IN HIS LIFE OF CONSTANTINE, Eusebius implies that the emperor devoted himself to ending pagan practices and advancing Christianity through legislation heavily influenced by his faith. “Having attached himself to God over all,” he claims the emperor would consider from dawn to dusk who should benefit from his largesse and how to be “fair to all and impartial in those benefits.” Eusebius considerably overstates the role of Constantine’s faith in determining his relationship with his subjects. Although clear about his own beliefs, the emperor remained deeply concerned with the welfare of all his subjects and devoted to the notion that he ruled a well-regulated society where people knew their place, Christians included.1
One of the salient issues in the legislation of the 330s continued to be preserving the fiscal health of town councils. Typical of his legislation is a rescript to Evagrius in 336 telling him that when decurions or the sons of decurions flee their civic responsibilities for positions in the imperial administration they should be sent home. In 334, Constantine had written to the praetorian prefect Pacatianus expressing deep concern about the situation of public swine collectors at Rome, ordering that they “appear before the Roman people at a meeting,” so that the people can make sure they are doing their job. (It’s hard to say which is more significant here, the swine threat or the fact that this is the only subject thought worth addressing by a meeting of the Roman people in any of Constantine’s legislation.) Later in the same year he told the praetorian prefect Felix that a shortage of architects in Africa meant that fathers who allowed sons older than eighteen to train in that subject would earn immunity from civic munera for both themselves and their offspring.
It was also important, especially in light of Constantine’s renowned generosity, to make sure that people who did not belong there didn’t try to slip into the imperial service. Ablabius was told in 333 that imperial officials’ sons who were physically or morally incapable of following their fathers into the imperial service should not do so, and that officers should not accept “the useless son of a veteran” into the service. This last provision looks a bit like a scam—a boy might be placed on a duty roster to keep him off the civic rolls. Similarly, in 331, Constantine told Evagrius that people who sneaked into the imperial service through the operation of illicit patronage should be dismissed.
Constantine continued to be concerned that his earlier ruling granting immunity to clerics encouraged people to flee civic responsibility. In 329, Constantine had told both Ablabius and Bassus that people were not to claim exemption from public services by becoming clerics, and if they were found to have done so they should be sent packing. If one wished to be exempt from all civic munera, it was far better to be a ship captain. In 334, Constantine wrote to the ship captains who worked “for the assistance of the city which we endowed with the eternal name on the order of God” saying that they had been granted immunities from civic munera and should not have to take up civic offices that could be disadvantageous. They could not be compelled to be tutors, and they were immune from the Augustan marriage laws, which still, Constantine evidently felt, governed the lives of his subjects who did not live as “celibates,” for whom immunity from these laws was established years before. The result of these generous grants is that the ship captains “expending almost nothing from their own resources, should engage in maritime trade with their own initiative.”2
The dividing line between slave and free continued to be an issue that particularly exercised the emperor. Probably in 329 he set out the punishments for a woman who “secretly” married a slave: both were to be executed. If the union had taken place before the edict was issued they would be exiled and their children would remain free but would be stripped of the right to inherit. However, any children of an earlier, legitimate, marriage could inherit following the rules for intestate inheritance—that is, they would be given the first option on any property; if they took it up, the next heirs would be the woman’s male relatives. Only if both the woman and her lover died before the passage of the law would their children be allowed to inherit as free persons.
The situation envisaged here appears to be anything but new: inscriptions attest to marriages between women and former slaves. A rescript to a woman named Theodora in AD 290 makes it plain that Diocletian was no more likely to be sympathetic to such a case than was Constantine. Indeed, the fact that the edict was thought to be needed at all might indicate that Constantine was doing no more than repeating a law that was already on the books—or, more likely, one that had just been wiped off the books when Licinius’ legislation was declared invalid in 324. A wide-ranging action of 336 prevented upper-class men from having their children by slaves or other “women of ill-repute” declared legitimate. What is particularly interesting in this case is that the definition of “upper-class” might be taken to describe people who were eligible, or potentially eligible, to join the court: senators, perfectissimi, or people who had already held significant positions in their cities; mayors (duumviri), priests, either local or provincial, of the imperial cult.3
Unwilling as Constantine was for the children of slaves to enter the upper class, he certainly did not want the children of free people, constrained by poverty, to be sold into slavery. It appears, though, that an economic crisis (famine in Italy?) forced him to reconsider his earlier views. Two texts of 329 provide the evidence. The first is a rescript to Ablabius in which Constantine states that no one should be forced to sell a child into slavery because of poverty, and orders that the state should provide food and clothing for newborns without delay. Later in the year, however, perhaps because the situation was getting out of hand, he wrote, in an edict “to the Italians” that “according to the rulings of earlier emperors,” a person who purchased a child from its parents could hold that child in whatever status he or she pleased, and anyone who later contested the person’s right to the child would have to provide a substitute or pay the going rate for a slave. This was a contradiction to his decree of 315, when he had forbidden freeborn children to be sold into slavery, and that of 323, when he had written that parents were not to take away their children’s liberty. The problem with these laws had been that if people could not enslave foundlings they were less likely to take them on, and impoverished parents might well find themselves incapable of rearing their child. In 331, he restated the new policy to Ablabius, reminding him that a person who took up a foundling could raise that child in whatever status he wished—either slave or free—and that people who once abandoned a child could not institute a suit for recovery at some later date.4
Constantine continued to view the ability of an owner to abuse a slave with an equanimity that might have given birth to his desire to help children avoid this status. In the same year, he (or a member of his staff) reiterated the earlier ruling that masters could not be prosecuted for murder if their slaves happened to die while being beaten. A year later he wrote to the vicarius Valerianus on the subject of runaway slaves. If a man deliberately harbored another man’s slave, then he should return that property and also pay a fine; if he did it repeatedly, he would have to hand over additional slaves. Only if he could not have known the slave was a runaway would he not have to pay, but to support that claim the slave would have to give evidence under torture. Slaves were unlikely to flee if their master treated them decently. It is arguable that this text validates cruelty.5
Harsh as his rulings were toward slaves, Constantine continued to show genuine concern for the least advantaged members of the classes whom he thought the law should protect. In December 328 he told the younger Maximus (now praetorian prefect) that he needed to look into complaints about the behavior of certain governors who knuckled under to local bigwigs. To stop this from happening, the prefect should tell these governors to refer the cases to him “and thus will provision be made for public discipline and counsel be taken for the abused lower classes.” Earlier that year he told Aemilianus, also a praetorian prefect, to make sure that the wealthier members of town councils were not allowed to assign munera to the weaker members of the community (this should be done by governors to ensure fairness). In 329 he told another official that rescripts granting immunity from munera were invalid.6
The problem was not always at the local level. In 334 he ordered that secretaries working for governors found to be engaging in corruption would lose the protection of their high status and be liable to judicial torture; and that people who had been compelled to sell things to minor imperial officials could bring actions for recovery. Then in one of the last surviving texts addressed to Felix as praetorian prefect: “If there should be a complaint of our provincials concerning the greed of the collectors of taxes and it should be proved that they have demanded something beyond ancient custom and the limits of our orders, those accused of such a crime should be punished with perpetual exile.” At moments like these he seems to have been consciously at war with his own government, which he feared was hopelessly corrupt and biased in favor of the wealthy, and needed ways to be more open. In an edict of 331 he had stated that he would investigate the content of public acclamations to determine whether governors were doing their jobs since those who were loudly praised should be promoted while those who were censured should be fired. Senior officials should make sure that they looked into what was said by the crowds.7
Just as he worried about disadvantaged adults, so too Constantine continued to worry about children who were subject to abusive adults. In 330, for instance, he told Valerianus that although the law usually did not assist women just because they were ignorant of it, there was an exception for girls who married when they were underage: if they divorced, they could retain property given them by their former husbands even if the gift had not been registered in the public records office. Two years later, he stated that if a girl had been betrothed for two years and the marriage had not taken place, the engagement could be broken off with no discredit to the girl; and although anyone—such as a girl’s parent or tutor—who broke off her engagement to a soldier before two years had elapsed should be deported to one of the islands of exile that were ubiquitous to the legislation of these years, after the two years, the parent or tutor was entitled to break the engagement. On June 17, 334, an official received an order telling him that if an action was brought against “pupils, widows or those worn out by illness and physically incapacitated at the court of Our Leniency,” they could not be forced to testify in person and that if those “who are wretched from the injury of fortune should appeal to the court of our Serenity, especially when they fear the power of another, their adversaries will be compelled to appear at our investigation.”8
Although aware that things could go wrong in families, Constantine hoped that people would treat each other decently. Two rulings of the 330s underscore this. In one, he expresses disgust at the thought that emancipated sons could be abusive toward their fathers. Indeed, if they behaved that way, their independent status should be voided and they should be returned to their father’s authority. On the other hand, he was also concerned that parents do the right thing by their children, declaring that men who remarried were responsible for the upkeep of the property that children from a first marriage inherited from their mothers. This property would still be the children’s and the father had the same responsibility for the property as he would have if he were appointed to be a legal guardian of another person’s offspring.9 Both rulings are clearly based on considerations of popular morality—they reflect what a reasonable person would think was just.
The senior officials changed over the years, of course, but the general tenor of Constantine’s correspondence remains remarkably consistent in its concern for status, for the protection of the worthy weak, for its harshness to slaves and against corruption, and in its dislike for inefficiency. At times emotional, often harsh in his judgments, Constantine retains firm moral principles; none of these can be directly related to his faith but can be seen to descend naturally from his office—hence his frequent citation of the example of earlier emperors, as he understood it. These values are more or less in tune with the value system of the Roman world generally. Whether pagan or Christian, people were concerned with fairness, with the stability of their marriages, and with their standing in the world. As Constantine saw it, it was his job to nurture a moral climate in which his officials could govern. To men he felt he could trust—Bassus, the two Maximi, Felix, Evagrius, and Ablabius, for instance—he was willing to delegate great authority over long periods of time; he even brought Ablabius into his family as guardian of one son and father-in-law to another. He could do this because he was confident that they shared his own values.10