A Christian education – The setting Sun? – Legislating toleration – The battle for toleration – Eusebius and the labarum – A common vision?
The son of monotheists, brought up to venerate a single ‘greatest god’, Constantine was an ideal candidate to embrace the empire’s fastest-growing faith, Christianity. As the sociologist John Lofland observed, upon close scrutiny of the Moonies in the early 1960s, conversion proceeds most easily within groups where potential recruits already have close associations, friends or relatives. Moreover, the process of conversion changes how one conceives of a new faith and its oddness. For example, Lofland witnessed new Moonies changing their opinions and denying that they had ever felt ambivalent about the cult. Having embraced Christianity and lived for a decade among Christian intellectuals, Constantine no longer saw that his choice was strange, still less that it had been a long process. In place of the story of his struggle to identify his god, and to smooth over the contradictions between his past and current views, he told a tale that those who would promote conversion more widely embraced and disseminated. Chief among these was Eusebius, whose view of Constantine’s conversion has been accepted ever since. His is the story of the emperor’s moment of revelation before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge that has persisted through the centuries.
Observers of the Fourth Rome, the USA, in the first decade of the twenty-first century are familiar with tales of conversion and redemption While politicians in western Europe,* Greece to America’s Rome, have done their best to conceal any religious convictions they might nurture, aspirants to executive office in the United States have embraced theirs and expounded them publicly, clamorously, juxtaposing middle-aged sobriety with admissions of youthful indiscretions. For the powerful, conversion is Pauline: a moment of revelation rather than decades of gradual refinement. Revelation is decisive, for the powerful must make decisions quickly and with conviction. It reveals an intimate relationship between the candidate and a higher power, the summus deus, whose hand might then be seen to guide him or her to powerful office, and who will remain a source of strength and inspiration, directly and regularly.
But conversion is never a momentary phenomenon; it is only held to have been upon reflection and with hindsight. Revelatory conversion has been recast by sociologists as the ‘peripety paradigm’. A term employed by dramatists and those who study modes of composition, peripety is a moment of sudden change, which one expects in literature and in the retelling of a life. For Constantine’s conversion, in the account related by Eusebius, was the emperor’s own tale presented in terms that Eusebius, as a churchman of the early fourth century, understood. He was sure to equate the road to the Milvian Bridge with the road to Damascus. If Eusebius realized that conversion was a life-long process which brought one closer to divinity, he may have equated it with monasticism, the phenomenon intended to facilitate and perfect that process, which emerged in the deserts of North Africa during Eusebius’ lifetime. The life of the first monastic hero, Antony (d. AD 356), was composed after Eusebius’ death. As a fourth-century work of spiritual biography, it may be compared to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine. But Constantine was no ascetic hero. He was mired in the business of mundane power, and his conversion saw the victory of the Christian Church over its persecutors. That victory was fragile and incomplete at his death, despite the efforts he made through the last two decades of his life.
A Christian education
As early as 312, Constantine may have recognized the god of the Christians as a manifestation of the greatest god, the summus deus. Christians saw in this recognition an end to their recent persecution. But was Constantine at that point a Christian? Had he been converted by the events of 312? These questions cannot be answered, for they are framed incorrectly. Constantine’s actions after 312 reveal a man with sympathy and concern for the Christians in his empire. Like his father, he forbade persecution of Christians throughout his lands, even when Tetrarchic colleagues pursued adherents of the faith most fiercely. Nor was Constantine’s concern simply to end violence between different religious communities. Letters written soon after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge demonstrate the emperor’s desire to end factionalism within the Christian community, lest this bring down divine wrath upon the emperor. The sentiment is as authentic as the letters, for it reflects Constantine’s conception of the summus deus as a grantor of victory, which might be rescinded as surely as it was given. Constantine’s concern for Christians was founded in a practical desire to ensure divine favour for his own enterprises, and this facilitated the emperor’s conversion from veneration of a summus deus that he portrayed in the traditional iconography of Sun worshippers, to his public recognition of the god of the Christians as the true ‘greatest god’. This process took the course that it did because Christians had been freed from persecution by his victories, and consequently some of the most eloquent and persuasive were drawn to Constantine’s court.
The most notable scholar to join Constantine at Trier, and according to a compelling recent study by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, perhaps the architect of the emperor’s developing religious policy, was Lactantius. According to Digeser, Lactantius, whose writings we have already consulted frequently, was at Constantine’s court at Trier as early as 310. At that time he was appointed tutor to Constantine’s son Crispus, responsible for instructing the young prince, then aged six or seven, in Latin literature. (Digeser quite rightly observes that those who suggest Lactantius arrived at Trier only in 317 must explain why Crispus, almost a grown man in charge of Gaul, would then still require a basic education.) It was at Constantine’s court, therefore, and not in Nicomedia under Galerius and Licinius, that Lactantius wrote his tract On the Deaths of the Persecutors, the earliest apologetic for violence committed in the Christian cause. Lactantius saw Constantine as his god’s tool for punishing those who had so recently persecuted his co-religionists, and will have read aloud each chapter to the emperor as he completed it. The emperor will also have been among the first to hear Lactantius’ greater work, the Divine Institutes, which was composed in its first form between 305 and 310.
The Divine Institutes were begun in Nicomedia, as a response to the musings of those philosophers who had justified the Great Persecution, notably Porphyry and Hierocles (see DI 5.2.1). Monotheism was, Lactantius held, Rome’s original religion, and the idea of many gods was introduced in error. He attacks the folly of the philosophers who have failed to see the truth: that religion and wisdom are inseparable, and that only through Christianity is true wisdom attainable. Only those who reject the many gods for the one may be wise and just. Whereas Porphyry had advocated repression of those who would not participate in established rituals, Lactantius exposes such false rites as the veneration of dead men and demons. And in a digression in the fifth book of seven in the Divine Institutes, Lactantius presents, according to its recent translators (Bowen and Garnsey, p. 46), ‘a plea for religious freedom [that is] the most elaborate and eloquent of its kind surviving from antiquity’. Its central message is that forbearance, not persecution, is the path to universal justice and to the re-establishment of Rome’s ancient constitution.
Monotheism was, in Lactantius’ formulation, superior to polytheism, and Constantine, long a monotheist, although not yet fully a Christian, was on the path to restoring truth and justice to Rome. Thus in 313-14 Lactantius retouched his work and dedicated it to the emperor with these words:
All fictions have now been laid to rest, most holy emperor, ever since God most high raised you up to restore the abode of justice and to protect the human race. Now that you are the ruler of the world of Rome we worshippers of God are no longer treated as criminals and villains … Nobody now flings the name of God at us in reproach, nobody any longer calls us irreligious … The providence of the most high godhead has promoted you to supreme power so that you may in the truth of your piety rescind the wicked decrees of others, correct error, provide for the safety of men in your paternal kindness, and finally remove from public life such evil men as God has ousted with his divine power and has put into your hands, so that all men should be clear on what comprises true majesty … They are paying, and have paid, the penalty for their wickedness; you are protected from all dangers by the powerful right hand of God … because you were the only one to demonstrate special qualities of virtue (virtus) and piety …
Lactantius’ works had a profound effect upon Constantine. As Digeser has shown, the Divine Institutes swiftly became a source of language and ideas for the emperor, which he employed in his letters and orations. A telling insight into Constantine’s Christian education, and into the influence of Lactantius, is offered by the emperor’s own Oration to the Saints, a sermon that he delivered on a Good Friday of uncertain date. Its most recent translator assigns the sermon to the year 315 and suggests it was delivered to the citizens of Rome, but most others have favoured a later date, including 321, 324, 325 and 328. Whatever the exact date, and we shall return to this later, the oration was delivered when Constantine had progressed considerably with his Christian education, for it greatly resembled Lactantius’ Divine Institutes in thought and terminology. The philosophical content of the emperor’s sermon owed much also to a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus which its author, Calcidius, had dedicated to Constantine’s closest Christian adviser besides Lactantius, Ossius of Cordoba. Many attempts have been made to attribute the oration to Ossius or to Lactantius, rather than to the emperor himself. But this is a fruitless exercise, akin to arguing that modern statesmen do not compose their own speeches. The themes of the sermon, and the terms in which they were expressed, were the emperor’s own, and these he had embraced by 315 and continued to refine over the following decade. Constantine concludes (Oration 26) with a telling observation: that the citizens of Rome have witnessed the triumph of the Christian god, still the grantor of victory, through Constantine, but they must continue to pray publicly and privately for his success:
They indeed have witnessed the battles and observed the war in which God’s providence awarded victory to the people, and have seen God co-operating with our prayers. For righteous prayer is an invincible thing, and no-one who pays holy adoration is disappointed of his aim … Those who pursue piety should confess their gratitude to the Saviour of all for our salvation and the good state of public affairs, and petition Christ for one another with holy prayers and litanies, that he may continue to benefit us. For he is an unconquerable ally and defender of the righteous, he himself is the best judge, the guide to immortality, the bestower of eternal life.
The setting Sun?
A third, short work by Lactantius, On God’s Anger, written after both the Divine Institutes and On the Deaths of the Persecutors, describes the path that the convert to Christianity must take: the convert would understand and reject false religions; then he would perceive clearly the singular, greatest god; and third, he would recognize Jesus Christ as ‘His Servant and Messenger Whom He sent to earth’. Constantine’s Christian education led him along this path, providing an intellectual framework for his intuitions and shaping his policy. He advocated not the performance of state-mandated rituals, but rather the efficacy of prayer to the single ‘greatest god’.
For the broadest audience Constantine had projected his devotion to the Sun god using the established language of late Roman imperial art. There were advantages in such a policy, where such an association advanced dynastic claims to sole rule. Sol had been the patron of Constantine’s chosen forebear, Claudius Gothicus, and had dominated the imperial iconography of the sole emperors who had preceded the Tetrarchs, notably Aurelian and Probus (AD 276-82). Moreover, Sol was well established in the canon of appropriate symbols for the representation of the ‘greatest god’. But Constantine also knew that to Christians Christ was the true Sun, and his use of Sol sent a message about his divine patron that was acceptable to all; or rather, to all but Constantine himself, as his personal beliefs changed and his hold on power became ever firmer.
If Sol was Constantine’s public patron, preserver and companion until 317, he was not the god Constantine now worshipped in private. Constantine had long given broad hints that his personal devotion was to the god whose symbol he sported, the chi-rho, which bore no association with Sol. Eusebius, in a passage of his Life of Constantine quoted in full below, claimed that Constantine had the chi-rho, his sign of victory, displayed on his helmet. The chi-rho does indeed feature prominently on the crest of the emperor’s helmet on a silver medallion struck in Ticinum, probably in 315. The medallion was struck to mark Constantine’s decennalia, for distribution among his more eminent followers, most likely army officers. The helmet itself is of a new type, with a high crest and cross bar, bedecked with jewels. It appears to have featured on bronze coins for the first time slightly earlier than on the silver medallions, and some of the coins show the chi-rho on the side rather than the crest of the helmet. The coins have always been controversial, and so it is of immense significance that a version of the very Christogram seen mounted on Constantine’s helmet has very recently been discovered in the Netherlands. The location suggests strongly that it could not have belonged to Constantine himself, and one cannot be certain that it dates as early as his reign. It is most likely from the later fourth or early fifth century. But it is clear that the symbolism Constantine sought to propagate after the Milvian Bridge was later adopted on the arms and armour of his overtly Christian successors.
As Constantine began publicly to recognize Christ, so Sol gradually disappeared from his coins, first from his large issues in bronze, which followed fairly soon after the promotion on 1 March 317 of the new Caesars to the imperial college. Sol appeared only intermittently on gold issues, notably from mints at Ticinum in 320-1, Sirmium in 320-3 and Antioch in 325. Radiate crown obverses are limited to the junior emperors after 317-18 and disappear altogether after 324-6. The disappearance of Sol, therefore, was as gradual as Constantine’s conversion, becoming absolute only in his last decade. Before then his agenda was to promote not Christianity but toleration.
Legislating toleration
All types of monotheists, the emperor included, prayed to the same ‘greatest god’, and this Constantine acknowledged when writing to Christians, whose priests he determined to afford the same privileges as those in other cults. This is clear in laws he issued, some of which have been preserved in two later Roman law compilations, the Theodosian Code (abbreviated below CTh) and the Justinianic Code. More than 300 entries in these codes are laws attributed to Constantine, all dating after 312, and three-quarters of those from before 324. The earliest, dating to 313 (CTh 16.2.1-2), exempt Christian clergy from compulsory public services so that they, like the priests of other religions, might devote their energies solely to the propagation of faith and to prayer. An important point to note in addressing these early laws is that they did not promote a peculiarly Christian agenda. Rather, they promoted particular Christians, clerics, who might then protect the interests of their communities. The rights of Christians were henceforth to be protected like those of other citizens, by powerful patrons who might interpret both existing law and new laws. Constantine legislated not Christianity but toleration. It was decreed that, pursuant to the edict of toleration issued from Milan in 313, bishops were to have the right to hear legal cases. Consequently, Christians would no longer be obliged to have their cases heard by those who had until recently enforced the persecution of their communities. In 318 it was determined that any Christian who so desired might have his case heard not by the civil judge, before whom it may have been instituted, but by an episcopal court (CTh 16.2.1). One might observe in this ruling a desire to protect those who were vulnerable to the whims of the powerful, and the jurisdiction of bishops was reiterated in 319, in response to a particular appeal to authority, in a decree addressed not generally but to Octavianus, an official in Lucania and Bruttium (modern Calabria) (CTh 16.2.2); and again in 321, in a decree to Bishop Ossius, Constantine’s close associate, which permitted bishops the right, accorded to other magistrates, to manumit slaves in their churches (CTh 4.7.1).
It has often been written that laws introduced in 320, aimed at regulating marriage and celibacy, present clear evidence of a Christian legislative agenda. Certainly, Constantine was the first emperor to rescind aspects of the lex Papia Poppaea, enacted in AD 9 to further Augustus’ moral agenda and to promote procreation among legally married couples. Constantine annulled penalties for childlessness and celibacy, so that celibates might ‘live as though numbered among married men and supported by the bonds of matrimony’ (CTh 8.16.1). But those penalties had not been particularly severe and must only very rarely have been applied. For example, a celibate might, after April 320, inherit property from those who were more distantly related to him or her than the sixth degree. Moreover, where a person was already married, then the existing law continued to apply. A married couple that was childless, Christian or not, did not benefit from Constantine’s new law. Nonetheless, the law was praised by Eusebius (VC 4.26) and others who would promote celibacy as a boon to Christians, as was the measure to ban facial branding and tattooing (CTh 9.40.2):
If any person should be condemned to the arena or to the mines, in accordance with the nature of the crime in which he has been detected, he shall not be branded on his face, since the penalty of condemnation can be branded by one and the same mark on his hands and on the calves of his legs, so that the face, which has been made in the likeness of celestial beauty, may not be disfigured.
Those made in the likeness of celestial beauty would still face death as a gladiator or subterranean slave-labourer. A law banning crucifixion as a method of capital punishment has not survived, and we know that a pretender who set himself up as ruler of Cyprus in the 330s was crucified (see below, p. 249).
Constantine’s legislation that may have been most clearly informed by his developing faith was devoted to children. Celibates enjoyed new rights, but those who married still did so to have children. A law of 315, attributed to both Constantine and Licinius, offered food and clothing to those in Italy who declared that they were too poor to raise their children (CTh 11.27.1), as did a second of 322 in Constantine’s name, addressed to those who were tempted to sell their children (CTh 11.27.2). The laws’ intention was to discourage the exposure or sale of infants, but it did not go so far as to ban such practices. Similarly, whoever had collected and raised an abandoned child with the consent of its father ‘shall have the right to keep the said child … as his child or as a slave, whichever he should prefer’ (CTh 5.9.1). This second provision was enacted in 331, some years after Constantine had engineered the death of his own child, no longer an infant.
A law of 323 on lustral (purificatory) sacrifices is of peculiar interest, for it suggests that those who were charged now with protecting Christians, their priests, were not themselves always safe from persecution (CTh 16.2.5). On 25 December 323 – the significance of the date will become still clearer – it was determined that Christian clerics were to be exempted from participation in traditional rites of purification. The decree is not a general ban on sacrifice, but rather is couched as a means to punish those who would persist in forcing clerics and others to participate in state religio. Under persecuting emperors sacrifice had been the litmus test of loyalty to the state, and it was compulsory participation, enforced by local magistrates, against which Constantine legislated. This was surely directed at those within Licinius’ lands, and to these we shall turn shortly. Constantine enacted no ban on sacrifice, for this would have contradicted his mandate of toleration. Clearly, however, he wished to discourage sacrifice and to promote the power of prayer. He appears to have abstained from participation in blood sacrifice, and legislated against those who used magic. However, he ordered no general destruction of temples. Those three temples that we know to have been destroyed were remarkable. One stood on the site of Mamre, where tradition held that God had appeared to Abraham at an oak tree (or terebinth); a church would be placed there. A second temple had been at Aphaca in Phoenicia, a site dedicated to Aphrodite (Venus) where homosexual intercourse and ritualized prostitution were encouraged; the destruction of this temple can best be understood in the context of Constantine’s moralizing legislation. A third temple was dedicated to Asclepius and, more problematically, to Apollonius of Tyana, a rival to Christ; this last was probably destroyed by angry Christians without official sanction in the aftermath of Constantine’s victory of 324. Eusebius was well informed on the church at Mamre, for he was one of the Palestinian bishops to receive a letter from the emperor ordering its construction. He exaggerates, however, when he proceeds to describe the ‘destruction of idol temples and images everywhere’ (VC 3.52-6). Libanius, a pagan, later observed with profound regret but accurately that temples survived but were starved of wealth. In 321 it was decreed that Christians might leave their property to the Church, and this they did in abundance (CTh 16.2.4).
The battle for toleration
In 313 Licinius had agreed with Constantine to follow the same policy of universal religious toleration, and for the most part he had done so. After the end of hostilities in 317, Licinius had recognized Constantine as senior Augustus and their pact held for some years, as is demonstrated by the emperors’ mutual recognition of consuls. The honorary office of consul was rotated between combinations of Augusti and Caesars: in 318, Licinius and Crispus were consuls; in 319, Constantine and Licinianus; in 320, Constantine and Constantine II; and in the first months of 321, Licinius and Licinianus. Throughout this period, Licinius and his son maintained their devotion to Sol Invictus as a manifestation of the ‘greatest god’ that was acceptable to all. From an army camp at Salsovia an inscription has survived revealing that the emperors Licinius Augustus and Licinius Caesar (i.e. Licinianus) commanded that a statue of Sol be consecrated each year on the dies Solis, the ‘Day of the Sun’, which was 25 December. This was a parallel measure to the dedication of a new altar to Jupiter each January, as prescribed in the army feriale (religious calendar). However, Licinius did not agree that prayer was more powerful than correct ritual observance, and he renewed efforts to promote official religio. Jupiter reappeared on his coins as a divine protector and companion, coinciding with Sol’s last major outing on Constantine’s coins, and this heralded a second, decisive rupture between the two emperors. In 320 the obverses (fronts) of Constantine’s gold coins had the familiar invocative inscriptions SOLI INVICTO COMITI, while Licinius favoured IOVI CONSERVATORI (‘To Jupiter preserver [of Licinius])’. On the reverses the imperial rivals are portrayed being crowned by their rival gods.
Shortly afterwards, if we believe Constantine’s propaganda, Licinius repudiated Constantine’s demands for universal religious freedom and, proceeding in familiar fashion, began to expel Christians from his palace. In his Life of Constantine, Eusebius offers a series of additional vignettes that attest to the threat of renewed persecution: women and men were forbidden to worship together, and women were banned from receiving instruction from (male) priests or bishops; bishops were to stay in their own cities and were forbidden to gather for synods; the tax privileges and exemptions that Christian clergy had been granted were revoked. Most strikingly, in his Proof of the Gospel, a work completed between 320 and 324, Eusebius observed that magistrates once again were seen to punish those who believed in Christ and consequently refused to sacrifice. Licinius is shown to be following the path set by Diocletian, and Christians in his lands are alleged to have appealed for Constantine’s intervention. This account seems highly suspect, offering a compelling justification for Constantine’s decision to launch an offensive war against his colleague. If conditions were deteriorating for Christians, and it is by no means certain that they were, there were no new Christian martyrs made in Licinius’ lands, as there were in Constantine’s, who was at that time seeking to bring a Christian sect in North Africa into line (we shall return to this below; see p. 263).
On 25 December 323, the ‘Day of the Sun’ but also the day Constantine now identified as the dies natalis of Christ, he issued his law exempting all Christians from participation in lustral rites throughout the empire. ‘Soon after that,’ according to the Origo, ‘war broke out again between Licinius and Constantine.’ Constantine prepared for war at Salonica, which he had annexed from Licinius in 317. Formerly the capital of Galerius, it had an imperial residence and hippodrome for Constantine’s immediate use. It also offered a splendid natural harbour, which Constantine augmented and where he constructed his fleet. The assault was to be by land and sea, for Licinius was now based on the Sea of Marmara, shuttling between Nicomedia and the city of Byzantium. While based at Salonica, Constantine dealt with an invasion across the Danube in spring 323 by an army of Sarmatians, led by one Rausimodus, who plundered Moesia and Thrace, taking many captives. Perhaps this was opportunism: Rausimodus may have known of the breach between the Augusti. Or perhaps Rausimodus had been made aware of the breach by Licinius’ agents and encouraged to raid Constantine’s territory. When Constantine marched to repel the invasion, he swiftly met and crushed the Sarmatians in battle at Campona in Pannonia. Rausimodus retreated back across the Danube, perhaps imagining that Constantine would return to Salonica. This was not the case, as Zosimus later related (II. 21):
When Constantine heard of this he set off in pursuit and crossed the Danube himself. As the barbarians were fleeing towards a thickly wooded hill he attacked them and killed many of them, including Rausimodus himself. He took many prisoners, accepted the surrender of the multitude of those remaining, and returned to his quarters with a throng of captives. After distributing these among many cities, he came to Salonica … where up to two hundred triremes were built, and more than two thousand transports, and where one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and ten thousand each of sailors and cavalry were assembled.
To mark his Sarmatian victory, Constantine took the title Sarmaticus Maximus and issued coins announcing SARMATIA DEVICTA, ‘Sarmatia has been conquered’. Such coins were struck at Trier, Arles, Lyons and Sirmium, all mints under Constantine’s control. None were struck by Licinius, who instead melted some down as a public statement, and asserted that in repelling the Sarmatians, Constantine had violated the border between their lands in Thrace. Licinius sent orders across the eastern Mediterranean that warships be sent to the Hellespont. By Zosimus’ account, he assembled 350 triremes, as well as 150,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry.
The climactic war between the two emperors took place in summer 324. In Constantine’s lands the usual calumnies were spread in preparation: Licinius, like Maxentius and Maximinus Daia before him, was a tyrant; he wallowed in avarice, cruelty and lust, murdering rich men and seducing their wives; like them, too, he was a persecutor and deserving of divine punishment. Unlike on those earlier occasions, however, it was made clear that the divinity to issue that punishment, through his chosen vehicle Constantine, was the god worshipped by the emperor and his fellow Christians. The first engagement took place on 3-4 July 324, between Constantine’s land troops and those Licinius had assembled at Adrianople in Thrace, his westernmost staging post. Zosimus offers an elaborate ruse as an explanation for Constantine’s success, involving immense personal bravery from the emperor. Sending a large force up into the wooded hills above the river Hebrus, Constantine feigned an attack across the river, personally leading only twelve men. That this went unmentioned by anyone else leads one to favour the simpler explanation in the Origo, that ‘Constantine was victorious due to the discipline of his troops in battle, although they had difficulty with the heights, and his own good fortune (felicitas)’. Still, the mention of the heights, and the further information that Constantine was injured in the thigh, leave open the possibility that Zosimus has merely exaggerated, not invented, the emperor’s role. He almost certainly exaggerated the figure for Licinius’ losses: 34,000 men.
Licinius’ remaining land forces withdrew in confusion towards Byzantium, while a second engagement took place at sea, in the narrow straits of the Hellespont (see map 6). Off the coast of Callipolis (modern Gallipoli), Constantine’s ships commanded by his first son Crispus met those under Licinius’ admiral Amandus (whom Zosimus calls Abantus). The narrowness of the strait persuaded Crispus to send forward only eighty ships, and in response, sensing a chance to surround and crush his enemy, Amandus sailed forth with two hundred. But with no room to manoeuvre, Amandus’ triremes proved to be easy targets for Crispus. Many were wrecked, and the crews of others leapt overboard abandoning their vessels. On the following day, as the fleets re-engaged, Crispus sensed the favour of his father’s patron. The prevailing wind changed from a steady northerly to a violent southerly, driving many of Licinius’ ships against the Asian shore and others onto rocks. According to Zosimus, one hundred and twenty triremes were lost, and five thousand men, many being infantrymen who had retreated from Adrianople and were being ferried across the strait. This left Amandus only four ships with which to effect his own disgraceful flight. Licinius and his remaining troops shut themselves up in Byzantium, to face Constantine’s siege. However, as Constantine’s men raised a mound against the walls and rolled forward their siege engines, Licinius withdrew, sailing to Chalcedon (modern Kadiköy, an Asian suburb of Istanbul). There he secured the support of an army of Goths, led by one Alica, which joined his line. Despite his failure to hold Byzantium and his lost ships, the advantage was once again with the older Augustus.
Licinius arrayed his forces on the hills above Chalcedon and sent the captain of his court guard, Martinianus, to nearby Lampsakos to prevent Crispus’ ships from ferrying Constantine’s army across (Lampsakos, modern Lapseki, faces Callipolis at the narrowest stretch of the Dardanelles). To induce Martinianus to remain loyal, Licinius promoted him to the rank of Caesar, just as he had his expendable subordinate Valens in 316. Constantine avoided the trap by leaving his transport ships at Callipolis and swiftly building new skiffs and barges (or requisitioning those anchored nearby), which he sailed across the Hellespont at the mouth of the Black Sea to Hieron, the ‘Sacred Promontory’, two hundred Roman stades (approximately twenty-three miles) north of Chalcedon. Zosimus (II. 26) relates:
There he [Constantine] landed his army and went up to some hills from which he extended his battle line. Licinius saw that Bithynia was now in enemy hands, yet having been thoroughly tested in all dangers he recalled Martinianus from Lampsakos and encouraged his men by promising them solemnly that he would command them himself. He then drew up his army and advanced from Chalcedon to meet the waiting enemy. A sharp battle took place between Chalcedon and Hieron, which Constantine won convincingly, for he attacked the enemy vigorously and effected such carnage that barely thirty thousand escaped. And as soon as this was known to the inhabitants of the city of Byzantium, they threw open their gates to welcome Constantine, and the Chalcedonians did the same.
Licinius withdrew from the battlefield to Nicomedia with his remaining forces: those not killed in the several encounters, or taken captive, or who had not fled or deserted. Although Constantine proceeded to set a siege, the war had by now been won, at Chrysopolis, between Chalcedon and Hieron, on 18 September 324. Having too few men to resist, Licinius surrendered. He sent his wife, Constantine’s half-sister Constantia, to beg for his life, and when that was granted he came in person to relinquish his purple cloak. Showing his usual ruthlessness, Constantine sent Licinius as a private citizen to Salonica and there had him murdered in the spring of 325. Loose ends were of course tied up. Martinianus was tracked down and killed in Cappadocia. Licinianus, Licinius’ ten-year-old son with Constantia, was treated with remarkable clemency, for a short while. He was relieved of his imperial style and permitted to live, but only until 326, when he too was put to death. Constantia alone was allowed to live, and she died a Christian some years later, probably in 330.
Eusebius and the labarum
To mark his victory in a war he had fought, according to his propaganda, to restore toleration, Constantine issued a statement to his newest subjects, which has been preserved by Eusebius (VC II.56):
My own desire, for the common good of the world and the advantage of all mankind, is that your people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord. Let those, therefore, who still delight in error, be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquillity that is enjoyed by those who believe. For it may be that this restoration of equal privileges to all will prevail to lead them onto the straight path. Let no one molest another, but let everyone do as his soul desires. Only let men of sound judgment be assured of this, that those only can live a life of holiness and purity, whom you call to a reliance on your holy laws. With regard to those who will hold themselves aloof from us, let them have, if they please, their temples of lies: we have the glorious edifice of your truth, which you have given us as our native home. We pray, however, that they too may receive the same blessing, and thus experience that heartfelt joy which unity of sentiment inspires.
While recognizing the importance of this ultimate victory, Eusebius evinced little interest in the manner by which Constantine defeated Licinius. In the Life of Constantine, the entire campaign is presented as a mere pendant to the account of the victory at the Milvian Bridge a dozen years before. In place of Maxentius, Licinius is now referred to as ‘Godhater’ and, of course, ‘tyrant’.
Thus one side advanced confident in the great throng of gods and with a large military force, protected by shapes of dead people in lifeless images. The other, meanwhile, girt with the armour of true religion, set up against the multitude of his enemies the saving and life-giving sign as a scarer and repellant of evils. For a while he exercised restraint … but when he saw his opponents persisting, already with sword in hand, the emperor became enraged and with one blow put to flight the whole opposing force, and won victories over enemies and demons alike.
The ‘life-giving sign’ Eusebius had introduced earlier, in describing the emperor’s victory over Maxentius. It is, by his telling, the very sign that Constantine had observed. Eusebius states that his insights are guaranteed by his claim to special knowledge through his personal contacts with the emperor (VC I.28; II.8), but he met the emperor on just a few occasions, and largely observed him from Palestine, a great distance from the court at Constantinople. Moreover, Eusebius’ purpose in composing the Life was didactic, so while historical detail had a role to play in his work, it was far from paramount. Rather, the Life of Constantine presents a distinctive vision of Constantine, drawing on various literary forms, especially imperial panegyric, and inventing aspects which were to become common in hagiography, written accounts of saints’ lives. It is in this light that we must understand his reworked description of the vision of 312, and the subsequent fashioning of the imperial standard known as the labarum.
It is only now, therefore, a dozen years after the event it purports to describe, that we may turn to Eusebius’ account of Constantine’s vision (VC I.28-32):
About the time of the midday sun, when the day was just turning, [Constantine] said he saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said, ‘By this conquer’. Amazement at this spectacle seized him and the whole company of soldiers * that was then accompanying him on a campaign he was conducting somewhere, and witnessed the miracle. He was, he said, wondering to himself what the manifestation might mean; then, while he meditated, and thought long and hard, night overtook him. Thereupon, as he slept, the Christ of God appeared to him with the sign which had appeared in the sky, and urged him to make a copy of the sign which had appeared in the sky, and to use this as protection against the attacks of the enemy. When the day came he arose and recounted the mysterious communication to his friends. Then he summoned goldsmiths and jewellers, sat down among them, and explained the shape of the sign, and gave them instructions about copying it in gold and precious stones … [They produced] a tall pole plated with gold that had a transverse bar forming the shape of a cross. Up at the extreme top a wreath woven of precious stones and gold had been fastened. On it two letters, intimating by its first characters the name ‘Christ’, formed the monogram of the Saviour’s title, rho being intersected in the middle by chi. These letters the emperor also used to wear on his helmet in later times. From the transverse bar, which was bisected by the pole, hung suspended a cloth, and imperial tapestry covered with a pattern of precious stones fastened together, which glittered with shafts of light, and interwoven with much gold, producing an impression of indescribable beauty on those who saw it. This banner then … carried the golden head-and-shoulders portrait of the God-beloved emperor, and likewise of his sons. This saving sign was always used by the emperor for protection against every opposing and hostile force, and he commanded replicas of it to lead all his armies.
In this account of Constantine’s vision, his subsequent dream, and the manufacture of the labarum, Eusebius collapses the developments of a decade or more into one episode, presenting a careful description of the device he can only have seen after 325. In this he emulates Constantine himself who, at the time he first met Eusebius in 325, saw his conversion not as a process over a decade, but rather as a moment of revelation on which he acted decisively. Eusebius displays no interest in the historical context of the vision, referring vaguely to ‘a campaign he was conducting somewhere’, nor does he express surprise that ‘goldsmiths and jewellers’ would be readily at hand among Constantine’s small expeditionary force. In fact, he realizes that they were not, concluding that ‘That was, however, somewhat later’. First, stunned by his vision, Constantine summoned experts to explain the sign to him, who said that ‘the god was the Only-begotten Son of the one and only God, and the sign which appeared was a token of immortality, and was an abiding trophy of victory over death’. It is striking that the sign of the cross is described as a trophy, in Greek tropaion or Latin tropaeum, the term for the cruciform symbol of victory that was erected by Roman armies. Eusebius equates the Roman trophy with another Roman innovation, the crucifix. Once an instrument of torture, the crucifix had become for the Christians a symbol of Christ’s victory over death. Eusebius now performed a further translation, imbuing another Roman symbol, the trophy, with a specifically Christian meaning. Eusebius claims that for Constantine his cruciform trophy was from the outset a manifestation of his conversion, a novelty of the highest order. But was it such an innovation?
The first certain depiction of the labarum can be dated quite precisely, for it is to be found with the caption SPES PUBLIC (‘the hope of the people’) on the reverse of an extremely rare bronze follis (coin) minted in Constantinople in 327 (fig. 41). Here, a staff is topped with the chi-rho, beneath which hangs a banner displaying three disks. The description offered by Eusebius identifies these as portraits of the Augustus and Caesars, and the presence of three disks/busts on the coin would be accurate in 327. The point at the base of the staff pierces a serpent, evidently intended to represent Licinius, but also perhaps an allusion to ‘a dragon and a crooked serpent in the books of the prophets of God’ (Isaiah 27:1). The coin design is a development of a far more common bronze type struck at Ticinum in 319-20, showing a vexillum, a military flag standard, planted between two bound captives, with the inscription VIRTUS EXERCIT (‘the Valour of the Army’). The banner hanging from the vexillum offers VOTA XX (twenty prayers of thanks). If the labarum had existed in 319, one might expect it to appear on these coins or another of the hundreds of variants that were minted between 312 and 327. It does not, and where Constantine is shown holding a device it is not the labarum, but the tropaeum or vexillum.
A striking illustration of a victorious emperor bearing a trophy can be seen on the reverse of a four-and-a-half solidus gold multiple struck in 326 at Siscia (modern Sisak, Croatia). On the obverse of the coin is a bust of the emperor gazing heavenwards. There is no inscription. On the reverse, the emperor, in military uniform, tramples or kicks a defeated foe with his right foot, and with his left hand drags a captive by the hair. Over his left shoulder, from which his paludamentum (cloak) billows, he carries a tropaeum. On the first of three types the inscription reads GLORIA CONSTANTINI AUG, ‘To the Glory of Constantine Augustus’ (fig. 42). On a second type, the reverse reads GLORIA SECULI, ‘To the Glory of the Ages’. The reverse inscription on the third type reads VIRTUS D[OMINI] N[OSTRI] CONSTANTINI AUG, identifying the cause of victory as the emperor’s virtue. This draws on the imagery of an earlier gold medal, one-third the size, struck at Sirmium in 322-3, with the inscription VIRTUS AUG ET CAESS NN, ‘To the Virtue of Our Augustus and Caesars’. There is a contemporary silver coin from Sirmium with the trophy on its reverse, with two spears and
four shields at its base beneath VIRTUS AUG ET CAESS. A third
version of the gold medallion, again of the smaller one-and-a-half solidus type, was struck in Nicomedia late in 324, with three notable innovations: the emperor holds not a spear but a vexillum in his left hand; he no longer holds the trophy over his shoulder but erects it; and at the base of the trophy sit two bound captives.
Although it is to some extent an argument from silence, still it seems safe to conclude that the labarum was produced as the imperial standard for the ‘battle for toleration’ against Licinius and no earlier. Subsequently, the labarum did not become a standard for the entire Roman army. Rather, it appears to have been made for those who had direct contact with the emperor, just as the chi-rho appears later on the shields of imperial bodyguards but not of regular rank-and-file troops. Eusebius can be forgiven for not knowing this, as he witnessed the drills in Constantinople where the emperor insisted that the labarum be carried. It was, therefore, a new standard for Constantine’s comitatus, the emperor’s personal guard which replaced the Praetorian Guard. As we noted in an earlier chapter, the Praetorians, by virtue of their special relationship with emperors, had placed his image on their regular standards. Other units had been content to place images of the emperor and his sons, the imagines, beside their regular standards. This practice continued, although others might also wish to march under the ‘saving sign’ and bear it alongside their established signa.
Evidently, reproductions of the labarum were used in battle by the imperial guard, while the original precious item was kept in reserve. This makes better sense of a later revelation (VC II.6-8 and 16-17) that the ‘saving trophy’ played a vital role in the victory over Licinius. Here, the power of the symbol was revealed when ‘the soldier carrying the standard on his shoulder got into a panic and handed it over to another man, so that he could escape from the battle. As soon as … he withdrew from the protection of the standard, a flying javelin pierced his midriff and ended his life. Meanwhile … to the one who lifted up the saving trophy it became a life-saver; frequently the bearer was saved when javelins were aimed at him, and the staff of the trophy caught the missiles.’ It is quite extraordinary that javelins would lodge in the narrow pole, particularly if this were the gold- and jewel-encrusted imperial standard. Indeed, although the story is clearly a pious fiction, one must imagine the emperor, in telling the story to Eusebius, had in mind a wooden-shafted replica rather than his personal standard.
It is wrong, of course, to interpret the role of the labarum too literally, for it served many symbolic functions in Eusebius’ text. Most importantly, however, it indicated that Constantine’s signal advantage over his enemies was his ability to recognize a powerful sign of divine favour and translate it to the profane world. Thus within a traditional Roman context he forged a material focus for his virtus, the ‘military courage’ or ‘valour’ that would be rewarded with success. In a Christian context, Constantine supplied a channel through which grace could operate: the imperial standard, or labarum, which Constantine had produced for his guards and replicated for his regular troops to carry alongside their standards. However, for Eusebius it was not enough that the troops followed such a blessed leader or marched under his new saving sign. They also had to share his vision.
A common vision?
It is clear from the passage quoted in full above (p. 183) that Eusebius (VC I.28), and following him the fifth-century Christian historians Sozomen (I.3) and Socrates Scholasticus (I.2), wished that Constantine’s soldiers had shared his midday vision before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, if not his subsequent nocturnal visit from Christ. Although no contemporary source suggests this, later representations of the vision, perhaps most famously Raphael’s Vatican fresco, show emperor and troops gazing heavenwards, observing the sign of divine favour. Constantine’s vision may very well have been a pious fiction, devised to demonstrate his suitability to rule alone and to authenticate his novel claims of descent. However, Peter Weiss has advanced a striking hypothesis, only hinted at by earlier commentators, that Constantine’s vision was real, however it was interpreted and later reinterpreted. Weiss has argued that Constantine and his troops all witnessed a solar halo, on a spring afternoon in 310. ‘Solar halos,’ he notes, ‘are created by sunlight refracted through ice crystals in the high levels of the atmosphere.’ The less common variant of the solar halo (the 46° halo) manifests itself as two concentric circles of light around the sun. The outer circle is faint, but within the inner circle one sees three points of intensive light, one to each side and one above the sun. These, one might argue, could have been seen as the numerals XXX within a circle. But the halo also gives the impression of a single ‘light cross’, formed by a horizontal axis passing through a ‘sun pillar’. The effect appears suddenly and lasts for up to two hours, before disappearing just as suddenly. It occurs mostly on afternoons in late winter and spring. According to Weiss, this vision was first interpreted as vota, prayers for a thirty-year reign, in a laurel wreath, but later a dream allowed Constantine to recall it as a ‘cross formed of light’. This reinterpretation has misled many into believing the vision took place in 312 on the eve of Constantine’s victory at Rome’s Milvian Bridge. They trust later Christian commentators who attributed these successes to their god, and it is clear that Constantine himself came to see things their way.
If we are to follow Weiss’s explanation, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that in 310 the whole army witnessed the ‘cross of light’ formed by a solar halo, and subsequently all were willing to embrace the explanation offered by their victorious imperator. But we need not follow Weiss to find a reason. Moreover, the Roman army comprised more than those troops who had accompanied Constantine in 310-12, and its transformation into a Christian force required more than a willingness to march beneath a new symbol, the labarum. The wielding of the labarum and the rhetoric employed by Eusebius have led many to call Constantine’s struggle with Licinius a ‘holy war’. Some have even referred to it as a ‘crusade’. The latter definition is especially inaccurate, in a literal sense, as Constantine’s troops fought not under a cross, from which word in Latin and French (crux, croix) we derive ‘crusade’, but rather under a chi-rho. Nor may ‘crusade’ be regarded simply as a synonym for ‘holy war’, of which there were many types. Crusaders in the twelfth century would be offered explicit spiritual rewards for fighting, ranging from the remission of their sins to the status of martyr. None of Constantine’s soldiers received such promises. But they did know that to fight for the god-protected emperor, whose divine companion had delivered victory on every occasion since 306, was rewarding. His legions fought with discipline and bravery, defending the lives of comrades in arms and the reputation of their commander. All knew that fewer men died under Constantine’s command than under that of his enemies, and that those who lived were paid handsomely and frequently. The imperial theology of victory showed him to be the rightful emperor, and while this interpretative framework would in time be surpassed by ideologies of holy war, from jihad to crusade, that time had not yet arrived. Constantine fought no crusades, but his wars did transform how Christians viewed war, and allowed the transformation of the Roman army into a Christian army in the century following Constantine’s victory over Licinius. The first order of business was to celebrate that victory in stone.