Preamble: Boys from the 'Hood – The
Meritocracy of Diocletian
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Diocletian – Son
of a Slave Makes Good
Diocletian was
the product of merit and of the social mobility which was possible
in the late third century.
Diocletian ruled
the Roman world for over twenty years. Neither mad nor debauched,
he (uniquely) retired from power and famously boasted of growing
cabbages "with his own hand" in retirement.
Diocletian
had recognised that the empire was too vast for one man's autocratic
rule and had sensibly divided absolute power between four monarchs.
At the same time he put in place a mechanism for orderly succession,
with the junior Caesars stepping up to the rank of Augustus and
appointing deputy Caesars in turn. Moreover, Diocletian had had
the wisdom
to choose colleagues and successors on the basis of ability
and loyalty, not blood-ties. The tetrarchy provided orderly
succession for a generation. The provinces themselves were grouped
into a dozen Dioceses, each ruled by a Vicar.
Constantine – Pampered
Prince Enters the Ring
As
caesar of Britain and Gaul, Constantine's father – Constantius – had
been chosen for the most junior post in the tetrarchy. With
his promotion, Constantius dismissed his concubine Helena, the mother
of Constantine, and made a politically advantageous marriage to the
daughter of Diocletian's colleague Maximian. Constantine
himself had been obliged to spend his youth at Nicomedia – as
'hostage' in the court of Diocletian.
When the ailing
Diocletian stepped down as Augustus after twenty years in 305,
Constantine was dismayed that he had been passed over for
the position of caesar. Galerius became senior Augustus in
the east. Frustrated, and fearful for his life, Constantine fled
to Gaul to join his father, and together they campaigned in northern
Britain.
Constantius – nicknamed
'Chlorus' because of his pale and sickly complexion – died
at Eburacum (York) the following year and Constantine was 'proclaimed'
Augustus by the troops in what was the most marginal of frontier
provinces. The ambitious prince was now vulnerable to a charge of usurping imperial authority.
His unauthorized promotion was a blow against the Tetrarchy
which had stabilized the Roman world.
The empire had almost collapsed
during the 3rd century because of military rebellions and only a
generation before, Aurelian had brought to an end fifteen years of
secession by the western provinces.
Subsequently, Constantine's own
father had invaded Britain precisely to end a decade of separate imperium in the province under the rebel emperors Carausius and Allectus.
Constantine
immediately left Britain and the legionary fortress where he had been
acclaimed to establish a firmer base with the legions of the
Rhineland. He moved quickly to establish a court
in the northern city of Augusta Treverorum (Trier) – often a secessionist capital – but
his sights were on a far bigger prize.
Like his father before him, Constantine abandoned a concubine (the mother of his child) to make a politically useful marriage into the family of the senior Augustus (and rival), Maximian,
Diocletian's original
colleague, who had returned to imperial politics from an
unwelcome retirement. Soon after, Maximian was dead, almost certainly on
the orders of his new son-in-law. In the eastern capital an unhappy
Galerius reluctantly
acknowledged Constantine as a caesar but appointed his own
nominee – Severus – as
supreme ruler for the west.
In the meantime, Maxentius (son of Maximian and now Constantine's brother-in-law!) had been proclaimed Augustus in Rome by the
praetorian guard.
Severus lost his life in an unsuccessful attempt
to remove the usurper.
Conversion? My
Enemy's Enemy is My Friend
In Constantine's
day, the eastern provinces were by far the richest and
most populous of the Roman world. Some of its cities – Pergamon,
Symrna, Antioch and so on – had existed for almost a millennium
and had accumulated vast wealth from international trade and venerated
cult centres. Through its numerous cities passed Roman gold going
east in exchange for imports from Persia, India and Arabia. Flowing
west with those exotic imports came exotic 'mystery religions'
to titillate and enthrall Roman appetites.
In
contrast, the western provinces now ruled by Constantine were
more recently colonized and less developed. Its cities were small
'new towns', its hinterland still barbarian. During the crisis
decades of the 3rd century many provincial Romans in the west
had been carried off into slavery by Germanic raiders and their
cities burned. The province of Britain and part of northern Gaul
had actually seceded from the empire in the late third century – and
had been ruled by its own 'emperors' (Carausius, Allectus) with the help
of Frankish
mercenaries (286-297).
Constantine had no power-base in the east from which to mount a bid for the throne – but he had been at Nicomedia in 303 when Diocletian had decided to purge the Roman state of the disloyal Christian element. He had also served under Galerius on the Danube and witnessed at first-hand how the favoured Galerius – designated heir and rival – in particular despised the cult of Christ.
The ambitious
and ruthless prince, from his base in Trier, immediately
proclaimed himself 'protector of the Christians.' But
it was not the handful of Jesus worshippers in the west that Constantine
had in mind – there had not, after all, been any persecution
in the west – but the far more numerous congregation in
the east. They constituted a tiny minority within the
total population (perhaps as few as 2%) but the eastern Christians
were an organised force of fanatics, in many cities
holding important positions in state administration. Some held
posts even within the imperial entourage.
By
championing the cause of the Christians Constantine put himself
at the head of a 'fifth column' in the east, of a state within
a state.
That Fabulous
Fable
At first, Constantine
honoured the tetrarchy which had stabilized the empire for
a generation
but Galerius himself died in 311 and Constantine saw his opportunity.
In the spring of 312, in the first of his civil wars, Constantine
moved against the ill-fated Maxentius to seize control of Italy
and Africa, in the process almost annihilating a Roman army
near Turin, and another outside of Rome.
A
nonsense repeated ad nauseam is the fable of the ‘writing
above the sun’ which advised Constantine of his divine
destiny. In its worst form, the legend has it that the words ‘In
this sign, you shall conquer’ and the sign of the cross
were visible to Constantine and his entire army. The words would
have been, perhaps, Latin ‘In Hoc Signo Victor Seris’,
a bizarre cloud formation unique in the annuls of meteorological
observation.
On
the other hand, more than one author (e.g. S. Angus, The Mystery
Religions, p236) says that the words were in Greek ('En
Touto Nika'), which would have left them unintelligible to
the bulk of the army. Then, again, perhaps they were in both Latin
and Greek, a complete occluded front of cumulus cloud!
Digging
below the legend however we discover that the vision was in
fact a dream reported some years later by Constantine to his
secretary Lactantius (On the Death of the Persecutors, chapter
xliv; ANF. vii, 318.) The fable was later embellished by the emperor's ‘minister
of propaganda’, Bishop Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine
(1.xxvi-xxxi). The ‘sign of the cross’ was
an even later interpolation (the cross was not a Christian
symbol at the time of the battle – nor would be until the
6th century!). Any ‘good luck emblem’ at this date would
have been the chi-rho – ambiguously the first two letters
of the word Christos, the Greek word for ‘auspicious’ and
also Chronos, god of time and a popular embodiment of Mithras!
What
is perhaps most significant about this ‘origins’ fantasy
is that ‘lucky charms’ had entered the parlance
of Christianity. Constantine did not need to be a Christian;
invoking its symbols was sufficient to win divine patronage.
But did he invoke its symbols? Coins issued at the time celebrating
his victory showed only Sol Invictus: his triumphant arch,
still standing, refers only to ‘the gods’. In
truth, Constantine was not a particularly pious man. Famously,
he delayed his baptism until he was close to death for fear of
further sinning – with good reason: among his many murders was
that of his first wife Fausta (boiled alive) and eldest son Crispus
(strangled).
End of Praetorians: New
Germanic cavalry
In the real world,
one consequence of Constantine's victories in 312 was the disbandment
of the praetorian guard. The praetorians had had the misfortune
to have backed Maxentius and those who had not fallen in the battle
(and many had drowned near the Milvian bridge) were demoted and
posted to garrisons on distant frontiers.
Replacing
the praetorians was a special imperial guard – Scholae Palatinae – an
elite cavalry regiment of 500, mainly Germans. Diocletian had pioneered
a new force of imperial guards (Ioviani and Herculiani)
but these had been crack infantry regiments.
"Constantine's fondness for German troops led to the charge that he had barbarised the army." (Farrel, p47)
Constantine's
spite left the city of Rome defenseless – and when the
Visigoths arrived a century later – the 'mistress of
the world' fell to the invader.
Constantine's Ambition Decimates the Legions
"The feeble policy of Constantine and his successors armed and instructed, for the ruin of the empire, the rude valour of the Barbarian mercenaries ... the mortal wound so rashly or so weakly inflicted by the hand of Constantine."
– Gibbon (Decline & Fall)
Multiple
Civil Wars
Having
added Italy and Africa to his realm, Constantine at first made
secure his position with the senior augustus in the east – where Licinius had
succeeded to the throne of Galerius – by a 'peace pact' and
the gift of his sister as a bride. But within a year, Constantine reneged
on his agreement with Licinius and plunged the empire into a
new civil war.
Two
battles in the Balkans – Cibalae (October, 314), Castra Jarba (November,
314) were stalemated with massive casualties on both sides. It
seems Constantine unnerved the Christians in Licinius's army
by displaying Christian emblems in his own legions.
Licinius – an
accommodating and benign emperor – sued for a peace in
which he acknowledged Constantine as the senior augustus.
Now titular monarch
of the world, for a decade Constantine concentrated on wooing the
senatorial class in Rome, marked by a program of public works in
a city already in decline.
The
Fate of Rome
In
the embattled years of the late third century the fortunes of the
city of Rome began a downspin, even as Christianity’s star
was rising.
By
Constantine’s day there were about two dozen Christian meeting
houses in the city but the imperial court and its bureaucracy had
moved north, first to Milan and Trier, and later, to Ravenna
and Arles.
Affected
both by civil conflict and the recurring epidemics which came in
its wake, the city’s population began to fall. Worse
yet, at the very moment of Christian triumph – the consecration
of the Lateran Basilica by the ‘first Christian Emperor’ – the
great general was already well ahead with plans for a new capital,
eight hundred miles to the east.
The
Christians had plundered and assimilated much of pagan religious
thought and ritual; their conquering hero now sequestered the statuary
and fabric of the eastern empire to aggrandize his new city on
the Bosphorus.
After
326, Constantine never again stepped foot in Rome; he personally ‘never
liked the city...' (J. Norwich, Byzantium, p61).
In
consequence the Bishops of Rome picked up the mantle of falling
grandeur and set the city on a new Christian path to power.
Autocracy
Having built
support within the old imperial capital, and with his ambitions
still not satisfied, Constantine provoked yet another civil
war with Licinius in 324.
Constantine gathered
an army of 125,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, and a fleet of
200 vessels. To meet the threat, Licinius stripped troops
from the vulnerable Persian frontier to assemble a force
of 150,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry and a fleet of no fewer than
350 ships. Battle was joined at Adrianople on 3 July and Byzantium
was blockaded. The fleets met in the Bosphorus, but Licinius's
navy was overwhelmed by a storm, drowning 5000 men in
the process. Licinius surrendered on the promise of personal safety;
six months later he was strangled by order of Constantine.
The pampered
prince had at last reached the summit of his ambition. The
tough and ruthless Constantine, bastard son of Constantius and
a Bithynian barmaid called Helena, had made himself master of the
Empire. Christianity’s hour had come.
Yet in his climb
to mastery of the Roman world, 'the first Christian Emperor' had
brought about the destruction of the heart of the Roman military
machine. The huge loss of manpower could be made good only by
ever greater recruitment of barbarian detachments, hired as
mercenaries to fight Rome's wars for her.
This, of course,
is precisely what Constantine did.
Fatal
Reorganisation of the Army
At the height
of its power, Rome's vast empire had been successfully defended
by legions stationed in great fortresses on the frontiers. Its
military machine had thoroughly mastered the arts of military support
and logistics. Some 33 legions had been sufficient to vanquish
barbarians in forest, desert, mountain or marsh.
But the legions
had increasingly become the makers of emperors. In the interlude
of the tetrarchy, Constantine's father had been chosen by Diocletian
for his ability. But Constantine himself had used the Gallic
army to stake his own claim for power and he was wary of the
legions. Having triumphed by force, Constantine was determined
to close the door for any future usurpers.
At the heart
of Constantine's new structure for the army was a mobile field
force of 100,000 troops, initially withdrawn from the frontier
garrisons. Protection of the imperial regime was more important
than protection of 'remote frontiers'.
A mobile force,
near to the person of the emperor, replaced forces scattered along
thousands of miles of frontier. Up close and personal, potential
rivals in the military could be identified and eliminated.
The new army
had a new command structure, based upon personal loyalty to the
emperor. At its head were two 'field marshals' for infantry and
cavalry (magister peditum, magister equitum), under Constantine's
watchful eye. Senators were eliminated entirely from military command.
Yet Constantine's
new army proved as disastrous as his new religion.
"The hugh mobile reserve created by Constantine (306-337) fatally weakened the frontier forces and emphasized cavalry at the expense of infantry ... Yet in the crucial battles that the legions fought against Goths and Huns it was the clash of foot soldiers – not cavalry – that decided the Empire's fate." (Farrill)
The Greek historian Zosimus, in the early 6th century noted other consequences of Constantine's reforms:
"Constantine abolished security by removing the greater part of the soldiery from the frontiers to the cities that needed no auxiliary forces. He thus deprived of help the people who were harassed by the barbarians and burdened tranquil cities with the pest of the military, so that several straightway were deserted. Moreover he softened the soldiers, who treated themselves to shows and luxuries. Indeed (to speak plainly) he personally planted the first seeds of our present devastated state of affairs." (Historia Nova, II.34)
The weakened and demoralised troops who remained on the frontiers (limitarei and ripenses – 'border' and 'river' guards) were re-grouped into small units of 1000 men (compared to 5000 of the former legions), with limited cavalry support under the command of a 'dux'. These small detachments were stationed in hill-top forts, where, essentially, they avoided any engagement with an enemy they were not expected to defeat.
"The limitanei probably went into immediate & gradual decline – the evidence for their tactical deployment is nearly non-existent."
– Farrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire, p49.
Training for these demoralised and irregularly paid troops seriously declined. Expensive body armour was abandoned, and simple leather caps replaced the iron helmet.
Under such conditions,
traditional Roman infantry tactics, driven by harsh discipline
and constant training, simply disappeared. The luckless frontier
troops, dependent upon payment in rations and only the occasional
cash bonus, degenerated into a peasant militia, spending more time
in growing food than on the parade ground.
 2nd century trooper |
 5th century trooper |
Yet the expensive
mobile force was never mobile enough.
"The result was that Rome's effective combatant manpower was drastically reduced, even though the overall army was larger than in the earlier Empire."
– Farrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire. p44.
This larger army required a vastly enlarged bureaucracy of tax-collectors and it had to levy the cities annually for manpower. The military draft and rapacious tax collectors sent many cities into a downward spiral as the citizenry seeped away.
Constantine
responded to the crisis – plainly evident in his own day – by
a law requiring sons of veterans to serve in the army. Military
service (like tax collecting) became hereditary. Not only
did this precipitate a collapse of espirit de corps: Constantine
laid one of the foundation stones of that insidious form of slavery
called serfdom.
With the
demise of the old structure of the army, the 'democratic' escalator,
whereby a common soldier, moving through the ranks, could enter
the imperial entourage and reach for the throne itself, passed
away. The stage was now set for 'Lords' on horseback and shoddily
equipped conscripts.
Divine, Dynastic Monarch! Strengthening the Centre, Dividing the Periphery
The wily Diocletian
had begun a process (adapted from the Oriental theocracies) which
the vainglorious Constantine refined and set as a model for all
future monarchs: he surrounded the imperial dignity
with a 'halo' of sacredness and ceremonial.
A large court-retinue,
elaborate court-ceremonials, and ostentatious court-costume made
access to the emperor almost impossible. When he eventually reached 'God's
agent on Earth', a 'suppliant' prostrated himself
before the emperor as if before a divinity (Augustus had always
stood to greet a senator!)
Henceforth, emperors
allowed themselves to be venerated as divines, and everything connected
with them was called 'sacred'. Instead of imperial, the word 'sacred'
had now always to be used.
The
egotistical Constantine, not content with concentrating absolute
(and 'divine') power into his own hands, went on to reduce the
authority of provincial governors and generals ('duces', 'comes').
Some of this authority fell into the hands of the nouveau riche bishops,
at whose head stood Constantine himself. Constantine hoped thus
to prevent any rebellion arising in the provinces – but he
did so at the cost of weakening the ability of provincials
to resist invasion.
State Church: Christianity
Goes Royal
"Nothing is more welcome to a military empire than a religious doctrine that counsels obedience and acquiescence."
– Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker, p163.
Constantine's desire to impose upon the Empire a religion that would identify obsequiousness to the deity with loyalty to the emperor found its perfect partner in Christianity – or at least in the Christianity he was to patronize.
In
the century before the ignoble alliance of one particular faction
with the imperium many christianities had contended.
Before Constantine, Christ had, for most Christians, been the ‘good
shepherd’, just like Mithras and Apollo, not a celestial monarch
or an imperial judge. Nor did the Christian sects dwell on the
crucifixion scene:
‘They shrink from the recollection of the servile and degrading death inflicted on their lord, and conceive salvation in the gentle terms of the friendship of Christ, not in the panoply of imperial triumphs.’ (Oxford History, p14)
But with Constantine's absolute monarchy, Christianity acquired its 'panoply of imperial triumphs.' The leading Churchman and propagandist Eusebius hailed the autocrat as a new Moses, a new Abraham.
Constantine saw himself,
more modestly, as the thirteenth apostle, a saint-in-waiting.
At the time, perhaps five per cent of the empire’s population
was nominally ‘Christian.’ With imperial encouragement,
support, funds and force the Universal Church set about the task
of gathering in its flock.
In a number of
provinces a serious breach had opened within the Christian churches
between those who had 'apostatised' during Diocletian's brief persecution
and those who had suffered penalties for their fanaticism. Some
churches already had a 'nationalistic' bent, serving as a focus
for opposition to the emperor.
Constantine,
vexed by all such discord, called for an inclusive 'universal'
or catholic faith.
Of course all factions regarded themselves as
that universal 'orthodox' faith and manoeuvred for preferment.
It was inevitable that an autocrat like Constantine would identify
with and adopt a church
which modelled its organisation not merely upon the Roman State but
upon its most authoritarian aspect: the imperial army.
In
the Constantinian Church, bishops would rule districts
corresponding with military dioceses, would control appointments
and impose discipline. Lesser clerics would report through a chain
of command up to the local pontiff. ‘Staff officers’,
in the guise of deacons and presbyters, would control funds and
allocations.
Just as well that in Christian morality there was no place for democracy, only for absolute monarchs, chosen by God. In Christianity there were no human rights (for example, of a slave to his freedom), only obligations (thus a slave should be honest and faithful to his master, because, of course, all would be judged on the day of reckoning).
Spoils of Victory: Pillaging
the Pagans
The
alliance of Roman autocracy and Christian intolerance was a marriage
made in hell. The
Universal Church eyed with envy the pagan temples and shrines
which, through centuries, had amassed their own riches. As propagandists
for Constantine, the Christians had the ear of the emperor and
successfully urged him to confiscate temple treasures throughout
the Empire, much of it redirected to the ‘One True Faith.’
The
assault upon the values that had sustained the Empire for a
thousand years was merciless and relentless. It
began with Constantine's denial of state funds to the ancient
pagan shrines which had
always depended on state sponsorship. Never having had full-time
fund raisers like the Christian churches the pagan cults immediately
went into decline.
But having given
the Christians the world, what Constantine could not anticipate
was the ferocity of Christian discord, which was
to dog his reign and the reign of all who were to follow him.
The
Christian 'community' itself had changed as a consequence of the
Constantinian revolution.
Official
recognition of Christianity, the tax exemptions it gave devotees
and state patronage made the Christian faith considerably more
appealing to opportunistic pagans. Episcopal posts became highly
sought after when, in 319, the clergy were exempted from public
obligations and, in 321, priests were exempted from imperial and
local taxation. Clerics were even placed outside the jurisdiction
of normal courts ('Privilegia
Ecclesiastica': Decline of Law).
A
flood of new converts, many with little or no religious motivation,
swamped the church. Fierce
rivalries within the Church multiplied, weakened its power
and exposed vulnerabilities in both its doctrine and organisation.
Constantine
successfully established the dynastic principle, but it had bitter
fruit. His feeble sons, 'born to rule', murdered each other (the
survivor died falling from his horse). Worse yet, Constantine’s
nephew, Julian, though raised as a Christian, detested the doctrine
and, on assuming the throne, reversed many of Constantine’s
policies.
Emperor Julian on his uncle Constantine
"As for Constantine, he could not discover among the gods the model of his own career, but when he caught sight of Pleasure, who was not far off, he ran to her. She received him tenderly and embraced him, then after dressing him in raiment of many colours and otherwise making him beautiful, she led him away to Incontinence.There too he found Jesus, who had taken up his abode with her and cried aloud to all comers: 'He that is a seducer, he that is a murderer, he that is sacrilegious and infamous, let him approach without fear! For with this water will I wash him and will straightway make him clean. And though he should be guilty of those same sins a second time, let him but smite his breast and beat his head and I will make him clean again.'To him Constantine came gladly, when he had conducted his sons forth from the assembly of the gods."– Emperor Julian, The Caesars (c.361 AD)
To the alarm of the new Christian 'establishment', the pagan world was not yet ready to die quietly.
Post-Constantine: Lurch
into Religious Tyranny
Within three years, Emperor Julian had been assassinated on the Persian front (probably by a disaffected Christian soldier) – but it left the Christians fearful of losing the prize that had fallen so unexpectedly into their laps.
Thereafter,
the Christians embraced a ruthlessness hitherto unknown in the
world, an intolerance which, in the centuries ahead, would wreak
unimaginable horror.
I
n
the closing years of the fourth century, draconian laws prohibiting
non-Christian beliefs were enacted by the new hero of the Christians,
Emperor Theodosius. Heresy was
now equated with treason and thus became a capital
offence.
Theodosius
'the Great' presided over the destruction of temples and icons,
the burning of books and libraries, and a rampage of murder of
pagan priests, scholars and philosophers.
The wisdom and finesse
of an entire civilization was sacrificed on the altar of the Christian
godman and delivered Europe into a dark age of barbarism and crass
superstition.
Only
the very brave, the very foolish or the very hidden would now deny
their Christianity. The prologue to the Dark Age had been
written.
Sources:
Edward Gibbon, The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin, 1960)
Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1985)
Michael Grant, The Emperor Constantine (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1985)
Arthur Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire (Thames & Hudson, 1986)
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew (Harper Collins,1992)
Arther Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire (Thames & Hudson, 1986)
Leslie Houlden (Ed.), Judaism & Christianity (Routledge, 1988)
Norman Cantor, The Sacred Chain - A History of the Jews (Harper Collins, 1994)
Friedrich Heer, The Fires of Faith (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1970)
H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (John Hopkins, 2000)
Paul Stephenson, Constantine, Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor ((Quercus, 2011)
Edward Gibbon, The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin, 1960)
Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1985)
Michael Grant, The Emperor Constantine (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1985)
Arthur Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire (Thames & Hudson, 1986)
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew (Harper Collins,1992)
Arther Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire (Thames & Hudson, 1986)
Leslie Houlden (Ed.), Judaism & Christianity (Routledge, 1988)
Norman Cantor, The Sacred Chain - A History of the Jews (Harper Collins, 1994)
Friedrich Heer, The Fires of Faith (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1970)
H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (John Hopkins, 2000)
Paul Stephenson, Constantine, Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor ((Quercus, 2011)
