death, and it was evidently unknown to him in the shape given above when he wrote the Ecclesiastical History. The author of the De mortibus persecutorum, whether Lactantius or another, was a well-informed contemporary, and he tells us that the sign was seen by Constantine in a dream; and even Eusebius supplements the vision by day with a dream in the following night. In any case, Constantine, who may have been impressed by the misfortunes which had befallen the more strenuous opponents of Christianity, adopted the monogram ☧ as his device[1] and staked his all on the issue.
Maxentius, trusting in superiority of numbers,—he is said to have had 170,000 infantry and 18,000 cavalry at his disposal, but this total probably includes the forces defeated by Constantine in Northern Italy—marched out of Rome and prepared to dispute the passage of the Tiber at the Pons Mulvius (Ponte Molle), beside which a bridge of boats was constructed. Our authorities give no satisfactory account of the battle which followed, and Aurelius Victor places it at Saxa Rubra, a statement accepted by Moltke and other modern authorities. It is more probable, as Seeck has shown, that while the head of Maxentius’s column may have reached Saxa Rubra (which is some miles to the north of the Mulvian Bridge on the Via Flaminia), Constantine, by a rapid turning movement, reached the Via Cassia and attacked Maxentius’s rearguard at the bridge,[2] forcing him to fight in the narrow space between the hills and the Tiber. The army which Constantine had been training for six years at once proved its superiority. The Gallic cavalry swept the left wing of the enemy into the Tiber, swollen with autumn rains, and with it perished Maxentius, owing, as was said, to the collapse of the bridge of boats (Oct. 28). The remainder of his troops surrendered at discretion and were incorporated by Constantine in the ranks of his army, with the exception of the praetorian guard, which was finally disbanded.
Thus Constantine became undisputed master of Rome and the West, and Christianity, although not as yet adopted as the official religion, secured by the edict of Milan toleration throughout the Empire. This edict was the result of a conference between Constantine and Licinius in 313 at Milan, where the marriage of the latter with Constantia took place. Constantine was forced to recognize Licinius’s natural son as his heir. In the course of the same year Licinius defeated Maximinus Daia, who perished at Tarsus by his own hand. In 314 war broke out between the two Augusti, owing, as we are told, to the treachery of Bassianus, the husband of Constantine’s sister Anastasia, for whom he had claimed the rank of Caesar. After two hardwon victories Constantine made peace, Illyricum and Greece being added to his dominions. Constantine and Licinius held the consulship in 315, in which year the former celebrated his decennalia, and on the 1st of March 317 Constantine’s two sons and Licinius’s bastard were proclaimed Caesars. Peace was preserved for nearly nine years, during which the wise government of Constantine strengthened his position, while Licinius (who resumed the persecution of the Christians in 321) steadily lost ground through his indolence and cruelty. Great armaments, both military and naval, were called into being by both emperors, and in the spring of 324[3] Licinius (whose forces are said to have been superior in numbers) declared war. He was twice defeated, first at Adrianople (July 1) and afterwards at Chrysopolis (Sept. 18), when endeavouring to raise the siege of Byzantium, and was finally captured at Nicomedia. His life was spared on the intercession of Constantia and he was interned at Thessalonica, where he was executed in the following year on the charge of treasonable correspondence with the barbarians.
Constantine now reigned as sole emperor in East and West. He presided at the council of Nicaea (see under Nicaea and Council) in 325; in the same year he celebrated his Vicennalia in the East, and in 326 repeated the celebration in Rome. Whilst he was in Rome his eldest son, Crispus, was banished to Pola and there put to death on a charge brought against him by Fausta. Shortly afterwards, as it would seem, Constantine became convinced of his innocence, and ordered Fausta to be executed. The precise nature of the circumstances remains a mystery.
In 326 Constantine determined to remove the seat of empire from Rome to the East, and before the close of the year the foundation-stone of Constantinople was laid. At least two other sites—Sardica and Troy—were considered before the emperor’s choice fell on Byzantium. It is very probable that this step was connected with Constantine’s decision to make Christianity the official religion of the empire. Rome was naturally the stronghold of paganism, to which the great majority of the senate clung with fervent devotion. Constantine did not wish to do open violence to this sentiment, and therefore resolved to found a new capital for the new empire of his creation. He announced that the site had been revealed to him in a dream; the ceremony of inauguration was performed by Christian ecclesiastics on the 11th of May 330, when the city was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
In 332 Constantine was called in to aid the Sarmatians against the Goths over whom his son gained a great victory on the 20th of April. Two years later there was again fighting on the Danube, when 300,000 Sarmatians were settled in Roman territory. In 335 a rebellion in Cyprus gave Constantine an excuse for executing the younger Licinius. In the same year he carried out a partition of the empire between his three sons and his two nephews, Delmatius and Hannibalianus. The last named received the vassal-kingdom of Pontus with the title of rex regum, while the others ruled as Caesars in their several provinces. Constantine, however, retained the supreme government, and in 335 celebrated his tricennalia. Finally, in 337, Shapur (Sapor) II. of Persia asserted his claim to the provinces conquered by Diocletian, and war broke out. Constantine was preparing to lead his army in person, when he was taken ill, and after a vain trial of the baths at Helenopolis, died at Ancyrona, a suburb of Nicomedia, on the 22nd of May, having received Christian baptism shortly before at the hands of Eusebius. He was buried in the church of the Apostles at Constantinople.
It has been said by Stanley that Constantine was entitled to be called “Great” in virtue rather of what he did than of what he was; and it is true that neither his intellectual nor his moral qualities were such as to earn the title. His claim to greatness rests mainly on the fact that he divined the future which lay before Christianity, and determined to enlist it in the service of his empire, and also on his achievement in completing the work begun by Aurelian and Diocletian, by which the quasi-constitutional monarchy or “Principate” of Augustus was transformed into the naked absolutism sometimes called the “Dominate.” There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, although we may not attribute to him the fervent piety which Eusebius ascribes to him, nor accept as genuine the discourses which pass under his name. The moral precepts of the new religion were not without influence upon his life, and he caused his sons to receive a Christian education. Motives of political expediency, however, caused him to delay the full recognition of Christianity as the religion of the state until he became sole ruler of the empire, although he not merely secured toleration for it immediately after his victory over Maxentius, but intervened in the Donatist controversy as early as 313, and presided at the council of Arles in the following year. By a series of enactments immunities and privileges of various kinds were conferred on the Catholic Church and clergy—heretics being specifically excluded—and the emperor’s attitude towards paganism gradually revealed itself as one of contemptuous toleration. From being the established religion of the state it sank into a mere superstitio.
- ↑ The name labarum, given to the military standards bearing the monogram, is of unexplained origin. Lactantius says that the symbol was used on the shields of Constantine’s troops.
- ↑ That the battle was called after the Milvian bridge is indicated by a relief and inscription from Cherchel (C.I.L. viii. 9356).
- ↑ It has been disputed whether the final struggle between Constantine and Licinius took place in A.D. 323 or 324; but the formulae employed in the dating of Egyptian papyri seem to point to the latter year (see Comptes-rendus de l’académie des inscriptions, 1906, p. 231 ff.).
