Originally Posted by
Anna_Gein
Wow. As much as indifferent or even slightly hostile I am to Constantine reign I think there are several serious misconception here.
Destroy the Tetrarchy
As said before Constantine did not destroyed it by alone even if he participated to this cycle of civil war and was the one victorious. One would say that the defeat and execution of the other Tetrarchs qualifies as "destroying". He could easily has settled with Licinus and divided the Empire in half as it was always meant to be. But he let his ambition and Christian beliefs get ahead of him and provoked Licinius to action. The Tetrarchy did literally fell apart as soon as Diocletian was not in charge anymore. Constantine was certainly not responsible for the civil conflict in Asia Minor or Africa when Maxentius was still alive for example.
He did not had 5 heirs. And only 3 were still alive and assumed power at his death. No. He appointed 5 heirs. Which was crazy and bound to fail, and when these things start failing, they keep failing, like the Tetrarchy. Constantius II killed Dalmatius and Hannibalianus when he purged the family line immediately following Constantine's death. While Constantine ended the Tetrarchy, every Roman Emperor of theses time recognize that the Empire was too much threatened to be effectively defended by a single Emperor. At this point the Empire was always divided. At least between an Emperor and a Caesar. His Son Constantius II defeated several usurpers and saw that family ties were not enough to prevent civil wars yet he recognize the need of a Caesar to defend the half where he could not be.
Force Christianity upon the empire
I hope you don't see Christianity as responsible for the Empire fall. I do. Gibbon was right, and has always been right. Like I said with the divorcing of the Church from the state, the authority of the state can rest on many things, and religion is one of them. By separating Imperial authority from divine authority, it meant that the Empire itself was no longer sacrosanct. This creates all kinds of problems for the mandate to rule. In any case Constantine did not enforced Christianity across the Empire. Except he did. Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, all public sponsorship of pagan institutions was cut off and diverted to Christian ones. And he made is super clear that anyone wishing to climb the Imperial hierarchy had better be Christian. He stopped just short of actually killing pagans outright. Pagan rites remained in existence in the official celebrations. For example when Constantinople is dedicated on 11 mai 330, it happens with pagan rites and pagan religious responsible. Constantine did confiscated some temples and destroyed some other but it did not happened on a grand scale. On the contrary the State continued to financially support pagan temples.
Call the Council of Nicea
First I don't see how it was a bad thing in itself. Then you are extremely sever here. Until then Christianity as propagated itself without clear organization. It was made of a great number of different sects with different usages and beliefs. Constantine, by his tolerant and non-interventionism posture certainly allowed the Arianism to remain. But his son Constantius II, himself Arian and, contrary to his father, interventionist, was certainly more decisive to give weight to the Arian movement.
Additionally you should realize how much difficult it was for the emperors to intervene in the theologian debates. First it was not considered their place to decide the result of a council but just to convoke it. Then even if they attempt to act with a bit of brutality, the priests were not the most easily population to deal with as a lot of them welcomed exile for their religious belief.
I should have explain this one more clearly. Religions will always fracture and divide. That's the way theology works. Had he just let Arianism play its course, it might have remained isolated in Egypt. But by forcing the decision at Nicea, and then not actually forcing it as he let Arius the man himself off the hook, he gave Arianism the best boost it could hope for. Making something "heretical" just makes it cooler. Do you think it's an accident that one of his heirs just happened to be an Arian? There's no such thing as bad publicity.
Formalize the comitus/limitanei division
Except he did not. Except he did. Check your sources. If not Constantine then who? And yes, there is still some confusion on how exactly the system worked and Vegetius is just not all too helpful on the matter. However, we can all agree the result was disastrous. Both the Rhine and Danube frontiers deteriorated to the point where they effectively ceased to exist. And how could they when you've placed the best troops at the back. It's not 1942 on the Eastern Front. Logistics back then meant that the field armies in the rear were weeks or months away from an effective response. The only time when he took troops from the frontier to incorporate them into his personally led army, it was in his march against Maxentius who had a greater army. Constantine took troops from the Gallic frontier. But he did so after he campaigned against the Germans there. Latter he may be accused to have a larger comitus but what he did was in fact to keep the comitus troops of the defeated Tetrarch and incorporate them in his own. So there was technically not a vast increase of Comitus troops in disfavor to frontier troops. That's for Constantine.
Then the division between Comitenses and Limitanei is a debated topic. While it received a lot of success in the past, Most historians now agree it did not happened. At least not as it is still commonly portraited on the web (*caught* wikipedia *caught). See Yann Le Bohec for example. In fact "limitanei" did not even existed in Constantine time. The term "ripenses was used instead.
Formalize the adoption of contigents of foederati under their own ethnic commanders
As said by vikior, foederati troops were not that much important under his reign. Foreign troops have been in the Roman Army since the very beginning of the Republic. Gothic soldiers serving Rome were around since the III century AD. Since the first time this people was identified by the Romans. Constantine indeed recruited in large number Foederati soldiers at the same time he took troops from the Gallic frontier to battle Maxentius, but he was not the first to do in this period. His father, Constantius Chlorus settled foederati troops in Britain for example. More importantly "foederati" started to designate full units only by the time of Theodosius I. Until then it referred to the soldiers on an individual basis. It is only when Goths were settled in Roman territory and allowed to keep their ethnic structure following the Roman lost war in the Gothic War of (376-382) that they became a danger to Rome.
This assessment completely ignores the key point. Auxiliaries or foederati are just fine until they get grouped into large, army-sized contingents and fall under the command of their own ethnic commanders. Constantine's victories were not the work of God or Chi-Ro, they were cause he led an army whose core was composed of the Franks. In fact his own personal bodyguard detachment was all Frankish, headed by a Frank. He used an expedient to gain the throne and it eventually led to the end of Roman control of the Roman army
Completely fail to curtail the inflation problem in silver and copper.
Inflation have been there during the whole imperial era. True Constantine was unable to stop it but so were all emperors. The economical knowledge was limited in this time. Diocletian attempted to deal with in with profound reforms but the result was catastrophic and the attempt cancelled during his own life. Constantine probably increased further the tax to meet the needs of the Empire defence.
Fair enough, inflation was not gonna stop anytime soon.
Start a completely meaningless war with the Sassanids under Shapur.
A conflict with the Sassanids was bound to happen. Ammianus Marcellinus says the war was started by Constantine. On the Opposite Theophanes says it was the Persians who started it. Shapur II was certainly determined to re-claim Persians territories lost to Diocletian and take more if possible. Julian was remarkably bad in his management of this conflict. Odd considering how good he was in Gaul. He was the one who attempted to turn this conflict from a defensive one to the conquest of Persia.
You're missing the two major things Constantine did to provoke the war: 1. appointment of Hannibalianus as the border marshal of sort in the East with titular claims to territories of the Sassanids. 2. Sending a formal letter to Shapur putting him on notice that the Christians of his domain were under Rome's protection. This is a huge insult to any sovereign state. Shapur would have been seen as weak to ignore it. If Shapur wasn't tied up with other fronts at the time, he would have invaded immediately rather than waiting till Constantine was dead.
Won many military victories and was a great general. Except theses were all against other Romans.
This is untrue. I fear you are badly informed on his reign.
Name me one major campaign against a foreign enemy that's even close to the scale of his 10 year civil war against the other Tetrarchs. He recovered some Dacia from his Danube campaigns and made a few incurisons across the Rhine, but what half way decent Emperor didn't when posted to those frontiers? None of these campaigns had any lasting effect. Dacia was lost soon again and the Rhine and Danube frontiers were alive and kicking again less then 5 years after his death.
As a conclusion, you should be prudent to not assign all radical change to a single man. The Empire was in an intensive but progressive phase of evolution. Constantine did offered some but he was not alone. Both his predecessors and his successors added their parts.
Was Constantine the man who ultimately doomed the Empire?
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general or commander in any time period), was priveleges: the Comitatenses had more tax breaks and a few more legal rights than the Limitanei did. The decay in quality of the Limitanei didn't begin until after the death of Aetius in 454.
