Models: The Constantinian Period and Beyond," in Constantine: History, Historiography and Legend, ed. Samuel Lieu and Dominic Montserrat (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 107-35.

2Eusebius Life 1.38.

3Ibid.,1.31. Eusebius is describing a developed and beautified form of the labarum, not the form that it had on the day of Constantine's victory, but there is no reason to doubt that the talisman was essentially the same. For analysis, see H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 201-4; Drake presses his argument about Constantine's use of deliberate ambiguity too far here, arguing that it was for Constantine more a dynastic than a religious symbol. Given the tenor of fourth-century political life, however, the distinction is another example of the "conceptual anachronism" that Drake charges against Burckhardt. Peter Weiss, "The Vision of Constantine," trans. A. R. Birley, Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003): 254-55, claims that the word labarum is Celtic in origin and that it combined symbolism of Sol and the corona with the Christian symbol of Christ's monogram.

'See Andreas Alfoldi, "The Helmet of Constantine with the Christian Monogram," journal of Roman Studies 22, no. 1 (1932).

SEusebius calls the Christian God the "God of his father," and this, along with other evidence such as the name of Constantine's sister (Anastasia, "Resurrection") and the clearly Christian testimony of Constantine's mother Helena later in life, have led some to conclude that Constantius was already a Christian. The most sustained effort to argue this point is T. G. Elliott, The Christianity of Constantine the Great (Scranton, Penn.: University of Scranton Press, 1996). To make his case, however, Elliott has to dismiss a fair bit of Eusebius as unreliable. Besides, though Constantius was a much less vigorous persecutor than Diocletian or Galerius, he did destroy some churches in the Western empire after the decree of persecution was issued in 303. R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great," ANRW23 (1980), succinctly assesses the evidence, concluding that Constantius was not a Christian but was sympathetic.

6In Eusebius's Greek the phrase is en touto nika (conquer by this), but this is rendered on the earliest Latin coinage as hoc signo victor eris (by this sign you will be victor) rather than, as later, in hoc vince or in hoc signo vinces. Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 318-19, n. 11 and the literature cited.