In A.D. 324 Christianity was established by Constantine as the religion of the State, and in 330 he made Byzantium the capital of the empire. This city on the Thracian Bosporus, founded by Greek colonists in 658 B.C., had early become a great commercial center. After being held successively by the Athenians, Lacedæmonians, and Macedonians, it came into Roman possession, and the new or reconstructed city Byzantium was afterwards called Constantinópolis (“City of Constantine”) and remained the capital of the Eastern Empire of Rome till A. D. 1453.
CONSTANTINE GIVES A NEW IMPETUS
TO CHRISTIANITY
In religion, Constantine showed marks of his former Paganism even after his conversion to Christianity. He was an able general and statesman, whose real character has been obscured by historical excesses, both of panegyric and of detraction, and around whose name, in connection with Christianity, interesting and picturesque legends are associated, like that of the apparition of the Cross and the words (in Greek), “By this sign, conquer.” He died in 337, leaving the empire to confusion and civil war under his sons.
Apart from its effects upon the morals, the new religion greatly and beneficially stirred the mind of the age. Political speculation and discussion were impossible under a despotism, and active minds turned to theology, and soon showed that the intellectual power of the time was to be found within the ranks of Christianity.
Among these early writers and rules of the church, known as the “Christian Fathers,” the following are the chief, Tertullian, Ambrose, Cyprian, Lactantius, Jerome, and Augustine being Latin Fathers; Origen, Gregory, Basil, Chrysostom, and Athanasius being Greek Fathers.
THE IGNOBLE END OF THE
WESTERN EMPIRE
The last Roman Emperor of the West was a child, called, as if in derision, Romulus Augustulus, the one name being that of the city’s mythical founder, the other (“Augustus the little”) a parody of the style of him who organized the empire. Augustulus became nominal ruler in A.D. 475, and in 476 was overthrown by the invasion of some German tribes, of which the chief were the Heruli. Their leader, Odoácer, took the title of “King of Italy,” and the Western Empire came thus ignobly to an end.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ROMAN SWAY
TO THE WORLD
The chief benefits derived by the world from Rome’s imperial sway were the spread of the Greek culture, the transmission of the greatest productions of the Greek mind, and the clear course made for the progress of Christianity.