Preface

In 305 Diocletian abdicated, persuading a reluctant Maximian to do likewise. He retired to a palace at Split, parts of which still stand. Although his achieve­ments would depend on his eventual successor Constantine to bring them to fruition, his had been a remarkable achievement. The fourth and fifth centuries were, as a result, not, as they might have been, solely a period of decline but ones in which imperial government was reinvigorated and set in new directions. As Peter Brown has written, 'Far from being a melancholy epilogue to the classical Roman empire, a fleeting and crudely conceived attempt to shore up a doomed society, the first half of the fourth century witnessed the long-prepared climax of the Roman state.' For this Diocletian must take much of the credit.

The Emergence of Constantine

When Diocletian and Maximian abdicated Diocletian's carefully structured sys­tem of succession was put into operation with Constantius and Galerius being appointed Augusti and they in their turn naming two new Caesars. However, the system fell apart almost immediately. Constantius died in 306, but instead of one of the Caesars succeeding him the troops of Britain and Gaul acclaimed his son, Constantine, as Augustus. Meanwhile in Rome the son of Maximian, Maxentius, also had himself proclaimed emperor. By 308 there were no less than seven rival emperors contending for power.

The winner was to be Constantine, an intensely ambitious and determined man with little time for power sharing. By 312 he was in Italy and advancing towards Rome, which was defended by Maxentius. The rival contenders for the western empire met at the Milvian Bridge, which still runs across the Tiber just north of the city. It was a decisive battle. Maxentius and his men were trapped against the Tiber and forced into headlong retreat across the narrow bridge where many, Maxentius among them, were crushed or drowned.

Constantine now entered Rome as victor and the senators soon devoted him a triumphal arch, which still stands near the Colosseum. Its decoration is a mixture of styles with much of the material reused from earlier imperial monuments. The reused material seems to have been picked specifically from monuments to 'good' emperors such as Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, presumably so as to associate Constantine with them. What is perhaps most interesting is the contrast between these older reliefs and those created specifically for the arch. A panel from an arch of Marcus Aurelius shows this emperor in his role as dis­penser of justice and largess, sitting informally surrounded by petitioners. A newly carved panel shows Constantine in the same role but now represented sit­ting formally and staring to the front with the gathered petitioners carved at only half his size and gazing up at him. It is the pose of Septimius Severus at Leptis taken a stage further. The arch marks the appearance in art of the new imperial ethos, the emperor as semi-god, removed from his people.

The inscription on Constantine's arch attributes his victory to 'the inspiration of the divinity and the nobility of his own mind'. It appears that the emperor is being associated with a single god as his third-century predecessors, Elagabalus, Aurelian, Diocletian (Jupiter), had been. The senate did not specify which divin­ity. On the arch Constantine is shown making a sacrifice to the goddess Diana but there is also a representation of the sun god. In fact, from about 310, the sun god seems to have been Constantine's favoured divinity, perhaps partly because the god was especially popular among the Balkan troops and their officers. Constantine was to issue coins with Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun portrayed on them, as late as 321.

In the third century the imagery of the sun god had also been used by Christians. In a mosaic of the period found in a tomb under St Peter's in Rome, for instance, Christ is portrayed like the sun god in a two-horse chariot. Although there is no direct evidence to prove it, Constantine may have been attracted to Christianity because of this association. (Accounts that Constantine had a dream that he was to place a chi-rhea sign (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ - ΧΡ) (a composite of the first two let­ters of the word Christos in Greek) on his soldiers' shields appear confused or unconvincing.) However, very soon after his victory Constantine was showing a commitment to Christianity, and the so-called 'Edict of Milan' of 313 shows that Licinius, Augustus in the east since 308, was prepared to join him in offering tol­eration to Christianity and other religious sects. It was a significant moment in the history of the Byzantine world.