![]() ![]() The Arch of Constantine in Rome salutes the victory over Maxentius. While he was about it, Constantine also disposed of his nephew, Licinius’ son. Constantine agreed, but once Licinius had become a private citizen, Constantine had him arrested and executed. Eventually Licinius surrendered on condition that his life be spared. In battle after battle, though often outnumbered, the Christians carried their sacred labarum to victory. Both sides considered the war a struggle between the old pagan values and upsurgent Christianity. This was either deliberate provocation, or largely fake news propagated by Constantine to legitimise his aggression in the civil war, which began in AD 320. As relations between the two emperors deteriorated, Licinius allegedly began to discriminate against Christians. That said, Constantine was now a promoter of Christianity (he had earlier been a worshipper of Sol, the Unconquered Sun). Violence, rebellion and sexual exploitation: the darker side of Ancient Rome.There may not have even been an official pronouncement, but merely mutual agreement that, as the contemporary writer Lactantius says, “everyone be given the freedom to worship as he wishes, and nothing detract from the dignity of any religion”. This is often misunderstood as the ‘edict’ that made the empire Christian, though it actually did nothing of the sort. Licinius had married Constantine’s half-sister Constantia, and the pair thrashed out their differences in a meeting in Milan in AD 313 – a summit famous for the so-called ‘Edict of Milan’. The two emperors had previously co-operated amiably. Supreme in the west, Constantine turned his malevolent attention upon his co-emperor in the east. However, that monument was commissioned by the resolutely pagan senate – and is constructed mostly of materials recycled from the reigns of Hadrian and Trajan. Therefore it seems ungrateful that there are no Christian symbols on the arch that stands beside the Colosseum in Rome commemorating Constantine’s victory. Either divine intervention or bad generalship by Maxentius gave a quick victory to Constantine. According to later texts, the Saviour himself told Constantine in a dream to construct this banner and to place the chi-rho emblem on the shields of his soldiers. Here, for the first time, the army of Constantine carried the labarum, a banner inscribed with the superimposed Greek letters X (chi) and P (rho). The system was still in its youth when it was ignored by Constantine’s troops who proclaimed him emperor, despite Constantine having no claim to that rank under the tetrarchic system. In this system there were to be two senior emperors – Augusti – who commanded the eastern and western parts of the empire.Įach Augustus had an understudy called a Caesar, who replaced him when he died or retired. In AD 293, the emperor Diocletian proposed to end the empire’s constant dynastic struggles by creating a career path to the imperial throne. What was the tetrarchy and how did it work? ![]()
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