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Constantine: Roman Empire
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Henceforth, Constantine was sole master of the Roman Empire. Shortly after the defeat of Licinius, Constantine determined to make Constantinople the future capital of the empire, and with his usual energy he took every measure to enlarge, strengthen, and beautify it. For the next ten years of his reign he devoted himself to promoting the moral, political, and economical welfare of his possessions and made dispositions for the future government of the empire. While he placed his nephews, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus in charge of lesser provinces, he designated his sons Constantius, Constantine, and Constans as the future rulers of the empire. Not long before his end, the hostile movement of the Persian king, Shâpûr, again summoned him into the field. When he was about to march against the enemy he was seized with an illness of which he died in May, 337, after receiving baptism.
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Constantine was now at the summit of his ambition, the sole governor of the Roman world. He chose Byzantium for his Capital, and in 330 solemnly inaugurated it as the seat of government, under the name of Constantinople or City of Constantine. In 324, he committed a deed that has thrown a dark shade over his memory. He had a gallant and accomplished son, named Crispus, who was exceedingly popular, and him and Constantina and others he put to death on a charge of treason. Niebuhr shows that it was not unlikely Crispus cherished ambitious desires. Next year occurred the great Council of Nice.
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In Constantine's day, the eastern provinces were by far the richest and most populous of the Roman world. Some of its cities –Pergamon, Symrna, Antioch and so on – had existed for almost a millennium and had accumulated vast wealth from international trade and venerated cult centres. Through its numerous cities passed Roman gold going east in exchange for imports from Persia, India and Arabia. Flowing west with those exotic imports came exotic 'mystery religions' to titillate and enthrall Roman appetites.
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Constantine is walled, the extant medieval wall having been largely constructed out of Roman material. Through the centre from north to south runs a street (the rue de France) roughly dividing Constantine into two parts. The place du Palais, in which are the palace of the governor and the cathedral, and the kasbah (citadel) are west of the rue de France, as is likewise the place Negrier, containing the law courts. The native town lies chiefly in the south-east part of the city. A striking contrast exists between the Moorish quarter, with its tortuous lanes and Oriental architecture, and the modern quarter, with its rectangular streets and wide open squares, frequently bordered with trees and adorned with fountains. Of the squares the place de Nemours is the centre of the commercial and social life of the city.
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Constantine was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia in 337, just before he died. (Deathbed baptisms were common at the time.) During his life he had brought Christianity from the position of being a persecuted minority to the dominant power in religious life in the Roman Empire.
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Christian historians ever since Lactantius have adhered to the view that Constantine "adopted" Christianity as a kind of replacement for the official Roman paganism. Though the document called the "Donation of Constantine" was proved a forgery (though not until the 15th century, when the stories of Constantine's conversion were long-established "facts") it was attributed as documenting the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity for centuries. Even Christian skeptics have accepted this formulation, though seeing Constantine's policy as a political rather than spiritual move.
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