Roman Empire
Constantine I AD 307-337
BI Nummus
Obverse: laureate head right.
Reverse: Military campgate with two turrets and star above.
A military camp or bivouac is a
semi-permanent facility for the lodging of an army. Camps are erected when a
military force travels away from a major installation or fort during training or
operations, and often have the form of large campsites. In the Roman era the
military camp had highly stylized parameters and served an entire legion.
Archaeological investigations have revealed many details of these Roman camps at
sites such as Vindolanda (England) and Raedykes (Scotland).
Constantine I 'The Great' - Roman Emperor:
307-337 A.D.
Caesar (Recognized): 306-309 A.D. | Filius Augustorum (Recognized): 309-310 A.D.
| Augustus (Self-Proclaimed): 307-310 A.D. | Augustus (Recognized): 310-337 A.D.
|
| Son of Constantius I 'Chlorus' and Helena | Step-son of Theodora | Husband of
Minervina and Fausta | Father (by Minervina) of Crispus and (by Fausta) of
Constantine II, Constantius II, Constans, Constantina (wife of Hanniballianus &
Constantius Gallus) and Helena the Younger (wife of Julian II) | Son-in-law of
Maximian and Eutropia | Brother-in-law of Maxentius | Half-brother of Constantia
(w. of Licinius I) | Half-uncle of Delmatius, Hanniballianus, Constantius
Gallus, Julian II, Licinius II and Nepotian | Grandfather of Constantia (wife of
Gratian) |
Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus;
27 February c. 272 AD - 22 May 337 AD), also known as Constantine I or Saint
Constantine (in the Orthodox Church as Saint Constantine the Great,
Equal-to-the-Apostles), was a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD. Constantine was
the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman army officer, and his consort
Helena. His father became Caesar, the deputy emperor in the west in 293 AD.
Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military
tribune under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius. In 305, Constantius was
raised to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was
recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia (Britain). Acclaimed as
emperor by the army at Eboracum (modern-day York) after his father's death in
306 AD, Constantine emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against the
emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by
324 AD.
As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and
military reforms to strengthen the empire. The government was restructured and
civil and military authority separated. A new gold coin, the solidus, was
introduced to combat inflation. It would become the standard for Byzantine and
European currencies for more than a thousand years. The first Roman emperor to
claim conversion to Christianity, Constantine played an influential role in the
proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which decreed tolerance for
Christianity in the empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at
which the Nicene Creed was professed by Christians. In military matters, the
Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile field units and garrison
soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions.
Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman
frontiers-the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians-even
resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the
Third Century.
The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman
Empire. He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city
Constantinople after himself (the laudatory epithet of "New Rome" came later,
and was never an official title). It would later become the capital of the
Empire for over one thousand years; for which reason the later Eastern Empire
would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire. His more immediate political
legacy was that, in leaving the empire to his sons, he replaced Diocletian's
tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession. His reputation flourished
during the lifetime of his children and centuries after his reign. The medieval
church upheld him as a paragon of virtue while secular rulers invoked him as a
prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and
identity. Beginning with the Renaissance, there were more critical appraisals of
his reign due to the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources. Critics
portrayed him as a tyrant. Trends in modern and recent scholarship attempted to
balance the extremes of previous scholarship.
Constantine is a significant figure in the history of Christianity. The Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus' tomb
in Jerusalem, became the holiest place in Christendom. The Papal claim to
temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the supposed Donation of
Constantine. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox, Byzantine
Catholics, and Anglicans.
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