The ascetic Julian does not spare his august relative, whose title to the epithet of “Great” he would have laughed to scorn. He declares that Constantine’s victories over the barbarians were victories pour rire; he represents him as a crazy being in love with the moon, like that half-witted Emperor of the Claudian house, who used to stand at night in the colonnades of his palace and beg the gracious Queen of the Sky to come down to him as she had come down to Endymion. Julian puts into his mouth a grotesque speech in which he makes Constantine claim to have been a greater general than Alexander because he fought with Romans, Germans, and Scythians and not with mere Asiatics; greater than Julius Cæsar or than Augustus because he fought not with bad men but with good; and greater even than Trajan, because it is a finer thing to win back what you have lost than merely to acquire something new. The speech was received with ridicule by the gods, and then Hermes pointedly asked Constantine in the Socratic manner, “How would you define your ideal?” (τὶ καλὸν ἐνόμισας;) “To have great riches,” was Constantine’s reply, “and to be able to give away lavishly, and satisfy all one’s own desires and those of one’s friends.” The answer is significant. Julian, like Constantine’s other critics, keeps harping on the same string. It is the luxury, extravagance, and self-indulgence of the Emperor that he singles out as the most glaring defect of his character and his squandering of the Imperial resources upon effeminate and un-Roman pomps, useless buildings, and greedy and unworthy favourites. Silenus, the bibulous buffoon of Olympus, a moral rebuke from whose lips would be received with shouts of laughter, tells Constantine with mock gravity that he has led a life fit only for a cook or a lady’s-maid (ὀψοποίος καὶ κομμώτρια), and so the episode ends. We cannot doubt that there was quite sufficient of truth in these accusations to make the sharp-witted Greeks of the Empire, for whom Julian principally wrote, thoroughly enjoy his biting sarcasms.
But we must be careful not to push too far any argument based upon this lampoon of Julian or upon the obvious bias of Zosimus. They disclose to us, undoubtedly, the least worthy side of Constantine’s character, viz., a tendency to effeminacy and luxury, and it is morally certain that no one who had given way to his worst passions, as Constantine had done in Rome in the year 326, could ever be quite the same man again. He had on his conscience the assassination of his son and wife. These were but two out of a terribly long list of victims, which included his father-in-law, Maximian; his brother-in-law, Licinius, and Licinius’s young son, Licinianus; another brother-in-law, the Cæsar Bassus; and many more besides. Some fell for reasons of State—“it is only the winner,” as Marcus Antonius had said three centuries before, “who sees length of days”—but there was also the memory, even in the case of some of these, of broken promises and ill-kept faith. Constantine’s Christianity was not of the kind which permeates a man’s every action and influences his entire life; or, if that be claimed for him, it must at least be admitted that there were periods in his career when he suffered most desperate lapses from grace.
On the whole perhaps the general statement of Eutropius, which we have already quoted, that Constantine degenerated somewhat (aliquantum mutavit) as he grew older, fairly meets the case. It is worth while, indeed, to quote the reasoned estimate which this excellent epitomist gives of the Emperor’s character. He says[[132]]:
“At the opening of his reign Constantine was a man who challenged comparison with the best of Princes; at its close he merited comparison with those of average merit and demerit. Both mentally and physically his good points were beyond computation and conspicuous to all. He was passionately set on winning military glory; and in his campaigns good fortune attended him, though not more than his zealous industry deserved.... He was devoted to the arts of peace and to the humanities, and he sought to win from all men their sincere affection by his generosity and his tractability, never losing an opportunity of enriching his friends and adding to their dignity.”[dignity.”]
This estimate agrees in its main particulars with that of Aurelius Victor, who, after speaking of his wonderful good luck in war (mira bellorum felicitate) and his avidity for praise, eulogises his exceptional versatility (commodissimus rebus multis), his zeal for literature and the arts, and the patient ear which he was always ready to lend to any provincial deputation or complaint.
We have spoken of a marked degeneracy observable in Constantine as his life drew to a close. Perhaps the clearest proof of this is to be found in a momentous step taken by him in 335, when he divided the sovereignty of the world among his heirs. Such a partition meant the stultification of his political career, for he thus destroyed at a blow the political unity which he had so laboriously restored out of the wreck of the system of Diocletian.
Eusebius gives us the truth in a single sentence when he says that Constantine treated the Empire for the purposes of this division as though he were apportioning his private patrimony among members of his own family.[[133]] He was much more concerned to make handsome provision for his sons and nephews than to secure the peace and well-being of his subjects. Crispus had now been dead nine years, and the three sons of Constantine and Fausta were still young, the eldest being only just twenty-one. Eusebius tells us how carefully they had been trained. They had been instructed in all martial exercises, and special professors had been engaged to make them proficient in political affairs and a knowledge of the laws. Their religious education had been personally supervised by their father, who zealously sowed “the seeds of godly reverence” and impressed upon them that “a knowledge of God, who is the king of all things, and true piety were more deserving of honour than riches or even than sovereignty itself.” Admirable precepts and Eusebius declares again and again that this “Trinity of Princes”—so he calls them in one place—were models of deportment, modesty, and piety. Unfortunately, we know how emphatically their future careers belied their early promise and the eulogies of the Bishop of Cæsarea. We do not doubt his statement that Constantine spared no effort to educate them aright, but it was most unfortunate that the remarkable success of their father’s political career bore testimony rather to the efficacy of ambition without scruple than of “godly reverence and true piety.”
In this new partition of the Empire the Cæsarship of the West, including Gaul, Britain, and Spain, fell to Constantine, the eldest of the three princes. To the second, Constantius, were assigned the rich provinces of the East, including the seaboard provinces of Asia Minor, together with Syria and Egypt. Constans, the youngest, received as his share Italy, Illyria, and Africa. But there was still a goodly heritage left over, sufficient to make a handsome dowry for a favourite daughter. This was Constantina, eldest of the three daughters of Constantine and Fausta, and she had been married to her half-cousin, Annibalianus, whose father had been the second son of Constantius Chlorus and Theodora. To support worthily the dignity of his new position as son-in-law of Constantine, the new title of Nobilissimus was created in his honour, and a kingdom was made for him out of the provinces of Pontus, Cappadocia, and Lesser Armenia. Gibbon expresses surprise that Annibalianus, “of the whole series of Roman Princes in any age of the Empire,” should have been the only one to bear the name of Rex, and says that he can scarcely admit its accuracy even on the joint authority of Imperial medals and contemporary writers. The explanation is surely to be found in the fact that Pontus, Cappadocia, and Lesser Armenia had for centuries been accustomed to be ruled by a king and that, in creating a new kingdom, Constantine simply retained the title which would be most familiar to the subjects over whom Annibalianus was to rule. Annibalianus was himself a second son: his elder brother, Dalmatius, was raised to the full title of Cæsar and given command over the important provinces of Thrace and Macedonia, with Greece thrown in as a make-weight. The position was a very important one, for it fell to the Cæsar of Thrace to guard the frontier chiefly threatened by the Goths, and we may suppose, therefore, with some probability that Dalmatius—who had been consul in 333—had given proof of military talent.
But to what extent, we may ask, was this a real partition? In what sense were the Cæsars independent of Constantine himself? Eusebius expressly tells us[[134]] that each was provided with a complete establishment—βασιλικὴ παρασκευὴ,—with a court, that is to say, which was in every respect a miniature copy of the court at Constantinople. Each had his own legions, bodyguards, and auxiliaries, with their due complement of officers chosen, we are told, by the Emperor for their knowledge of war and for their loyalty to their chiefs. It is hardly to be supposed that Constantine contemplated retirement: had he done so, he would have retired at the Tricennalia which he celebrated in the following year. In all probability, he did not intend that his supreme power should be one whit abated, though he was content to delegate his administrative authority to others acting under his strict supervision. His Cæsars, in short, were really viceroys, though it is difficult to understand how such an arrangement can have worked harmoniously without some modification of the powers of the four Prætorian præfects. But the division, as we have said, was not made in the interests of the Empire but in the interests of the Princes of the Blood, and it was one which could not possibly endure. As soon as Constantine died chaos and civil war were bound to ensue, and, as a matter of fact, did ensue. For there is no evidence that the Emperor made any arrangement as to who should succeed him on the throne. Constantinople itself lay in the territory assigned to Dalmatius; yet it was entirely unreasonable to suppose that the three sons of Constantine would acquiesce in leaving the capital to the quiet possession of their cousin. The division of the Empire, therefore, in 335 carried with it the early ripening seeds of civil war, bloodshed, and anarchy. If the system of Diocletian had proved unworkable, because it took no account of the natural desire of a son to succeed his father, the system of Constantine was even worse. It was absolutely certain that of the five heirs the three sons would combine against the two cousins, whom they would regard as interlopers, and that then the three brothers would quarrel among themselves, until only one was left.
Constantine’s reign was now hastening to its end. In 336 he celebrated his Tricennalia, and his courtiers would not fail to remind him that he alone, of all the successors of the great Augustus, had borne such length of days in his left hand and such glory in his right. The principal event of the festival seems to have been the dedication at Jerusalem of the sumptuous Church of the Anastasis on the site of the Holy Sepulchre. As we have seen in another chapter, the year was one of acute religious contention, rendered specially memorable by the awe-inspiring death of Arius, and the Emperor’s last months of life must have been embittered by the thought that, despite all his efforts, religious unity within the Church seemed as far as ever from realisation.