(5) BEST: CONSTANTINE –

CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY

(306 – 337 AD: 30 YEARS 9 MONTHS 27 DAYS)

 

“In this sign thou shalt conquer”.

Diocletian may have created the Dominate but Constantine…dominated it (heh).

It’s hard to go past Dovahhatty’s summation of Constantine’s greatness –

“Having ruled as Rome’s emperor for over three decades, he displayed wisdom and virtue, was never defeated in battle, defended the empire against barbarians countless times, reunited Rome after a terrible civil war, transformed Christianity into a Roman, civilizing faith, and gave the empire a new capital that would last for over a thousand years. And it is for these reasons, and a thousand reasons more, that history will forever remember him, as Constantine the Great.”

Although, as we’ve seen, that title of the Great was used by Roman chroniclers to signify the first of his name (as emperor) rather than greatness, in the case of Constantine the greatness also applies.

In the eastern Roman empire, “it became a great honor for an emperor to be hailed as a new Constantine; ten emperors carried the name”, including the last ever Roman emperor, Constantine XI.

That carried over in the west as well. The Holy Roman Empire “reckoned Constantine among the venerable figures of its tradition” and Charlemagne “used monumental Constantinian forms in his court to suggest that he was Constantine’s successor and equal”. Charlemagne was one of many monarchs or royal dynasties that claimed descent from Constantine – Geoffrey of Monmouth even claimed it for King Arthur. (Weirdly, Monmouth also had Caracalla as a king of Britain).

“The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire…He built a new imperial residence at the city of Byzantium and renamed it New Rome, later adopting the name Constantinople after himself…It subsequently became the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years, the later Eastern Roman Empire”.

He also proclaimed that the Praetorian Guard, by now a byword in assassinating the emperors they were meant to safeguard, would be ABOLISHED – the subject of the greatest sequence in the entirety of Dovahhatty’s Unbiased History of Rome, even if Constantine didn’t gloriously slaughter them all as depicted.

As for the usual beating back barbarians from the borders, Constantine drove back the Picts in Britain (having succeeded his father as emperor while they were both in Britain), as well as winning campaigns against the Franks and Alemanni on the Rhine, and the Goths and Sarmatians on the Danube. He also reoccupied most of the long-lost province of Dacia (in his campaigns on the Danube) and at the time of his death was planning a campaign against the Sassanids in Persia (to end their raids on the eastern provinces).

However, as Adrian Goldsworthy wryly points out, Constantine spent as much (or more) time fighting other Romans as the Tetrarchy collapsed into chaos and civil war. However, this was as (or more) important for the empire as defeating the barbarians at its borders – as Constantine reunited and restored the empire under one emperor.

It was also during these civil wars that Constantine embraced Christianity for himself and the empire – through the legend of the sign that literally came to him in a dream, the Chi Ro or Labarum that he then had placed on the shields of his soldiers before winning the famous Battle of the Milvian Bridge against the usurper Maxentius. “By this sign, thou shalt conquer” – and he did!

Constantine didn’t just become the first Christian emperor – he also became a saint, “one of the only saints to be canonised in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox & Anglican Churches”. Indeed, he was (and is) hailed as the ‘Thirteenth Apostle’, a pretty impressive feat for someone who had his eldest son Crispus and wife Fausta executed – which remains a black mark against his name.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

EMPIRE-MAKER

(Yes – only one emperor was truly the empire maker but Constantine gave it a makeover, enduring for a century in the west and more than a millennium in the east)

 

MAXIMUS:

And how! Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus Maximus, Gothicus Maximus, Dacicus Maximus.

 

DEIFIED:

And sainted too, earning the double whammy of deification and canonization.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Similar but Spectrum ranked Constantine higher as third best emperor. By contrast, Daily Roman Updates had Basil II in fifth place in his top five Roman emperors, but I have ranked Roman emperors past 476 AD separately.