3 The Unconquered Emperor and his Divine Patron

The crisis of empire – The emperor and the army - The Roman theology of victory – The unconquered emperor and the Sun – Aurelian – Christ the true Sun

The rise of Christianity coincided with a sustained period of crisis for the empire. It was held by many to be the cause of the crisis, and for that reason one finds, for the first time in the mid-third century, a systematic persecution of Christians throughout the empire. At the same time, in response to the crisis but in fact contributing far more effectively to its perpetuation, one witnesses a dramatic increase in the political power of the army. Through the third century, the army was the only instrument of state that could raise up and strike down emperors. To retain power, therefore, third-century emperors struggled with only limited success to maintain control over their errant soldiers. In the half-century between the end of the Severan dynasty (193-235) and the foundation of the Tetrarchy (in 284), the subject of our next chapter, more than fifty men claimed the title emperor. Twenty-two of these were universally recognized, of which the vast majority were both acclaimed and later murdered by troops under their command. All but two of the recognized emperors who reigned from AD 251 until 284 died in this manner, the exceptions being Valerian (253-60), who was captured in battle with the Persians, and Claudius II Gothicus (268-70), who died of ‘a most grievous pestilence’, probably measles or smallpox.

The instability associated with ephemeral and brutal reigns compounded problems that Rome might otherwise have dealt with quite comfortably. It is beyond the scope of this study to sketch the empire’s troubles at length, but it is important to outline the developments that paved Constantine’s path to power. Constantine was, in York in AD 306, merely the next man to be raised up by his army, and his greatest fear, quite logically and legitimately, was that he would be the next to die at their hands. The likelihood of his demise declined with time and success, the latter defined exclusively in terms of victories in war. This was the legacy of Rome’s third-century crisis.

The crisis of empire

It has become fashionable recently to diminish the problems faced by the Roman empire in the middle years of the third century – to attribute more to literary construction than to barbarian invasion and to deny the situation its traditional appellation, ‘the crisis of empire’. The threats to the Roman frontiers in the third century may have been no greater than in some earlier or later periods, and the nature of surviving histories may indeed skew the picture. Eyewitness accounts by Cassius Dio and Herodian cover only the first four decades. For the remainder of the century we are largely reliant on the Historia Augusta, compiled by an ingenious and disingenuous scholar at the end of the fourth century. However, one cannot ignore the fact that foreign threats were pressing and regular, and that they were largely the unhappy consequence of Roman victories. Whereas the Parthian empire to Rome’s east had presented a large and soft target, a perfect source of booty and prestige, the vacuum created by Severan success against the Parthians unleashed Ardashir, satrap of Fars, from his tutelage. His ambition rested on military accomplishments, and thus he directed his aggression against Rome. From the mid-220s, a new power, the Sassanian Persian empire, replaced the Parthians as Rome’s eastern foe, with conflict intensifying during the reign of Ardashir’s son, Shapur I (241-72).

At the same time, the Germanic and Gothic peoples of the north pressed regularly across the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Scholars no longer regard the Goths and Alemans as coherent peoples, two of many shunting each other across the steppes of inner Asia into Europe. Instead, it is now recognized that their appellations, created in the Latin annals of their literate enemies, mask as much as they reveal about barbarian identities. The Goths and Alemans were armies, not peoples, who shared goals (accrual of wealth, social advancement), not signifiers of ethnicity (brooches, hair-styles). However, a key means by which Goths and Alemans cohered as groups was by following kings who attacked Roman outposts in search of plunder and prestige. While not as disruptive as invasions by whole peoples, increasingly frequent raids by efficient armies could not simply be ignored. Foreign invasions both provoked and exacerbated failures in the imperial system, and for two decades splinter states existed in Gaul and Syria, both claiming to be Roman, but denying grain and taxation revenues to the empire.

The leaders of the Gallic and Palmyrene empires failed to secure support within the empire’s core provinces, but many other pretenders and usurpers enjoyed, for better or (mostly) for worse, the title ‘Emperor of the Romans’. When there was no stability at the heart of government, the fiscal demands of running the army were crippling to the state economy, which was but a small part of the broader economy. Only a small fraction of the Roman economy was ever monetized, being that part of it which was of direct interest to the state. Certainly, Roman citizens needed bronze coinage to buy bread, where this was not distributed to them in major cities and where they did not produce their own. But the coinage was provided so that those who sold bread and grain might acquire coinage to pay their taxes. This was still more the case with gold and silver coins, which were issued exclusively to support the state economy: to meet the demands of government, to pay the army, and to facilitate the levying of taxes. The fact that some precious metals entered general circulation, serving the secondary function of facilitating trade in very large volumes or luxury goods, was of only slight interest to most emperors, so long as enough was recouped each year. In times of war disruptions to the system of taxation were inevitable, as revenue-generating lands were under threat or lost for periods of time. Southern Gaul and Egypt, both lost for protracted periods, were two of the leading tax-exporting regions, whereas Italy and the city of Rome, which were never lost, enjoyed tax-exempt status under the ius Italicum. The loss of productive lands was exacerbated by the destruction of crops by foreign or Roman forces wishing to deny provisions to enemies in foreign or civil wars and by the requisitioning of crops to feed troops. Landholders, having no crops to sell, were denied the means to pay taxes on their lands. Romans had endured this in the past, of course, but the problems of the mid-third century saw fighting increasingly within the frontiers, and between dozens of emperors, each unable, and in many cases unconcerned, to raise sufficient revenue to meet more than the ever-increasing demands of the army.

Each ephemeral emperor would immediately concern himself solely with the army: defending the frontiers with garrisons and fortresses; keeping troops constantly in the field and ensuring that they were properly supplied and provisioned; distributing cash bonuses to the army, known as donatives, upon accession and to reward victories; ransoming captives. Nothing beyond the camp would seem immediately pressing, and except for crisis management little revenue would be diverted to finance the regular workings of government. Beyond the army, the state was starved of the taxes it needed to function and of the opportunities and means to raise them. The situation was greatly exacerbated by the epidemic which persisted through the 250s and 260s and killed up to thirty percent of the population of the Roman empire. Dead citizens tilled no fields and paid no taxes. This was a tipping point. Where sufficient gold and silver could not be recouped to meet the demands of the state economy, the only immediate solutions open to an emperor were to debase the currency and increase rates of taxation. Thus, the fineness of the precious currency decreased, and consequently inflation rose rapidly. Sellers, recognizing the diminished value of currency, raised prices accordingly. And even as taxation rates rose, the government recouped ever less precious metal to re-strike coins. According to Gresham’s Law, which states that bad money drives out good, Romans who could afford to do so hoarded older coins with higher gold or silver content, paying taxes in the debased currency. Moreover, the wealthy were always far more able to extract tax concessions from the state, or indeed to resist the demands of armed tax-gatherers. So the burden fell ever more on the poor, who were ever less able to pay.

The story of this fiscal crisis is told not by hyperbolic literature but in the numismatic record: in the ever-diminishing fineness of gold coins; in the explosion in numbers of low-value coins in circulation after AD 200; and in the breakdown of monetary unity across the empire, with patterns of circulation for different provinces diverging wildly. Coins, struck to meet immediate needs in particular locations, were no longer circulating through a centralized system. The fate of the ‘double denarius’, later called the antoninianus after its originator, is instructive. The emperor better known as Caracalla (211-17) introduced the coin in AD 215. Although its face value was, perhaps, twice that of the regular silver denarius, the double was only fifty percent heavier and contained the same amount of silver. Production was stopped for twenty years, from 219 to 238, and when it recommenced, the coin was one-sixth lighter. By the reign of Gallienus, the regular denarius had been stopped altogether, and after 260 the silver content of the antoninianus, once fifty percent, was reduced to a silvering on the surface. At this time production of the ‘silvered’ coins escalated rapidly, with finds in hoards suggesting that the number of new coins struck was three times higher than usual. This was surely a response to the loss of tax-exporting regions, most notably Gaul and Egypt, and therefore to the loss of currency in those provinces. Even with the ‘restoration’ of the 270s, Aurelian’s antoniniani, although back to full weight, were one part silver to twenty parts copper.

The emperor and the army

Making war was always the most important duty of a Roman emperor. Augustus, in his Res Gestae, made this plain, listing his campaigns and victories before all else. Later emperors composed war narratives, sending despatches from the field to the senate. One usurper, Maximinus, to whom we shall return below, also sent pictures of his personal exploits, although this may have been because he was unwilling to present himself in Rome and nobody might otherwise know what he looked like. Emperors wrote autobiographies, for example Trajan’s account of his Dacian wars, of which but one line survives. That shows at least that he wrote in the first person, unlike Julius Caesar, who wrote in the third. But if victory in war was always a crucial factor in sustaining an emperor, the ability to lead and reward the army became the only imperial quality that mattered in the third century.

The rise of the army began with the Severan dynasty, which ruled with various interruptions from the accession of Septimius Severus in April 193 to the murder of Severus Alexander and his mother, Julia Mamaea, near Mainz in March 235. Septimius Severus attempted to legitimize his usurpation by declaring himself the son of Marcus Aurelius. But his right to reign was established on the battlefield, where he won significant victories in Mesopotamia, at various times taking the triumphal epithets Arabicus, Adiabenicus and Parthicus Maximus to mark his victories over the Arabs, the Adiabeni and the Parthians. The last victory he celebrated in 204 with a triumphal entry at the head of his army into the city of Rome, where a monumental archway was raised through which it would march. Septimius endeared himself further to the army by increasing pay by one half and by allowing enrolled soldiers to marry. He died after an eighteen-year reign in York, Britannia, on 4 February 211. No reign would last as long until Diocletian’s.

Government under the Severans was in the hands of a select group that cohered around the emperor. This was most notable in the case of the youth Severus Alexander, who was in thrall to his mother and murdered by his troops, who came to despise him as a ‘mummy’s boy’. Notable features of the period were an increased reliance on the army to maintain authority. Large stipends were paid to officers and generous distributions made to the rank and file. The army’s gain was largely at the expense of the senate, which was marginalized by the autocratic, military regime.

The Severan emperors projected themselves aggressively as ‘fellow soldiers’. Septimius Severus rode at the head of his line of march bareheaded in rain and snow, so that he could be seen clearly bearing the same hardships as his men. He ate and slept as they did in the open and served as a figure for them to emulate as well as to serve. Severus’ son, whom he named Lucius Septimius Bassianus, followed his example, and the name by which he is better known, Caracalla, is that of the hooded tunic he had worn in the army camps from boyhood. Caracalla saw himself as a new Alexander the Great and is described as having modelled not only his portraits on Alexander’s, but his very gaze and posture, the tilt of his head and his flowing locks. When he marched against the Persians, Caracalla chose deliberately to follow in Alexander’s footsteps, and on that journey drank from cups and bore weapons he alleged had belonged to his hero. He even enrolled a phalanx of Macedonians. It was a shock to many when he was killed by his men. His replacement, Macrinus, had been Caracalla’s Praetorian Prefect and spent the whole of his fourteen-month reign with the army in the east. He was clearly in thrall to his men and dispensed with the infamous punishment of decimation, whereby every tenth soldier in a disgraced unit, selected by lot, was put to death by his comrades. Macrinus made the punishment one-tenth as severe, instituting the centesimatio. Senior soldiers, who were most likely to rise against him, were given a pay rise, whereas new recruits were not.

Maximinus Thrax (235-8), who engineered the death of the last Severan, Severus Alexander, went further still, taking part personally in battles. This was exceptional, for the emperor was not expected to risk his life in the battle line. Although this might have been the ultimate demonstration of bravery to his ‘fellow soldiers’, it was generally regarded as unnecessary and foolhardy. The emperor should stay back and direct tactics. Maximinus had been responsible under Severus Alexander for enrolling and training recruits, who remained loyal to him throughout. But Maximinus fared poorly despite this. He was the first of a seemingly endless stream of men who claimed the title of emperor, only to be killed by the very troops who raised them. This was often a practical measure, to prevent a battle. That is to say, in order to avoid becoming further enmeshed in civil wars, the army looked to its own interests, raising champions for as long as they were useful, then cutting them down. This was the case with Maximinus, whose demise is worth pondering for what it reveals of the mood of the army. An account is provided by Herodian, written shortly after the events described. We meet Maximinus at Aquileia in northern Italy, where he has set a siege, hoping to proceed thence southwards in an aura of victory. However, the citizens resist his assault ably, inspired by one Crispinus:

It is reported that Crispinus persevered in prosecuting the war because there were many people inside the city [of Aquileia] who were experts in the art of reading omens and entrails, and who announced that the signs were auspicious. The Italians place particular faith in this kind of divination. Some oracles were also spread around to the effect that the local god was promising the Aquileians victory. The god, whose worship is extremely popular, was called Beles and is identified with Apollo. Some of Maximinus’ soldiers said that his image appeared frequently in the sky fighting for the city. I am not sure [Herodian avers] whether the god really appeared to some of the men or whether it was imagination. They were anxious to avoid the disgrace of being unable to overpower a crowd of townsfolk that was numerically inferior, so wanted it to appear that they had been defeated by gods and not men.

Clearly, Maximinus’ patron god could not overpower Beles. His soldiers were maimed, blinded and disfigured by the burning pitch that the Aquileians poured down upon them. Moreover, the troops, to prevent supplies being taken into the city, had burnt the local vines and fruit trees. As their siege dragged on, they began to starve. Action was necessary, and the Second Parthian Legion acted decisively.

Suddenly the soldiers … decided to murder Maximinus, so that they could abandon the long interminable siege, and stop laying waste to Italy for the benefit of a tyrant who was condemned and hated. With great daring they went towards Maximinus’ tent at noon and tore down his image from the standards [of the Praetorian Guard] with the assistance of the guards. When Maximinus and his son emerged from their tent to try to negotiate, the soldiers killed them without a hearing.

Maximinus was killed to end a civil war, and a similar desire to end or avoid battle with fellow Romans saw to the demise of many other emperors and pretenders. Indeed, only one legitimate emperor, Philip the Arab (244-9), died after engaging in battle with a fellow Roman, Decius (249-51). On the other hand, in an era when plunder was an excellent source of income for a soldier, an emperor had constantly to be willing to fight if the army so demanded. Probus (276-82), who was responsible for establishing the first fortifications that later became known as the Saxon Shore in Britain, was murdered by his own troops because he had no great expedition planned. This dynamic has been observed in later centuries, notably during Charlemagne’s campaigns against the Saxons and Avars, which were intended to secure booty to reward his troops and shore up his prestige. Emperors, it would appear, could be disposed of by the army if they demanded battle against the men’s wishes, and equally if they showed a lack of desire to fight. Never was a telling phrase, coined by Tiberius, truer than in this period, when handling the army was ‘like holding a wolf by the ears’.

The prevailing motivation was often simply the army’s desire to install yet another general, who would thus owe his men substantial rewards and, potentially, booty, as he strove to prove his mettle and bolster his prestige in foreign wars. Frequent usurpation created a constant demand for coins, as every emperor was expected and required to distribute donatives upon his accession. Failure to do so would lead very swiftly to his demise. Victories helped, as booty could be secured and either distributed in pieces or melted down and struck as coinage. Following a successful campaign, the emperor would distribute mostly bronze coins, but also gold and silver for officers. Nevertheless, expensive campaigns did not always pay for themselves. The coins distributed to soldiers in great numbers bore legends that may not have been legible to them, for many could not read. Still, images must have been clear enough: bound captives beneath standards, emperors in helmets or laurel crowns, or the goddess Victoria carrying a wreath or the trophy, to which we shall turn shortly.

Each emperor would address the army formally when distributing donatives after a victory or upon accession. One might suppose that an informal address often preceded acclamation, as the pretender needed to gauge the likelihood of gaining the support of his troops. The imperial speech (adlocutio) was delivered from a platform that was a permanent feature of all camps. A travelling version might be carried on campaign and erected when necessary. The emperor would be accompanied on the platform by key advisers, including the unit commander. He might also here introduce his sons, and their claims to succeed, to the troops. For example, Septimius Severus, when he knew he was soon to die, appeared on the rostrum with Caracalla. The emperor’s message was always straightforward, as his men were generally poorly educated but understood and appreciated a direct address from their commander.

Once raised up by the army, third-century emperors were generally keen to secure recognition from the senate in Rome. This was always granted. Additionally, the Arval brethren, a priestly college in Rome composed of senators, would sacrifice for the good of the emperors and look after their interests while they were away from Rome. This barely affected the army’s propensity to act just as it pleased in dispensing with emperors of whom the senate had approved. Indeed, the only lasting effect of recognition by the senate has been to recommend many usurpers to posterity as legitimate, while others who ruled for longer and more successfully are denied the title Roman emperor. Since emperors travelled to Rome to secure recognition, the city retained some of its prestige. But this must be measured against the fact that most emperors now spent the greater part of their short reigns in the field, or at a series of important centres elsewhere, including Trier, Sirmium and Sardica, within striking distance of the Rhine and Danube frontiers; Salonica and Nicomedia, on major roads between east and west; and Antioch, whence one might strike at Persia. We shall turn to several of these in later chapters, to explore the effects of being designated an imperial city. This was truly a significant feature of the period, reflecting centrifugal tendencies that were expressed also in the emergence of ephemeral mini-empires, in Gaul and North Africa. There was no desire, it seems, for these regions to separate entirely from Rome, but where the regional rulers could not secure recognition and could not march on Rome, there emerged for the same short period, AD 260–73, two autonomous empires: the Gallic empire, and the Palmyrene empire. Both were called Roman by those who ruled them, intending eventually to rule from the centre. Both also were symptoms of the inability of one man to control the whole empire.

1. Bust of Christ, with the chi-rho and pomegranates. Detail of a mosaic discovered at Hinton St Mary, Dorset, now preserved in the British Museum. (The Granger Collection/TopFoto)

2. Gravestone of Titus Flavius Surillio (d. CAD 213), aquilifer of the Second Legion Adiutrix, now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. (akg-images/Erich Lessing)

3. Roman flag standards (vexilla) and other signa depicted on Trajan’s Column, Rome, represented here on the facsimile in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. (Author)

4. (Above) A flag standard (vexillum) depicted in a fresco in the Temple of Bel at Dura Europos, where a tribune named Terentius is shown performing a camp ritual. (Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Archive)

5. A sarcophagus from the tomb of the Calpurnii, now at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum; it depicts Victories bearing cruciform standards and a ‘shield of virtue’ showing Dionysus’ head. (Author)

6. The triumph of Dionysus, his chariot pulled by leopards or panthers. A late second-century mosaic in the so-called House of Dionysus, Paphos, Cyprus. (Author)

7. The triumph of Dionysus again, his chariot pulled by centaurs. A fourth-century mosaic in the so-called House of Aion, Paphos, Cyprus. (Author)

8. Tauroctony, the ritual bull-slaying sacred to initiates of the mysteries of Mithras, now displayed in the Pio-Clementine Museum, Vatican. (Scala/Museo Pio-Clementino)

9. The ‘thunderstruck’ legion and the rain miracle depicted on the column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. (The Granger Collection/TopFoto)

10. The Gemma Augustea, produced in CAD 10 to mark a victory of Tiberius over the Dalmatians. A trophy is raised on the battlefield in its bottom-left corner. It is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. (Luisa Ricciarini/TopFoto)

11. The Ludovisi Sarcophagus, depicting Gallienus (or another mid-third-century emperor) as an unconquerable emperor (Invictus Augustus), without a helmet in the midst of battle. Rome, Museo Nazionale, Romano. (Author)

12. Oversized bronze statue of Trebonianus Gallus, displayed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Scala/The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource)

13. A small statue of Sol Invictus striking a pose rather similar to Trebonianus Gallus (c. AD 190). (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts/Bridgeman Art Library)

14. A mosaic depicting Christ-Helios, in Mausoleum M, the tomb of the Julii beneath the Vatican. (Topham Picturepoint)

15. Porphyry statues of the Tetrarchs, located in the south-east corner of the southern facade of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. (Scala/St Mark’s Basilica)

16. Porphyry statue of the Tetrarchs, now in the Vatican Museums. (Photo: Scala/Vatican City)

17. The Arras medallion, showing London submitting to Constantius, ‘Restorer of the Eternal Light’. The original has been stolen. There is an electrotype in the Museum of London. (The Granger Collection/TopFoto)

18. Pier of the Arch of Galerius in Salonica, modern Thessaloniki, Greece, to be found very close to the Rotunda of Galerius. (Author)

19. Detail from the Arch of Galerius, showing the emperor in single combat with Narses, ruler of the Persians. (Author)

20. Detail from the Arch of Galerius, showing the Tetrarchs together in victory. The Augusti are enthroned in the centre, the Caesars standing to either side. (Author)

The Roman theology of victory

In the words of J. B. Campbell, in his authoritative study The Emperor and the Roman Army, ‘Ultimately the Roman emperor did not rely for his survival on political parties, or the support of groups of senators or equites, or on mass popular support based on elections or assemblies, but on military strength and the personal loyalty of his army.’ We have sketched some attempts by emperors to secure the personal loyalty of the army, by portraying themselves as ‘fellow soldiers’, addressing the troops regularly in person, providing opportunities to secure plunder, and, above all, through the distribution of donatives, in coins and bullion. Such practical measures alone clearly did not work, and thus there were also attempts to consolidate the bond between leader and followers on emotional and spiritual levels. The bond was, as we have seen at some length, at the core of the army’s religious life.

Emperors attempted to bind the army to them more firmly through powerful oaths. The most potent, the sacramentum, was sworn to the emperor by each soldier upon recruitment, when the recruit was also obliged to wear around his neck a lead seal, a dog tag, bearing the image of the emperor. He was thus ‘branded’ the emperor’s man. The oath was sworn by every soldier each year thereafter, on 3 January, and upon the accession of a new emperor. Additional oaths were sworn during regular ceremonial, and we have observed the development at this time of imperial cults that appear to promote the veneration of the emperor’s person, as well as his ‘divine quality’ (numen). There is evidence that the troops took their oath of loyalty seriously and considered it a personal oath to the emperor rather than to the state. Individual emperors seem to have tinkered with it to improve their own standing or chances of survival. Alas, we have only one full version of the sacramentum, preserved in a later Christian context and probably reworked to suit the tastes of Theodosius I (d. AD 395).

Correct ritual observance was required of all Romans to secure divine support for the state and its leader, the emperor. The requirement that the people, most notably the army, participate fully in state religio remained in force, of course, and it is for this reason that persecution of Christians was mandated first of all in the army camps. But increasingly the onus was on the emperor to prove that he enjoyed the patronage of a powerful god, who, if propitiated by correct ritual, would deliver victory. This, in essence, is what Jean Gagé seventy-five years ago called the ‘Imperial Theology of Victory’. The term ‘theology’ is used in a precise manner, to designate the interpretation and understanding of the nature of god, or the gods, and by extension their roles in delivering victory in battle. (It does not refer to the study of religions or of Christianity in particular.) A Roman commander would need to demonstrate a host of qualities to secure the favour of a divine patron, but the reward of victory rested squarely on two characteristics with which he must be endowed: felicitas and virtus.

Felicitas is most commonly translated into English as ‘good fortune’, but that does not accurately represent the concept. Being essential to victory, felicitas was a divine gift, not in the keeping of any mortal. Cicero is quite clear on this: felicitas, unlike fortune (fortuna), which might be both good and bad, was a reward for the deserving. More particularly, felicitas was the reward for virtus. This latter term is usually translated rather generally as ‘virtue’, but in this context a more accurate rendering would embrace ‘manly aggressiveness’, ‘bravery’ and ‘valour’. Sallust, Cicero’s contemporary, identified this human quality, rather than divine favour, as the principal cause of victory, but as republic gave way to empire, the valour of the emperor became a superhuman quality. Indeed, it was most commonly translated into later Greek as dynamis, which in Homer means bodily strength but which by the fourth century AD is used regularly to designate the Christian god.

During the third century there was no longer a balance between human virtus and divine felicitas, but rather one observes an ‘absolutist theology [of Victory] involving the notion of an invincible (invictus) emperor, possessed of a supernatural virtus procuring an eternal and universal Roman victory’. That last clause is a quotation from Rudolph Storch, who observed astutely that this escalation mirrored both a decline in Roman military fortunes and the rise of monotheistic beliefs. Invictus means both ‘unconquered’ and ‘unconquerable’. Neither quality was enjoyed by any emperor of the third century, but this did not prevent all from claiming it. The notion that invincibility was an imperial quality, intimately associated with virtus and felicitas, was as old as the empire.^* However, this was not reflected in official imperial titulature until the third century, mirroring the rise of an absolutist theology of victory.

It has been suggested that the title invictus was applied to emperors rarely. However, it appears quite frequently in military contexts throughout the empire. For example, a third-century altar found in 1693 at Chester (Deva), in Britain, was dedicated:

For the welfare of our Lords the most invincible emperors, to the guardian spirit of the place Flavius Longus, military tribune of the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix, and Longinus, his son, from Samosata, fulfilled their vow. (RIB 450)

At the other end of the empire, far nearer the birthplace of Flavius Longus, one of the papyrus morning reports of the Twentieth Palmyrene Cohort, stationed at Dura Europos in Syria, begins with an oath to ‘stand watch at the standards of the Emperor Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius Felix Invictus Augustus’. This oath to Gordian has been dated to 27–8 May AD 239.

As emperors fell ever more rapidly to the swords of their own men, symbols of divinely inspired victory, always ubiquitous in imperial art, acquired new meanings. The goddess Victoria, who would later mutate into the angel of Byzantine art, appears everywhere bearing a laurel wreath, the shield of valour (clipeus virtutis), or most notably the trophy. The trophy (tropaeum) was, in origin, a pole or tree trunk with a cross-beam upon which were hung the arms and armour, notably the breast-plate, helmet and shields, of a vanquished foe. Initially it appears to have been raised on the battlefield. The first reference to a battlefield trophy is in Florus’ description of a victory over the Allobroges by the third Domitius Ahenobarbus (consul in 122 BC) and Fabius Maximus. A trophy being raised on a battlefield can be seen on the Gemma Augustea, produced in C.AD 10 to mark a victory of Tiberius over the Dalmatians (fig. 10). On a grander scale, one can see trophies depicted half-way up Trajan’s Column in Rome. The monumental Tropaeum Traiani, ‘Trajan’s Trophy’, erected in C.AD 107–9 at Adamklissi to celebrate Trajan’s successful Dacian campaigns, takes the form of a trophy and also portrays trophies carried by victorious Roman troops.

Representations of trophies were a commonplace on Roman coinage from the last century of the Republic until the early third century AD. They were most often shown placed between bound captives or borne by the goddess Victoria. In each case the trophy shown commemorated a specific victory. However, quite suddenly the trophy disappeared from imperial coins during the reign of Macrinus (217–18) and did not reappear until that of Gallienus (253–68). Now it was shown carried by the emperor, no longer representing a specific victory but rather appearing as a visual equivalent of the title invictus, and there is even evidence that it was used as an imperial standard. On the Ludovisi Sarcophagus, “on view in the Museo Nazionale Romano, in Rome” an emperor is shown mounted in the middle of a battle scene (fig. 11). Roman legionaries in crested helmets, mounted and foot soldiers, are engaging ‘barbarians’, who wear no helmets nor any clear ethnic markers, being distinguished from the Romans by their curly hair. Diana Kleiner, an eminent commentator on Roman sculpture, notes that of the Romans only ‘the Ludovisi general is bare-headed and holds no weapon. The implication is that he is insuperable and will be victorious without protection or weaponry.’ He is invictus, and thus one might clearly understand the presence on the edge of the battle of a trophy, borne on the shoulder of a Roman legionary.

The Ludovisi Sarcophagus is exceptional in being the only extant battle sarcophagus produced after their Antonine hey-day of AD 160–200. And the general has now been identified as the very man who reintroduced the trophy to Roman coins: Gallienus. The trophy depicted on the sarcophagus serves a symbolic function, corroborating the bareheaded emperor’s invincibility. But it is also possible that Gallienus carried the trophy into battle as an imperial standard, to ensure his victory. As we shall see, a similar idea was seized upon by Constantine, who devised his own cruciform battle standard, the labarum. It was forged in the form he claimed to have seen in a vision that foretold his victory. The vision is later described as a ‘cross-shaped trophy formed of light’, using the now familiar term in Greek (tropaion).

The unconquered emperor and the Sun

As the empire’s crisis deepened in the middle years of the third century, Roman emperors resorted more fully to rhetoric, becoming unconquerable generals whose actions in war demonstrated the support and manifested the will of a single greatest god (summus deus). Emperors had long shared the characteristics of the gods, and their divine qualities (numina) were worshipped in the camps. Emperors appeared divinely nude in sculpture, for example – and there are many examples up until the end of the second century – the bronze of Septimius Severus on display at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. In contrast, the more-than-life-sized nude of Trebonianus Gallus at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is the only large-scale bronze to survive from the third century (fig. 12). Gallus, if Gallus it is, is shown in a pose freely emulating that of Alexander the Great, glancing heavenwards and holding aloft a lance, based on a lost prototype by Lysippus, which depicted the hero in full battle armour and helmet. The nude emperor, therefore, presents a striking contrast to his model. Emulation of Alexander (imitatio Alexandri) was, as we have noted, much in vogue in the third century, but the preferred Alexander type was no longer the man, but Alexander in the guise of a god, Alexander-Helios, Alexander the Sun. The emperor as Alexander the Sun wore a solar crown, from which the sun’s rays projected, and raised his right hand in a gesture of imperial or divine majesty and benediction. He wore a uniform, standing erect, in the pose of a living trophy.

In the third century, emperors were portrayed as generals, uniformed and armed, and gods as emperors, no longer nude, nor simply bearing their traditional accoutrements, but rather wearing cuirasses and helmets and bearing weapons. This was not, of course, an absolute contrast, but a further blurring of the distinction between patron gods and client emperors, who now shared divine characteristics and were filled with supernatural virtus that ensured their victories: until it did not, and they were replaced. One meets for the first time in the third century the gods Jupiter Invictus, Mars Invictus and Hercules Invictus, each ‘unconquerable’, each portrayed on coins in military dress. A god almost invariably portrayed in military garb is Jupiter Dolichenus, wielding his double-headed axe. More striking is the fact that Mithras is not portrayed thus in iconography discovered within Mithraea, but it is perhaps through devotion to this god of the camps that the military emperors, many of whom must have been initiates of the mysteries, evinced a devotion to Sol Invictus ‘the Unconquered Sun’. This fact deserves more consideration than it has so far received from experts, for where initiates could not reveal any details of the mysteries, and therefore of their devotion to the Unconquered Sun God Mithras, they might openly venerate Sol Indiges, a solar deity long within the Roman pantheon, who was venerated on the Quirinal and in the circus and was reborn as Sol Invictus.

Sol came to the fore in the reign of Septimius Severus, whose wife Julia Domna was daughter of the chief priest of the Sun god at Emesa (modern Homs), Syria. Upon relocating to Rome, she appears to have brought a suitable priest, as eight inscriptions have been discovered in Trastevere naming one Julius Balbillus, six of which identify him as a sacerdos (priest) of Sol. On two occasions, Sol is identified as Elagabalus, the Syrian god worshipped at Emesa in the form of a black stone, probably a meteorite (and thus common to the worship of Cybele, Sol Elagabalus and later the god of the Muslims). But Septimius was wary of presenting such a deity to the Roman people, who preferred anthropomorphic gods with Roman equivalents. Thus, from AD 197, he struck coins annually to Sol, and on the reverse declared himself AUG INVICTUS, ‘unconquered emperor’. Hitherto, Sol was most commonly portrayed on his four-horsed chariot, a quadriga, streaking towards the sky – a pose which remained popular. Now the god was depicted for the first time standing unattended, in the pose of Alexander-Helios, wearing a solar crown and with his right hand raised as if in benediction or acknowledgement (fig. 13, and compare with fig. 12), a gesture described by art historian Richard Brilliant as a ‘conventional and ecumenical sign of radiant power’. But more particularly, it was the way an emperor would hold his hand when he was about to address his troops, in adlocutio, or when receiving the acclamations of a cheering crowd during a triumphal entry, the adventus.

Sol was by no means Septimius Severus’ only patron, and he appears to have considered Jupiter his principal patron during a long and successful military career. His son, Caracalla, displayed a preference for the moon over the sun, venerating the goddess Luna. Caracalla struck coins to Sol regularly, but as son to a companion of Jupiter, he also favoured Jupiter’s sons, Hercules and Dionysus. It was not a general, therefore, but a man quite without military standing who introduced the Sun as his sole imperial patron. A priest of the Sun god at Emesa, in Syria, before he acceded to the throne as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (AD 218–22), he is better known by the name of his god, Elagabalus. Elagabalus the emperor was unpopular in Rome for wishing to institute the worship of Elagabalus the god alongside regular state rituals. He wore his priest’s costume on state occasions and placed his cult title, ‘the most mighty priest of the invincible Sun god’, before that of pontifex maximus, chief priest of the various cults, within the imperial titulature. He struck coins to no other god and declared Sol Elagabalus to be protector of the emperor (conservator augusti). But the conservator could not protect the young priest from his own guards, who murdered him and his mother. The black rock which he had imported to Rome from Emesa was sent back, and Sol Elagabalus was not worshipped in Rome thereafter. Sol Invictus, however, remained, now striking additional poses and communicating additional messages.

In AD 238, when Gordian III, aged thirteen, was raised to the throne by the senate, coins were struck demonstrating his solar credentials. Sol is depicted handing the young emperor a globe, symbol of world domination, suggesting an established connection between the worship of the Sun and imperial legitimacy. It seems clear that those claiming to succeed the Severans observed the established iconography they had propagated and recognized the value of Sol’s patronage. There are no known coins depicting Sol struck by the usurpers Gallus, Decius or Aemilianus, but the Sun was favoured by Valerian (253–60) and consequently by his son, Gallienus (253–68), as a guarantor of Rome’s aeternitas, the eternal endurance of the empire in the face of ever-mounting troubles. Sol featured yearly on Gallienus’ coins, and a new type emerged, featuring a winged horse, akin to Pegasus, but in fact a symbol of the Unconquered Sun identified as Sol, as the inscription reveals: SOLI CONS AUG, ‘To Sol, Protector of the Augustus’. Sol appears thus to have been recruited as a patron for Gallienus’ new cavalry corps, with the four horses of the Sun’s familiar quadriga and the flying chariot itself suitably condensed. More significantly, Gallienus was the first emperor to strike coins which featured on their obverse the inscription ‘unconquered emperor’ (invictus augustus), with a reverse portrait of the unconquered Sun god, named in full as Sol Invictus. Previously, the god had enjoyed that epithet only in private inscriptions, mostly by adherents of Jupiter Dolichenus and those initiated into the mysteries of Mithras. One suspects that Gallienus, who spent his entire adult life in the army, must be numbered among these. We have already seen what efforts Gallienus made to portray himself as ‘unconquerable’, and this extended to the promotion of the Unconquered Sun. According to the later (and largely unreliable) Historia Augusta, Gallienus …

gave orders to make a statue of himself arrayed as the Sun and greater than the Colossus [a pre-existing statue of the Sun god, erected by Nero with that emperor’s face], but it was destroyed while still unfinished. It was, in fact, begun on so large a scale that it seemed to be double the size of the Colossus. His wish was that it should be placed on the summit of the Esquiline Hill, holding a spear, up the shaft of which a child could climb to the top. The plan, however, seemed foolish to Claudius and after him to Aurelian.

If the plan did indeed seem foolish to these men, it was not the reason that they, with other senior army officers, conspired to bring about Gallienus’ death in 268. Claudius II (268–70) promptly proclaimed himself Sol Augustus, the Sun emperor. What he meant by this remains unclear, but it does not suggest an aversion to the Sun god. A glance at his coins might suggest that Claudius did not especially venerate Sol, striking coins dedicated to Jupiter the Victor and to the rarely seen Neptune, and even altering Gallienus’ Sol Invictus type so that it displayed Hercules instead of the Sun god opposite the inscription ‘unconquered emperor’. But Sol featured on a rather large proportion of the coins struck in his short reign, and also on those of the still shorter reign of Quintillus, his brother. Aurelian (270–5) went far further, and his reign deserves careful consideration, for it presents a case study of the imperial theology of victory in action and serves as a model for Constantine’s actions in the early years of his reign.

Aurelian

Aurelian was a successful cavalry commander in his mid-fifties when Claudius II acceded to the throne. He had flourished in a milieu where rapid deployment of smaller, mobile units had come to dominate military strategy, and achieved high command during the apogee of the crisis under Gallienus. Most recently he had taken part in the campaigns that secured Claudius II his triumphal epithet, Gothicus Maximus, by the defeat of the Goths at a set-piece battle near Naissus (modern Niš in Serbia) in AD 269. Claudius’ reign was cut short in 270 when, about to turn east to confront the rebel Palmyrene empire of the self-styled empress Zenobia, he fell victim to ‘the plague’. Quintillus, Claudius’ younger brother, was acclaimed by the army, but when Aurelian, commander of the cavalry, threatened civil war, Quintillus’ troops turned against him and he committed suicide. Aurelian succeeded.

The brutal imposition of authority was more admired than feared by the Romans, but Aurelian was remembered as a particularly stern disciplinarian. While still a cavalry officer, according to the gloriously fictitious account in the Historia Augusta, Aurelian indulged in some imitatio Alexandri. But in this instance, it was not to magnify his achievements but to inspire respect in his troops:

He was alone among commanders in inflicting the following punishment on a soldier who had committed adultery with the wife of a man at whose house he was lodged: bending down the tops of two trees, he fastened them to the soldier’s feet and let them fly up so suddenly that the man hung there torn in two – a penalty that inspired great fear in all.

Alexander is recorded as having employed this punishment, and the readers of this life would have been expected to make the association.

Aurelian travelled to Rome late in 270, not only to secure approval of his succession from the senate but also to begin a programme to rebuild the city’s crumbling walls. This he did less to defend the populace and more to project his vision of eternal Rome, even as the empire endured for the first time in its history the presence of two secessionist states in its core provinces. Aurelian’s achievement was to restore the integrity of the empire, in 272–3 defeating Empress Zenobia of Palmyra to recover Egypt and Syria, and in 274 crushing C. Pius Esuvius Tetricus to recover Gaul. Consequently, he took the title restitutor orbis, ‘restorer of the world’, and attributed his victories to Sol Invictus. He erected a new temple to this god in Emesa, and following a triumphal entry into Rome in 274, where Zenobia and Tetricus were paraded in defeat, he dedicated another still greater temple to the Unconquered Sun on the Campus Agrippae. To tend to this cult, he established a new priesthood of Sol, the pontifices deo Soli, whose members were drawn from the senatorial aristocracy and were distinct from all earlier sacerdotes of Sol Elagabalus. There were also games devoted to the Sun, the agones Soli, which were celebrated annually on 25 December.

Why, one must ask, was Sol Invictus credited with delivering victory and allowing Aurelian to restore the empire? We are reliant almost solely on the Historia Augusta for our answer, and the tale is highly suspect. However, it makes comprehensible those of Aurelian’s actions that are attested archaeologically – in the temple he erected at Rome, in the coins he struck, and in inscriptions by the priesthood of the Sun that endured after the emperor’s death. The account involves an imperial vision of a philosopher-redeemer, the battlefield manifestation of a god to the commander and his men, and the glorious observance of the theology of victory in action.

Setting out for war, Aurelian commanded that the senate consult the Sibylline Books, Rome’s famous books of oracles, kept meticulously updated shortly after the events they predicted had unfolded. They revealed that victory would be secured by correct propitiation of the gods. ‘I wonder, revered fathers,’ Aurelian informed the senators, ‘that you have hesitated so long to open the Sibylline Books, as if you were consulting in a gathering of Christians and not in the temple of all the gods.’ This would appear to be clear evidence that the author of this part of the Historia Augusta is addressing an audience of Roman senators in the later fourth, not third, century. But we cannot assume, consequently, that everything else here recorded is merely a response to Christianity’s rise. Rather, the tale as it unfolds suggests that a story circulated during Aurelian’s reign, the key elements of which were later recorded and embellished by our author. Most significantly, we may surmise that the story was known to Eusebius, and he used it when rewriting the tale of Constantine’s vision, as we shall see in chapter 7.

The reason given for the delay in consulting the books is rooted in a now familiar discussion about the nature of imperial virtus, manly valour, and its divine or human origins. Thus, one senator, Ulpius Silanus, reminded his peers:

I often said in this body, when the invasion of the Marcomanni [a Germanic people] was first announced, that we should consult the commands of the Sibyl, make use of the benefits of Apollo [a cognate of Sol], and submit ourselves to the bidding of the immortal gods; but some objected, and objected too with cruel guile, saying in flattery that such was the valour (virtus) of the emperor Aurelian that there was no need to consult the deities, just as though the great man does not himself revere the gods and found his hopes on the dwellers of heaven. Why say more? We have heard this man’s message asking for the help of the gods, which never causes shame to any. Now let this most courageous man be helped.

Aurelian, however, failed to defeat the Marcomanni, and ‘there would have been no victory for Rome … if the power of the gods, after the Books had been consulted and the sacrifices performed, had not confounded the barbarians by means of certain prodigies and heavensent visions’. There is no indication that these visions are the same as that which Aurelian alone experienced en route to his decisive battle with Zenobia. As he was encamped before the city of Tyana, contemplating the fate of the rebels within …

Apollonius of Tyana, a sage of the greatest renown and authority, a philosopher of former days, the true friend of the gods, and himself even to be regarded as a supernatural being, suddenly appeared to Aurelian as he was withdrawing to his tent … [saying] ‘Aurelian, if you wish to conquer, there is no reason why you should plan the death of my fellow citizens. Aurelian, if you wish to rule, abstain from shedding the blood of the innocent. Aurelian, act with mercy if you wish to live long.’ Aurelian … at once stricken with terror, promised him a portrait and statues and a temple … For who among men has ever been more venerated, more revered, more renowned or more holy than that man [Apollonius]? He brought back the dead to life, he said and did many things beyond the power of man.

Apollonius is clearly here presented as a counterpart to Christ. According to a third-century life composed by Philostratus, Apollonius was an exact contemporary of Christ, who prayed thrice daily to the Sun. He is credited with the prayer: ‘O, thou Sun, send me as far around the world as is my pleasure and thine; and may I make the acquaintance of good men but never hear anything of bad ones, nor they of me.’ Unlike Christ, who would in a vision urge Constantine on to the slaughter of his foes, Apollonius provokes Aurelian’s clemency. Consequently …

The whole issue of the war was decided near Emesa in a mighty battle fought against Zenobia and Zaba, her ally. When Aurelian’s cavalry, now exhausted, was on the verge of breaking ranks and turning about, suddenly by the power of a supernatural agency, as was afterwards made known, a divine form spread encouragement throughout the infantry and rallied even the cavalry. Zenobia and Zaba were put to flight, and a victory was won in full. And so, having reduced the East to its former state, Aurelian entered Emesa as a conqueror, and at once made his way to the temple of Elagabalus, to pay his vows as if by a duty common to all. But there he saw the same divine form which he had seen supporting his cause in the battle. Wherefore, he not only established temples there, dedicating gifts of great value, but also built a temple to the Sun at Rome.

The form that appeared to Aurelian and his troops is not revealed, but it should be recalled that the god of Emesa was worshipped in the shape of a black rock. There are here remarkable similarities to Constantine’s vision, but only in the form recorded by Eusebius, according to which Constantine, as we shall see, had both a dream of Christ and a vision. Eusebius also produced a treatise refuting a now lost work by Sossianus Hierocles, which advanced an extended comparison between Apollonius and Christ that favoured the miraculist from Tyana. However, there are notable differences also: Apollonius appears to Aurelian while he is awake some time before the battlefield vision, whereas Christ appears to Constantine while asleep on the eve of battle, in order to explain an earlier vision. The vision that Aurelian shared with his troops occurred in the midst of battle, inspiring his men to snatch victory from defeat. Constantine’s men had no vision during the battle, nor indeed immediately before, but relied on their commander to remind them of an earlier sign they had observed, and by his command to daub it on their shields. These distinctions will become clearer once we turn to the accounts of Constantine’s vision. For now it is important to record that Aurelian’s actions demonstrate clearly that he attributed his victories to Sol and that this must be interpreted within the established framework of the imperial theology of victory.

Aurelian’s vision is known to us only from the Historia Augusta, a source compiled after Eusebius’ account of Constantine’s vision and in that form evidently responding in some fashion to it. Nevertheless, it was not entirely a later fiction, but rather drew on an earlier story that was known by and served as a template for Constantine’s actions. It would be easy to suggest cynically that he did not believe in divine patronage, but used the idea and its symbols to inspire his men to action. But this would be to introduce modern sensibilities. Certainly, the Romans were masters of propaganda and persuasion, but they also lived in a world filled with gods who provided very real benefits and rewards. For Aurelian’s men at Emesa, therefore, like those who fought for Maximinus Thrax at Aquileia, it was quite natural to see the actions of a particular local god behind their successes or failures. Aurelian’s achievement was to establish that god, Sol, at the pinnacle of the Roman pantheon, where Elagabalus had earlier failed, as the true greatest god (summus deus). There he would be equated with Apollo, or with Jupiter, or indeed with Christ.

Christ the true Sun

From the time of Aurelian dates the most striking image to have emerged from the excavations conducted beneath the Vatican. In the tomb of the Julii (mausoleum M) is a mosaic of the Sun god, seven rays projecting from a nimbus around his head (fig. 14). He is riding a solar chariot pulled by white horses, two of which are visible. A cape flies out behind his left shoulder. The god’s right hand, now mostly lost, appears to be raised in benediction, familiar from other third-century representations of Sol. The left hand, also damaged, holds a globe. The halo and solar rays are standard, but are also evocative of earlier images of Apollo, in the guise of Helios, for example a wonderful medallion from a floor mosaic discovered at El Djem in Tunisia, which dates from the later second century. Thus the figure has been identified as Apollo-Helios. But more frequently, Sol of the Julii has been identified with Christ, largely because of his location and juxtaposition with scenes from the life of Jonah.

Two further elements of the mosaic decoration of mausoleum M, a fisherman and a man holding a staff, are ubiquitous early Christian motifs. Both are presented alongside a sun-crowned god on a striking sarcophagus, dating from the mid-third century and discovered at La Gayole in Provence. One sees here also a teaching scene and a person standing with hands outstretched in prayer (orans). The scene suggests the progression of the person buried within through education, revelation and the power of prayer, from worship of the Sun to that of Christ. This was exactly the path recommended by Clement of Alexandria, who saw worship not merely as a polytheistic fallacy but rather as a monotheism a step below that of Christian worship. For Clement, moreover, Christ is the Sun:

And the Lord, with ceaseless assiduity, exhorts, terrifies, urges, rouses, admonishes; He awakes from the sleep of darkness, and raises up those who have wandered in error. ‘Awake,’ He says, ‘thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light’ – Christ, the Sun of the Resurrection, He ‘who was born before the morning star’, and with His beams bestows life.

Likewise for Origen, Christ is the Sun of Justice, that part of the godhead that manifested itself to mankind, to illuminate the earth and dispense justice. In his polemic against Celsus, Origen observed the difference between worshipping the Sun and that which the Sun represented:

Those, indeed, who worship sun, moon, and stars because their light is visible and celestial, would not bow down to a spark of fire or a lamp upon earth, because they see the incomparable superiority of those objects which are deemed worthy of homage to the light of sparks and lamps. So those who understand that God is light, and who have apprehended that the Son of God is ‘the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’, and who comprehend also how He says, ‘I am the light of the world’, would not rationally offer worship to that which is, as it were, a spark in sun, moon, and stars, in comparison with God, who is light of the true light.

While pagans would have observed the Sun god in his familiar chariot, Christians looking at the image of Sol in the Mausoleum of the Julii would have seen none other than the Light of the World. And the same must surely apply to those who, a century later, looked up into a cupola in the small church of San Aquilino in Milan to see Christ in a chariot streaking across the sky. Perhaps the prayer of Ambrose, Splendor paternae gloriae, composed in Milan, was intoned beneath this very image. It is now known to English-speakers as the hymn ‘Splendour of God’s Glory Bright’:

O splendour of God’s glory bright,
O Thou that bringest light from light,
O Light of light, light’s living spring,
O day, all days illumining.
O Thou true Sun (verusque Sol), on us Thy glance,
Let fall in royal radiance,
The spirit’s sanctifying beam,
Upon our earthly senses stream.