Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (33 page)

The Roman Empire did not have a "grand strategy" in the sense that moderns think of it. The Romans lacked the technology in both cartography and communications. There is something to be said for the thesis that Rome's empire was an "unexpected" empire that expanded through a ripple of defensive alliances.'
Security in the negative sense of safe roads, unpillaged fields, untransgressed borders does not, however, explain Roman imperial behavior. As Augustine knew, what guided foreign policy and imperial expansion was Roman love for honor, philotimia, which ex
pressed itself in a lust for domination (libido dominandi).9
Romans gained honor and glory by conquest, and by the titles and honors paid to conquerors back home. When a rival treated Rome with mockery, that insult needed to be avenged, with clemency if possible, viciously if necessary. Earlier in Domitian's reign, Nasamones massacred Romans and plundered the camp of Flaccus, but then drank themselves drunk on the spoils. This gave Flaccus the opportunity to "annihilate them, even destroying all the non-combatants." The same Domitian whose hapless Dacian war we have noted was "elated" and boasted to the Senate, "I have forbidden the Nas- mones to exist.."10
Terror kept barbarian pride in check; the sacrifice of barbarians and rebels maintained Roman honor.

This was, to the Romans' sense, a defensive posture. Romans reasoned, If the barbarians get uppity, they might attack. To be safe, we need to make sure they never get uppity. Shock and awe keep them in their place, and any sign of weakness only encourages them. Roman imperial policy may be described as a pursuit of "security" so long as it is understood that security meant honor."
Virgil had written that the Roman Empire existed to subdue pride, superbia. That was true, but Romans came to define superbia as any opposition to Rome.12

CONSTANTINUS IMPERATOR

Constantine was immersed in Rome's military culture. He was in the Roman army from his youth to the end of his life, and like nearly every Roman emperor before and most after him, he was ambitious for territory and glory. Like his predecessors, he was willing to use brute force to attain his goals, and he covered his violence with propaganda that makes it impossible to know what actually happened.13
By the early fourth century, the
empire was more defensive than expansive (see below). One index of this stance was the fact that many of Constantine's military victories occurred in wars waged against other Romans, usually relatives.14
He became the undisputed Western Augustus after putting down a revolt led by his father-in-law Maximian, took Rome by invading Italy while it was under the control of his brother-in-law/uncle-by-marriage Maxentius, and expanded his domains to the east in two wars against another brother-inlaw, Licinius. He believed these were wars of liberation, and many of his subjects agreed. Rome greeted him with enthusiasm, and the Christians of the East welcomed him as the church's liberator from the persecution of Licinius. Enthusiastic Eusebius celebrated his victories as gifts of God, and the more sober Augustine attributed his success in war to God's blessing: "In conducting and carrying on wars he was most victorious; in overthrowing tyrants he was most successful."15
There is no evidence that any bishops criticized Constantine for his conquests and battles with family members, and the evidence that survives suggests that they warmly supported him. Perhaps they knew more than we, and knew that every last one of Constantine's actions was a justifiable act of self-defense. I find that unlikely. Constantine was less brutal than some emperors, but one does not have to be a pacifist to notice unpleasant resemblances between Christian Constantine's career and that of any of a dozen pagan emperors.

Also like many Roman emperors, though more effectively than most, he used the symbols of power to enhance his own imperial reputation and power. From Vespasian and Domitian his father had adopted the name Flavius, a signal of "his own new dynastic pretensions
.1116 The original Flavian family was not especially successful, lasting only three generations and ending with the assassination of Domitian in 96. Besides, Domitian had been condemned by Christian writers as a persecutor. Yet Constantine found something to emulate in the Flavians: their contribution to the Ro
man cityscape. Domitian had such a reputation for building that people joked he had a Midas touch that turned everything to stone. His most important building was the new Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill, still a landmark by the fourth century.'?
Constantine also tried to channel some of Trajan's success by reusing some of Trajan's Roman monuments. Details of Constantine's triumphal arch were sculpted from Trajan's statues and reliefs, and the colossal statue of himself that he placed in Maxentius's Basilica Nova, of which only an enormous head, a hand and a kneecap remain, "may have originally been a statue ofTrajan."1S
He rebuilt Trajan's bridge across the Danube.

Constantine inherited a position as Caesar at his father's death, the Western empire after defeating his brother-in-law Maxentius and the Eastern empire after defeating another brother-in-law, Licinius. He was an imperialist, and apparently aspired to be an imperialist like Trajan, who wanted to be like Alexander.

Yet something had changed. With Constantine, the Roman army and empire, like Roman worship, Roman cityscapes, Roman law and society, were being transformed. Something new was being born. Rome had been baptized and was being desacrificed.

WHAT DOES THE EMPEROR WANT TO HEAR?

Late Roman emperors lived in a bubble. Diocletian had introduced all manner of court ceremonial, appropriate to his supposed divine status, and many features of that ceremonial continued after the Tetrarchy collapsed, especially in the florid rhetoric of the panegyrists. Stamped with overconscious artifice, "poetical tricks, avoidance of hiatus or of inelegant words; metrical terminations of sentences or clauses; variation through an apparently limitless vocabulary of periphrasis," panegyrics celebrated the emperor's divine virtues and successes. "One almost imagines ... that the emperor never had a normal conversation with anybody."19

Panegyrists did not tell a story straight, but neither were they necessarily official instruments of court propaganda.20
Panegyrists thought about
how their subjects would receive their praises and told emperors things they thought the emperors wanted to hear. We can wring important historical truths from the panegyrists, so long as we read them upside down and backwards. Panegyrists returned again and again to common themes, and in these themes they laid out a vision of what kind of man the emperor was supposed to be, what kind of man the emperor thought he was. Emperors were to be virtuous men, guided by justice, temperance, courage and prudence. Panegyrists frequently alluded to the imperial recusatio, a ritual reluctance to assume power whose precedent had been established by Augustus. Military ability was important, as was readiness to provide for subjects (providentia) and cooperate with colleagues (concordia). Since Augustus, pietas was a leading virtue; an emperor could not expect success without the assistance of the gods.2'
Emperors were also expected to express the imperial strategy of honor.

Constantine's panegyrists no doubt distorted as much as any. A panegyrist told him around 310 in Triers that he was a "most sacred Emperor" to whose "divinity" he offered his address.22
After his father died, he fought back the tears, the orator said, remembering that "it was not right to mourn any longer a ruler who had been consecrated as a god."23
Constantine himself had arisen, like every new divinity, from the edge of the earth, as "Mercury from the Nile, the source of which river is unknown, and Liber from the land of the Indians, who are almost privy to the sunrise, have shown themselves to mankind as gods manifest." He had a theory: "Regions next to heaven are more holy than Mediterranean ones," and therefore "it is closer for an Emperor to be sent by the gods from where the land ends."24

Godlike conquests were another subject for celebration. Constantine had recently put down the revolt of his father-in-law, Maximian, but the panegyrist focused on Constantine's earlier conquests among the Franks. When the Frankish kings tried to take "the opportunity of your father's absence to violate the peace," Constantine "visited the punishment of their rashness" on the "contemptible band of barbarians who tested the very beginnings of your reign with a sudden attack and unexpected brigandage." He imposed the "ultimate penalty," even at the risk of "perpetual hatred of that race and their implacable fury." That was good policy: "clemency is secure insofar as it spares enemies and protects its own interest." Pardon is "more prudent," but "to trample them down in their fury" is "more courageous." That is what Constantine did.

So that the monstrous power of the barbarians might be broken in every way, and so that the enemy should not merely grieve over the punishment of their kings, you have made in addition, invincible Emperor, a devastating raid on the Bructeri. In this the first aim of your strategy was to attack them when they were off guard by suddenly throwing your army across ... that this nation, which is accustomed to frustrate warfare by taking refuge in forests and marshes, should lose the opportunity for flight. And so countless numbers were slaughtered, and very many were captured. Whatever herds there were were seized or slaughtered; all the villages were put to the flame; the adults who were captured, whose untrustworthiness made them unfit for military service and whose ferocity for slavery, were given over to the amphitheater for punishment, and their great numbers wore out the raging beasts.25

Such an emperor: young, courageous, with flashing eyes and a majesty that "dazzles us at the same time as it invites our gaze." Such an emperor must have been "that great king" Alexander and his hero, Achilles, "the Thessalian hero, whose combination of courage and beauty is celebrated."26

Several years later, another panegyrist celebrated Constantine's triumph over the "contemptibly small," "twisted" and slack-limbed Maxentius in similar terms, and drew from this success a warning for barbarians who might consider attacking the empire. Constantine cheerfully "accepts the submission of friendly kings and the very fact of being feared and cultivated by the noblest kings counts the same as praise for victory [ad laudem victoriae]," yet barbarians should not think him soft: "he is glad that the fame of his valor [gloriam virtutis suae gaudet] is increased as often as it is challenged." Nothing is "lovelier than this triumphal celebration in which
he employs the slaughter of enemies for the pleasure of us all, and enlarges the procession of the games out of the survivors of the massacre of the barbarians."27

The whole Roman ideology of conquest is there. Swift, godlike Constantine descends to the field seeking praise and fame, whether by clemency or by conquest. Blood and slaughter follow him on campaigns, reducing enemy fury to abject fear. Once Constantine converted, churchmen seem to have played along. Like the panegyrist of 306, Eusebius compared Constantine to Cyrus and Alexander the Great, whose conquests also followed a steady eastward progress. Constantine "began his reign at the time of life at which the Macedonian died, yet doubled the length of his life, and trebled the length of his reign." He started "as far as the Britons, and the nations that dwell in the very bosom of the Western ocean." As he moved through Europe, "he subdued likewise all Scythia, though situated in the remotest North, and divided into numberless diverse and barbarous tribes." His conquests pushed "to the Blemmyans and Ethiopians, on the very confines of the South," and he did not "think the acquisition of the Eastern nations unworthy his care." Though beginning in the far west, his reign was like the sunrise, "diffusing the effulgence of his holy light to the ends of the whole world, even to the most distant Indians, the nations dwelling on the extreme circumference of the inhabited earth." Everywhere, "he received the submission of all the rulers, governors, and satraps of barbarous nations, who cheerfully welcomed and saluted him, sending embassies and presents, and setting the highest value on his acquaintance and friendship; insomuch that they honored him with pictures and statues in their respective countries, and Constantine alone of all emperors was acknowledged and celebrated by all."28

Constantine's conception of his own life's work was much the same. "Beginning at the remote Britannic ocean, and the regions where, according to the law of nature, the sun sinks beneath the horizon," he wrote, "I banished and utterly removed every form of evil which prevailed, in the hope that the human race, enlightened through my instrumentality, might be called to a due observance of the holy laws of God, and at the same time our most blessed faith might prosper under the guidance of his almighty hand
.1129

EMPIRE ON DEFENSE

Rhetoric did not match the reality. During the third and fourth centuries, Roman emperors had little time for conquest. Their role was mainly defensive. As we saw in chapter two, the third century witnessed a recurring pattern of internal conflict and external threat. Whenever there was an interregnum, or when two pretenders were vying for power in the empire, the barbarians would seize the chance to invade. As long as Roman armies could concentrate on fighting barbarians, the situation was a decided mismatch in Rome's favor; but when Rome's armies were being deployed against one another, the barbarians had a free hand to invade and pillage. During the third and fourth centuries, the good emperors were the ones who spent their time fighting barbarians rather than other Romans.30

When Diocletian wanted to celebrate the achievements of his imperial reign in the prologue to his Price Edict, he pointed to the fact that the empire had been free from barbarian invasions:

We may thank the good fortune of our state, as well as the immortal gods,

on remembering the wars we have waged successfully. The condition of the world has been placed, tranquil, in the lap of the deepest quiet and peace towards good men. For this reason we have labored and spent our effort lavishly. Now both Roman dignity and majesty desire that the public honor be arranged faithfully and fittingly adorned. We, who by supernatural forces' benevolent support have suppressed the raging depredations of the past by slaughtering the very peoples of the barbarian tribes, will secure the quiet we have established with the reinforcements Justice deserves.