THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 012
The Death of Constantine and the Disposition of the Empire
1-12. The Death of Constantine and the Disposition of the Empire
Nor can we doubt that Constantine himself grew slacker in the years of peace. Nature had richly gifted him with sound health, strong limbs, and a stately presence. His energy was untiring, his observation keen, his decision quick. He was a splendid soldier, and the best general since Aurelian. If he had no learned education, he was not without interest in literature, and in practical statesmanship he may fairly rank with Diocletian. His general humanity stands out clear in his laws, for no emperor ever did more for the slave, the foundling, and the oppressed. If he began by giving the Frankish kings to the beasts, he went on to forbid the games of the amphitheatre in 325. In private life he was chaste and sober, moderate and pleasant. Yet he was given to raillery, and his nearest friends could not entirely trust him. His ambition was great, and he was very susceptible to flattery. So freely was it ministered to him that he sometimes had to check it himself: but in his later years he was more or less influenced by unworthy favourites, as Ablabius and Sopater seem to have been.
No doubt his Christianity is of itself an offence to Zosimus and Julian, so that we may discount their charges of sloth and luxury : but upon the whole, the judgment of Eutropius would seem, impartial, that Constantine was a match for the best emperors in the early part of his reign, and at its end no more than average.
As Constantine had won the Empire, so now he had to dispose of it. Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, his three sons by Fausta, were born in 316, 317, 320, and each received the title of Caesar in 317, 323, 333. In 335 their inheritance was marked out. Constantine was to have the Gaulish prefecture, Constantius the Eastern, Constans the Italian and Illyrian. This is the partition actually made after the emperor's death; but for the present it was complicated by some obscure transactions. Constantine had made honourable provision for his half-brothers Delmatius and Julius Constantius, the sons of Theodora, and they never gave him political trouble. Of their sisters, he married Constantia to Licinius, Anastasia to Bassianus and Nepotianus, of whom the second certainly was a great Roman noble, so that they too suffered no disparagement. Basilina also, the wife of Julius Constantius and mother of the emperor Julian, belonged to the great Anician family.
Now Delmatius left two sons, Delmatius and Hanniballianus. Of these Delmatius must have been a man of mark, for he held the high office of magister militum, and was made Caesar in 335, while Hanniballianus was the husband of Constantine's daughter Constantina. But they had no proper claim to any share in the succession, and we do not know why they were given it. There may have been parties in the palace; and if so, Ablabius is likely to have had a share in the matter, for he was put to death along with them in the massacre which followed Constantine's death. Certain it is that shares were carved out for them from the inheritance of their cousins. Delmatius was to have the Gothic march, while Hanniballianus received Pontus, with the astonishing title of rex regum — for no Roman since the Tarquins had ever borne the name of king.
The strange title may point to some design upon Armenia, for the whole Eastern Question of the day was raised when Persia threatened war. Four emperors in the third century had met with disaster on the Persian frontier, but there had been forty years of peace since the victory of Galerius in 297. The Empire gained Mesopotamia to the Aboras, and the five provinces which covered the southern slopes of the Armenian mountains ; and in Armenia itself, Roman supremacy was fully recognised by its great king Tiridates (287-314). If his adoption of Christianity led to a short war with Maximin Daza, it only drew Armenia closer to Constantine. But if the royal house was Christian and leaned on Rome, there was a large heathen party which looked to Persia: and Persia was an aggressive power under Sapor II (309-380). A vigorous persecution of Christians was carried on, and war with Rome was only a question of time. Sapor demanded back the five provinces and attacked Mesopotamia, while a revolution in the palace threw Armenia into his hands.
How much of this was done during Constantine's lifetime is more than we can say, but at all events a Persian war was plain in sight by the spring of 337; and a war with Persia was too serious a matter to be left to Caesars like a Frankish foray or a Gothic inroad, so the old emperor prepared to take the field in person. He never set out. Constantine fell sick soon after Easter, and when the sickness grew upon him, he took up his abode at Ancyrona, a suburb of Nicomedia.
As his end drew near, he received the imposition of hands, for up to that time he had not been even a catechumen. He then applied for baptism, explaining that he had hoped some day to receive it in the waters of the Jordan like the Lord himself. After the ceremony he laid aside the purple, and passed away in stainless white on 22 May 337. As all his sons were absent, the government was carried on for three months in the dead emperor's name, till they had made their arrangements, and the soldiers had slaughtered almost the entire house of Theodora.
Constantine was buried on the spot he had himself marked out in the cathedral of the Twelve Apostles in his own imperial city. The Greek Church still calls him ίσαποστόλων — an equal of the Apostles.
End Chapter I, Constantine and His City
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Sapor II (309-880)?