Original subtitles

Previously on "Rome, rise and fall of an empire"...

Faced with barbarians at his doorstep, usurpers on the frontiers,

and rebellious subjects in Rome itself,

the third-century emperor Aurelian turns to the soldiers' own god for help

and manages to restore and unite the broken empire.

But before his work can take root, he is assassinated, leaving the empire at risk once again.

Now:

In the troubled days of the late Roman empire, many rulers vie for power.

From this chaos, one man emerges, eliminating his rivals and uniting the empire under the sign of a new god.

His name is Constantine, and he will stop at nothing to save a dying empire.

ROME RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

Third-century Rome is wracked by internal strife and barbarian invasions.

But by 295 A.D., a powerful new emperor has emerged as the empire's savior.

His name is Diocletian.

What Diocletian has chosen to do addresses a number of the concerns

and a number of the challenges the empire faced in the third century.

One element that Diocletian brings in is a redefinition of the way frontiers were to be defended.

Emperor Diocletian creates a mobile imperial army,

always available to send reinforcements to the vulnerable frontier.

One of his most capable imperial soldiers is Constantine, only 17 years old.

He was a distinguished soldier, that is to say that he was very courageous in battle

and that he performed all sorts of feats of derring-do.

These early signs of greatness in Constantine have not escaped the notice of emperor Diocletian.

Diocletian keeps the young soldier close at hand,

claiming a desire to groom Constantine for a position of power within the empire.

Diocletian's other major reform is to divide the empire between 4 co-emperors,

one each in Illyricum and Italy, while Constantine's father rules from Gaul.

Diocletian himself governs from Nicomedia in Asia minor.

But Diocletian knows how easily his chosen co-emperors could turn on him.

To prevent this, he keeps their sons, including Constantine, in his court,

where they are trained as master soldiers under his watchful eye.

Constantine was sent off to the courts of Diocletian

to obtain the proper education for a member of the upper class,

a literary education, philosophical education.

He learned Greek, which he wouldn't have known, but most important, he had a military education.

But Constantine's life in court is anything but comfortable.

For as a father figure and an emperor, Diocletian rules with an iron fist.

He begins to rule increasingly by issuing a whole series of extremely heavily moralizing edicts,

telling people what to do, telling them how to be better citizens, and so forth.

Diocletian insists that everyone at court- including Constantine-make regular sacrifices,

for above all, Diocletian believes unity in the empire comes from appeasing Rome's pagan gods.

But another religion is gathering many converts, putting Diocletian's plans at risk.

Its followers worship the son of a new god-Jesus Christ.

The church had not only grown numerically, but it had also grown quite wealthy.

It had come to control large buildings.

It was in many ways a thriving institution within the Roman empire.

An institution that Diocletian believes is a threat to Rome.

He was extremely concerned that the health of the state and that the health of Rome itself

was tied up with Roman religion, and christians were a threat to that.

Christians who had been tolerated for nearly 40 years

were clearly a large percentage of the population in the big cities,

and it's clear that there were christians in the army and there were christians in the imperial court.

Diocletian begins in his own imperial army,

where he requires that all soldiers make sacrifices to the gods of Rome, though many christians refuse.

Diocletian believed that anything that interfered with the cultivation of Rome's protecting gods

was a genuine threat to the state and could destroy the state, could destroy the state from within.

This is the way he looked upon christians in the army.

Punishment for rejecting the emperor's edict is death,

a brutality that Constantine, as a soldier in Diocletian's army, is forced to witness.

Constantine grows troubled by the fear and discord born of Diocletian's reforms.

It is a discord that will soon spread beyond the army.

In 303 A.D., emperor Diocletian issues an edict against all christians

that becomes known as "The great persecution".

As soon as the persecution edict was issued,

it unleashed what is virtually a culture of administrative cruelty.

Roman officials, in carrying out the edict when they met resistance,

were expected to bring the defendants to court and to torture them for evidence

and try to force them to officially and publicly give up their christianity.

The great persecution marks the beginning of what the christians call "The era of martyrs".

Any Christian who proclaims his faith in public is subject to death.

In many ways, Diocletian's persecution brought previous persecutions way farther.

It's probably the closest Roman emperor who came to destroying the entire system.

That is probably why so many martyrs commemorated by the Christian church

are said to have suffered for Christ during Diocletian's reign.

Despite his reservations about the persecutions,

Constantine must stay on good terms with the man who will likely determine his future.

But when Diocletian unexpectedly falls ill and is forced to retire,

Constantine is surprised to find himself shut out of the succession plan.

Diocletian, it seems, understood that Constantine represented something of a threat.

Constantine had campaigned with Diocletian

and had done a reasonably good job during these campaigns.

We're told that later in his life, Diocletian actually had imprisoned Constantine in his court

to prevent Constantine from going to his father's court and establishing a relationship with his father's army.

But now, with nothing left to keep him in the east,

Constantine resolves to grab hold of his destiny and finally escape Diocletian's grasp.

Constantine travels from Nicomedia to Boulogne, Gaul, to meet his father, who now rules Spain, Gaul, and Britain.

Constantine's father, emperor Constantius, is by now old, unwell,

and troubled by the extended absence of a son he longs for.

But in 305 A.D., Constantine is finally united with his father,

a man more like him in nature than Diocletian ever was.

Constantius, as far as we can tell in the west, was a good deal more relaxed in his approach to government,

and he certainly found that it was quite possible to ignore some of the things that Diocletian told him to do.

Constantine finds in his father a more compassionate leader,

and Constantius finds his son has grown into the kind of man who could one day take his place on the throne.

When emperor Diocletian retires in 305 A.D.,

Constantine is finally released from his controlling grip and free to join his aging father Constantius in the west.

One of Rome's four co-emperors, Constantius rules over Spain, Gaul, and Britain-now threatened by barbarian picts.

In 305 A.D., he and Constantine travel from Boulogne to Britain to put down the rebellion.

The picts are a ferocious tribe in present-day Scotland that has long plagued Roman britain.

In battle, these bloodthirsty barbarians present a serious challenge for Constantine and his father.

These barbarian neighbors in the fourth century are much better organized than they had been in previous generations.

The Roman armies faced far more difficult campaigns in Europe than they previously had.

To make matters worse, emperor Constantius' health is in serious decline.

The ailing emperor- he clearly was sick by the time he had come with his son to face the danger of the picti,

he had gone onto this campaign-

is yet another indication of how serious the threat was.

With Constantius' health in question, it is up to Constantine to lead his father's troops and secure their allegiance in battle.

When Constantine rejoined his father in the west,

Constantius made sure that he began to assume a place in the higher command echelons,

that he joined the army on campaign, that the soldiers came to know him,

and that he would actually have a natural place within the administration of the western empire.

This had always been Constantius' hope for him.

With his military prowess, Constantine wins the loyalty of the army,

but the victory cannot save his father's life.

In the end, Constantine will lose the father he has only just come to know.

When his father died, the army thought enough of Constantine that they immediately claimed him emperor.

In a way, this is a natural occurrence.

It was an army that knew Constantine's father,

respected Constantine's father, and now knew the son as well.

They understood in a sense what they were getting with Constantine.

In an empire where the death of a ruler too frequently leads to violent coups and ambitious plays for power,

Constantine's succession is smooth and bloodless.

But when barbarian Franks attack Gaul in 306 A.D., Constantine faces his first challenge as emperor.

He heads south from Britain to meet them in battle.

The Franks clearly understood the death of Constantius was an opportunity,

and an opportunity that they could take advantage of.

Constantine, though, demonstrated a great capacity as a commander and beat back this initial incursion.

As a new emperor, Constantine wastes no time proving his worth.

The emperor was expected to be in personal command of the army

and was very often expected to be in command in the front rank.

Constantine seemed himself to have been a very capable front line soldier.

He's often seen to be leading cavalry charges in his battle.

He's a very able tactician.

He is also wise and knows that to establish his power, he must win the trust of the populace as well.

The captured frankish leaders provide the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Constantine parades the barbarian captives in the streets of Trier,

in modern-day Germany, to show his people he will protect them.

Constantine's well aware that the primary objective of any emperor at this point,

if he wants to gain and hold power, is to fight with barbarians, so Constantine does this in grand fashion.

Constantine undertakes campaigns against the Franks,

and we have evidence that he captured a couple of frankish kings

whom he then put on display in the arena for the delight of the gallic masses.

Ultimately, the barbarians will be thrown to the beasts,

sending a clear message that Constantine will not tolerate those who threaten the Roman empire.

But in 306 A.D., the empire is threatened from within

when a usurper named Maxentius seizes power in Rome,

declaring himself emperor and taking control of most of Italy and north Africa.

The usurper Maxentius wins support by promising to cut taxes and provide free grain to the people of Rome.

Like Constantine, he is the son of a former co-emperor.

Constantine was proclaimed emperor by the troops in July of 306,

and Maxentius, who's sitting in Rome, is thinking, well, he's an emperor, I want to be emperor, too.

And so what happens is at the end of 306, he's proclaimed emperor.

But unlike Constantine's, Maxentius' claim to the throne is not legitimate.

Maxentius defeats, imprisons, and eventually murders the rightful co-emperor of Italy.

And soon, the people of Rome will learn his promises are nothing but lies.

In 311 A.D., the romans revolt when the free grain and tax cuts are only offered to the wealthy.

Ordinary citizens must steal what they can to survive.

Maxentius is not a popular leader.

He was a particularly ruthless leader. He put down revolts very bloodily.

There were rumors going around that he was seducing senators' daughters.

There were problems with the grain supply.

He was taxing people, which- they'd never been taxed before in Italy.

The desperate uprising of Rome's oppressed masses offers an unexpected opportunity for Constantine.

Hoping to save the people of Rome and expand his own reach into Italy,

Constantine travels from Gaul to Milan to strike a deal with another co-emperor, Licinius.

It is a deal to consolidate power.

To seal their alliance, Licinius is betrothed to Constantine's sister.

Constantine played every game in the book.

He was an extremely ambitious person

and there was no avenue to power that he was going to leave open.

That meant that in his early years,

he was willing to do all sorts of manipulations to try to continue to climb the ladder.

Together, Licinius and Constantine trick their co-emperors in the east

into believing their intentions are only to oust Maxentius.

Constantine looks to take advantage of the situation

and starts calling Maxentius an illegitimate emperor and a usurper.

Constantine and his supporters justify an invasion against Maxentius

as a necessary removal of a tyrant from the city of Rome.

But once Rome is secure, Constantine and Licinius will set their sights on seizing control of the entire empire.

In 306 A.D., when the usurper Maxentius seizes power in Rome,

Constantine strikes an alliance with his equally ambitious co-emperor Licinius

to destroy Maxentius and divide the empire between them.

While Licinius is occupied with defending the empire's northern border from barbarian invaders,

Constantine marches on Rome, laying siege to the imperial city where Maxentius hides.

Within the walls of Rome, the devout pagan Maxentius will base his strategy on the sheep entrails read by his priest.

When it came time to fight a battle, Maxentius was interested in having some sort of divine protection,

and he followed the procedures that any good Roman emperor would have followed in order to seek that protection.

But desperate to determine if he should wait Constantine out or face him in battle,

Maxentius also seeks guidance from the words of the sybilline prophecies.

One of the sources that Maxentius turned to were the sibylline oracles.

These were books of prophecies that were kept by Roman priestly colleges,

and these priests would then investigate certain questions and pull out an oracle.

This is an oracle in which he's told that an enemy of Rome will die today.

For this reason, it seems Maxentius changes his plan and makes a decision that he won't wait Constantine out.

He'll go out and meet Constantine in battle.

Assuming that Constantine is the enemy of Rome referred to by the oracle, Maxentius prepares his army for war.

Meanwhile, just outside of Rome, Constantine prepares to meet Maxentius on the battlefield.

Knowing his troops will be severely outnumbered, Constantine grows uneasy.

Constantine began to get very concerned about the strength of his forces,

and we're told he prayed that some god would help him and received a vision in response.

This is interpreted by Constantine as a Christian vision.

The fourth-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea records what is supposed to have happened,

as recounted to him by Constantine himself.

"Around noontime, when the day was already beginning to decline,

he saw before him in the sky the sign of a cross of light."

"He said it was above the sun, and it bore the inscription "conquer by this."

What he claims to have seen was a symbol that looked like a cross with a sort of "p" form at the top of it;

That is the letters "chi" and "rho" that would have formed the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek.

And there are some sources that claim that he also heard a voice at the same time

that said that he would conquer by this sign.

Constantine orders his soldiers to place the chi-rho on their shields and standards,

transforming the Christian symbol from an object of persecution to one of honor.

Constantine assumed a new god, or a god that had formerly been rejected,

as his divine force, as his victory power.

By taking on the Christian god, the god that had been subjected to persecution by former emperors,

Constantine was therefore doing something quite revolutionary.

With his conversion, Constantine turns his impending battle with the pagan Maxentius into a test of religions.

Constantine meets Maxentius at the Milvian bridge,

which, passing over the Tiber river, is the only obstacle between Constantine and an open road to Rome.

Though grossly outnumbered by Maxentius,

Constantine and his army, now marked by the Christian chi-rho, ride into battle with courage.

The battle of Milvian bridge is a significant battle.

The forces are arrayed against each other,

and despite a numerical advantage, Maxentius' forces are pushed back by Constantine towards the river.

It is at the banks of the Tiber that Maxentius' fate is sealed.

Constantine forced Maxentius to give battle with the Tiber at his back.

It was a terrible position to be in,

and as Constantine's force pressed in on his own, Maxentius' army fell apart.

With no other options, the usurper Maxentius flees with his army, attempting to swim across the Tiber river to Rome.

But Maxentius, with his heavy armor weighing him down, does not survive the swim.

Days later, his bloated and deformed body is pulled from the Tiber,

final proof that the usurper's regime has fallen.

Constantine has won a significant victory at Milvian bridge

that eliminates the opposition of Maxentius and even more significantly,

it gives Constantine control of the full half of the empire, including the wealthy province of Italy.

Maxentius' fate is a powerful reminder of Constantine's strength and of what befalls those who dare to oppose him.

Constantine went out of his way to dredge his body out just so they could parade his head through Rome

and then send it to north Africa to demonstrate that this previous emperor was dead and Constantine had now taken over.

His victory over Maxentius also proves to Constantine

that the Christian god is more powerful than the pagan gods of his enemy.

With the defeat of Maxentius, all of the western empire belongs to Constantine.

As agreed, he leaves the east for Licinius to take.

They meet in Milan, where Constantine and Licinius confirm their mutual support through marriage, as planned.

Constantine decides to bind himself to Licinius or bind Licinius to his cause.

He takes one of his half-sisters, Constantia, and marries her to Licinius,

who recognizes that this is the natural way of making an alliance.

Now, to begin with, the marriage itself actually marks the point at which the two,

Constantine on one hand and Licinius on the other, agreed on the policies.

One of these policies reflects Constantine's recent adoption of christianity.

The two emperors consulted on how they would carve up power between them,

and one element in this decision was to extend toleration for christianity throughout the whole empire.

Licinius was not a Christian himself, although he agreed with Constantine to stop persecution throughout the empire.

For now, such agreements come easily, but an alliance born of ambition is fragile,

and Constantine must recognize that his sole co-emperor is also his greatest rival.

After forming an alliance with emperor Licinius, Constantine defeats the usurper Maxentius in Italy.

Now convinced that the Christian god granted this victory, Constantine is determined to show his appreciation.

For the first time in ten years, christians throughout the empire are able to worship freely,

and for the first time ever, their faith is shared by the emperor.

Constantine had converted to christianity.

He had embraced quite seriously the task of defending the Christian church.

His family, including his son and heir, Crispus, converts as well.

Constantine not only extended toleration to the Christian church,

but in the territory he controlled, he favored christians very thoroughly.

In 313 A.D., Constantine and Licinius jointly issue the edict of Milan, recorded by the fourth-century author Lactantius:

We grant both to christians and to everyone freedom to follow whatever religion they want to,

so whatever divinity there is in heaven may be appeased and made favorable to us

and to all who are set under our power.

But in the years that follow, Constantine's relationship with Licinius deteriorates.

As Licinius battles his way to dominance in the east, his hunger for power grows.

So Licinius goes off and does his own thing, as it were, in the east.

But Constantine doesn't trust him, and there are growing tensions between the two.

After 9 years of shared rule, both emperors covet control over the entire empire.

It is a rivalry that will quickly drive Rome toward civil war.

In the east, christians soon bear the brunt of the growing conflict.

As supporters of the Christian emperor Constantine, they are now Licinius' greatest threat.

They pay a heavy price.

Ultimately, one of the responses was a renewal of persecution,

and the reason for that, of course, was very simple: Constantine was known to be a defender of christians,

and Christian subjects of Licinius could look like a fifth column,

could look like enemies in Licinius' own territories.

So he chooses to persecute them.

As the churches and holy books go up in flames, so does the old alliance between Licinius and Constantine.

For Constantine, now a seasoned ruler of middle years,

the persecution of christians is just the excuse he needs to attack Licinius.

He quickly orders his troops to march on his eastern rival.

Constantine was an especially effective cavalry leader,

who often finds himself at the head of the cavalry moving around the flanks of his enemy.

He certainly does this to Licinius.

At Constantine's side is his able son and heir, Crispus, who proves his worth in battle as well.

Together, they drive Licinius eastward.

From Adrianople, Constantine and Crispus pursue Licinius to Byzantium, and on to Chrysopolis, where he makes his final stand.

There, in 324 A.D., with the entire empire at stake, Constantine and Crispus face Licinius side by side.

Crispus inherited his father's ability on the battlefield. Crispus was another military genius.

Without Crispus' help, the success against Licinius may never have happened.

Constantine and Crispus annihilate Licinius' army, fighting once more under the banner of the Christian god.

The battle of Chrysopolis was really over before it began.

Constantine was able to bring his own troops into the territory of Licinius without any kind of effective resistance.

His own army had been victorious now easily in several battles.

Licinius' own confidence seems to have been minimal.

And in the final battle, their victory wins Constantine sole rulership of the entire empire.

Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea:

"The eastern regions were united with those of the west,

and the whole body of the Roman empire was graced by a single and supreme ruler.

Imprisoned in Nicomedia, Licinius will face a brutal punishment.

The only witness is his beloved wife, the sister of Constantine.

His relationship with Licinius is interesting.

Licinius is technically, remember, his brother-in-law. Licinius' wife pleads for mercy for her husband.

For a while, Constantine seems to grant that sort of clemency.

They share a meal, Licinius is sent into exile, then he's executed.

Despite his wife's pleas, Licinius' execution is swift and bloody,

making clear that Constantine shows no mercy, even to members of his family.

With the elimination of Licinius, Constantine now rules the entire unified empire

and intends to make his loyal son Crispus a junior emperor in the west.

As co-emperor, Crispus shares in his father's plans for a new Christian capital in the east,

to be located at Byzantium.

After Constantine conquered the entire empire, he wanted to create a brand new city in his own name.

And he did-Constantinople.

He chose a strategic location halfway between the most important frontiers

and he deliberately chose to create a new city that would have no association with his pagan predecessors.

It was a city that had no rival traditions.

It was a Christian city.

But even as his greatest dreams come to fruition,

trouble brews among those closest to Constantine's heart: His wife Fausta and son Crispus.

Crispus was the son of Constantine's first wife.

His last 3 sons were the sons of his second wife, Fausta.

And there can't help but have been some kind of tension between the two groups,

especially on Fausta's side because she would clearly want her sons to get what's coming to them

but, of course, Crispus is in the way.

Jealous that Crispus has been granted power in the west,

Fausta is determined to secure even greater power for her sons, no matter what the cost.

With his son Crispus, Constantine defeats his last rival, Licinius,

and finally unites the empire under his new Christian faith.

But Constantine's unity is soon threatened as riots break out over religious differences within the Christian church.

The situation he finds among christians in the eastern empire is one of great turmoil.

There is a controversy raging about the nature of Christ

that is also tied up with the question of who ought to have authority in the eastern church.

Rival bishops incite mob attacks against other christians with opposing beliefs.

It is a violence not seen since the days of persecution over 20 years earlier.

Desperate for a resolution, Constantine demands the church officials put an end to the bloody controversy.

So he calls together a council of over 300 bishops and has them meet at a city called Nicea.

He charges them with arriving at a single definition of what christians believe.

The result is The nicene creed,

a statement of faith that has survived over 1,600 years

and is still recited today in Christian churches around the world.

We believe in one god, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;

and in one lord Jesus Christ, the son of God, the only-begotten of the Father."

But it's a definition of Christian belief that not everyone can agree with.

And this stores up a great deal of trouble for the future

because it means that rival christians, rival Christian beliefs,

are constantly jockeying for imperial favor throughout the rest of the century.

And it means that emperors are regularly distracted from other business of government

by trying to manage the rivalries among different christians and different Christian bishops.

Perhaps it is this distraction that blinds Constantine to a rivalry much closer to his heart.

In 326 A.D., Constantine's wife Fausta attacks the integrity of his son, Crispus.

Crispus was Constantine's eldest son from an early marriage,

and he did not have the same mother as his half-brothers had.

And it's quite clear that he was in rivalry, strong rivalry, with his 3 younger half-brothers.

As part of an elaborate plot, Fausta delivers shocking news, claiming that Crispus has tried to seduce her.

Things don't go very well for Crispus at all.

Fausta was eager to get Crispus out of the way,

so her legitimate sons could succeed without threat from Crispus.

Constantine, unable to see that it is his wife, not his son, who has betrayed him,

orders Crispus to be prepared for execution.

Imprisoned in distant Pola- modern-day Croatia- Crispus insists on his innocence.

Though his cries fall on deaf ears, he has an advocate in Constantine's court.

Constantine received advice from his own mother Helena

that perhaps it was fausta herself who had engineered this little plot,

had pretended to be violated or to have been set upon by Crispus

in order that she, Fausta, could promote the interests of her own sons.

Constantine had certainly acted too hastily and was aware of that.

Fausta pays for her treachery with her life,

but Constantine's realization comes too late for Crispus.

The prison guards have already received their orders to execute the royal son.

What exactly happened we don't know.

But it was a terrible blow to the Roman empire that Crispus was sacrificed on the altar of history.

And Constantine is left only with a devastated conscience.

As a sort of penance, Constantine spends the last years of his life

building churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Constantinople, and Rome.

Among the most magnificent of these churches is one built on the site thought to be St. Peter's tomb in Rome,

a place of pilgrimage for christians to this day.

It is for his churches that Constantine is better known.

That in itself is an indication of both of his pro-Christian policies and of the attachment to the Christian faith.

Refusing to abandon this faith despite its ongoing disputes,

Constantine directs the construction of the glorious basilica of St. Peter himself.

It's an extraordinary explosion of architecture in a way that did not exist before in the Roman empire,

and the variety of plans could be explained both by the variety of architects

that Constantine involved in this and most likely by his own ideas.

He was involved in almost every project there,

and he was a man that actually had his own ideas about what's going on.

Constantine can only hope that this devotion at the end of his life will erase a multitude of sins...

For Constantine knows that his day of reckoning is not far off.

Old, and unwell, he finally requests baptism in 337 A.D.

It would make sense for Constantine to delay his baptism because emperors had a dangerous and dirty job,

and sometimes they had to do difficult and sinful things as a consequence of their job.

To delay baptism until the end of one's life made some sense.

Those dangerous and dirty and sinful things that one had to do could be washed away before you die.

Haunted by these sins, Constantine wants nothing more

than to die with a clean conscience, purified by the waters of baptism.

By the end of his life, Constantine is something of a sort of living visionary

who, at the point when he's baptized, wanted to take off his imperial robes and live ever thereafter as a sort of priest.

At the end of his life, Constantine finally finds peace in the faith he wrote about throughout his life.

I know that I am in the true sense blessed,

that now I have been shown worthy of immortal life, that now I have received divine light.

Constantine dies in may of 337 A.D. after more than 30 years of rule.

Constantine was tremendously successful as an emperor, tremendously successful as a military leader.

This was a man who clawed his way into power using raw ambition,

and at every turn, he used that same ambition in order to win the day.

Throughout his life, Constantine fights to keep the fragile empire whole,

unified under his new religion, but nothing, not even faith, can save it now.

Next on "Rome, Rise and fall of an empire".

In the late fourth century, the Roman empire is forced to use barbarian mercenaries to defend its borders.

But when one barbarian rises to the rank of general, ethnic hatred explodes, threatening to tear the empire apart.