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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free, get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit. With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary All About Petra and the Nabateans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:26]
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- [01:06]
Tristan Hughes
It's the Ancients of History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host and today where we're once again delving into the Ancients archive over the Christmas break, bringing you back to the fore, another of my favourite episodes from the back catalogue. Now this episode was within the first 20 that the Ancients ever released back in mid-2020 more than four years ago. It is a real golden oldie and I've always had a soft spot for this interview. One, because when it was released it gave the Ancients one of the first ever notable spikes in listens. We were only talking hundreds if that back then, but that was big for me at the time. And two, because this episode covers such an interesting period in Roman history. It's the story of how the famous Roman Emperor Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, rose to power. His early years, his proclamation as emperor at York in Britain, the rivals he defeated, the well known victory he gained at the Milvian Bridge, his careful balancing of Christianity and the traditional Roman gods, his terrible parenting, his and much more. Now our guest for this episode was the fantastic Professor David Potter from the University of Michigan. So sit back and relax as we revisit one of my favorite early episodes of the Ancients, the Rise of Constantine.
- [02:32]
Professor David Potter
Now, Constantine the Great, a man whose religious significance sometimes overshadows his other extraordinary achievements.
- [02:40]
Historian/Expert
Yes it does. Of course a lot of the later record was written by Christians and very heavily influenced by especially the work of Eusebius of Caesarea, a man who was not actually very close to Constantine at any point in his life, and wrote his biography of Constantine after the Emperor was dead. The other records for Constantine, which are primarily the record of his legislation, gives us, I think, a much better take on his personality and on what drove him there's a particularly notable letter to the prefect of Rome after the palace had been struck by lightning. And this is well after Constantine became a Christian saying. Okay, and remember to consult the Haruspices as well. I mean, Constantine was a man who knew how to hedge his divine bets, which is not something you'd ever find in Eusebius biography.
- [03:34]
Professor David Potter
You mentioned Eusebius just there. And the fact that so many of our sources about Constantine are Christian sources. And do we have any pagan sources written near the time of Constantine that talk about Constantine's life?
- [03:46]
Historian/Expert
Yes, the basic pagan sources come from the imperial palace. These are a series of speeches in praise of Constantine. And we can trace the way that he wanted to be seen by his subjects through the way the story of his life is changed in these speeches. This especially of course has to deal with his relationship with his father in law, who he hung for rebellion in 310. And so, you know, got to be very careful around that one other people. He doesn't mention the previous emperor's Diocletian at all. Then in the latter panegyric, there's some, the last of them, there's some very negative commentary on his deceased brother in law who of course he killed at the battle of the Millen Bridge. You basically don't want to be married, you know, related to Constantine by marriage at all. But he paints his then other brother in law Licinius in this speech very much as a sort of suggestion that brothers in law need to know how to behave. Now the message there about Licinius, I think is very clear. And then we have an extraordinary legislative record and we can really get a sense of Constantine's personality. Not just, as I just said, hedging the divine bet, but also there are moments where he's clearly very impatient with his senior subordinates. And he's basically saying, why didn't you do this? Get on with it. And so we do get this sense of the real personality coming through some of this legislation. And we know that there's some question, did the emperor really write this? Did he know this? Was it his secretary? But when we concentrate on the documents which are written to the most senior officials in the empire, you can be pretty sure that the emperor is sitting there dictating this. You can see him pacing back and forth.
- [05:41]
Professor David Potter
I mean, that's a remarkable source to have for an emperor. It sounds, I guess diaries is too strong a word. But as you say, these administrative papers, these orders, they sound like they're coming from Constantine's mouth himself.
- [05:56]
Historian/Expert
They Very much are in the case of these letters to the senior officials. And they all tell a story because somebody's got a problem and they've written to the emperor and the emperor is responding to the problem. And you can get a sort of sense of consistency in his approach here. I mean, he was a man who valued efficiency enormously. And we can see him coming back to these points again, again and again. And then if we transfer that to the record we have of say, Constantine in the military sphere. This is a man who got an army across the Alps at the beginning of the spring in 312. This is an enormously complicated military operation. But it doesn't come as any surprise that he managed to pull it off. This is a man's enormous attention to detail. And he's also, as I say, a guy who you can sense is a bit passionate at times and that would cause him a certain amount of difficulty at points in his life.
- [06:54]
Professor David Potter
And this real attention to detail. Let's have a look at the background to all this. Before he becomes emperor, before his clashes with his fellow Roman leaders, what do we know about Constantine's background? What sort of world is he born into?
- [07:10]
Historian/Expert
Constantine is really born into a world of incredibly rapid change. His father was a senior official, married his mother, Helena, who was probably a fairly well off woman from what we would now think of as western Turkey. Her home city was later renamed Helenopolis in her honor. There are later stories, of course, that Helena was a barmaid and that Constantius would have picked her up on the side. And this is simply not true. Constantine was the legitimate son of Constantius by a legitimate marriage. And that is why he could be picked back up by Constantius in 305 and put in the line of succession. But Constantius himself, a very, very able general, was promoted to being deputy emperor by Maximian, who would later also become Constantine's father in law. And at that point he had to divorce Helena and marry a daughter of Maximian. And at that point, you know, Constantine and Helena are sort of, they're making their way in the world. Constantine is sent to the court of Diocletian, that's Nicomedia, get him away from his father. He grows up there, has a career as a sort of military officer, mid level military officer. He tells us at various times that he accompanied Diocletian to Egypt. He served with Galerius in the great campaign against the Persians where the Romans undid a massive disaster that they'd suffered back in 260. It really changed the balance of Power on the frontier. A lot of the influence on his life was really, I think from Diocletian and Galerius, because those are the people who, in his teens, he's observing. And Diocletian is an enormously powerful personality himself. I mean, here's a man who again was a mid level officer, is placed on the throne by the general staff because who wants to be emperor? It's a death sentence at this point. If you go back to 238, you have the emperor Maximian, who was murdered by his men, his two immediate successors, Pupianus and Balbinus, murdered by their men. There's Gordian iii, murdered by his men. Philip the Arab, murdered in a revolt. Decius dies in battle. Valerian is captured by the Persians, you know, Aurelian, the most successful of these people, murdered by his men. So as Diocletian takes off, how am I going to fix this? How am I going to survive? And he manages it. And then, you know, in this astonishing ceremony In May of 305, one of the things that Diocletian establishes, that emperors wear purple cloaks. Nobody else wears the purple cloak. And he'd establish an imperial image. He's a very square, bearded chap, you know, but he gets up on the platform outside of his capital at Nicomedia, he takes off the purple cloak, drapes it over the shoulders of the new Caesar, walks down off the platform, far better than the President of the United States recently gets into a cart and drives off into retirement. And I mean, it's an extraordinary thing to think if you're Constantine, this is what you're watching. How did this man reshape the Roman Empire? What did he do right? What did he do wrong? And a lot of what we see Constantine doing is a dialogue with Diocletian.
- [10:32]
Professor David Potter
It's fascinating how his early career, as he said at the court of Diocletian and in the East. Do you think all this knowledge, looking and watching, as it were, gaining all this experience, really sets him up for when he goes to the other end of the empire in the three hundreds with his father, which ultimately ends up with him being crowned emperor?
- [10:52]
Historian/Expert
I think it absolutely does because he really knew the imperial system from the bottom up, from the inside out. He also, I think, recognized the personalities he was dealing with. When he takes the throne in 305, he is directly defying Galerius on whose staff he served. But I think he knows enough about Galerius to know he can get away with it. And the, the staff around him that he meets when he goes and rejoins his father in 305 he is able to establish himself as somebody they're going to trust. It is their necks that are going to be on the line if they don't do what Galerius expects them to do which is allow the deputy that Constantius didn't want Severus to become the senior emperor, they don't want that. But Constantine has really taught them that they can trust him to be a good manager and a good leader. And I think he also realized that Galerius is somewhat risk averse and so that if they do it right they're going to get away with it.
- [12:01]
Professor David Potter
So it's kind of exploiting the new system as it were. Exploiting the tetrarchy and this joint rule over the Roman Empire.
- [12:08]
Historian/Expert
Yes, exactly. Knowing where the weak points are.
- [12:12]
Professor David Potter
Fascinating. So when Constantine arrives in Britain, what is Constantine's relationship with Britain?
- [12:19]
Historian/Expert
Well, he'd never been there probably. I mean we wouldn't know if he had been a little, little boy. But he's in York on the staff of his father and they're on the campaign against tribes north of the wall. I mean this is something that happens from time to time as the wall fails. The Emperor's got to go up there and do something about it. Most likely he would have served as a liaison between his father and other senior officials at that point. But it's also I think important to him that the whole organization is up there at this time and they make this radical decision when Constantius dies. Which I think Constantius, he knew that he wasn't in good health when he insisted that his son come back to him. And God knows, maybe he got report cards from the guys in the east. Yeah, the kid's doing well. You know, you can trust him. But it's that sort of moment of having everybody together in York that means that this coup can work.
- [13:23]
Professor David Potter
And as soon as he is crowned Emperor by his troops, how does he go about, I mean, what are the immediate challenges he faces?
- [13:31]
Historian/Expert
The immediate challenge he faces is to control the passes over the Alps so that Severus can't get at him. And so again he has to move with extraordinary speed really getting his people in position before any kind of response can come from the south. Because Severus we know was based in northern Italy around Milan. He had the army that had served under Maximian around him. He could move potentially fairly quickly into southern France if that was the case. So he had to be also quite confident that Constantius own officers going from northern France to southern France would be loyal to the regime. And he does start as a sort of negotiation. Well, I'll only be Caesar, I won't be the senior Augustus. We'll let you be Augustus Galerius. You just have to accept this arrangement here. And so the interesting thing here is that Severus is left with a sort of a problem. Can he get himself across the Alps in the fall to take on Constantine? Because you'd figure it takes a couple of weeks for the news to come. The end of July, we're coming into August and by the time you get the army together, you know it's going to be October, November, and you don't want to be wandering around the Alps at that point in time. So Constantine is going to take advantage of having the protection of the mountain range while he pulls his regime together.
- [14:57]
Professor David Potter
So if you can control those crossings, as it were, over the Alps in this time of the Roman Empire and you're controlling Gaul and Britain or Roman Britain, and Constantine's managed to do this. Is he now able to focus more on consolidating that northwestern part of the empire under his control?
- [15:15]
Historian/Expert
Exactly. That's what he's looking to do as soon as he becomes emperor is consolidate his position. He'll move back from Britain to Trier, which will remain his main capital up until, well, really, even after he takes Rome in 312, he'll go back to Trier. It's also there where he will, as a way of consolidating his power, lead campaigns across the Rhine to prove to his generals that he really is the right person to have here. Constantine was never afraid of exemplary brutality. I mean, this is another thing that he learned from Diocletian. And he captures a couple of kings of the Franks who ordinarily you'd let them go and make sure you pay them off to make sure their people behave. Instead, he throws them to the lions in Trier.
- [16:04]
Professor David Potter
That's brutal, nasty.
- [16:06]
Historian/Expert
Yeah, this is that other side of Constantine who is capable of being extremely brutal if he sees that there's a reason for it. And the memory of his execution of these Frankish kings is carried through really as one of the first acts of his reign. And we see it in later panegyrics. It's picked up in Western accounts of Constantine's life as sort of a big moment. This is where he. He sort of puts his stamp on, on the regime. I am in charge and I have a lion.
- [16:39]
Professor David Potter
Yeah, you're talking about Diocletian just there. And of course, one of the things Diocletian is infamous for, and almost famous for, is his brutal persecution of the Christians. Do we have any idea did Constantine treat with the Christian Church at all during these early years of his emperorship?
- [16:57]
Historian/Expert
We don't have any real evidence that Constantine had any contact with the Christian Church up until the campaign against Maxentius in 312. At that point, he certainly did have contact with the Church because he has a group of bishops with him on campaign. In 310, he advertised a personal meeting with the God Apollo. So certainly he's very much in the traditional range of things, but he also has a great deal of, as it seems his father may have done in a version of the sun God called Invincible sun. And this was a sort of reinvented and redesigned divinity connected with the city of Emesa in Syria originally. El Gabal, which is the name of this God, is a meteorite and the name means God Mountain. By the third century, he's already been called Sun God and he's brought to Rome by the Emperor Elagabalus and then shipped back. But then Aurelian seems to have a vision of him before a battle against the Palmyrenes, who'd been running the eastern part of the empire for more than a decade. And Constantius was on the staff of Aurelian. And Invincible Son is going to remain very important for Constantine well after his conversion. And one sort of senses with Constantine because Christians would allow that the solar imagery connected with resurrection. And for Constantine, the Christian God, Invincible Son, etcetera, seemed to sort of meld together until finally, I suspect some bishop sat him down 10 years after the fact and said, you really got to stop this.
- [18:41]
Professor David Potter
That's absolutely fascinating. So Sol Invictus, this eastern God, as it were, has a principal importance, a prime importance on Constantine, you know, from the times he's in Britain, from the times he's in Northwest Europe all the way to he's in Rome and then back in, well, what will be Constantinople exactly.
- [18:58]
Historian/Expert
I mean, Invincible Son stays on the coinage into the 320s. And then if you go to Istanbul today, you can go and see the burnt column, which is this great black column, which would have been in the form of Constantine and on top of it in antiquity would have been a statue of Constantine as the sun God in heroic nudity. One thing I suppose we didn't really miss, but we have a picture of it. So even after the foundation of Constantinople, we can see that the solar imagery remains a significant thing to Constantine and we know that he will tell Christian audiences That, oh, yes, it's the Christian God. He leads me to victory and that's why I win. But he tells all of his subjects that he worships the great and supreme God who brings him victory. He's very subtle about this. And I think what he really learned watching Diocletian is that persecution fundamentally cannot work, that what he will never do is attempt a widespread persecution of pagans. The closest he comes to actually engaging in persecution is in a fight within the Christian church when he had the order of persecution of one faction in North Africa. And in a sense, it's as a bishop pulled him aside, said, that's going a bit too far. But it's really quite noticeable that in sort of matters of conscience, Constantine recognized that there was a limit to what the emperor could compel people to do. And I'm sure that in 303, watching the persecution of Diocletian, he would have been there in Nicomedia when it happened. He realized that it was just a dreadful mess.
- [20:52]
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- [21:29]
Professor David Potter
Let'S talk about Constantine's arrival in Rome and one of the most famous episodes in Christian history, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. How does Constantine's relationship with Maxentius, why does it descend into war?
- [21:42]
Historian/Expert
Well, Constantine and Maxentius were brothers in law. And while Galerius was alive, Maxentius was very nervous about Galerius because Galerius had already tried once to invade Italy and unseat him. In one of the more astonishing moments in this period, in 307, Galerius was beaten by Maxentius, and this was the great soldier of the age. And Maxentius, his army drove him from Rome. It was a logistical failure as much as anything on Galerius part. And so as long as Galerius is there, though, both Constantine and Maxentius are sort of looking over their shoulder at him. Once Galerius dies, he's succeeded by Licinius, and Licinius has a terrible relationship with the other sort of junior emperor in the east. And one of the problems of this period is everybody has the same sounding name. So this is Maximian Maximinus, not to be confused with Maximian or Maxentius and Maximinus. And Licinius don't like each other. So Maxentius and Maximinus seem to be making an alliance and there's Licinius caught in the middle between the two of them. So he now makes an alliance with Constantine and says, I'll deal with Maximinus if you could take care of Maxentius. The relationship between Maxentius and Amid, you might want to sort of look to the fact that as I mentioned earlier, Constantine had executed Maxentius father, Maximian, but Maximian was in the court of Constantine because Maxentius had driven him out of Rome. And Constantine is still married to the very much younger sister of Maxentius Fausta at this point. So I think it really is ambition that drives this in the beginning. He's made an alliance with Licinius, he's going to attack Maxentius and it's going to be a very difficult campaign. Nobody has taken Rome, no matter what their superiority looks like. A bit, if you go back to 238 another Maximinus had attacked Italy and didn't get further than Aquileia before he was murdered by his men. Galerius had failed, Severus had failed to take Rome when Maxentius had seized power. It's a very difficult operation. And then you also have the army that Maxentius has in northern Italy. So how do you fight your way down the peninsula? And I think at this point, and Constantine does seem to feel that he and the divine have a lot in common. And who is the God who is most unlike any divinity that Galerius would ever have had anything to do with? Oh, that happens to be the Christian God and he's not unlike the sun. And so the nice bishop here seems to be quite willing to tell me whatever I want to hear. And so we get an indication that Constantine has advertised that he has a new God on his side before he crosses the Alps. Now, the most famous story, of course, of this is the one that Eusebius makes up later, which is before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine saw a cross in the sky and this sign conquer. That's total nonsense. Constantine never mentions anything like that himself. Nobody in the west knew the story at all, because it was in Eusebius. Life of Constantine is when it comes into existence. But what Constantine would later write to a group of bishops is that he realized that there were some things in himself that could be improved upon. And as he thought about this, he then thought and met the God who sits in the great watchtower of heaven, who showed him how to Be a better person. And this is the way emperors do things. They talk to God in their private time. And this is what was said in the panegyric of 313, that the emperor had had an experience with God, the. In this case, divine mind. And so. But what he really is that I need somebody, a new God to help lead me south. Under these extraordinary circumstances, it's going to be a difficult campaign. And this new God, I think he feels, is with him as he crosses the Alps, as he moves into northern Italy, as he moves south towards Rome. But this conversion of Constantine may not be as dramatic a story as the one that Eusebius makes up, but in many ways, it is an incredibly dramatic story of an emperor. And you can feel him wondering, how am I going to pull this off? How am I going to outdo my former boss, who we know was a great soldier himself? And it's this confidence he gets from believing that he has a God on his side that I think helps him as he's planning the campaign and leading his people across the Alps in the spring to take on the army of Maxentius. Then when he gets down to Rome, it's rather interesting. There seems to be a rather good fifth column operating in the city. And you'd think that Maxentius could just have sat tight, as he really did, against Severus and against Galerius, because Rome's a big place. It's got some wonderful new walls, as you can see. You walk around Rome today, the walls that Aurelian built around the city. It was very powerful, well supplied, very hard to besiege. And if Constantine was forced into siege operations, he probably wouldn't have been any more successful than anybody else had been. But somehow he forces Maxentius, creates a situation where Maxentius has to leave the city. And on October 28, the day that Maxentius had taken the throne himself, Maxentius comes out to fight Constantine over the Milvian Bridge. Constantine is ready for him and destroys his army. No wonder what kind of general Maxentius is anyway. Draws his army up with a Tiber at the rear.
- [27:22]
Professor David Potter
28 October, as you said, it sounds a very auspicious day for Maxentius, as you say, if it's the same day that he was crowned emperor, yes, absolutely.
- [27:32]
Historian/Expert
And I think that he, you know, that he consulted oracles in Rome and you should go do this. You know, this is your big day. But also, I think he has watched his armies fall apart fighting Constantine as Constantine has come south. And I think that there's a real question amongst his own supporters as to whether or not he's somebody they can continue to trust. So Maxentius, in a way, has to prove himself to his own people, which is why he leads the army out to fight Constantine.
- [28:05]
Professor David Potter
So at this battle, one of the most famous things is the chi rho symbols. What do you think is the truth behind the chi rho is being painted on the shields.
- [28:15]
Historian/Expert
The story about the chi rho comes from Lactantius, who wrote a book on the deaths of the persecutors. And Lactantius, he wrote the book before he had come west, but he was using official information to describe the campaign and the battle. So this has been part of whatever. The messaging that was sent out is not mentioned in the panegyric of 313, which is our most contemporary description of the account, but it must have happened. But the Cairo signal can also mean luck. So it's a Christian symbol, becomes a Christian symbol, but it is also a common symbol meaning good luck.
- [28:57]
Professor David Potter
So it might not have been done for Christian reasons. It may have been done for luck, for good fortune in the battle.
- [29:04]
Historian/Expert
Well, I think it's a typical Constantinian moment. It's both, and it's a symbol of Christ for Constantine and anybody who wants to see it that way, and as a symbol of good luck for everybody who doesn't. And with invincible Sun Christ standing behind you, there's a remarkable consistency to the ambiguity that we see here.
- [29:26]
Professor David Potter
Fascinating. Yeah. As you were saying earlier with Sol Invictus and the Christian God, as you say, this ambiguity, this ability to appeal to both sides of a population, as it were.
- [29:37]
Historian/Expert
Exactly. And that's what Constantine had sensed, is that the job of the emperor is to bring people together. And he saw the persecution as divisive. There may not have been a whole lot of Christians in the empire, but the notion that the imperial government is persecuting people for what they believe rather than what they do is something that Constantine, I think, felt was completely wrong. And in doing it, Diocletian failed. Diocletian himself revoked the persecution edict that Diocletian had previously sold himself to the world as a man who restored the unity of the Roman Empire. And I think that Constantine takes away from Diocletian the impact of the notion of the job of the emperor being ensuring the unity of the empire. And you can't do that by telling people what to think, talking about healing.
- [30:33]
Professor David Potter
The divides and bringing the empire together. How, after defeating Maxentius, does Constantine go about consolidating his control over the West.
- [30:42]
Historian/Expert
Constantine has a great deal of difficulty when it comes to taking over the area that had been ruled by Maxentius. There had been a major revolt shortly before Constantine took power in North Africa. So he's got to build up confidence in the regime. And one of the things that we see him doing is actually using a lot of Maxentius own people in government instead of exiling everybody. This is part of the unity of the empire. I have jobs for everybody. But maybe the top five under Maxentius governors of North Africa, for instance, which is critical because that's where a lot of the grain for Rome comes from, are former officials of Maxentius. He's got to find a way of blending his staff and Maxentius staff, because also, you know, he recalls that one of the tensions that led to his becoming emperor was distrust on the part of Constantius staff, of the people of Severus to the south. And in fact, Maximian's people, when they put Maxentius on the throne again, they'd been sort of cut out by Severus. And so Constantine knows what doesn't work and works to build a unity government, as it were.
- [31:57]
Professor David Potter
So maybe if this is the wrong one, but is it kind of keeping your enemies close?
- [32:01]
Historian/Expert
Yes, keeping your enemies close is the best way of keeping them from staying your enemies. And the people who are running the show for Maximian and Maxentius are really the senior aristocracy of Italy and North Africa. So if you're going to run this part of the empire, you need their buy in.
- [32:19]
Professor David Potter
Fascinating. And where does the Edict of Milan come into all of this?
- [32:25]
Historian/Expert
The Edict of Milan is a document that was composed by Constantine and Licinius when they met in Milan in the autumn of 312 for the wedding of Constantine's half sister and Licinius. The edict was never posted in the West. Calling it the Edict of Milan is something of a misnomer, because it was an edict of toleration that was publicized by Licinius as soon as he defeated max minus in 313. It's actually a letter from the emperor to all of the governors of the east ordering the restitution of Christian property to the Church and announcing very clearly freedom of conscience. And I think that Constantine probably did have significant influence over the text, but the text, as it was published, was actually published by Licinius in the eastern provinces. But it's another way of saying that the new regime isn't like the old. Because Maximinus had persecuted the Christians, Galerius had persecuted the Christians. So again, what you're doing is drawing a line between the world of Constantine and Licinius, which is a world of toleration and the world of persecution which Maximinus had certainly been part of.
- [33:38]
Professor David Potter
And is this helpful, this drawing a line under what's happened before? Is this also helpful in the regime changing from four emperors, as it were, to two?
- [33:49]
Historian/Expert
I think it is absolutely an important aspect of this because on the one hand we look back to the great figure of Diocletian and the reunification of the empire and on the other hand we've just fought a couple of civil wars. We have to point out that these are the people who are not really living up to the standards that we expect of an emperor. But now that the two of us, brothers in law happily will rule this empire together, I think is a way of showing, and you know, with a very important statement in this edict, that one of the policies most easily associated with Galerius and Maximinus was that of persecution and we are undoing the mistakes of the past.
- [34:33]
Professor David Potter
Fascinating these these two brothers in law as it were, ruling the empire together. But this relationship doesn't stay cordial for long.
- [34:43]
Historian/Expert
No it doesn't. And it really only takes three years for the relationship between the two of them to break down. And I think the facts that we have indicate it worked out. It was Constantine who decided that, you know, really one emperor is better than two. But Licinius himself is a pretty good soldier. And in the first campaign in 317, Constantine is certainly the aggressor. Licinius has come west as well. I mean it's not taken by surprise. It's clear that the relationship has broken down. In the previous year. Constantine has accused Licinius of trying to instigate his assassination. So Constantine attacks Licinius is defeated, withdraws back towards Byzantium and then actually manages to outmaneuver Constantine. And even though he doesn't win a battle when he withdraws, he places himself over Constantine's lines of communication which forces Constantine to negotiate. And so a peace treaty is made whereby Constantine and Licinius will remain co emperors, their eldest sons will be their deputy emperors and Constantine will get 1/4 of the empire of Licinius. So if you think about the empire really being divided up into 12, well really 16 parts. Constantine is now going to be emperor of nine parts and Licinius of seven parts.
- [36:10]
Professor David Potter
It's too much maths for me I.
- [36:12]
Tristan Hughes
Think.
- [36:14]
Professor David Potter
But I mean that's remarkable. It's sounding like you don't really want to be a family member, member of Constantine. It's not going to save you if you're another powerful figure in the Empire.
- [36:25]
Historian/Expert
No, it certainly is not. I mean, the most dangerous job you can have is being related to Constantine. By this point he's killed one brother in law, one father in law, and he's been at war with the other brother in law.
- [36:39]
Professor David Potter
I know in your work you've talked about how Constantine exploits the weaknesses of his opponents. And what weaknesses does Constantine target in Licinius?
- [36:50]
Historian/Expert
I think that what Constantine exploits in Licinius is that Licinius moves a little bit more slowly than he does. If we look at where the battle, the first battle is fought at Cybele, Constantine is well over the border into Licinius, part of the Empire. Licinius had plenty of warnings, but as had been the case with Maximinus in the previous civil war, Maximinus had actually gotten his army into Licinius as part of the Empire before Licinius reacted. And so I think Constantine looks over there. Well, he's a little slow on the uptake. We can move a bit faster than he does. The descriptions of the battles and it's a little hard to know how accurate these are, but there are some fairly extensive descriptions of the campaign. And we can see Constantine launching some quite daring attacks with his cavalry around the flanks of Licinius army. He tries to be far more mobile than Licinius is.
- [37:51]
Professor David Potter
And after this first clash of Licinius, what happens afterwards? Is there further conflict between the two?
- [37:59]
Historian/Expert
Well, the situation settles down for a while. 7 years until 324 when Constantine will attack again. And at this point it's a very heavily prepared campaign. He has greater resources than Licinius does at this point. And he's ready and he exploits them. But again it's. It's interesting that what he does initially is he gets Licinius to fight on the European side of the Bosphorus, where Constantine has the advantage. And then when he, when he drives him back and Constantine now has to cross the Bosphorus, Constantine has a well prepared fleet which he's able to use, is commanded by his son, by his own first marriage, Crispus. Again, it's a family affair with Constantine here. And he seems to be again able to land the army where Licinius isn't expecting him. And you know, it's not an easy matter. Any kind of amphibious operation is going to be complicated and antiquity is now. But again, there's a lot of very good intelligence work that's going on, seeing where Licinius is, and I think being able to count on the fact that Licinius is going to react more slowly than would be advisable. So you know, Constantine then inflicts the final defeat on Licinius Chrysopolis on on his side of the of the straits. And then Licinius goes back to Nicomedia, which had been the capital of Diocletian, and there his wife negotiates his surrender to Konstantin.
- [39:39]
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- [40:15]
Professor David Potter
It'S amazing, that kind of homecoming to Nikomedia which you mentioned earlier when he was at Diocletian's court. It's as if he learns so much from Diocletian, the man who creates the tetrarchy, this four man rule to ultimately destroy the tetrarchy.
- [40:31]
Historian/Expert
Exactly, exactly. What he learned from Diocletian, I think was how to govern, how to project himself as emperor. What he was not going to do, and we see this in his relationship with his senior subordinates, is he's a man who doesn't have a great deal of patience. And whereas Diocletian can rule by committee, Constantine sees himself as the chief executive and he's going to tell the committee members what to do. But I think that what Diocletian had seen is the way to protect the imperial office was to create co stakeholders because the empire has been disunited and fragmented for decades prior to his taking the throne. And so in order to protect himself he needs deputy emperors he can trust. Constantine, conversely, sees that the empire was reunited by Diocletian and that Constantine's style of government is to tell people what to do. And he is very happy to sit on top of a college of efficient, experienced senior administrators who serve as Praetorian prefects for a very long period of time in many cases. But it is a much more top down approach than Diocletian's and to be.
- [41:52]
Professor David Potter
The head of this new administrative system. Is this one of the reasons he chooses Byzantium to become his new capital instead of Rome?
- [42:01]
Historian/Expert
I think that the reason that Constantine chooses Byzantium is he needs to rule in the east and he can't Bear living in Nicomedia. I mean, this is the city of Diocletian. It's the city of Maximinus, the city of Licinius. It is not the city of Constantine. The palace is full of statues. We've now discovered the imperial palace at Nicomedia, one of the great new discoveries of the last decade. And there we have sculptures of Diocletian and Maximian hugging each other. Now, this is really not Constantine's kind of place. And he's come to appreciate Byzantium as a very strong city. It held out against his armies. He knew that it had held out for a long time in a previous civil war, more than a century before. It had some of the amenities of an imperial city. And so he just said, no, this is going to be my city, and it's going to be named Constantinople because it is the city that celebrates my victory. I think as much as anything else, other people might be more tempted to give a city the name like Nicopolis, which is Victory City or something like that. But for Constantine, it's Constantinople. It takes a long time to build the city, but it is very much seen as a capital on a par with the other capital cities of the empire. And at this point, you have Trier, you have Milan, you have Rome, you have Sirmium, you have Nicomedia, you have Antioch. All these places have imperial palaces. So Constantine City is going to have that. It's going to have, as you can see today when you go to Istanbul, the great hippodrome running in front of the palace, which is. I mean, the Blue Mosque is now. Is on top of the imperial palace, and it's going to have its circus. And then at the other sort of high point in the city, looking out from the palace, you're going to have the great mausoleum of Constantine himself. And that sort of visually, if you look across the city from one side to the other, you have the imperial palace to the imperial mausoleum. So if you come down the Bosphorus, you know, you'll see Constantine literally from one end to the other.
- [44:13]
Professor David Potter
When he's overseen the construction of these pieces of monumental architecture, is he still continuing this policy of ambiguity, as it were? Is he still constructing temples to solemn victors, but also honoring the Christian God?
- [44:27]
Historian/Expert
Absolutely. There are temples in Constantinople, and they're open when he dies. Under his successors, they'll be transformed into churches and things like that, but they're still open when he dies. But the most remarkable document of all is really from the last year of Constantine's life, which is a letter from the City of Spello in Italy and an absolutely beautiful place. If you go there today, you can see the remains of a small amphitheater as well as this inscription of this long letter. And what the people of Spello, or Hispellum as it was named in the past, wanted was to set up a temple of the imperial cult and to have their own festival so they don't have to go over to their neighbors and celebrate a festival every year somewhere else. And in this case the Praetorian prefect for Constantine writes back, says sure, yeah, he's writing in Constantine's name. Absolutely delighted to have a temple erected, just no sacrifice. And this would be clear that Constantine would not allow public sacrifice to himself. It seems, depending on how you read Eusebius, that he told imperial officials that they shouldn't engage in animal sacrifice, but he does not ban sacrifice in the empire as a whole. That's why the people at Hispelum have to be told, you can have your temple, but you can't have a sacrifice in front of it.
- [45:42]
Professor David Potter
So it's his successes which as it say, takes the more, I guess, non tolerant step of going further with the embracing of Christian as the prime religion.
- [45:54]
Historian/Expert
Exactly. And I think some of the messaging here is actually in Eusebius, Life of Constantine, who paints Constantine as being far more devoutedly Christian than Constantine actually was. But Constantine's son Constantius II is a very devout Christian and is quite happy to stomp down on temple sacrifice and cult and things like that. So he's. For Constantius, he's just, he's being the father that Eusebius told him that Constantine was. And the sons of Constantine will justify their harsher policy towards pagans by saying it's really their father's policy.
- [46:31]
Professor David Potter
You mentioned the sons of Constantine there. I feel it wouldn't be a proper podcast about Constantine if we don't mention Constantine's son. But you mentioned his first son earlier, Constans. What is the infamous story behind Constans demise?
- [46:47]
Historian/Expert
Okay, well there are ultimately four sons of Constantine. The oldest is Crispus.
- [46:53]
Professor David Potter
Sorry, Crispus, yes.
- [46:54]
Historian/Expert
Who is the son of Constantine's first wife, Minervina, and who was clearly a little baby when Constantine became Emperor. And he is raised very much to be the heir apparent. And in 326 things go really, really badly wrong. Here's another case. You don't want to be too close to Constantine. Now there was a very nasty story told later by pagan sources about the conversion of Constantine, because nobody really knew when he converted, you see. So everybody makes up Their own story. And according to this story, Fausta tried to seduce Crispus. This is a very old story going back to the Hippolytus. And Crispus says, no, no, I won't sleep with you. And she goes off to Constantine. Crispus tried to rape me. Constantine executes him, and then he finds out the truth through Helena. His mother said, you know, it's really. It's all Faustus fault. And so he slams her into an overheated bath house, and she dies. So in one summer, he murders his wife and his oldest son. In point of fact, things are still going to be very dramatic, but a little bit less dramatic than that. Crispus is executed in 326. Crispus had been in command in the West. And there are other suggestions that a number of Western officials could see where things are going. I can see that Constantine is moving the center of government to the east. And there is some suggestion that maybe we need to re. Establish a stronger center in the West. The interesting thing is that this is also the 20th anniversary of Constantine's accession. So it's hard to say whether or not people. There's a lot of discussion. Is there a change in structure? Maybe Crispus should become co Augustus, or something is happening. Because another source tells us that senior officials were executed at this time. We're told by a less biased source that Crispus was actually tried and executed in the Balkans and that there's no Ammianus Marcellinus when he tells the story. There's no indication that Faustus got anything to do with it. We're also told that Fausta actually outlived this event by a couple of years. But her face is taken off the coinage by the end of 326. And clearly she and Constantine are on the outs at that point. Now, another thing about this relationship is Fausta had always traveled with Constantine. So there's, in fact, no way that the story of Christmas could be true because he's in Trier and she's with Constantine. She's certainly not in Rome when this happens. One obvious effect of this is the fact that she has an awful lot of children in these years. And it's a clearly very passionate relationship between the two. But Fausta was very young when she married Constantine. He was about 8 years old. It was a political marriage. She was about the same age as Crispus, I think. And I had a sense the two of them, in a way, grew up together in the imperial palace. And I have a strong feeling that she let Constantine know exactly what she thought about the execution of her close friend. And there was a split there that was never healed, and she died a couple of years later. There's an interesting story about Constantine's sarcophagus, and the story is that after he died, the bones of Fausta were brought to Constantinople and mixed with his, also very striking, is that Constantine never remarried. And there's plenty of evidence that he very much enjoyed the matrimonial state. And so you get a sense of somebody who realized that he let his anger get the better of him, the passion that we see elsewhere in his life, and that in the last decade of his life, in a sense, is he, in a way, regretting what he did in 326 and how the relationship with Fausta ended? It's a very difficult story, as clearly there are no Roman tabloids to tell us. But the evidence will suggest that there was a great deal of rethinking on, I think, on Constantine's part, as you say there.
- [50:45]
Professor David Potter
It sounds like that's one of the most difficult stories to sort the fact from the fiction about with sources that we have surviving, I guess. Final question to wrap this all up. How do you think, as a historian who's written about Constantine, who's researched Constantine, how do you think Constantine would want to have been remembered as, first and foremost?
- [51:05]
Historian/Expert
Constantine would want to have been remembered as. In fact, he described himself the greatest victor in war, God's representative on earth. This was not a man given to modesty. He saw himself competing with all of the emperors in the past, and he wanted to be seen as the one who'd done the best job.
- [51:27]
Professor David Potter
Is it competing with just with emperors, or would it be with other legendary figures like Alexander the Great or Cyrus or Darius?
- [51:33]
Historian/Expert
I think that Constantine's vision probably fairly limited to other emperors, though. You've mentioned Alexander the Great to him. He said, oh, yeah, him too. And there's Julius Caesar before that. I'm better than him.
- [51:49]
Professor David Potter
David, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure. You have written a book about Constantine.
- [51:55]
Historian/Expert
That's right. Constantine the emperor. Whereas the title suggests. What I'm trying to do is show you Constantine as the person I think he was as an emperor first, who then had an enormous impact on the history of Europe following him.
- [52:10]
Professor David Potter
Fantastic. David, thanks so much for coming on the show.
- [52:13]
Historian/Expert
It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
- [52:22]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. There was our rerun of one of our earliest ever episodes, the Rise of Constantine with Professor David Potter. Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Please follow the Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor.
- [52:40]
Historian/Expert
You can also follow me on social media.
- [52:42]
Tristan Hughes
I'm on both Instagram and TikTok where I do even more ancient history stuff. Just search Tristan Hughes Ancient History. You should find me or Ancients Tristan. Don't forget you can also listen to the Ancients, History and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.