Death of Constantine – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 18 Part 2

Constantine died in Nicomedia in 337 after a short illness.  He had lived to 64, a good age for the time. And he had one of the longest reigns in the history of the empire.  His death came just after he had celebrated his thirtieth year as emperor, something only Augustus had previously achieved.  It was fitting that he was buried in Constantinople, the city he founded.

Lars Bronworth started his 12 Byzantine Emperors podcast series with Diocletian, but Constantine is usually seen as the founder of the Byzantine empire.   This is a reasonable enough thing to do.  There really was no longer anything particularly Roman about the political entity Constantine had ruled and the move of the capital to the east marks a clear change of focus and direction.  To describe this as a new empire with a new name fits well enough and helps us to make sense of the complexities of this period.  But the people at the time would not have been aware of this change.  A new emperor could just as easily have moved the capital back to Rome after all.  The reign of Constantine is one of those turning points that only become clear later.

In the meantime, the people on the ground had more compelling matters on their mind.

The principle question would probably be how the post Constantine government was going to work.  Was Constantine’s idea of handing over to five (count them) five successors going to work?

Constantine had died in Nicomedia in the jurisidiction of Constantius, who had got the best provinces in the will.  He was in charge of the East which was where the money was.  It was also where the action was because a major war with Persia was underway.

Dalmatius and Hannibalanus were in Constantinople but could not establish their authority.  They were quickly seized by supporters of Constantius.  When he arrived in the city with his father’s body he quickly ordered them to be killed along with their family.  This had the effect of simplifying the somewhat complex dynastic situation, which is good if you are trying to give a clear account of the time.  But the aim wasn’t to make life easier for future amateur historian. It eliminated possible rivals from the succession.

This meant that the empire was now divided between the three sons of Constantine all of whom were extremely young.  The potential for problems was obvious and gives us one of those laugh out loud quotes you come across from time to time in Decline and Fall.

After the partition of the empire, three years had scarcely elapsed before the sons of Constantine seemed impatient to convince mankind that they were incapable of contenting themselves with the dominions which they were unqualified to govern.    

 People just don’t write like that anymore.   It is both funny and accurate.

The oldest son was Constantine II who had been allocated Britain, Spain and France.  This was a large chunk of the empire in terms of area and came with some pretty handy legions used to fighting on the perilous German and Scottish borders.  But it was a relatively undeveloped and non-prestigious portion.

Constans got Italy and Africa and a big chunk of the Danube border.  He also acquired most of the big chunk of what Dalmatius was supposed to have got in the Balkans.  So he had a better patch than his older brother Constantine.  But Constans wasn’t yet an adult, so Constantine was his legal guardian.  This set the stage for a classic bit of sibling rivalry which they soon provided by the inevitable disagreements about how big their share of the imperial pie was.  They obviously wanted to sort it out amicably and tried rearranging their borders.  But they couldn’t find a settlement that suited both of them – though I dare say the views of the advisers around Constans probably played a fairly big role too.  In the end Constantine ended up invading Italy to sort it out by force.

He was following the pattern of his father and might well have succeeded, but by chance he happened to get caught up in a skirmish where he was killed.  His one time supporters transferred their allegiance easily to that of his brother, so at a stroke and with relatively little fighting Constans became the master of two thirds of the empire.  His precise age is uncertain, but he was probably about 15.  I imagine that he was simply a figurehead at first.

He was to rule for 13 years despite his youth making him far from ready for the job.  Constans as the youngest of the three sons of Constantine would have had the least opportunity to benefit from any training from his father.  Nobody else would have dared to help the young prince with the kind of advice you badly need to be an autocrat.  But whatever the reasons, and however excusable given that he hardly chose to be who he was, Constans got a bad press as a ruler.  He was vigorous enough but was prone to favouritism and cruelty.

His homosexuality may have been a problem too.  Christianity was continuing to increase its influence and it may be that homosexuality was already starting to be considered to be sinful in its own right.  But even prior to this Roman attitudes to sexuality were not as liberal as they sometimes seem.  Cavorting about with a bunch of barbarian pretty boys selected from some prisoners of war -as Constans did – was not behaviour consistent with the dignity of an emperor of Rome.

But nonetheless it isn’t very likely that his overthrow was down to public disapproval so much as to the ambition of one of his generals, Magnentius.  I think the most likely explanation of events is that Magnentius had been used to getting his own way with the youthful fop.  As Constans approached his thirties he started taking more interest in the actual day to day running of the empire, threatening the position of Magnentius.

Magnentius was himself a barbarian who had risen to be in charge of the emperor’s personal bodyguard.  These were now known as the Jovians and Herculeans in a nod to the distant reigns of Diocletian and Maxentius.  His co-conspirator was Marcellinus who was in charge of the money – a key factor in ensuring a successful regime change attempt.  It was possible to put forward many convincing arguments why the degenerate Constans should be replaced by the fine and upstanding  soldier Magnentius.  The troops would no doubt be sympathetic.  But hard cash tends to be even more persuasive.

The coup was instigated at a birthday party for the son of Marcellinus in the city of Autun.  All the top people from the court were there.  The wine flowed freely and there was plenty of it.  Late, when everyone was suitably impressionable, Magnentius appeared in the robes and purple of an emperor.  As prearranged, some of those in the know hailed him as the new Augustus and in the heat of the moment everyone joined in.

By dawn, the guards had sworn to support him and the city of Autun was in his hands as was the treasury.  Constans was nearby hunting in a forest with his ‘friends’.  He got wind of what was going on and wisely fled.  But it was too late.  He was overtaken by some light cavalry and killed.  With his death there was no longer any point in anybody standing up to Magnentius and he rapidly took control of the western half of the empire.  A massive donative to reward the lack of loyalty of the troops didn’t do any harm to his position either.

But while the population of the provinces had no way to resist the new regime, nor any particular motive to do so, this wasn’t true of the general of the forces defending the Danube.  He had to make a choice of which horse to back.  He was an oldish guy called Vetranio who seems to have been popular and not particularly ambitious.   These two facts may well have been related.  Consider the position he was in.

Had he come out in support of Magnentius he might have been able to keep his position, though there was a good chance that Magnentius would have rapidly replaced him with someone he knew and trusted.  If he had supported Constantius against Magnentius he would have instantly been at war against Magnentius who had a bigger army.  Whether or not Constantius would be able to send much support to Vetranio was questionable.  Indeed it was not a foregone conclusion that Constantius would not simply recognise Magnentius.

Just to make his position even harder to cope with, his troops were up for a bit of rebellion.  It had been a long time since donatives had been in fashion, so they probably saw an opportunity for a spot of pocket filling.  And then Constantina turns up.  She was the daughter of Constantine and the widow of Hannibalanus – one of the cousins of the sons of Constantine killed by the sons of Constantine.

Having missed out on one shot at becoming an empress she spotted another.  She offered to make Vetranio an emperor.  It wasn’t the most solid basis for a legitimate reign – especially with an actual son of Constantine not only available but already actually reigning – but it was obviously better than that of Magnentius.  With Constantius’ sister on board there was a good chance of a reconciliation with Constantius himself.  So Vetranio became an emperor largely as a result of the actions of other people.  He allied himself with Magnentius but was also keen to open negotiations with Constantius.  You get the impression his heart wasn’t really in this whole rebellion thing.

All eyes were now on Constantius.  His main preoccupation up to that point had been the Persians which we’ll see wasn’t showing him in a great light.  How would he cope with this crisis?  Negotiations opened at Heraclea in Thrace.  Magnentius was clearly the major threat.  He had the most troops, and it was his initiative that had created the situation.  His negotiating position was straight forward.  He was in charge in the West and simply wanted mutual recognition.  That the legions of the West could conquer the whole empire if they chose was not really in doubt.  After all, that was exactly what Constantine himself had done.   Constantius asked to sleep on the matter.

Overnight he had a dream in which his father appeared to him and told him that his duty was to avenge his brother.  The message was sent back to Magnentius via one of his three emissaries. The other two were thrown into prison to indicate that his regime was not considered legitimate.  At a time like this when hearts and minds are important, Constantius was showing a good appreciation of the situation.  If he was to fight he needed every advantage he could muster, and portraying himself as a loyal son and an avenger of his murdered brother played well with the public and with the sympathies of the troops.

But Vetranio was a different case.  Could he be won over?  Feelers were sent out and the overtures from the camp of Constantius were accepted.  Vetranio would be recognised as a co-emperor.  This split the opposition, which was neat work.  It was arranged to initiate the alliance in the city of Sardica.  Vetranio’s 20,000 horsemen and even more infantry vastly outnumbered the troops of the emperor.  But events did not pan out as might be expected. A large scaffold had been erected for the leaders to address the troops from.  Constantius, given his imperial seniority, was on first.  He had prepared well and key individuals in the Danube legions had been won over to his cause beforehand.

He started by attacking his brother’s murderer.  He then went on to remind them of the greatness of Constantine.  His backers in the crowd started to salute him as the true emperor.  Their enthusiasm was contagious and soon the whole assembled army was joining in with the cry of “Away with these upstart usurpers! Long life and victory to the son of Constantine! Under his banners alone we will fight and conquer.”

Vetranio was stood next to Constantius on the platform watching his strength and support melt away in front of him.  He lost his nerve and supplicated himself before Constantius.  It was a skilful bit of work from the young man, combining planning, organisation, a shrewd eye for an opportunity and a willingness to take a risk.  His father would have been proud of him.  Next time, we’ll have a closer look at the last surviving son of Constantine.

Character of Constantine – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 18

If it weren’t for Constantine it is quite likely that very few of us would have ever been inside a Christian Church.  The city he founded bore his name up until the lifetime of my Grandfather.  It is still the largest one in Europe.   Ten more emperors were to bear the name Constantine, and when Greece became an independent nation in modern times several of its kings were also called Constantine which remains a popular name there and elsewhere.  Aristocratic titles throughout Europe  hark back to ranks in Constantine’s army. So it is natural to be curious about what a man who had so much influence on history was really like.
Opinion about him has been divided since his own time.  He has always had a good press from the religion which he did so much to promote.  This has led to something of a backlash against him from people who aren’t so keen on his religious reforms.  It is extremely easy to criticise Constantine from the perspective of our modern values, but you can say that about any emperor.  Emperors of Rome were not nice cuddly people.  They were all brutal dictators heedless of the rights of their subjects.  So the question really is how did Constantine stack up compared to his peers?

One thing is for sure, he was a complicated guy.  As a young man he was tall and good looking and seems to have got on with everyone.  He was active and diligent, working hard on the paperwork and admin stuff even though his active nature and lack of education must have made this side of things hard work.  There is no doubt of his ability as a general – I have just quickly reviewed his military career and he either won or drew every battle he fought.  And most of his best known battles were against fellow Romans and many were against the odds, so he wasn’t simply trading on the well known military superiority of the legions.  He was bold when required, but hardly reckless.

So he ranks well in comparison with other military successes like Trajan and Aurelian.  In an age where the ability to lead troops in the field was a key skill, this was important.  But there is more to being a successful emperor than effective skull bashing, and again his grasp of politics and getting things done puts him up there with Caesar and Diocletian.  

His personal relationships with those around him are more ambiguous.   Putting aside his first wife in favour of a politically advantageous marriage to Fausta, the daughter of the emperor Maximian seems harsh to modern eyes.  But at the time it would not have raised an eyebrow.   In a world where status, connections and pedigree were paramount,  the willingness to stick by his son from his first marriage was more likely to attract disapproval.  The obscurity of his mother put Crispus at an intitial social disadvantage.  But Crispus was groomed to be Constantine’s successor.   As a teenager was made a Caesar and given key commands.  In the battle to capture Byzantium he led the decisive naval coup with courage and success.

Success in arms trumped any doubts and Crispus was young and became popular.  That is the way with these things isn’t it. It is always the young royals that get the crowd behind them.  This ought to have been a great asset to Constantine’s regime.  Constantine had obviously fought and killed his way to the top.  Propaganda can achieve much, but the plain facts were known to everyone.  Constantine was only the unrivalled ruler of the Roman world because Constantine had killed all the rivals.

Having a blameless successor  should have been a great card to play offering the hope of legitimacy and stability for the future.   It was after all not Crispus who had killed Maxentius and Licinius.  But it was not to be.

In 326 Crispus was killed on Constantine’s orders.  The exact manner of his death is unclear, but it involved a trial and was a public event.  Shortly afterwards his step-mother, Fausta, was also killed again on Constantine’s orders.  This seems to have been an in-house event. In her case the method used was to place her in an overheated steam bath in the palace.  A curious means of execution that suggests to me at any rate that the intention was to kill her without giving her any prior notice.

So in a very short period of time Constantine had killed both his son and his wife.  The precise details of how, why and what motivated it all haven’t survived.  This has encouraged a lot of speculation ever since and no doubt plenty of gossip at the time.  But it is hard to see any way it can be turned round to make Constantine look good.

With Crispus out of the picture the succession issue was much less clear cut.  Constantine had three sons by Fausta – Constantine, Constans and Constantius.  They were obviously much younger than Crispus and so were not nearly so well suited to succeed.  Was one going to inherit or would they share power?  It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but Constantine chose to make it tougher still by elevating a couple of their cousins as well.  And to throw yet another random factor in, he created a couple of new titles.  The cousins were Dalmatius and Hannibalianus.  Hannibalianus was married to Constantine’s daughter Constantia and he was raised to the status of nobilissimus.   I am not sure exactly what that means.  It may well be that not many people at the time did either.

But Hannibalianus got another title the meaning of which was not so ambiguous.  He was also declared King of Pontus.  It was the first appearance of that title applied to a Roman since the kings had been expelled from the city over a thousand years before.  Gibbon doesn’t seem to have thought of one possible explanation of this – that it was intended that Hannibalianus was to be imposed on the Persians as their king once the Romans had defeated them in war.  But even if this was the intention, it was a significant moment when the thought of a Roman emperor as a king in name as well as in fact became once again possible.

But whatever they were called, it is obvious with hindsight that elevating so many individuals to the top rank was a risky strategy.  It can’t have seemed at all a smart move even without hindsight.  Constantine needed only to look back on his own career for an example of how sharing power between peers had led to conflict.  And so it was to prove again, but we are getting ahead of ourselves we are still looking at the character of Constantine himself.  Maybe his intention was to set up a sort of Darwinian struggle for survival where the fittest successor would emerge from a struggle between them.

It seems quite likely that Gibbon was right to draw a distinction between the early and the later Constantine.  The youthful Constantine had been a skilled general, but he had always worked in a way that showed a good sense of political judgement as well.  We see him biding his time when it suited his purpose, and acting decisively when he thought it worth taking a risk.  It sounds a far cry from the older Constantine whose succession plan seemed to guarantee a civil war.

His poor preparation for his own demise is really the biggest error of his reign.  His squeezing the pips out of the poor was a continuation of the earlier policy of Diocletian and was to be continued afterwards by his successors.  It was pretty much the only way the empire could be made to work so it isn’t really a personal failing of Constantine himself.  His increasing reliance on German soldiers was to prove disastrous in later reigns.  But in principle, there was no reason why this should have been the case.  The empire had absorbed plenty of immigrants in the past and could have continued to do so, and indeed it could have been a source of great strength.  His rule was effective enough, but he doesn’t show the administrative genius of Diocletian.

He was paranoid enough to believe in conspiracies against him.  Decrees survive of punishments meted out to a wide range of courtiers.  This may have been the origin of the death of Crispus.  Jealousy for his youth and popularity are another possibility.

We hear that as he grew older he became vain, sporting absurd hair pieces and wearing ridiculous silk garments that were simply not appropriate to the dignity of an emperor of Rome. It turns out you can have a major influence on the development of Western civilisation and still be a prat.  The contrast between his earlier worthy treatment of Crispus and his darker later behaviour is another example.  So if you want to love Constantine you will be better off concentrating on the energetic young general.  If you want to think of him as an evil monster, well he got there in the end.  It is said that after his murder of Crispus graffiti appeared on his palace comparing him to Nero.  The comparison is unfair, but not totally unfair.  They both used violence liberally and directed it against members of their own family. They also both left Rome in ruins, though in very different ways.  Nero of course was a buffoon and whatever you think of him, you can’t say that of Constantine.   Constantine was a great emperor and had the most influential reign of the hundred or so holders of that post.  But he was definitely not a saint.

We’ll be burying him in the next episode, but you’ll probably have noticed that we haven’t yet covered the most important aspect of his reign, which is religion.  Gibbon devotes a couple of chapters to this after he covers the events following the succession.  You can’t really do justice to the reign of Julian the Apostate without having detailing the continuing rise of the Church, but it is my intention to get through it as quickly as possible.

Goblin Town: A Socialist reads the Hobbit Part 6

“I’m a roving Jack of all trades
Of every trade and all trades
And if you want to know my name
They call me Jack of all trades… 
In Swallow Street made bellows-pipes
In Wharf Street was a blacksmith
In Beak Street there I did sell tripe
In Freeman Street a locksmith
In Cherry Street I was a quack
In Summer Lane sold pancakes
On then at last I got a knack
To manufacture worm cakes”


Birmingham folk song.




Birmingham at the turn of the twentieth century was a hive of small manufacturers and workshops.  Unlike some other industrial districts in Britain and around the world the characteristic of Birmingham trade was flexibility.  Like the Jack of All Trades of the folk song, it wasn’t surprising to find a particular enterprise doing buckles one week, buttons the next and bed posts the week after that.


Frequently adapting machinery no doubt left little time to optimise it for efficiency or make it run smoothly.  Intense competition bore down on the workers forcing them to long and unhealthy hours.  Coal was the energy source, so everything was black with a covering of soot. The long hours and poor diet coupled with the haze from all the smoke meant rickets was endemic.  The inhabitants of London who had similar conditions to contend with are even today known as ‘cockneys’, a nod to the way their soft bones deformed their knees to resemble those of a cock.

Bow Legs – A characteristic of rickets victims and goblins

It must have been a confusing and chaotic place to grow up.  But what has it got to do with the Hobbit?


Well on leaving Rivendell the party heads over the Misty Mountains.  They have been given a lot of help by Elrond in the form of ponies, supplies and equipment.  They manage to hang on to it for about 4 pages.  This party’s ability to lose its gear is astonishing.  The problem this time was sheltering in an apparently unoccupied cave which turned out to be the entrance to a goblin cave.  They get kidnapped and dragged down to Goblin Town.


Goblin Town turns out to be a dark maze of tunnels inhabited by goblins.  Like the Birmingham Tolkien grew up knowing, it is very easy to take a wrong and find yourself completely lost. Goblins turn out to have quite a few common characteristics with the inhabitants of Victorian Birmingham.  For a start they like machines.  If you read out the song the goblins sing during their abduction you can pick up a really strong rhythm that is highly reminiscent of factory machinery.  


Clash, crash! Crush smash!
Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!
Pound, pound, far underground!
Ho ho, my lad.


Goblins make no beautiful things, but many clever ones.  They are inventive.  But they tend to invent things that it would be better if they weren’t invented like weapons for killing lots of people and instruments of torture. We don’t get a good description of what a goblin looks like here but in the Lord of the Rings we hear that they are squint eyed and bow legged.  This is reminiscent of the rickets ridden industrial workers who rarely saw the sun that must have been a common sight when Tolkien was growing up.  So the goblins, later rebranded as orcs, are inspired by the workers he saw as a boy.


If you have a connection to Birmingham’s labouring classes – which as it happens I do – you might be pardoned for taking offense.  But don’t worry, you are in good company.  Tolkien’s attitude to modernity generally is a pretty negative one.  He rarely expresses this explicitly. But we do get pretty close to it in this chapter.  In general goblins like engines and machines with wheels and are very good with them.  But these particular goblins  “in those days and those wild parts had not advanced (as it is called) so far.”  The assault on the Twentieth Century takes many forms in Tolkien’s work, usually obliquely.  But I wonder if the root of it is simply that as a boy he just found industrialisation in its raw form really frightening, and we see those fears surfacing in this chapter.

Tolkien would of course dismiss any attempt to read anything like that into his work. He always claimed to be motivated purely by a desire to tell a good story. And he can almost always be relied upon to do just that.  It is very rare to find a weak plot line.  But I think this is one of those rare instances.  Having been introduced to the goblins, and getting a bit of their back story – most importantly that they have a personal feud on the go with the family of Thorin Oakenshield – they are then rescued by Gandalf.  He does this by turning all the lights out by magic and killing the great goblin using the famous elvish sword he picked up from the trolls, that is instantly recognised by his enemies.  He then leads the dwarfs out of the cavern as thy are chased by the mass of goblins.


It isn’t very imaginative but I bet it will feature prominently in the film when it comes out.  What film can’t use a chase scene.


The only thing that goes wrong with the plan is that during the escape, Bilbo gets lost.  This sets up the next chapter nicely.  The episode with the goblins turns out to be important to the later stages of the story, and it is also our first introduction to the wider political situation of Middle Earth.  Goblins are free agents able to make alliances with other peoples when it suits them.  They have worked with dwarfs for instance.  But they have a particular animosity towards elves, which is manifested by their intense dislike of elvish swords which are fitted with a goblin detecting feature.  They glow when goblins are around.  Thorin’s particular dwarf clan has recently been involved in a war with the goblins.


It is a world where there is good and evil, but it isn’t entirely a world of black and white.  Goblins are clearly evil but do have an organised society and can pick and chose their friends and enemies. They are also intelligent and have something of a sense of humour.  And although they use their inventive powers to bad ends, at least they have some kind of creativity. They’d probably fit in well enough in most factories or offices.

Constantinople – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 17

With the defeat of  Licinius, Constantine was left as the sole leader of the entire Roman world.  But that didn’t stop him from dreaming.  In one dream he saw the spirit of the city of Byzantium as a tired and frail old matron.  But then she was transformed before his eyes into a beautiful young woman and with his own hands he adorned her with the accoutrements of an imperial city.

It was clear that Constantine was being instructed by God to build a new Rome on the banks of the Bosphorus transforming the city of Byzantium into a new capital of the empire.  The new city would be free of the pagan past and would be Christian from its first day.  And as Constantinople it would commemorate the name of its founder far into the future.  The holy nature of this new city was made clear even before construction started.  Constantine marked out the boundaries in person with a team of his officials.  As the scale of the project became clear they pointed out that the area he had already enclosed made this an unusually large city. In reply he said that ‘I shall advance for as long as He, the invisible guide before me thinks proper to stop.’

God clearly knew a good location when he saw one.  Constantinople is built on a triangle of land that juts out into the Bosphorus where it comes near to Asia Minor commanding the end of the narrow straits that link the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara.  The natural harbour formed by the northern side was of enormous value.  It could be used for both military and commercial purposes.  Any attempt to attack by land would have to reckon with the probability that the city could be supplied from the sea.  A sea born attack would be easy to defeat because the narrow entrance to the bay could easily be blocked by drawing a chain across it.

The surrounding land was fertile and well tended which would be useful in the feeding of a large population.  The fish in the locality are abundant and easily caught, another bonus.

And in addition to its highly beneficial local advantages, it also occupied a key strategic position.  During the crisis of the third century the goths had been able to sail across the Black Sea, through the narrow straits of the Bosphorus past Byzantium.  From there they had got  into the Mediterranean where they had been able to reach most of the empire with ease.  The foundation of Constantinople blocked off this possibility.

So the building of a new city made religious sense, and its geography made it easy to defend.  It was also a great location strategically.  It allowed easy communication with the always troublesome Danube frontier and was close to the sensitive border with the Persians.

What more could an emperor wish for?  Well when the emperor is Constantine, quite a bit.  Since it was to have his name it needed to be a city on a scale that reflected his ambition.  The size of the plot was just the start.  The new Rome had to not just rival, but to eclipse the old one.  In everything.

One of the symptoms of the decline in the empire was the shortage of educated people with skills.  In order to bring his city to the state he wanted it Constantine had to found new schools of architecture to supply the men he needed to fulfill his vision.  When Constantine wanted something, he put every conceivable effort into it.

Architects can be trained.  Artists have to be born. There was no way to create a cadre of imaginative painters and sculptors to decorate the new city suitably. Instead Constantine brought existing artworks from the rest of the empire, especially statues.  A good example was a bronze statue of Apollo moved to the new capital from a city in Phyrgia, or possibly from Athens.   The sculpture was reputed to be Phidias.  Phidias was the most famous sculptor of the ancient world, even having one of the wonders of the world on his CV, so to have one of his works in Constantinople was an ornament indeed.

The statue had been cast in bronze, a scepter in one hand, a globe in the other and a crowned with rays of light.  This would later be reinterpreted as a statue of Constantine himself.  It was placed on a 100ft marble column in the forum.  The statue is now long gone, but the column still stands in the ruins.  It is known as the Burnt Column.

Any new city would have a forum, that was a foregone conclusion.  That Constantine would make that forum large enough to rival he one in Rome made clear his intentions for the role he foresaw for it.  And there were no pagan temples.  Instead it was from day one a city that worshiped the one true God.   So there were to be plenty of churches.  The main one, and the one that Constantine no doubt envisaged as the main church of the empire and of the religion of Christianity as a whole was Santa Sofia: the church of the holy wisdom.  I suspect if Constantine could be resurrected today he would be quite surprised to find that St Peters in Rome is the premier centre of Christianity according to the majority of Christians.

It isn’t often remembered that there was a religious aspect to gladiatorial games, so in keeping with his desire to make a new start without pagan influences, rather than supply the new city with an arena for games he instead built a  hippodrome dedicated to chariot racing.   This was to become very popular with the inhabitants.

A new senate was created and people were invited from all over the empire to the new city.  At first Constantine had to offer specific inducements, but the attractions of the place were soon strong enough for it to become a magnet drawing in the declining population of the empire.  Let’s be clear here.  Constantine was playing a zero sum game.  The empire was well armed and effectively defended, but it was not expanding.  The sole energy source was muscle power and at this time in history muscles could only be available if they were fed by farming.  If there was any technological progress at all it wasn’t significant enough to create a fourth century green revolution.

As the population of Constantinople grew it inevitably drew resources from other cities.  And grow it did.  It was soon to become the biggest city in the empire, and possibly the biggest in the world.  Even in Constantine’s time the population must have got over 100,000.  That is a lot of dinners.  The city was fed by a number of means, one of which was a corn levy from the rich province of Egypt.  This was a simple enough operation logistically.  The Egyptians grew corn and the Romans took it off them and gave it away to the populace of the new city.  One can see how that made becoming a citizen of the new metropolis appealing.   The Egyptians probably saw the downside of the arrangement a bit more clearly.

Egypt was not the only province to suffer from the robust approach Constantine adopted towards getting the resources he needed.  Constantinople was a huge project in itself, and on top of that there was the maintaining of a huge military machine and a huge programme of church building.  Non productive fighters and prayers have to be supported by the rest of society.  This means taxes.  And again it was a zero sum game.  More soldiers meant less for everyone else.  Socialism has been described as ‘from each according to his means, to each according to his needs’.   To describe the Roman Empire under Constantine and his successors you only need the first half of that phrase.

The objective was simple enough.  Squeeze as much out of the population to support the palace, the Church and the military.  The tax was collected in kind and gold every four years.  Debased imperial coins were not accepted as payment of imperial taxes.

Collection was efficient and effective. A full census was carried out every 15 years – no trivial matter in such a large empire and without paper on which to record it.

Gibbon would not be surprised by modern archeological data showing that standards of nutrition rose after the fall of the empire in the West.  Taxes were collected indiscriminately and with no regard to encouraging trade or development.  The full coercive powers of the state were brought to bear on taxpayers up to and including torture.  This had a generally depressing effect on economic activity.  A survey of an Italian province carried out some 60 years after the death of Constantine revealed that one eighth of cultivated land was abandoned.

This is not surprising when you consider the plight of the Decurions. Being a decurion had originally been a mark of esteem.  They were the wealthy local businessmen and landholders who played a leading role in the small town community life. But under Diocletian they had been given the unpaid role of tax collectors and enforcers.  They had to make up any shortfall out of their own pockets.  This could and did ruin them.  But they were not allowed to give up the post, and could be executed if they tried.  

It was a tax and spend regime that took both taxing and spending to extremes, but which did at least balance the books.  In a world of profligate state spending on credit this probably seems more virtuous in hindsight than it deserves to.  The wreckage of the currency that previous emperors had achieved had wrecked the financial system removing the option of borrowing to fund big projects.  The financial institutions simply weren’t there.  So if the emperor wanted to build a city, the resources had to be found there and then.  It could not be spread over a few generations.

Undoubtedly the burden of taxation led more and more people to give up the struggle for financial independence and to throw in their lot with anybody who offered them the chance to survive in return for giving up their liberty.  The gritty independent farmers who had founded a republic and fought to defend and then extend it were long gone.  Only the outward form of some republican institutions and attitudes remained.  But even these were being hacked away.  Where Augustus was careful to portray himself as simply another citizen, Constantine was appointed by God.  His titles would have shocked a Roman from an earlier era.

Titles being thrown around included your sincerity, your gravity, your sublime and wonderful magnitude, your excellency. Admittedly that last one probably didn’t sound as ridiculous then as it does since the release of the film of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

It is hard to imagine what a hard bitten consul of the old republic would have made of it. It was a far cry from Augustus styling himself Princeps to disguise his true power. The consuls did still exist, even though Diocletian had abolished voting for them. They were now in the gift of the emperor.

Empty titles are a great boon to autocrats. It is a great way to reward people that involves giving them neither power nor money. So it is no surprise seeing Constantine reviving the long lapsed order of patricians. The patricians of the republic had been a true aristocracy that you had to be born into. Constantine’s version was a bit different. He appointed patricians and you couldn’t pass the role on to your descendants. But there are always enough people around for whom a flashy title is as good as, indeed better than a real role with real responsibility.

The civil administration was handled by 4 praetorian prefects in areas corresponding to the old tetrarchy. They no longer had any military function so they posed no threat to the emperor. They concentrated on justice and managing taxation. Rome and Constantinople were exempt from their jurisdiction, they each had praetor who maintained order.

Governors still existed and still had some kind of role. They also administered justice in their particular provinces and were able to impose punishments up to and including execution. They weren’t allowed to impose large fines though. Those went directly to the emperor. He was heedless of his subject’s lives, but he was very interested in what happened to their money.

Having more than one system for administering the law certainly sounds like a recipe for confusion and no doubt it was. Lawyers continued to thrive. I sometimes have the feeling that if an asteroid hit the earth wiping out all forms of life except cockroaches there would still be lawyers around.

The military were also reorganised once again with the emphasis on making a challenge to the authority of the emperor difficult to pull off.  The most notable example of that was the reduction in the size of the legion to half the size it used to be.  Commanding a legion was no longer anywhere near such an influential post.  But you did get to wear a special gold belt.  Status and titles were once again used as handy substitutes for power.  A couple of military titles started to become prominent at this time – counts and dukes.  These were to go on and become aristocratic titles in the world after the empire, but for now they were simply ranks in the army.

There were also two grades of soldier,  internal and external.  The external ones were the guys actually manning the frontier dealing with threats from outside the borders.  The role of  the internal ones wasn’t spelled out but it is pretty likely that they were intended to keep the population under control.

The manpower requirements were very large and this sucked in even more Germans into the empire where they were able to observe with their own eyes just how the whole system worked.

If the army was now huge, so was the court.  Another contribution to the tax burden.  But the state was not just a drain on the economy, it also became an active participant in it.  The army was supplied by state run factories.  Thirty four different cities had centrally controlled armouries in them supplying the troops with weapons and equipment.  It was very much like the Soviet Union in many ways.  This included the problem of all non-privately owned enterprises of ensuring quality and innovation.  Archeologists have found that steel forged in barbarian Germany at this period was of superior quality to that from the empire.

The court projected the power of the emperor directly to his subjects.  Messengers were sent out with proclamations and edicts.  They also reported back on what was going on in the provinces and soon to on the role of making sure that the edicts were being obeyed as well.  The employed spies and informers so in keeping with the Soviet Union comparison, we have a secret police as well.  They were  empowered to use torture in their investigations, so coming under suspicion was bad enough even if you didn’t feel guilty.

But there were some restraints on their powers.  There were categories of citizen that were exempt from torture.  These were people of an illustrious or honourable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors of the liberal arts, soldiers, municipal officers, and children below the age of puberty.  It is pretty clear where the regime felt its support lay.

But just to be on the safe side, none of these exemptions applied in the case of an investigation of treason against the emperor.

The court itself was large and well staffed and probably amounted to many thousands of individuals in the palace itself and representatives elsewhere in the empire. Much like the army, much of the court’s consumption was self generated.  The treasurer general employed a large staff to count and manage all the money extracted from the population.   But he we also in charge of all the mines where the precious metals were extracted.  And he also ran large factories manned by slaves producing linen for the use of the imperial household.

With all this money being spent in the locality of Constantinople it is little wonder that its growth was rapid.  A hundred years after its foundation an account describes it has possessing –
– a school of learning
– a circus
– 2 theatres
– 8 public baths
– 153 private baths
– 52 porticos
– 5 granaries
– 8 aqueducts or reservoirs
– 4 spacious halls for Senate meetings and court proceedings
– 14 churches
– 14 palaces
– 4,384 houses large and distinguished enough to stand out from the commonplace

Constantine has been praised by many people for his promotion of Christianity. He has also been criticized for much the same reason.  As we have seen, he was certainly a ruthless autocrat determined to get what he wanted and capable of any amount of repression to achieve it.  Personally I regard him as an ancient version of Stalin.  But like Stalin, not everything he did was bad.  And the foundation of Constantinople was to prove far sighted.

The city proved to be a major asset to the empire for centuries to come.  Towards the end, it would be just about its only asset. The city is to be the major character in the story we are going to tell from now on.  It will become the central focus of the politics of the empire and for the next eleven hundred years it will be central to history. The strong walls of this great Christian city will protect the empire from disaster more than once.  And in all probability they protected Christianity itself from being overrun.

If he had done nothing else, the foundation of Constantinople would be enough to earn Constantine the title he is often awarded of Constantine the Great.

Reference

A Germanic ultrahigh carbon steel punch of the Late Roman-Iron Age Evelyne Godfreya,), Matthijs van Nieb Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004) 1117e1125

Rivendell – A Socialist reads the Hobbit Part 5

The Hobbit was a great success on its publication.  Children loved it and sales were robust.  The publisher asked Tolkien for more about hobbits.  Tolkien’s response was to send an early draft of the Silmarillion.

For anyone who hasn’t read both books, here is the opening line of the first one.

“In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.”

Here is one of the opening lines of the Silmarillion. (Its structure is a bit diffuse making it hard to tell exactly where the actual narrative begins.)

“In the beginning was Eru, who in Arda is known as Illuvatar”.

It doesn’t really grab you and pull you into the story the way the Hobbit does. I think the publishers can be forgiven for deciding not to go with the Silmarillion.

I suspect that the public probably were not ready yet for Tolkien’s great work explaining his cosmology in considerable detail.  More detail than most of us realised we wanted.  

While many people, including me, have read the Silmarillion and enjoyed the process – indeed consider it a work of genius – nonetheless it isn’t a book that leaves you desperate for more the way the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings do.  And the publishers were clear enough.  They wanted a book with more about hobbits.

Had the publishers put out the Silmarillion many of the references Tolkien makes to the historical background of the  world of the Hobbit in the chapter on Rivendell would have made sense, even if the commercial calculations didn’t.  Elrond is introduced as half elf descended from both elves and Northern heroes.  The effect is to once again give the book that depth that is so characteristic of Tolkien’s writings.  It always strikes me that if we knew Tolkien only by this one work and on other, we would probably be impressed at the way that he uses this literary trick to give the impression that the story in hand is just one drawn from a large body of tales making up the history of his imaginary world.

But thanks to the success of Lord of the Rings, we now know that that is exactly what it is:  one small snippet from a much bigger picture.   The elves of the Silmarillion bear very little resemblance to the elves of folklore, and these are the elves that Bilbo and the dwarfs meet in Rivendell.  There are several references to the epic back story that nobody who read the Hobbit up until 1977 had any chance of getting.  But there are some features of the elves as portrayed in the Hobbit that are a bit closer to conventional everyday fairies than the rather serious creatures in Tolkien’s other writings. 

For a start they are bit more light hearted, with jokey songs and good natured mockery of the dwarfs’ beards. I should just point out that Tolkien treats elves and fairies as pseudonyms – but in quite subtle way. For example, you never hear about an elf that is right in front of you being referred to as a fairy. The fairy reference is almost always indirect. This adds a layer of authenticity to them by making an indirect connection to everyday fairies. People who call elves fairies haven’t actually seen them. So their ideas about them are a lot vaguer. This gives the elves a bit of mystery and makes them a bit more like the fairies of everyday folklore and less like the noble but tragic beings of the Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion. 


Another way the elves of the Hobbit are a bit more traditional is that they keen on staying hidden. Rivendell is hard to spot until you get right up close to it, and the elves themselves are a bit more elusive than later ones. Folklore fairies have their own ecological niche. They live at the bottom of the garden out of sight. You don’t find them on the lawn. That is the realm of the garden gnome.


Elrond himself is a half elf – which is one of the things that early readers like myself had a long wait for an explanation. There is simply no indication of any kind as to what the other half is. We meet Elrond in the text before we meet any actual men so the truth is far from obvious.

Whatever his breeding, he is a substantial figure. He has great ancient wisdom which is deployed to explain their treasure map to the dwarfs. It turns out that you have to hold it up to the Moon to read it properly. And not just any Moon, a full Moon. The chances of this occurring just when the dwarfs met up with Elrond were not high, but nonetheless that is what happened. The information that Elrond revealed was crucial to the success of the project, so it really was a lucky break. This kind of happy coincidence is to occur a lot more throughout the book. This could be interpreted as the operation of divine providence. God is setting up the plot in his own way to reveal His truth and stress that nobody can achieve anything without His help.

But I don’t think this is the correct interpretation. I think the point is that the dwarfs are creating their own luck by their action. They had obviously set out without mission critical data. In particular they were unaware that there was a secret entrance to the mountain guarded by the dragon. The lesson is that if you need to get something done, just get started. The details will sort themselves out.

The dwarfs leave Rivendell in a much stronger position to get back their long lost treasure. But before we follow them, a quick note about Rivendell itself.

The name Rivendell is suggestive of its geography. It is a dell or valley riven or scoured from the landscape. It sounds very much like the kind of place you would find in the north of England, both in the sense that that is where you find that kind of place and where you find names like that. But in fact it was based on somewhere in Switzerland. Namely Lauterbrunnental, a valley Tolkien visited on holiday as a young man. This doesn’t really help understand or interpret the book, but it is an interesting titbit. Tolkien must have let his imagination free reign quite a bit. I wonder how many other bits of scenery from his imaginary world have real world equivalents. I expect it is quite a lot of them.

You can see pictures here. 

http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/Rivimages/realriv.html

The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola

Why does anyone get this into their head to do this?  At some point Emile Zola decided that it would be a good idea to write a huge series of novels based around the interlinked tales of one family.

The whole series would take him over twenty years and finish up comprising twenty separate full sized novels.  One of them, Germinal, would go on to become one of the great classic novels.  It would be easy to regard the whole series as one of the all time classics of mission creep.  But in the introduction to the very first one of them, the Fortune of the Rougons, Zola makes it clear that the large scale of the project was something that he conceived from the very beginning.

The Fortune of the Rougons is a book that is seeped in the history of the time in which it is set.  But Zola never writes about politics.  He writes about people’s reaction to politics.  The events of French history play a key role in the book, but the book is about the way people’s lives play out.  What he is particularly good at is handling the way that politics motivates people.  It is rarely straight forward.  We get to realise why the characters take particular sides.   And how their own motives shape the way they see and react to events. For example, having brothers as political opponents is a good plot device, but the way Zola sets it up is completely believable.

The background in history is that of the sudden collapse of the second French republic and its replacement by a new empire under Napoleon III.  The Bourbons had been overthrown in the revolution of 1848.  The republic that came in after this was a bit shaky from the start.  It lasted only three years before being replaced by, of all things, a second go at an empire under Napoleon III.

Social divisions in France at this time were deep and bitter and were reflected in political divisions.  It is the genius of Zola that he can weave all this into a novel which also has deep human interest as well. The innocent love affair that takes up much of the middle of the book is beautifully described and oh so believable, but has nothing whatever to do with the bigger picture.  It brings home that even at a time of great political and historical drama, on the ground ordinary people have to continue to live their lives and that really that is the real thing that is going on.  Reading this book is a great way to get a feel for the history of this period in France.  But you learn a great deal more as well.

Dangerous Nation – Robert Kagan

Expansion of the United States (From Wikipedia)

America is and always has been a highly expansionist entity.  It has used diplomacy, commerce and outright military force to expand its influence over the globe and to promote its own interests.  It has been markedly successful in this project and is now the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.

None of this seems remotely controversial and fits perfectly with just about any objective reading of the historical facts since the birth of the United States as a political entity in 1776.  But the tone of this book from Robert Kagan strongly suggests that at least some Americans would not automatically accept this blindingly obvious statement of the facts.

But obvious as it is, lets have a quick look at the expansion of the United States.   It started in 1803, just 27 years after the foundation of the state with the Louisiana Purchase.  This was opportunistic – normally a war would have had to have been fought to acquire so much territory – nearly doubling the size of the US at a stroke.  As it was, there was little Napoleon could have done to defend it.  The low price probably reflected that.  Less than ten years later the US provoked a war with Britain with the intention of getting control of Canada.   As Jefferson put it in 1812 “The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.”

In the event the British ate the president’s dinner and burned down the White House, but it was clear that the new republic was not in the least unwilling to take up arms to increase its power and influence, almost from day one. Expansion was soon back on the agenda.  A war with Mexico to annex Texas was not particularly well justified on purely moral grounds.  To go on and annex even bigger chunks of Mexican territory on top of Texas was a transparent grab for power.

The pattern was clear enough from the start and has continued to this day with American forces now regularly deployed on every continent on the planet.  In this the United States has behaved much as all states have done throughout history.  There is nothing much exceptional about this.  That the Americans’ own interpretation of events tends to be favourable to their general world view is also not particularly exceptional.  The only exceptional thing about America is that while most national stories take the form of ‘we are in charge because we are great’, the American one is much more ‘we are a bunch of peace loving guys who only get pulled into events when we have to’.

It is impossible to criticise the United States from the outside without acknowledging that they are no worse than anybody else.  All states work ruthlessly to promote their own interests and to exert as much influence as they can get away with.  America has simply been much more successful in the process than anyone else.  Nobody really imagines that in private American politicians go around placing their palms on their foreheads and saying to their colleagues ‘Sheesh guys, we’ve somehow ended up running the world.  Well, what do you know!’

The thought does sometimes cross your mind that the actions of the States might be in contradiction to its deep seated liberal and democratic traditions.  But the thesis of this book is that far from being a contradiction, it is these liberal values themselves that have played a part in the way the US has projected power.

So the US has been able to hold itself up as a defender of a certain world view.  This hasn’t been done cynically, the United States does hold certain democratic and liberal principles close to its heart. So when it opposes say Communism in Vietnam and Fascism in Europe it is working with the grain of its being and draws strength and inspiration from it.  But this doesn’t stop it working with those that don’t share its values when it suits.   In fact this policy predates the formation of the state since the colonists were willing to form an alliance with the France of the grand monarchy against the considerably more liberal British state.

America does stand for something, but not to the detriment of its own interests.  The most liberal of Democratic presidents is not likely to give Texas back to Mexico.

This book is very well written and a gripping read, especially considering its subject matter.  Ultimately it is stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious is what needs to be stated.  It is particularly worthwhile reading if you are the kind of European who watches US politics and hopes for the victory of one side or the other. You might as well find another interest. It might make a difference if you live there, but for the rest of us it doesn’t really matter who is in the White House.  They all behave the same when it comes to foreign affairs.

News of the World – Good Riddance

Rubbish First Edition of Paper that was Rubbish from beginning to end

I like history, but I try not to be sentimental about historical things.  The News of the World has been a British institution for 168 years.  When I did a paper round as a boy half the Sunday papers we delivered to the council estate I grew up on were the News of the World.  So am I sad to see it go?  Not a bit.  It might be a part of British culture but it was always a rubbish bit of British culture and we are better off without it.

I couldn’t bring myself to buy the last edition but I did flick through the pages of its ‘commemorative’ edition last Sunday.  It just reinforced my revulsion for the tawdry rag.  Basically it was a demeaning scandal sheet even before the Digger got his hands on it.   It was the unique genius of Rupert Murdoch to take something that was worthless and turn it into something toxic.

As it happens, I do have some personal experience of the way that News International works.  In 2005 some money was stolen from the joint credit card my wife and I use.  It was used to buy about £300 worth of slightly bizarre health products including herbal viagra.  We realised fairly quickly and managed without too much difficulty to identify the person responsible.  It was a journalist on the Sun.  We tried to get in touch with him and ended up talking to his line manager.  It turned out that this was part of a piece of ‘investigative journalism’.  They had used our credit card to demonstrate how easy it was for terrorists to fund their terrorism by using stolen credit card numbers.  Or something.  The guy I was talking to sounded like a complete prat.   We had already reported the incident to the Police but as they had returned the money it didn’t seem worth taking the matter any further.

Nonetheless it left an impression.  I thought that they were simply idiots.  It turned out that they had done the same to several other people. It even got turned into a sort of news story.  Frankly, if terrorists had the skill level of these so called ‘investigative journalists’ we could all sleep more safely in our beds.   Whatever else Murdoch is guilty of – and that is turning out to be quite a lot – he was certainly guilty of employing half-wits.  And that ultimately may have been the real problem all along.

Table Talk by William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt – Self Portrait (Thanks to Wikipedia)

Thanks to Jane Austen, and even more to all the television and film adaptations, we tend to think of Victorian and pre-Victorian Britain as a bit of a stuffy class based society where everyone knew their place.  And so no doubt it was.

But just as modern Britain or modern America for that matter defy easy description or monotone portraits, so the Britain of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries was a large and complex society with all sorts of things going on and plenty of radical thoughts being thunk.   (That sounded better before I wrote it down.)

A good case in point was the essayist William Hazlitt.  He was not exactly from a proletarian background, but he certainly wasn’t well connected.  Not to begin with anyway.  And yet by dint of nothing more than an ability to write and to put into writing some of the radical ideas that were swirling around he was able to become a major figure friendly with the likes of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Stendhal.

He still has big name fans.  Simon Schama name drops him from time to time.  Orwell was a fan. Micheal Foot never quite got around to writing a biography of him.

And yet his works are little read nowadays and you struggle to find them in print.  But with Project Gutenberg to hand, that is not a problem.   I downloaded his best known collection – Table Talk – and gave it a read.  It didn’t take long to see why they are so hard to find.  I gave up less than a third of the way through.  They might be highly rated but I didn’t think they were very good.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=3020