'Quoted in Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge 2004), p. 66.
10Quoted in Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 22.
"Barnes, "Sossianus," p. 247.
12The notion that Christianity was unpatriotic is found in pagan apologists like Celsus and Porphyry. See Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 33.
I7Lactantius's description of Galerius's character is found in Death 9, and in 11 he attributes Galerius's anti-Christian bias to the influence of his mother.
I5Ibid., p. 21.
16Eusebius Life 2.51.
"Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, pp. 20-21.
14Ibid., p. 19.
18The most thorough study is P. S. Davies, "The Origin and Purpose of the Persecution of AD 303, journal ofTheological Studies 40, no. 1 (1989), which systematically eliminates all possible sources of Lactantius's information. H. A. Drake (Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000], pp. 142-44) suggests that Lactantius is employing a technique of ancient history writing by which writers "convey their own analyses through fictional speeches." Drake concludes that Diocletian was manipulated into beginning the persecution and that the failed sacrifice was "rigged." That may be, but first, Lactantius may have had access to court gossip, and second, even if he made up the specifics of the conference, he presumably had some grounds for describing the interplay of Augustus and Caesar in the way he did. David S. Potter (The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395, Routledge History of the Ancient World [London: Routledge, 2004], p. 338) wisely notes, however, that "conversations between important men, even in camera, have a way of becoming public knowledge."
"Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 244.
201bid., p. 243; Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 292-93.
21Ibid., 338.
22Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 19; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire; Van Dam, Roman Revolution, 164.
25Details in Dioysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 2.74.
23 Van Dam, Roman Revolution, 146.
24Heyman, Power of Sacrifice, pp. 13, 47.
26G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). This is a crucial point, since it demonstrates the continuity between the church of the martyrs and the church under Constantine. Neither was an isolated ghetto community; if Christians had been isolated, they would have been left alone.
"Johannes Roldanus, The Church in the Age of Constantine: The Theological Challenges (London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 30; Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 21.
28G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, "Aspects of the `Great' Persecution," in Harvard Theological Review 47, no. 2 (1954): 75-76, and Potter, Roman Empire, p. 337, both summarize the contents of the first decree.
29Corcoran, Empire of the Tetrarchs, 179-82; Simon Corcoran, "Before Constantine," in The Cambridge Companion to theAge of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 52; Roldanus, Church in the Age of Constantine, p. 30; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 69; Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, pp. 50-51; Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 164. Eusebius (Church History, 8.14.9) mentions a fifth edict of 309, issued by Maxinimus in the East, to revitalize paganism by rebuilding temples, appointing priests, and requiring sacrifice (cf. Corcoran, Empire ofthe Tetrarchs, pp. 185-86).
32Drake (Constantine and the Bishops, p. 114) links Valerian's defeat and the cessation of persecution, as does Barnes ("Sossianus," p. 241).
33Eusebius, Church History, 8.6.4.
30The phrase is from de Ste. Croix, "Aspects," p. 105.
31Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 36.
36Quoted in MacMullen, Constantine, p. 27.
34Ibid.
35Ibid., 8.12.9.
"Assuming that Eusebius records every martyr in Syria Palaestina, de Ste. Croix concludes that ninety were executed in that province ("Aspects," p. 101) and generally estimates that "dozens or scores rather than hundreds" were put to death (p. 102).
"Church History, 8.9.3.
40W. H. C. Frend ("The Failure of Persecutions in the Roman Empire," Past and Present 16 [1959]: 20, 26) emphasizes the importance of the demographic shift.
41K. M. Coleman, "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments," Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 53. Bowersock (Martyrdom and Rome, p. 18) makes the same connection, also citing Coleman's article.
42Joe1 Marcus, "Crucifixion as Parodic Exaltation," Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 1 (1996).
390n voluntary martyrdom, see Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome; de Ste. Croix, "Aspects."
'Coleman, "Fatal Charades," p. 66. The point can be made from the other direction as well: Christians applied the category of sacrifice to the martyr (Heyman, Power of Sacrifice, chap. 4).
"Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3 vols. (New York: Modern Library, 1982), 1:31, 33; 2:87; quoted in Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 21-23.
45Burckhardt, Age of Constantine the Great, pp. 252-55.
"David S. Potter, "Martyrdom as Spectacle," in Theater and Society in the Classical World, ed. Ruth Scodel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 61-65.
47 Voltaire, On Toleration, available at classicliberal.tripod.com/voltaire/toleration.html, accessed June 10, 2009.
"Frederick Pollock, Essays in Jurisprudence andEthics (London: Macmillan, 1882), pp. 144-75.
491bid., pp. 145-51.
"Potter, "Martyrdom as Spectacle," explores the theatrical and "spectacular" dimensions of martyrdom.
S1Lactantius, Death, p. 34. Burckhardt (Age of Constantine, p. 250) suggests that Galerius is rebuking Christians for abandoning their own ancestral practices, but that seems highly unlikely.
520n the integration of religious and political life in Rome, see Jorg Rupke, Religion of the Romans, trans. Richard Gordon (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions ofRome, vol. 1, AHistory (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1998).
14 Craig Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A PostChristendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), provides little more than a page covering the period between Christ and Constantine (pp. 78-79). John Howard Yoder regularly speaks glowingly of the martyr church but rarely acknowledges this as the context for Constantine. J. Alexander Sider (To See History Doxologically': History and Holiness in John Howard Yoder's Ecclesiology," Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2004, p. 154) is correct that from Yoder one could get the impression that the Galerian and Diocletian persecution were not all that significant in the formation of "Christian consciousness" in the early fourth century. Robert L. Wilken (The Myth of Christian Beginnings [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970], p. 55) says that the "trauma" of persecution marked Eusebius for life.
"The phrase is from Roldanus, Church in theAge of Constantine, p. 32.
'For summaries of the crisis, see Jakob Burckhardt, The Age of Constnatine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), chap. 1, and A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 14-19. David S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, Routledge History of the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 2004), pts. 2-3, is a richly detailed account. Simon Corcoran, "Before Constantine," in The Cambridge Companion to theAge of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 37, offers the more modest view that eschews universal explanations, is more skeptical of contemporary anxieties, and argues that a genuine crisis, brought on by invasions, is most evident in the imperial court and the army.
2Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 3.
3The first Roman emperor has many names. Octavius was his given name, but he is also known by the variant Octavian during parts
of his life. Augustus (revered one) was a title given to him in 27 B.C. The protocols of proper usage being unnecessary for my purposes, I refer to him indiscriminately either as Octavius or as Augustus.
'Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "Civilisprinceps: Between Citizen and King," Journal ofRoman Studies 72 (1982).
'Quoted in H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 52. This summary of the constitutional system of the Principate comes from ibid., pp. 35-53.
6Cameron, Later Roman Empire, pp. 3-4; Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 17-19; Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, pp. 18-19; Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 158-62.
'Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 38.
101bid., p. 35; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 24; Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 294-95. A picture of the relief is found in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), figure 6.
"Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 38;Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 36.
12Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 5-6.
7jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, p. 14.
'Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 54.
"Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 277-78.
"On the horoscope, see ibid., p. 107; on Augustus's iconography and religious claims, see S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1984); Paul Zanker, The Power ofImages in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990); Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars: Historical Sketches, trans. K. and R. Gregor Smith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955).
13Dio Cassius, Roman History, 71.8; c£ Potter, Roman Empire, p. 30.
16See Price, Rituals and Power, pp. 207-20.
"Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, Making ofa Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 20-23.
20Ibid., 48.
21Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 43; see also Cameron, Later Roman Empire, p. 42; Burckhardt, Age of Constantine the Great, pp. 51-52; MacMullen, Constantine; Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 17.
"Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 118.
"Xenophon, quoted in ibid., 47.
22Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, p. 17.
23Ibid., p. 15. Later emperors imposed taxes on the cities of Italy and eventually on Rome itself. Fees piled on top of fees: tax collectors often charged taxpayers for the privilege of receiving a receipt (ibid., p. 17). Among other effects, the Antonine Constitution arguably devalued citizenship in the eyes of Romans (Corcoran, "Before Constantine").
24Digeser, Making ofa Christian Empire, pp. 4-5, 24-25.
25The summary of the decree comes from J. B. Rives, "The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire," Journal ofRoman Studies 89 (1999): 137; Rives assembles the contents of the decree, which is no longer extant, from the fragmentary existing evidence. For the libelli, see John R. Knipfing, "The Libelli of the Decian Persecution," Harvard Theological Review 16, no. 4 (1923): 345-90. A brief summary is available in Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 241-45; Potter believes that the edict may have partly been Decius's effort to distance himself from his predecessor, Philip the Arab, who was sympathetic to Christianity and rumored to have been a Christian. On Philip, see also Warwick Ball, Rome in the East: The Transformation ofan Empire (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 417-18.
28Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, p. 14.
"Potter, Roman Empire, p. 243.
27Ibid., p. 255.
29See R. R. R. Smith, "The Public Image of Licinius I: Portrait Sculpture and Imperial Ideology in the Fourth Century," Journal ofRoman Studies 87 (1997): 179.
30For a summary of the changes in the administration of the empire that accompanied these military and social shifts, see Corcoran, "Before Constantine," pp. 45-47. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 121, describes the order of the Tetrarchy itself as another expression of the militarization of the empire, the adoption of military models of order.
31Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 43.
32On the disruption of traditional Roman social order, see Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, pp. 18-19. See also Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 42.
33Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Toward 'a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), chap. 1.
34Potter, Roman Empire, p. 273.
"Ibid., pp. 273-74. See also Corcoran, "Before Constantine," pp. 48-49; Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, pp. 16-17.
360n the declining importance of Italy, see Van Dam, Roman Revolution, pp. 23-27. One sign of the collapsing privilege of Italian cities, long favored by the emperors, was the decision of Diocletian and Galerius to tax both the cities of northern Italy and Rome itself. In spite of its declining actual importance, emperors still used association with Rome for their political ends. Diocletian may have visited Rome as early as 285 and certainly did in 303, and his victory over Carinus was hailed as a liberation of "the Republic" from "most savage domination" (Van Dam, Roman Revolution, pp. 40-41).
`According to Van Dam, Constantius had actually visited once before, as a boy.
38Corcoran, "Before Constantine," pp. 43-45.
"Corcoran, "Before Constantine," pp. 47-50. Cameron (Later Roman Empire, p. 8) questions the direction of cause and effect for many of these crises.
41Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, chaps. 5-6, offers what is still the most vivid portrait of the religious ferment of the period; also E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age ofAnxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965).
42See W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 272-437, for the church's history from the early third century up to Diocletian; Henry Chadwick. The Early Church, The Pelican History of the Church 1 (New York: Penguin, 1967), chaps. 5-7, covers the same ground.
43Cf. Clifford Ando, The Matter ofthe Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 2008).
39Cameron, Later Roman Empire, p. 10; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 26.
44R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great," ANRW 23 (1980): 959. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 136-39, argues that the similarity of Christianity and monotheistic paganism, not their radical differences, was what made Christianity threatening. T. D. Barnes. "Monotheists All?" Phoenix 55, nos. 1/2 (2001), reviews some recent work on the subject, concluding that "even if they worshipped a multiplicity of gods, most thinking men in late antiquity who reflected at all on what this worship meant were in a very real sense monotheists" (p. 143).
45Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 90-91, including n. 12. The contrast of Origen and Celsus is found on p. 103.
46D. G. Kousoulas, The Life and Times of Constantine the Great: The First Christian Emperor, 2nd ed. (author, 2007), pp. 14-16.
"Potter, Roman Empire, p. 279.
48HistoriaAugusta, trans. Jacqueline Long, selections available at
49Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, pp. 41, 48; Kousoulas, Life and Times, p. 14. One wonders whether Diodes thought, too, of the Odyssey, whose hero is identified by a scar won in a boar hunt.
"Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 12.
S1MacMullen, Con
stantine, p. 8, on the prominence of the prefix rein the rhetoric of Diocletian's empire.
12Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, p. 68.
13Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 39; Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 5.
"Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 6.
56Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 145 n. 2.
"Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 116-17.
54Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, p. 21.
sspotter, Roman Empire, p. 336.
59Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 237. On the iconography of the Tetrarchy, see Smith, "Public Image," pp. 179-83; quotation from the decree is in Smith, "Public Image," p. 182.
"Quoted in Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 359.
61Ibid., pp. 239-40.
62Quoted in Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, p. 612. Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 35, notes that the map highlights areas where the Tetrarchs had recently defeated enemies of the empire: "Egypt, where Diocletian had suppressed a rebellion; Africa, where Maximian had defeated the Moors; Batavia and Britain, where Constantius had overthrown a usurper; and the eastern frontier, where Galerius had triumphed over the Persians."
63Quoted in Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 41.
64Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, pp. 8-9.
65Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, p. 61.
66Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 231; he adds, "In theory their standing as gods allowed [the Tetrarchs] to transcend dependence on the affirmation of the senate at Rome or the acclamation of the troops. Now any opposition to their rule could be represented as not just seditious, but also sacrilegious, impious, even unbelief."
67Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, p. 49.
68Corcoran, "Before Constantine," pp. 40, 51.
69The phrase is from Digeser, Making, p. 3. See the similar conclusions of Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 40; MacMullen, Constantine, p. 23; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, 43. Burckhardt points out that Diodes' name includes "Dio," equivalent to "Zeus" (Age of Constantine, p. 43).
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