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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Nathan B., post: 8056846, member: 112852&quot;]Oh my--a debate! And since this is CoinTalk, there is a guarantee that it will not end with one of us calling the other one Hitler--or a communist!</p><p><br /></p><p>That said, I don&#039;t think that you have addressed the first of my arguments at all, the first of which are:</p><ul> <li>that Constantine survived against long odds and multiple competitors</li> <li>that he was a long-reigning emperor (30 years, including 13 as sole emperor).&nbsp; Not that being long-reigning is necessarily a sign of greatness <i>per se</i>, but when the fifty years before Diocletian saw a dozen emperors or so, and when there were as many as six co-emperors at one point during the Tetrarchy, this is a sign of something very significant</li> <li>that he united the empire together after a very long period of disunity</li> <li>that he founded a dynasty--again, no small feat for the time</li> </ul><p>I don&#039;t think that any of this can really be attributed to simply being in the right place at the right time.&nbsp; To be sure, he did need to be in the right place and at the right time, but that was not enough on its own; he was not simply carried forward passively, like a surfer riding a wave.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition, I definitely do not agree that Constantine had no effect on the development of Christianity.&nbsp; As I mentioned, he took an intense interest in settling the Christian theological squabbles, and his convening of the Nicene Council is universally agreed as a major development in the history of Christianity.&nbsp; Interestingly, the bishop he chose to oversee the Nicene Council was not Arian, and it was the Arians who ended up losing, eventually, to the group we now call &quot;orthodox.&quot;&nbsp; So Constantine not only had a profound effect on Christianity in terms of its doctrinal development, but in terms of everything that flowed from those ideas, too.</p><p><br /></p><p>As far as the numbers go, I don&#039;t think I quite understand your argument, so you can help me there.&nbsp; On the one hand, you say that Christianity grew exponentially, but on the other, you say that it was growing at about the same rate as the birth rate. </p><p><br /></p><p>What I can say is that Christianity had grown to about 10% of the empire&#039;s population by about 300 CE or so--about 6 million people.&nbsp; After only 50 years, the first of which saw Constantine and his dynasty in power, that number grew to many times that, with Christians forming an actual majority of the population.</p><p><br /></p><p>I do agree that Christian growth was trending--not least because of what is called the &quot;enthusiasm gap&quot;--but without having a sitting emperor, the most powerful in perhaps a century, to favour them and to try to unite them, and to officially use their religion as the very basis of his very significant power, what would have happened?&nbsp; I just don&#039;t think it&#039;s possible to simply assert that Christian development in terms of doctrine, practice, and demographics, would simply have turned out the same or even similarly.&nbsp; And indeed, Christianity was not the only successful religion at the time; one could argue that Mithraism was far more successful.&nbsp; Constantine placed a very heavy thumb on the scale.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition to these things, the establishment of the capital at Byzantium was extremely significant.&nbsp; I agree that Constantine was following in the footsteps of a number of his predecessors in choosing an eastern city to be his capital, but I don&#039;t really agree that he could not have foreseen how long-enduring Constantinople would be as the seat of Roman power.&nbsp; If anything, he probably took it for granted that it would be. </p><p><br /></p><p>And he chose the site of his capital very well, too: it was close to the Dacian front, so he could respond more quickly to barbarian trouble there, and closer to the Persian front so he could respond more quickly there.&nbsp; In addition, unlike Rome, it was a port city on the Mediterranean, and so conferred substantial advantages that way.&nbsp; And finally, the city itself was geographically very defensible--a key to its longevity in the face of Islamic expansion later. </p><p><br /></p><p>In addition to all this, Constantine brought a lot of wealth into the city.&nbsp; One consequence of that would be the presence of scholars who preserved and wrote about many important books of classical antiquity--works that would go on to have a profound influence on Europe during the Renaissance thanks to the dispersal of many scholars after the conquest of the city by the Turks in the mid 14th century.</p><p><br /></p><p>I also think it&#039;s important to note that Constantine was able to accomplish all this despite not being a military genius.&nbsp; Being such is not a requirement to greatness for a ruler.&nbsp; It was enough for Constantine to use capable commanders and to take advantage of the mistakes of his opponents even as Octavian had earlier used Mark Antony and Agrippa to expand his own power until he became the first emperor.&nbsp; In so doing, Constantine was creating the circumstances that led to all the accomplishments he was able to achieve.</p><p><br /></p><p>Speaking of accomplishments, it&#039;s odd that on a numismatic forum, I had completely forgotten to mention in my previous post that Constantine also initiated a new and very long-lasting gold denomination, the <i>solidus</i>, which was a very significant development in the economy and finance of the empire.</p><p><br /></p><p>So overall, I do think that Constantine was definitely deserving of his <i>MAX </i>moniker by which he continues to be identified today.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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