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BIOGRAPHYCAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY |
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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
VTHE INVASION OF ITALY
THE tragic end of his old colleague must have raised many disquieting
thoughts in the mind of Diocletian, already beginning to be anxious lest his
successors should think that he was living too long. While Galerius flourished
he was sure of a protector, but Galerius died in 311. In the eighteenth year of
his rule he had been stricken with an incurable and loathsome malady, into the
details of which Lactantius enters with a morbid but lively enjoyment,
affecting to see in the torture of the dying Emperor the visitation of an angry
Providence. He describes minutely the progress of the cancer and the “appalling
odour of the festering wound which spread not only through the palace but
through the city”. He shows us the unhappy patient raising piercing cries and
calling for mercy from the God of the Christians whom he had persecuted, vowing
under the stress of physical anguish that he would make reparation; and,
finally, when at the very point of death, dictating the edict which stayed the
persecution and gave the Christians full liberty to worship in their own way.
It will be more convenient to discuss in another place this remarkable
document, the forerunner, so to speak, of the famous Edict of Milan. It was
promulgated at Nicomedia on the thirtieth of April, 311, and a few days later
Galerius's torments were mercifully ended by death.
The death of Galerius gave another blow to the already tottering system
of Diocletian. It had been his intention to retire, as Diocletian had done, at
the end of his twentieth year of sovereignty, and make way for a younger man,
and there can be little doubt that he would have been as good as his word.
Galerius has not received fair treatment at the hands of posterity. Lactantius,
his bitter enemy, describes him as a violent ruffian and a hectoring bully, an
object of terror and fear to all around him in word, deed, and aspect.
Lactantius belittles the importance of his victory over Narses, the Persian
King, by saying that the Persian army marched encumbered with baggage and that
victory was easily won. He makes Galerius the leading spirit of the
Persecution; represents him as having goaded Diocletian into signing the fatal
edicts; accuses him of having fired the palace at Nicomedia in order to work on
the terrors of his chief; charges him with having invented new and horrible
tortures; and declares that he never dined or supped without whetting his
appetite with the sight of human blood. No one would gather from Lactantius
that Galerius was a fine soldier, a hardworking and capable Emperor, and a
loyal successor to a great political chief. Eutropius does him no more than
justice when he describes him as a man of high principle and a consummate
general. Aurelius Victor fills in the light and shade. Galerius was, he says, a
Prince worthy of all praise; just if unpolished and untutored; of handsome
presence; and an accomplished and fortunate general. He had risen from the
ranks; in his young days he had been a herd boy, and the name of Armentarius clung to him through life. This rough
and ready Pannonian spent too energetic and busy a career to have time for
culture. He came from a province where, in the forceful phrase of one of the
Panegyrists, life was all hard knocks and fighting. Galerius had already
nominated Licinius as his successor, but Licinius was far away in Pannonia and
did not cross over at once into Asia to take command of Galerius’s army—no
doubt because it was not safe for him to leave his post. In the meantime,
Maximin Daza, the Augustus of Syria and Egypt, had
been preparing to march on Nicomedia as soon as Galerius breathed his last, for
he claimed, as we have seen, that by seniority of rule he had a better right
than Licinius to the title of senior Augustus. While, therefore, Licinius
remained in Europe, Maximin Daza advanced from Syria
across the Taurus and entered Bithynia, where, to curry favour with the people,
he abolished the census. It was expected that the two Emperors would fight out
their quarrel, but an accommodation was arrived at, and they agreed that the
Hellespont should form the boundary between them. Maximin, by his promptitude,
had thus materially increased his sovereignty, and, at the beginning of 312,
the eastern half of the Empire was divided between Licinius and Maximin Daza, while Constantine ruled in Great Britain, Spain, and
Gaul, and Maxentius was master of Italy and Africa.
Whether or not his position had been recognized by the other Emperors at
the conference of Carnuntum, Maxentius had remained
in undisturbed possession of Italy since the hurried retreat of the invading
army of Galerius. In Africa, indeed, a general named Alexander, who, according
to Zosimus, was a Phrygian by descent, and timid and advanced in years, raised
the standard of revolt. Maxentius commissioned one of his lieutenants to attack
the usurper and Alexander was captured and strangled. There would have been
nothing to distinguish this insurrection from any other, had it not been for
the ruthless severity with which the African cities were treated by the
conqueror. Carthage and Cirta were pillaged and
sacked; the countryside was laid desolate; many of the leading citizens were
executed; still more were reduced to beggary. The ruin of Africa was so
complete that it excited against Maxentius the public opinion of the Roman
world. He had begun his reign, as will be remembered, as the special champion
of the Praetorians and of the privileges of Rome, but he soon lost his early
popularity, and rapidly developed into a cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant. His
profligacy was shameless and excessive, even for those licentious times.
Eusebius tells the story of how Sophronia, the
Christian wife of the city prefect, stabbed herself in order to escape his
embraces, when the imperial messengers came to summon her to the palace.
If Maxentius had been accused of all the vices only on the authority of
the Christian authors and the official panegyrists of Constantine, their
statements might have been received with some suspicion—for a fallen Roman
Emperor had no friends. Zosimus, however, is almost as severe upon him as
Lactantius, and Julian, in the Banquet of the Caesars, excludes him from the
feast as one utterly unworthy of a place in honourable society. According to
Aurelius Victor, he was the first to start the practice of exacting from the
senators large sums of money in the guise of free gifts on the flimsiest
pretexts of public necessity, or as payment for the bestowal of office or civil
distinction. Moreover, knowing that, sooner or later, he would find himself at
war with one or other of his brother Augusti,
Maxentius amassed great stores of corn and wealth and took no heed of a morrow
which he knew that he might not live to witness. He despoiled the temples,—says
the author of the Ninth Panegyric,— butchered the Senate, and starved the
people of Rome. The Praetorians—who had placed and kept him on the throne—ruled
the city. Zosimus tells the curious story of how, in the course of a great fire
in Rome, the Temple of Fortune was burned down and one of the soldiers looking
on spoke blasphemous and disrespectful words of the goddess. Immediately the
mob attacked him. His comrades went to his assistance and a serious riot
ensued, during which the Praetorians would have massacred the citizens had they
not been with difficulty restrained. All the authorities, indeed, agree that a
perfect reign of terror prevailed at Rome after Maxentius's victory over
Alexander in Africa, while Maxentius himself is depicted as a second Commodus
or Nero.
One of the most vivid pictures of the tyrant is given in the Panegyric
already quoted. The orator speaks of Maxentius as a “stupid and worthless
wild-beast” skulking for ever within the walls of the palace and not daring to
leave the precincts. Fancy, he exclaims, an indoor Emperor, who considers that
he has made a journey and achieved an expedition if he has so much as visited
the Gardens of Sallust! Whenever he addressed his soldiers, he would boast
that, though he had colleagues in the Empire, he alone was the real Emperor;
for he ruled while they kept the frontiers safe and did his fighting for him.
And then he would dismiss them with the three words: “Fruimini!
Dissipate! Prodigite!”. Such an invitation to
drunkenness, riot, and debauch would not be unwelcome to the swaggering
Praetorians and to the numerous bands of mercenaries which Maxentius had
collected from all parts of the world.
We ought not, perhaps, to take this scathing invective quite literally.
For all his vices, Maxentius was probably not quite the hopeless debauchee he
is represented to have been. It is at least worth remark that it was this
Emperor, of whom no one has a charitable word to say, who restored to the
Christians at Rome the church buildings and property which had been confiscated
to the State by the edicts of Diocletian and Galerius. Neither Eusebius nor
Lactantius mentions this, but the fact is clear from a passage in St.
Augustine, who says that the first act of the Roman Christians on regaining
possession of their cemetery was to bring back the body of Bishop Eusebius, who
had died in exile in Sicily. Nor did Maxentius's political attitude towards the
other Augusti betray indications of incompetence or
want of will. He was ambitious—a trait common to most Roman Emperors and
certainly shared by all his colleagues. There was no cohesion among the four Augusti; there was no one much superior to the others in
influence and prestige. Constantine and Maxentius feared and suspected each
other in the West, just as Licinius and Maximin Daza feared and suspected each other in the East. When the two latter agreed that
the Hellespont should divide their territories, Licinius, who had lost Asia
Minor by the bargain, made overtures of alliance to Constantine. It was
arranged that Licinius should marry Constantia, the sister of the Augustus of
Gaul. Naturally, therefore, Maximin Daza turned
towards Maxentius and sent envoys asking for alliance and friendship.
Lactantius adds the curious phrase that Maximin's letter was couched in a tone
of familiarity and says that Maxentius was as eager to accept as Maximin had
been to offer. He hailed it, we are told, as a god-sent help, for he had
already declared war against Constantine on the pretext of avenging his
father’s murder.
The outbreak of this war, which was fraught with such momentous
consequences to the whole course of civilization, found the Empire strangely
divided. The Emperor of Italy and Africa was allied with the Emperor of Egypt,
Syria, and Asia Minor, against the rulers of the armies of the Danube and the
Rhine. We shall see that the alliance was—at any rate, in result—defensive
rather than offensive. Licinius and Maximin never moved; they simply
neutralized one another, though the advantage clearly lay with Constantine and
Licinius, for Maxentius was absolutely isolated, so far as receiving help on
the landward side was concerned. We need not look far to find the real cause of
quarrel between Constantine and Maxentius, whatever pretexts were assigned.
Maxentius would never have risked his Empire for the sake of a father whom he
detested; nor would Constantine have jeopardized his throne in order to avenge
an insult. Each aspired to rule over the entire West; neither would acquiesce
in the pretensions of the other. Both had been actively preparing for a
struggle which became inevitable when neither took any radical steps to avoid
it.
We have already seen that Constantine kept the larger part of the army
of Gaul stationed in the south near Arelate and Lugdunum, in order to watch the Alpine passes; we shall
find that Maxentius had also posted his main armies in the north of Italy from
Susa on the one side, where he was threatened by Constantine, to Venice on the
other, where he was on guard against Licinius. There is a curious reference in
one of the authorities to a plan formed by Maxentius of invading Gaul through
Rhaetia,—no doubt because Constantine had made the Alpine passes practically
unassailable,—while Lactantius tells us that he had drawn every available man
from Africa to swell his armies in Italy.
Constantine acted with the extreme rapidity for which he was already
famous. He hurried his army down from the Rhine, and was through the passes and
attacking the walled city of Susa before Maxentius had certain knowledge of his
movements. That he was embarking on an exceedingly hazardous expedition seems
to have been recognized by himself and his captains. The author of the Ninth
Panegyric says quite bluntly that his principal officers not only muttered
their fears in secret, but expressed them openly, and adds that his councillors
and haruspices warned him to desist. A similar campaign had cost Severus his
life and had been found too hazardous even by Galerius. Superiority of numbers
lay not with him, but with his rival. Constantine was gravely handicapped by
the fact that he had to safeguard the Rhine behind him against the Germanic
tribes, which he knew would seize the first opportunity to pass the river.
Zosimus gives a detailed account of the numbers which the rivals placed in the
field. Maxentius, he says, had 170,000 foot and 18,000 horse under his command,
including 80,000 levies from Rome and Italy, and 40,000 from Carthage and
Africa. Constantine, on the other hand, even after vigorous recruiting in
Britain and Gaul, could only muster 90,000 foot and 8000 horse. The author of
the Ninth Panegyric, in a casual phrase, says that Constantine could hardly
employ a fourth of his Gallic army against the 100,000 men in the ranks of
Maxentius, on account of the dangers of the Rhine. Ancient authorities,
however, arc never trustworthy where numbers are concerned; we only know that
Maxentius had by far the larger force, and that Constantine's army of invasion
was probably under 40,000 strong. Whether the numerical supremacy of the former
was not counterbalanced by the necessity under which Maxentius laboured of
guarding against Licinius, is a question to which the historians have paid no
heed.
Marching along the chief military highroad from Lugdunum to Italy, which crossed the Alps at Mont Cenis, Constantine suddenly appeared
before the walls of Susa, a strongly garrisoned post, and took it by storm,
escalading the walls and burning the gates. The town caught fire; Constantine
set his soldiers to put out the flames, a more difficult task, says Nazarius,
than had been the actual assault. From Susa the victor advanced to Turin, which
opened its gates to him after the cavalry of Maxentius had been routed in the
plains. These were troops clad in ponderous but cleverly jointed armour, and
the weight of their onslaught was calculated to crush either horse or foot upon
which it was directed. But Constantine disposed his forces so as to avoid their
charge and render their weight useless, and when these horsemen fled for
shelter to Turin they found the gates closed against them and perished almost
to a man. Milan, by far the most important city in the Transpadane region, next received Constantine, who entered amid the plaudits of the
citizens, and charmed the eyes of the Milanese ladies, says the Panegyrist,
without causing them anxieties for their virtue. Milan, indeed, welcomed him
with open arms; other cities sent deputations similar to the one which,
according to the epitomist Zonaras, had already reached him from Rome itself,
praying him to come as its liberator. It seemed, indeed, that he had already
won not only the Transpadane region, but Rome itself.
Constantine, however, had still to meet and overthrow the chief armies
of Maxentius in the north of Italy. These were under the command of Ruricius Pompeianus, a general as stubborn as he was loyal, and of
well-tried capacity. Pompeianus held Verona in force.
He had thrown out a large body of cavalry towards Brescia to reconnoitre and
check Constantine's advance, but these were routed with some slaughter and
retired in confusion. If we may interpret the presence of Pompeianus at Verona as indicating that Maxentius had feared attack by Licinius more than
by Constantine, this would explain the comparative absence of troops in
Lombardy and the concentration in Venetia, though it is strange that we do not
hear of Licinius taking any steps to assist his ally. Verona was a strongly
fortified city resting upon the Adige, which encircled its walls for
three-quarters of their circumference. Constantine managed to effect a crossing
at some distance from the city and laid siege in regular fashion. Pompeianus tried several ineffectual sorties, and then,
secretly escaping through the lines, he brought up the rest of his army to
offer pitched battle or compel Constantine to raise the siege. A fierce
engagement followed. We are told that Constantine had drawn up his men in
double lines, when, noticing that the enemy outnumbered him and threatened to
overlap either flank, he ordered his troops to extend and present a wider
front. He distinguished himself that day by pressing into the thickest of the
fight, “like a mountain torrent in spate that tears away by their roots the
trees on its banks and rolls down rocks and stones.” The orator depicts for us
the scene as Constantine's lieutenants and captains receive him on his return
from the fray, panting with his exertion and with blood dripping from his
hands. With tears in their eyes, they chide him for his rashness in imperilling
the hopes of the world. “It does not beseem an Emperor”, they say, “to strike
down an enemy with his own sword. It does not become him to sweat with the toil
of battle”. In simpler language, Constantine fought bravely at the head of his
men and won the day. Pompeianus was slain; Verona
opened her gates, and so many prisoners fell into the hands of the conqueror
that Constantine made his armourers forge chains and manacles from the iron of
the captives’ swords. In accordance with his usual policy, he conciliated the favor of those whom he had defeated by sparing the city
from pillage, and sheaved an equal clemency to Aquileia and the other cities of
Venetia, all of which speedily submitted on the capitulation of Verona.
With the entire north of Italy thus wrested from Maxentius, Constantine
could turn his face towards Rome. He encountered no opposition on the march.
Maxentius did not even contest the passage of the Apennines; the Umbrian passes
were left open; and if the historians are to be trusted—and they speak with
unanimity on the point—the Italian Emperor simply waited for his doom to come
upon him, as Nero had done, and made no really serious effort to defend his
throne. This slave in the purple, as the author of the Ninth Panegyric calls
him, cowered trembling in his palace, paralyzed with fear because lie had been
deserted by the Divine Intelligence and the Eternal Majesty of Rome, which had
transferred themselves from the tyrant to the side of his rival. We are told,
indeed, that a few days before the appearance of Constantine, Maxentius quitted
the palace with his wife and son and took up his abode in a private house, not
being able to endure the terrible dreams that came to him by night and the
spectres of the victims which haunted his crime-stained halls. Constantine
moved swiftly down from the north of Italy along the Flaminian Way, and in less
than two months after the fall of Verona, he was at Saxa Rubra, only nine miles from Rome, with an army eager for battle and confident
of victory. There he found the troops of Maxentius drawn up in battle array,
but posted in a position which none but a fool or a madman would have selected.
The probabilities are that Maxentius could not trust the citizens of Rome and
therefore dared not stand a siege within the ramparts of Aurelian. Then, having
decided to offer battle, he allowed his army to cross the Tiber and take up
ground whence, if defeated, their only roads of escape lay over the narrow
Milvian Bridge and a flimsy bridge of boats, one probably on either flank.
It is said that Maxentius had not intended to be present in person when
the issue was decided. He was holding festival within the city, celebrating his
birthday with the usual games and pretending that the proximity of Constantine
caused him no alarm. The populace began to taunt him with cowardice, and
uttered the ominous shout that Constantine was invincible. Maxentius's fears
grew as the clamour swelled in volume. He hurriedly called for the Sibylline
Books and ordered them to be consulted. These gave answer that on that very day
the enemy of the Romans should perish—a characteristically safe reply. Such
ambiguity of diction had usually portended the death of the consulting Prince,
but Lactantius says that the hopes with which the words inspired Maxentius led
him to put on his armour and ride out of Rome.
The issue was decided at the first encounter. Constantine charged at the
head of his Gallic horse—now accustomed to and certain of victory—into the
cavalry of Maxentius, which broke and ran in disorder from the field. Only the
Praetorians made a gallant and stubborn resistance and fell where they had stood,
knowing that it was they who had raised Maxentius to the throne and that their
destruction was involved in his. While these fought valiantly with the courage
of despair, their comrades were crowding in panic towards the already choked
bridges. At the Milvian Bridge the passage was jammed, and the pursuers wrought
great execution. The pontoon bridge collapsed, owing to the treachery of those
who had cut or loosened its supports. All the reports agree that there was a
sickening slaughter, and that hundreds were drowned in the Tiber in their vain
effort to escape. Among the victims was Maxentius himself. He was either thrust
into the river by the press of frenzied fugitives or was drowned in trying to
scale the high bank on the opposite shore, when weighed down by his heavy
armour. His corpse was recovered later from the stream, which the Panegyrists
hailed in ecstatic terms as the co-savior of Rome
with Constantine and the partner of his triumph.
The victor entered Rome. He had won the prize which he sought—the
mastery of the West—and, like scores of Roman conquerors before him, he marched
through the famous streets. His triumphal procession was graced, says Nazarius,
not by captive chiefs or barbarians in chains, but by senators who now tasted
the joy of freedom again, and by consulars whose prison doors had been opened
by Constantine's victory—in a word, by a Free Rome. Only the head of Maxentius,
whose features still wore the savage, threatening look which even death itself
had not been able to obliterate, was carried on the point of a spear behind
Constantine amid the jeers and insults of the crowd. Another Panegyrist gives
us a very lively picture of the throngs as they waited for the Emperor to pass,
describing how they crowded at the rear of the procession and swept up to the
palace, almost venturing to cross the sacred threshold itself, and how, when
Constantine appeared in the streets on the succeeding days, they sought to
unhorse his carriage and draw it along with their hands. One of the conqueror's
first acts was to extirpate the family of his fallen rival. Maxentius's elder
son, Romulus, who for a short time had borne the name of Cesar, was already
dead; the younger son, and probably the wife too, were now quietly removed.
There were other victims, who had committed themselves too deeply to Maxentius'
fortunes to escape. Rome, says Nazarius, was reconstituted afresh on a lasting
basis by the complete destruction of those who might have given trouble. But
still the victims were comparatively few, so few, in the estimation of public
opinion, that the victory was regarded as a bloodless one, and Constantine's
clemency was the theme and admiration of all. When the people clamoured for
more victims— doubtless the most hated instruments of Maxentius's tyranny—and
when the informer pressed forward to offer his deadly services, Constantine
refused to listen. He was resolved to let bygones be bygones. The laws of the
period immediately succeeding his victory, as they appear in the Theodosian
Code, amply confirm what might otherwise be the suspect eulogies of the
Panegyrists. A general act of amnesty was passed, and the ghastly head of
Maxentius was sent to Africa to allay the terrors of the population and
convince them that their oppressor would trouble them no more. There, it is to
be supposed, it found a final burial-place.
Another early act of Constantine was to disband the Praetorians, thus
carrying out the intention and decrees of Galerius. The survivors of these
long-famous regiments were marched out of Rome away from the Circus, the
Theatre of Pompeius, and the Baths, and were set to do their share in the
guarding of the Rhine and the Danube. Whether they bore the change as
voluntarily as the Panegyrist suggests is doubtful, and we may question whether
they so soon forgot in their rude cantonments the fleshpots and deliciae of the capital. But the expulsion was
final. The Praetorians ceased to exist. Rome may have been glad to see the
empty barracks, for the Praetorians had been hated and feared. But the vacant
quarters also spoke eloquently of the fact that Rome was no longer the mistress
of the world. The domina gentium, the regina terrarum, without her Praetorians, was a thing unthinkable.
Constantine only stayed two months in Rome, but in that short time, says
Nazarius, he cured all the maladies which the six years’ savage tyranny of
Maxentius had brought upon the city. He restored to their confiscated estates
all who had been exiled or deprived of their property during the recent reign
of terror. He showed himself easy of approach; his ears were the most patient
of listeners; he charmed all by his kindliness, dignity, and good humour. To
the Senate he showed unwonted deference. Diocletian, during his solitary visit
to Rome just prior to his retirement, had treated the senators with
brusqueness, and hardly concealed his contempt for their mouldy dignities.
Constantine preferred to conciliate them. According to Nazarius, he invested
with senatorial rank a number of representative provincials, so that the Senate
once more became a dignified body in reality as well as in name, now that it
consisted of the flower of the whole world. Probably this signifies little more
than that Constantine filled up the vacancies with respectable nominees, spoke
the Senate fair, and swore to maintain its ancient rights and privileges. The
Emperor certainly entertained no such quixotic idea as that of giving the
Senate a vestige of real governing power or a share in the administration of
the Empire. In return for his consideration, the Senate bestowed upon him the
title of Senior Augustus, and a golden statue, adorned, according to the Ninth
Panegyrist, with the attributes of a god, while all Italy subscribed for the
shield and the crown.
The Senate also instituted games and festivals in honour of
Constantine’s victory, and voted him the triumphal arch which still survives as
one of the most imposing ruins of Imperial Rome and a lasting monument to the
outrageous vandalism which stripped the Arch of Titus of its sculptures to
grace the memorial of his successor. Under the central arch on the one side is
the dedication, “To the Liberator of the City”, on the other, “To the Founder
of Our Repose”. Above stands the famous inscription in which the Senate and
people of Rome dedicate this triumphal arch to Constantine “because, at the
suggestion of the divinity, and at the prompting of his own magnanimity, he and
his army had vindicated the Republic by striking down the tyrant and all his
satellites at a single blow”. “At the suggestion of the divinity!” The words
lead us naturally to discuss the conversion of Constantine and the Vision of
the Cross.
THE VISION OF THE CROSS AND THE EDICT OF MILAN
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