The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 Read Online Free PDF

the other hand his coins continued, at least until 324, to depict him as a companion of the Unconquered Sun and - more significant even than this - he still jibbed at the prospect of his own baptism, which he was to continue to postpone until he lay on his deathbed a quarter of a century later. This reluctance may to some extent have been due to political considerations; he was anxious not to alarm those of his subjects who still clung to the old gods. But he certainly did not hesitate to give mortal offence, during his stay in Rome, by refusing to take part in the traditional procession to the Capitol for the sacrifice to Jupiter.
    The truth is probably rather more complicated: that while Constantine felt a genuine sympathy towards Christianity and genuinely believed the God of the Christians to have been responsible for his mystical experience (whatever that may have been) on the way to the Milvian Bridge, he was not yet ready to embrace the Christian religion in toto. While by now almost certainly accepting the concept of the Summus Dens, the Supreme God, he was perfectly ready to believe that this God might manifest himself in several different forms: as Apollo, or Sol Invictus, or Mithras (whose cult was still popular, especially in the army), or indeed the God of the Christians. Of all these manifestations he may have preferred the last, but as a universal ruler, feeling himself to be above all sects and hierarchies, he saw no reason not to keep his options open.
    And the Roman Senate agreed with him. To celebrate his victory over Maxentius and his re-establishment of law, order and the imperial administration in the city, they erected in his honour the great triumphal arch that still stands a little to the south-west of the Colosseum. Much of its relief decoration is in fact reused, having previously served as part of various earlier monuments dedicated to Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius; Gibbon describes the whole structure as 'a melancholy proof of the decline of the arts, and a singular testimony of the meanest vanity'. The inscription, however, dates explicitly from the time of Constantine. In translation, it reads:
    to the emperor caesar flaviu s constantine who being instinct with divinity and by the greatness of his spirit avenged the state in a just war on the tyrant and all his party.
    Instinctu divinitatis: the phrase is a curious one, and must have been deliberately chosen for its ambiguity. There is no mention of Christ, nor of the Cross; no indication, even, of the precise divinity referred to. Yet Constantine must certainly have approved the text before it was passed to the stone-carvers. It is only natural that he should have been treading warily, as doubtless were the senators who drafted the inscription in the first place; one suspects, none the less, that his approval was not unwillingly given, since he himself had as yet made no final commitment to any one god. Instinctu divinitatis: he could not have put it better himself.
    Apart from the triumphal arch - and the colossal statue of the seated Emperor, seven times life-size, which was placed in the remodelled (and hastily renamed) Basilica of Maxentius and of which the terrifying, staring, nine-ton head survives in the Capitoline Museum - the Roman Senate showed to Constantine, during the last two months of 312, one further mark of favour. They proclaimed him Supreme Augustus. It was in this capacity that he left the city in early January 313 for Milan, where he had arranged to meet Licinius.
    The Augusti had three principal issues to discuss. The first was the future of Italy. Theoretically it formed part of that area of the Empire which was subject to Licinius, but the latter had not raised a finger to assist Constantine in its recapture and cannot seriously have expected that his colleague would now freely hand it back to him. Next was the question of religious toleration and, in particular, the future status of the Christians. It was