^* A glossary can be found below, at p. 309, which explains some Latin and Greek terms.

^* Far more recently, small unit efficacy has become the focus of much theorizing and planning by those responsible for training US troops for the ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT). In the bewildering acronymic jargon of the modern military one reads of the need for greater recognition of the fact that ‘victory rests with small units’ in the ‘contemporary operating environment’ (COE) and that this must be reflected in ‘mission rehearsal environments’ (MRE), i.e. exercises. Recognition of the supremacy of the small unit has become a predicate of those calling for the transformation of the US military, to meet the challenges of modern warfare, where ‘stability operations and support operations’ (SOSO) are at the core of most missions. As the COE has changed, increasingly the smallest units, squads and platoons, operate independently, heightening the tendency for soldiers to fight not for a cause but to protect and impress their closest friends and comrades.

^* RIB is the standard abbreviation for The Inscriptions of Roman Britain. Full details of this, and every text to which we shall refer, may be found in the bibliographical essays that complete this book. A list of frequently used abbreviations can also be found at the end of the book.

^* It is important to note that this interpretation remains controversial and has provoked many dissenting opinions. Some are presented in the bibliographical essays appended to this book.

^* Since I shall refer to Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History very frequently, the abbreviation HE will often be used. Those who wish to consult the text, available in a Penguin translation and online, and find the chapter and section number useful.

^* The sense persists. Recent observers of the ‘Third Rome’, a title claimed for Moscow as early as the fifteenth century, when Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Turks, may be interested in anachronistic comparisons which will age rapidly in print. Still, biographies of Constantine are always of their age, so one might note without inordinate fear of censure that on 2 October 2007 it was reported in the New York Times that Paralympic ski champion Mikhail B. Terentyev took to a Moscow stage in his wheelchair to proclaim to the then president of Russia: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, you are lucky … And while you are president, the luck accompanies Russia.’ Felicitas is the reward for virtus, the manly aggressiveness with which judo champion Putin defended Russia’s national interests.

^* This point is significant, as far too much has been made of the fact that the terminus of Constantine’s triumphal procession through Rome in 312 is also unmentioned.

^* Since this chapter was written, it has been revealed by researchers at the University of Salerno, employing radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating techniques, that the bronze in the Capitoline Museums was sculpted in the thirteenth century AD. The twins were added in the fifteenth century. We must suppose, therefore, that we possess only a copy of an original piece, now lost.

^* Since I shall refer often to Eusebius of Caesarea’s Life of Constantine, the abbreviation VC (Vita Constantini) will be used. Those who wish to consult the text will find the chapter and section numbers useful. In most cases I have used and quoted from the English translation by Cameron and Hall. The reader will recall that Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History is referred to by the abbreviation HE.

^* Philippi is also offered as a location, for which see map 5. Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv, Bulgaria) appears to make more sense, given where the battle took place.

^* Excepting Tony Blair, who confessed that God had guided him to war, but only once he had left public office. The archetypal ‘candidate’ is George W. Bush, whose redemption is held to have taken place at a moment in 1986, but also from the time of his marriage in 1977; and yet it is clear that his problems had not been entirely resolved by 1991, when he attended a state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II hosted by his father, President George H. W. Bush. A stump speech delivered in June 2007 by Barack Obama, then a Democratic party candidate in the 2008 presidential election, is also paradigmatic: ‘One Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to the Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon entitled ‘The Audacity of Hope’ [which is also the title of Obama’s second book]. And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone called Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, he would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in him. And in time [my italics], I came to see faith as more than a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.’ Obama’s story is the more convincing for containing no dates.

^* We shall return to this statement below.

^* This phrase is distinct from the more familiar – insofar as any Latin phrase is now familiar – in hoc signo vinces. This variant was employed by Rufinus in his translation back into Latin from Eusebius’ Greek, so is no earlier than AD 400. We shall return to Rufinus later in this chapter. The first, correct version appeared in extant form on coins struck by the usurper Vetranio in 350 (fig. 59), some fifty years before Rufinus’ text.

^* The ending-ae, as in Galliae, Pannoniae or Moesiae, is a plural, to indicate that there were several provinces in the diocese. These are also seen in the singular forms: Gallia, Pannonia, Moesia, etc.

^* It is unfortunate that we do not know more about the emperor’s habits, for example whether he regularly doled out nicknames to ‘name and tame’ those around him, or to bring the ethos of the camp into the court.

^* In this way, in April 193, news of the death of Pertinax in Rome reached Septimius Severus, 735 Roman miles away at Carnuntum, after eleven days. Terrain has to be taken into account, of course, and the route north from Rome was extremely hilly. It was once believed that the journey from Constantinople to Antioch took only three or four days, and still it is often imagined that a relay of riders with an urgent message might cover vast distances mounted on horses ridden at full gallop (30 mph or more). Even Procopius (Secret History, 30) claimed that the public post once covered ten times the distance of a single traveller in any given day, which might mean up to 250 miles, although at that point he is exaggerating to emphasize how Justinian had allowed the service to decline. Roman roads were intended for infantry: they were paved with stones which were hard on hooves in an age before horses were shod in iron, and could be slippery, especially for a rider without stirrups (introduced to the Romans only two centuries after Constantine). Consequently, those on horseback travelled along dirt tracks beside the roads, certainly not at full gallop. The only comparable modern service, the short-lived Pony Express, had stations every ten miles and averaged ten miles per hour across the western states of the USA. The riders, on horseback, not in carriages, and weighing no more than 125 pounds, carried up to forty pounds of mail and provisions in a pannier.

^* His heritage is disputed but there were as yet no Bretons, so Magnentius’ father cannot reasonably have been from that region of Gaul.

^* The altar of Victory would be replaced by Julian and removed again by Gratian; then restored by Eugenius and removed for the final time by Theodosius.