4 - The Reign of Constantine, a.d. 306–337

Summary

Outside the great medieval cathedral in York there is a modern statue of Constantine cast in bronze. The emperor is seated, wearing military dress, and holds a broken sword which can be taken as a cross; the inscription on the base of the statue reads (in English) ‘Constantine, by this sign conquer’. Hailed at York as Augustus by his father's troops on 25 July 306, Constantine himself was cautious: he assumed only the title of Caesar and waited for that of Augustus to be conferred in the following year by the senior emperor Maximian along with a new imperial bride, the latter's daughter Fausta. It is difficult not to view the years 306–13 with the benefit of hindsight. We know, of course, that Constantine, the son of Constantius Chlorus, emerged as victor first over Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge in the late autumn of 312, and then over his erstwhile ally Licinius at Cibalae in 316 and Chrysopolis in 324; however, as so commonly happens, most of the surviving literature also favours and justifies his success. While the available source-material for the reign of Constantine, and particularly the literary record, is very different from the meagre narrative sources for Diocletian, the two emperors are frequently treated in the sources that do refer to both as stereotyped opposites. Constantine was to reign as sole emperor from 324 until his death in May 337. We possess abundant, if often one-sided, contemporary accounts, and these have certainly helped to reinforce the idea of the inevitability of Constantine's rise and his subsequent casting in the role of the first Christian emperor. Yet in 306 neither his future military and political success nor his later religious policies would have been at all easy to predict.