Originally Posted by
Alexios Komnenos
Manicheism was a "terrorist" religion in Rome, or seen as one, since it was percieved as a deviation of Zoroastrism, but still inherently Persian. During all that time, Persia and Rome were like the US and the USSR. Manicheans were seen as the fifth column, spies and traitors working secretly for Persia.
True that Christians were also persecuted, but mostly for religious and later on, political reasons. The reasons behind the persecution of Manicheism were far more "important", a matter of State.
If I see Constantine becoming something else than Christian, it's backing the other real competitors of Christianity, the cults of Mithra and Sol Invictus.
Anyway, I like to think sometimes how would our world be if it was Constantine, and not Maxentius, who drowned int he battle of the Milvine Bridge, ad portas of Rome. There, Constantine (already backed by Christians, but probably still not a Christian himself, or so says the latest research based on his coinage) faced the pagan Maxentius. Maxentius was possibily betrayed by Christians inside the city of Rome, or maybe just victim of a bad stroke of luck. He fell down and drowned. Pity.
Usually, many people mark the diverging point of a "Christian Europe" in the Battle of the Frigidus between the Christian Theodosius and the pagan Arbogast (along with his puppet Emperor, Eugenius, who was not Pagan but was sympathetic of Arbogast-sponsored Pagan revitalization). But I think that by the reign of Theodosius... it was too late. It's with Constantine that the balance shifted. It's a the Milvine Bridge that the whole course of history was set, on the few meters of rock and brick over the Tiber. Quite the vertigo.