The History of Rome - 139- Wash Away Your Sins

Episode Date: June 13, 2011

Constantine was baptized on his deathbed after arranging a plan for succession.

Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome. Episode 139, Wash away your sins. Last time, we talked about what Constantine got up to when he wasn't busy trying to convert the empire to Christianity. You'll recall that for the most part, he was up to refining the administrative apparatus Dow Clycheon had created, transforming Byzantium into Constantinople, and killing his wife and son. This week, we will bring the long and remarkable career of the first Christian emperor to a close. But before we do, I want to spend some time discussing the external posture of the empire during Constantine's reign. Last time, we focused mostly on domestic concerns, taxes and monetary policy and so on.

So this week, I want to take a look at foreign affairs. What was Constantine's relationship with the tribes beyond the northern frontiers? what was his relationship with the Great Sassanid Empire beyond the eastern frontiers? And of course, what was his relationship with the army that defended those frontiers? Once we get done talking about all that, we're going to turn our attention to the thorny issue of succession, and then finally to the baptism and death of Constantine the Great. As we've discussed previously, during the later Roman Empire, the hard line separating the civilized Romans from the barbarian tribe,

began to blur. Imperial policy had always hinted at the possible benefits of bringing the Germans into the Roman fold, and round about the reign of Aurelian, that hint became a blunt statement, as willing tribesmen, suitably pacified, started to be deposited in Gaul or Pannonia or Moesia to help fill the empty quarters and provide a buffer between the soft inner empire and the hard northern wilds. These same tribesmen were then recruited into the army, and by virtue of the fact that the legions were a far more merit-based institution in the late empire than it was in the early empire, they began to climb up the chain of command. This so-called Germanization of the army is a very important development in the history of the empire, a development which we will come back to again and again as the West slips into terminal decline. because any discussion of why the Western Empire fell would be incomplete without a good, hard look

at the Roman failure to successfully integrate the Germans, the way they had successfully integrated practically every other foreign people they had run up against in the whole long history of the empire. By virtue of the circumstances of his times and the circumstances of his own political situation, Constantine wound up becoming an acolyte of Germanization. His father, as you'll recall, had gotten his imperial star, fighting wars with and making peace with the tribes along the Rhine River. So when Constantine succeeded him, the son inherited the political and military legacies of the father. Constantius had embraced the policy of German settlement within the borders, and in particular,

he had a strong relationship with the Franks on the Lower Rhine. Indeed, one of the great successes of his career was defeating a portion of the Franks who were lined with Corotius and then flipping them over to his side. When Constanius died 10 years later and Constantine made his bid for power, he was backed at a critical moment by the Frankish clients his father had cultivated. From that moment on, Constantine had a close relationship with the Germans in general and the Franks in particular. They formed the most formidable parts of the armies he used to conquer the empire, and his own personal bodyguard was made up exclusively of German cavalry.

This is, of course, not to say that the Germans were one monolithic thing, and that Constantine was friendly with them all, nor that they were all friendly with him. One look at the innumerable campaigns fought along the Rhine during the length of Constantine's career is enough to dispense with that notion. But that said, the incorporation of Germanic elements into the empire's military apparatus was now on the steady rise, and Constantine was a big reason why. Besides his willingness to fight using German soldiers, there was one other change Constantine made to the military structure that wound up having long-term consequences for the empire. You'll recall that back in episode 125, the best defense is a good defense, I mentioned the difficulty in trying to figure which of the period's military reforms were actually initiated by a diocesan due to the presence of possible anachronisms in the historical record.

Specifically, I was talking about the creation of the Limitanii, the frontier militias, who would act as a first line of defense until the legions proper could arrive on the scene. Well, we can stop worrying about anachronisms now, because in the reign of Constantine, the existence of the Limitanii is definitely attested to, and those who are loath to attribute the creation of it to Daoclesian are hesitant to do so because they believe it was actually Constantine who initiated the change. and that he did so as a way to make up for the fact that he was now deploying the empire's legionary forces much further behind the frontier lines. He is said to have done this in order to create large mobile field armies that would be able to easily reach an invasion point along the border and then overwhelm any hostile forces they found. But these days, there is a large contingent of historians who suspect that Constantine concentrated his forces and garrisoned them in interior cities for, domestic political reasons. More than any commander since perhaps Octavian, Constantine's career was dominated by

civil war, and it is not unreasonable to assume that his military posture was heavily influenced by that experience. To help him run the vast new army he now had sole control of, an army numbering somewhere between 400 and 600,000 men, Constantine created two new ranks, the master of the infantry and resurrecting the long-ago abandoned title of a dictator second-in-command, the master of the horse. As the title suggests, one was supposed to be in control of the empire's foot soldiers and the other in charge of the empire's cavalry, thus allowing for a large-scale coordination without investing either man with sole control over all the forces in a region. But in practice, both of these high-ranking officers wound up commanding elements of the other's administrative.

administrative sphere. Plus, in time, both of these ranks would become subservient to an overall master of the military, who acted as the commander-in-chief of the whole army, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the foot-horse distinction. In and of themselves, these new positions are not that interesting, as they simply filled the void left by the Praetorian Prefects once their military powers were stripped away. But the role the men who held these offices would play in the final century and a half of the Western Empire is fascinating indeed.

Essentially, denied the right to hold political power in their own right. The powerful German officers who served as masters of the military in the 5th century would become the power behind a series of puppet emperors. And eventually, the imperial office itself would be weakened to the point that when it was abolished by Otto Aser in 476, it went not with a bang, but a whimper. But we'll get to all of that soon enough. Constantine's reforms to the military worked out pretty well for the emperor at the time. But eventually, they became the source of some of the harshest criticisms of his reign.

By pulling the stronger, faster, and better-trained troops off the frontiers, the feeling was that he was fatally weakening the borderlands and leaving them far more vulnerable than they needed to be. Plus, by dropping huge garrisons in the cities of the interior, those cities, were suddenly dealing with the burden of feeding and housing all of these troops. Far from the front lines, the soldiers grew soft, and the citizens became embittered. Moral suffered all around, and that old disconnect between the armed forces and the civilian population was revived with a vengeance. Finally, though there are many ways to look at the issue, Constantine's willingness to populate the legions with soldiers of German descent and augment his armies with German august. auxiliary forces, was seen as a crucial development in the story of how the Western Empire fell.

Because, the theory goes, once the Germans worm their way into the military, the ultimate destruction of the empire became a matter not of if, but of when. But like I say, the reforms worked pretty well at the time. And for the 12 years, he was sole emperor. The legions won every single campaign they initiated, and they initiated a lot, mostly against the Franks and the Alamani on the Rhine, and the Sarmatians and Goths along the Danube. In fact, after being pushed back by the barbarians during the crisis of the third century, the Romans finally, consistently, found themselves having the upper hand in their dealings with the northern menace.

Things went so well that Constantine actually felt comfortable building a permanent bridge across the Rhine, and repairing the bridge that Trajan had once built and Aurelian had torn down that crossed the Danube. There was even a brief period in the early 330s when the Romans reoccupied Lower Dacia. Aware that his execution of Crispus had left him without an experienced air, Constantine began handing all of these wars

off to his younger sons to season them up a bit. None of them were quite old enough to hold down a command of their own, but they were put in nominal charge and told to stick close of the capable generals actually running things and learn everything they could as fast as they could. In 330, Constantine II earned the title Alamanicus,

and in 332 at the age of 15, he fought in a successful war against the Goths. Constantius II, meanwhile, was sent to acquaint himself with the eastern provinces, and had there actually been a war with Persia, which we'll get to in a second, he certainly would have found himself right, smack, dab in the middle of it. Constantine's youngest son Constance was still just a child during the latter part of his father's reign, but he was made Caesar in 333 and likely would have followed his older brothers had the emperor lived. The implications of all this began to become clear. Constantine was not favoring one son over any of the others, and it appeared that the emperor expected all three of them to succeed him to power in the spirit, if not the form. of the Tetrarchy. If Constantine's redeployment of the Empire's military forces raises

eyebrows among scholars, then his succession plan makes them bang their heads against the wall. I don't think in all my research I have read a single good thing about how Constantine chose to leave the Imperial House when he died. Had Crispus lived, it is probable that Constantine would have passed the throne directly to his eldest son, who was both a proven leader and eminently capable. But after, you know, murdering him, Constantine was left with a pile of sons and nephews, all of whom were young, all of whom were relatively inexperienced, and none of whom really stood out against the others. So Constantine decided to just leave the empire to the whole lot of them and let them figure it out for themselves. Constantine the second was to receive the Western

provinces, Constantius II to Eastern provinces, Constance, Italy, and Pannonia. One step-nephew, a man named Dalmatius, was to receive Thrace, Macedonia, and Achaea, and another, Hannibalianus, was to have some sort of vague authority over the far eastern borderlands. Had the sons of Constantine bid paragon's of virtue and filled with fraternal love, the arrangement might have worked. but unfortunately they had all grown up in the shadow of their father, a man who had spent his entire life ruthlessly dispatching members of his own family in order to demolish a carefully

arranged power-sharing agreement. Over the years, he had killed his father-in-law, three brothers-in-law, one nephew, his son, and his wife, all in the name of securing and maintaining sole control of the Roman Empire. His sons learned this lesson well. and if Constantine thought that they were not going to follow in his footsteps, then he was blind, or he was crazy, or both. More than a few people have accused him of simply being so egomaniacal that he just didn't care what happened after he died. We'll get into it more next week, but suffice it to say that Constantine had raised a basket full of vipers,

and it took them about seven seconds to turn on each other once the old man was gone. which brings us to one of Constantine's last and most controversial initiatives. At some point between 334 and 336 AD, the emperor got it into his head that he was going to provoke a war with Persia. Why he thought this would be a good idea, especially since the legions were bogged down on both the Rhine and Danube frontiers, remains a mystery. But there you have it. The groundwork for the war had been laid at some point, after he defeated Lichenius, when the emperor sent a strongly worded letter to the Sassanid King, informing him that Constantine considered the Christians in Sassanid territory to be his

clients, and that he would have no qualms about taking any necessary steps to ensure their safety. The Sassanid king did not miss the fact that this was pretty much exactly the same line of thinking that Constantine had just used to pick a war with Lichenius. tensions were kept to a low simmer until the mid-330s, when Constantine decided to confer upon his step-nephew, Hanabalianus, the title King of Kings of the Pontic people, which was basically the equivalent of the Sassanid king, appointing someone emperor of the Roman people. In other words, pretty provocative stuff. So the Persians got a little paranoid, especially about the Christian king of Armenia, who they now saw. as a part of a larger plan to encircle and conquer them. So, probably in 336, the Sassanid king invaded Armenia and deposed the Christian king,

which could not have played more into Constantine's hands, and the old emperor began to gear up for one last great campaign. But he would never make it out of Bethenia. Not long after Easter 337, the emperor fell ill and left Constantinople to recover at the hot baths near the city of Helenopolis, named for the emperor's mother. After a short visit to the Turkish coast, Constantine realized that he was not going to recover, and he tried to make it back to Constantinople, so he could die in the city he had created. But he was only able to make it as far as the suburbs of Nicomedia.

Knowing that the end was near, Constantine summoned the bishop of Nicomedia to formally baptize him. people often express surprise and wonder at the fact that the first Christian emperor was not baptized until moments before his death and a cynical reading often results usually that reading goes something like this the emperor never was a true Christian and even now was just hedging his bets but there is another reading that i often find more compelling constantine was a true believer who was really really a really really, really afraid of the Lord our God. It was not uncommon at the time to believe that baptism washed away all your accumulated sins and basically left you with a blank moral slate. If you truly believe then that too much sin would hurt your ability to make it into heaven, it is only logical to wait until the last possible moment to get baptized. That way, you would go in clean as a newborn babe.

It was a dangerous game because, hey, what if you get run over? by an ox cart. But it was a game that Constantine evidently played and won, because in the few days between his baptism and his death, he didn't murder a single one of his family members. So, pure as a fresh mountain stream on May the 22nd, 337 AD, Constantine the Great died. He was 65 years old and had been an emperor for almost 31 years. Constantine was a strong political leader. indisputably the greatest general of his age, and a visionary who transformed the religious and cultural life of the empire like no emperor before him. Before he rose to power, Christianity was a religion being hunted down like a criminal,

and when he died, Rome was so far down the road to conversion that Julian the apostates' attempt to turn back the tide simply confirmed how much Constantine had entrenched his new religion. Beyond that epoch-shifting feat, he also built a new capital on the Bosphorus that quite literally became the most important city in the world for a thousand years. But these great, truly great achievements were offset by a darker set of legacies. And when the critiques of Constantine's military reforms are coupled with his handling of the sassanids and his handling of the succession issue, what we are left with is a great emperor with a mixed record. Because one of the major questions we must ask when assessing an imperial career is did he leave the empire stronger and safer than he found it? In Constantine's case, it is not uncommon to hear scholars and historians say, well, no, he did not.

His new gold standard served to stabilize the economy, yes, but only for the upper classes. The rest of the citizen body was left. scrambling to keep up in a world of runaway inflation. Mostly they could not keep up, and the roots of medieval feudalism with its serfs and its lords is not too difficult to detect. His inexplicable desire to start up a war with the Sassanids would leave his heirs tied to an unnecessary conflict with the Persians for years that would cost men and resources and at least one emperor that Rome really couldn't spare.

And, of course, his ill-conceived dynastic plans, all but guaranteed a return to the dark days of civil war. Constantine the Great was a great emperor, and easily one of the most important figures in all of world history. But despite the key role he played in the evolution of the West, we should not forget that he was also a flawed man who was fully capable of making bad choices that his heirs paid for in blood and treasure.

Some would even go so far as to trace the fall of the Western Empire right to his doorstep. Gibbon's whole thesis, for example, was that Christianity was a malignant cancer that eventually killed the empire. I wouldn't go that far because nothing Constantine did guaranteed a catastrophe of that magnitude. And some of the things he did, like furthering the Germanization of the army, only turned out to be bad ideas in retrospect because of how his successors handled the issue, not because they were inherently bad ideas. Constantine was a complicated man who lived in an utterly dominated complicated times. Whatever your view of the man, noble Christian saint or reckless theocratic tyrant,

he changed the course of world history, and for that reason alone, we will never, ever stop talking about him. Next week, we will stop talking about Constantine. Instead, alive and in-person me will be back to discuss the bloody struggle that erupted between his sons and nephews the minute the emperor was dead. It would take 13 years of strife, backstabbing, and discord, before the empire was once again united under a single man. The craftiest and ruthless of all Constantine's heirs,

Constantius II.