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? Maxentius had the larger army and came out of Rome to challenge Constantine at the Milvian bridge. While his advisers – and even his soothsayers – felt that Maxentius was too strongly entrenched, Constantine marched against him anyway. In the meantime, Maxentius had seized control of Italy. The coup failed and Maximian committed suicide.īy AD 311, Constantine was in control of the west and a new emperor called Licinius ruled the east. Consequently, Maximian himself came out of retirement and attempted to seize control of Constantine’s army. The Frankish leaders were captured and, in an unprecedented display of savagery, their two kings were thrown to the beasts in the arena.Ĭonstantine’s usurpation of the title of Caesar left no place in the tetrarchy for Maxentius, the son of the former emperor Maximian. Constantine went on to legitimise his standing in the eyes of his army by defeating a Frankish invasion of Gaul. Constantine’s troops immediately proclaimed him as Caesar, though this violated the more meritocratic Tetrarchic system. He was there when Constantius died in AD 306, in Eboracum - the city of York in modern England.

When given grudging permission to join Constantius on campaign in Britain, Constantine fled to his father’s side. Constantine had previously been a competent subordinate of Galerius, but now became a hostage for his father’s good behaviour.

In AD 305, Constantius became co-emperor with a man called Galerius. Once he gained control of the entire Roman Empire, Constantine set about an ambitious programme of reform.

Royal order of constantine