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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Nathan B., post: 8055884, member: 112852&quot;]I think it&#039;s indisputable that Constantine was &quot;Great.&quot;&nbsp; That&#039;s not to say that he was <i>good</i>, or that he was unusually interesting, but rather that he made a very substantial mark on history.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, though, above all, he <i>survived</i>--no small feat for an emperor of his time.&nbsp; The Crisis of the Third Century, which began with a &quot;Year of the Six Emperors,&quot; saw many men lifted to the purple for their ancient equivalent of fifteen minutes of fame.&nbsp; In less than 50 years, excluding co-emperors, there were more than a dozen emperors whose average reign was less than 4 years--and it is Gallienus&#039;s 15 year reign that is bringing that number up to the high average that it is!</p><p><br /></p><p>Following that crisis, the empire was slowly pieced back together by Aurelian and Diocletian--who indisputably was great--but Diocletian himself left behind the Tetrachy--with all the tension, ready to burst, inherent in that structure.&nbsp; In civil war, Constantine I had to outlast, outmaneuver, and outright beat his co-Augustuses and co-Caesars, some with formidable resources. Not only that, he had to fight off another half dozen would-be emperors before he finally emerged as the sole ruler and the founder of a dynasty.</p><p><br /></p><p>While still part of the Tetrarchy, Constantine legalized Christianity, but more than that, as sole emperor, he set it up to provide unity for the empire.&nbsp; The early Church Fathers, when they weren&#039;t writing their learned tomes, were busy hacking each other to death (ok, I am being a bit facetious, but people were killed) over obscure theological debates involving positions in one case literally separated from each other in name by a single iota.&nbsp; Constantine I convened a series of church councils in an attempt to impose some order on the Christian chaos.&nbsp; The Nicene Creed, which came out of the most famous of these councils, even today is still agreed upon by Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox denominations.&nbsp; It&#039;s true that various theological controversies continued, with one side now dominant, now in minority, for some time after Constantine I, but it was he who set the parameters for the (relatively quick) outcome of these damaging and divisive debates.</p><p><br /></p><p>And even if we set aside all that, Constantine brought the seat of the empire to Byzantium, where it would continue to rule over Roman territory for a thousand years. As Olivander from Harry Potter might tell us, Constantine did things that were great--&quot;terrible, but great.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>So I do think Constantine&#039;s epithet of &quot;Great&quot; is fully deserved.</p><p><br /></p><p>Having said all of that, I wish that Constantine had not set up Christianity to be a&nbsp; secular power.&nbsp; So much science and philosophy suffered thanks to this development.&nbsp; (Ironically, many Christians share my misgivings about these changes as they see here not Christianity conquering Rome, but rather Rome conquering Christianity.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Constantine managed through bloodshed and sweat and vision (ahem!) to launch a new world order whose reverberations are still very much with us nearly two millennia later (what&#039;s a few hundred years between friends?;-)).</p><p><br /></p><p>But for myself, if I were to choose an emperor from that era whom I would call genuinely interesting, I would actually choose Julian (&quot;the Apostate&quot;--even his epithet is given by the historians of the new world).&nbsp; But Justinian represents an ending, while Constantine inaugurated a new beginning.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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