136- Let This Be Our Final Battle

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Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome,

episode 136.

Let this be our final battle.

Last week, we left off in March of 317 AD, with Constantine and Lycinius renewing their imperial alliance.

For Constantine, the settlement was something of a disappointment.

After all, he had beaten Lycinius twice in battle, but two sunsets and some clever maneuvering on the part of the Eastern Augustus had conspired to deny Constantine outright victory.

For Lycinius, though, the settlement was a huge relief, a classic case of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

Well, stalemate from the jaws of defeat anyway.

But you know, when you head into the end game with nothing but a king and two pawns, stalemate and victory look pretty much the same.

Licinius's position was far weaker after the settlement than before it, but he was still Augustus, he still ruled the Eastern Empire, minus what he had been forced to cede to Constantine, and perhaps most important of all, he still had his head.

As I mentioned last time, following the settlement, Licinius returned to Nicomedia, while Constantine set up shop in Sirmium.

Constantine wanted to establish his authority over the newly seated Middle Empire, yes, but he also wanted to make sure that he was right on top of Lycinius, in case the Eastern Augustus ever slipped up.

So he made his headquarters along the Danube River.

This meant, though, that the always volatile Rhine frontier, where Constantine had spent the majority of his reign thus far, was no longer under close imperial watch.

This, as you can imagine, made the local Gallic citizenry nervous and hostile German tribesmen giddy.

But both the fear and the giddiness turned out to be misplaced, because everyone was about to discover that the always volatile Rhine frontier was actually still under close imperial watch.

Now, probably in his late teens, the newly anointed Caesar Crispus was dispatched by his father to govern the western provinces following the settlement of 317.

Crispus would set up his capital in Trier, and for the next five years would run the government and defend the frontier better than anyone could have reasonably expected.

He defeated German tribes in battle in 318, 320, and 322, and in the process demonstrated to everyone that he was every bit his father's son, a brilliant commander, and a savvy politician.

When father and son visited Rome together in 320, it is reported that the ovation for Crispus was louder than the ovation for Constantine.

And while I hope it wasn't something as petty as jealousy that ultimately led to Crispus' tragic demise, it is definitely a possibility.

Also a possibility is the fact that Fausta would bear two more sons for Constantine during these years, Constantius II in 317 and Constance in 323.

Can the wicked stepmother trope really be too far behind?

During the interregnum between the First and Second Civil Wars, Constantine and Licinius continued to drift apart not just personally, but politically as well.

Up until this point, the two emperors had been rivals, yes, but they had more or less pursued the same policies.

Round about three hundred twenty, though, this began to change, and once again Christianity was at the center of imperial division.

Just as Constantine was stepping up his support for the Church, Licinius was dialing his back, until finally he abandoned the Edict of Milan and renewed the persecution of Christians in the East.

His persecution had none of the bloody overtones of the Great Persecution, but in the early 320s, Licinius began to target church property for confiscation and target church leaders for harassment.

Back in 314, his political enemies had been the militant anti-Christians, and so Licinius had ruthlessly enforced the terms of the edict.

But now that his rival was no longer Maximinus and instead a very pro-Christian Constantine, the Eastern Christians, who had once been Licinius's allies, were now suspected of being dangerous fifth columnists.

Licinius knew a political threat when he saw it, so he abandoned the edict and went after a group of people he probably rightfully suspected of harboring cross-loyalties.

But how hard Lycinius pressed the renewed persecution is difficult to determine.

Because Constantine would specifically cite Licinius' treatment of the Christians as one of his main reasons for going back to war, separating truth from propaganda is a tough assignment.

What is a less tough assignment is determining the nature of Constantine's treatment of the Christians in his domain, because with each passing day, it was becoming more and more apparent which religion was the Western Augustus' favorite religion.

As late as 315, when his triumphal arch in Rome was erected, Constantine was still pretty vague about his religious beliefs.

The arch only refers to the fact that Constantine was, quote, inspired by the divine, without naming any names.

Even more interesting is the fact that nowhere in the depiction of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, a depiction which explicitly contains carvings of Constantine's various military standards, does the Labarum or the Cairo or any other kind of cross appear?

Which is pretty surprising, given the story we've all been told about how Constantine was ordered to conquer in this sign.

But the omission of the Cairo from the arch, curious as it is, also appears to be the last gasp of Constantine the Dissembler.

From here on out, we move pretty decisively over to Constantine the Christian, the man who would one day become literally a saint.

In the period between his victory over Maxentius and his coming victory over Licinius, Constantine's patronage of Christianity became wider and deeper.

He sponsored the building or rebuilding of churches, he exempted clergymen from tax obligations, and signaling the esteem with which he held the church leadership, when they traveled, he allowed them to use the imperial post, an honor that was reserved only for the most important imperial agents.

And beyond that, when the bishops of the Western Empire were convening for the Council of Arl, a council which in and of itself points to Constantine's special interest in the Church, he paid for all necessary travel expenses.

The Emperor still maintained his patronage of pagan philosophers and orators, and was happy to let them sing his praises on their own terms.

But clearly, this was a man becoming less and less shy about openly promoting Christianity.

And as I said before, when he declared war on Licinius in 324, the defense of Eastern Christians would form the backbone of his rationale.

Not that I found any direct link between the two events, but it is interesting to note that not long after Licinius started harassing Christians again, Constantine accidentally stumbled into the Eastern Augustus' territory at the head of a very large army.

The official story is that Constantine had been north of the Danube chasing some hostile Sarmatians, and that they decided to flee southeast and cross the river into Thrace.

Constantine couldn't very well let them just get away, so he followed imaginary boundaries between the emperors be damned.

Licinius, of course, took deep offense to Constantine's presence and protested, naturally suspecting that the whole thing was a contrived attempt to suck him back into war.

If Constantine was looking to to provoke something, though, Licinius refused to take the bait, and the Eastern Augustus stopped short of threatening military action.

But Constantine was undeterred, and after a few more years passed he tried the same trick again, at which point Licinius would be unable to ignore Constantine's aggressive disregard for the terms of their settlement.

In the spring of 324, Constantine was once again north of the Danube, either campaigning against the Goths or the Sarmatians, depending on your source, and once again they just happened to flee southeast into Licinius' territory.

Once again, Constantine pursued, and once again, Lycinius got a message saying that his brother Emperor was camped out in Thrace at the head of a very large army.

This time, Licinius was livid, and basically told Constantine to get out of his territory or else.

This heavy-handed threat was all Constantine needed.

Protesting that he was just doing his best to defend the frontier, Constantine announced that this was the last straw.

He had stood by and watched as the despised tyrant Lycinius, you see what I did just there, had resurrected the evil persecution of the Christians, ignored his imperial responsibilities, and was generally living the life of a debauched villain.

Citing in particular Lycinius' advanced age and unpopular vices, Constantine declared that it was his moral duty to rid the Empire of this imperial cancer.

As spring turned to summer, Constantine finally got the war everyone suspected he had been trying to start for years.

Both emperors immediately mustered the largest armies they could put together, as it was understood on both sides that there would be no settlement this time around.

The troop numbers, while obviously exaggerated, speak to the seriousness with which both men took the coming confrontation.

Licinius allegedly gathered 165,000 men, while Constantine led 130,000 of his own.

It appears that both men could afford to concentrate such massive forces without weakening the frontiers because their armies were in large part made up of mercenary forces who would otherwise be the ones the border legions were fending off Franks for Constantine and Goths for Licinius.

In essence, the whole Roman world, friend and foe alike, stopped what they were doing and focused on the coming civil war.

In addition to the ground forces, each emperor also assembled a navy.

Licinius's was there to protect the crucial Hellespont and Bosphorus crossings.

Constantine's was there to seize them.

In July of 324, the two sides were ready to have it out.

Licinius took up a strong position at Adrianople on the east side of the Hebris River, now the Maritza River in Bulgaria.

Constantine advanced to meet him and took took up his own strong position on the west side of the river.

For days, neither commander was willing to make a move.

After all, crossing a river directly in front of enemy forces puts you at a considerable tactical disadvantage.

But Constantine finally got sick of the staring contest and devised a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.

His scouts had identified a good possible crossing point a little ways upstream, so Constantine ordered a division of his men to make a very big show of building a bridge a little ways downstream.

Licinius fell for the Ruse hook line and sinker, and focused all his attention on the decoy construction project.

Constantine then personally led an expeditionary force and cavalry and archers across the river at the upstream crossing.

They took Licinius' army completely by surprise and caused so much chaos in the enemy ranks that the rest of Constantine's army was able to cross the river unopposed.

Once the two forces were on the same side of the Hebrus, the Battle of Adrianople could really get going in earnest.

Though they had been taken by surprise, Licinius' army was not just going to roll over, and once the initial shock wore off, they rallied effectively, and just like every other battle between Constantine and Lycinius, the fight turned into an evenly matched slugfest.

At some point in the battle, one of Constantine's flanks was even being pushed back, but, according to legend, he dispatched the Labarum to that corner of the battle, and thanks to its magical properties, Lycinius' advance was halted.

Once again, the battle lasted until sundown without a decisive conclusion, and once again Lycinius, who had lost something like thirty thousand men in the fighting, withdrew under the cover of darkness.

When morning came, though, Constantine was not able to immediately pursue his rival, because it appears that he had been wounded in the previous day's fighting, though the injury was not serious enough to keep him out of action for long.

In contrast to his line of retreat following the Battle of Mardia, this time Licinius headed directly to Byzantium without stopping.

Constantine was not going to fall for the same trick twice, so better to just play it safe.

Once he got to Byzantium, Licinius followed the same pattern he established following his initial defeat at the Battle of Kibali, and he appointed a man named Sextus Martinianus to the rank of Caesar.

It wasn't exactly the same as appointing Valens Augustus, but it had the same effect.

A key subordinate's loyalty was secured, and his army had another leader of imperial standing to help share responsibility for the war.

After designating some of his troops to act as Byzantium's defense force, Licinius began ferrying the rest of his men across the bosphorus with all haste, putting Martinianus in charge of the army on the far side.

Licinius was confident that the navy he had posted in the Propontis would prevent Constantine's navy from ever entering the Hellespont, but he was not taking any chances.

If Constantine's navy were somehow able to seize control of the narrow straits separating Europe from Asia, the Eastern Augustus knew he would be in big trouble.

Better to just cross over to Bithynia now and not worry about getting trapped in Byzantium.

And it was a good thing he didn't take chances, because the coming battle of the Hellespont was not going to go well for Licinius's navy at all.

While he was gathering his army in the early summer of three hundred twenty four, Constantine had recalled Crispus from the Rhine frontier, and ordered him down to the Greek port of Piraeus, to take command of the navy assembled there.

It was a good sized fleet, eighty ships in all, but nowhere near the number Licinius had at his disposal.

But Crispus, undeterred, sailed out towards the Hellespont anyway.

His orders were to seize all the waterways between the Aegean and the Black Sea.

When Lycinius received word that Crispus was on the way, he ordered two hundred of his ships down to blockade the straits of the Hellespont.

The idea, of course, was that this force would overwhelm Crispus's smaller fleet.

But in the narrow waters of the Hellespont, the larger numbers actually worked against Licinius's admiral.

Crispus was able to deftly maneuver round the larger and more constrained enemy fleet, and he inflicted serious damage before Licinius' navy was able to withdraw north to regroup.

In the aftermath of the first naval battle, Crispus was reinforced, possibly by ships sailing around from Ravenna.

And when he sailed further into the Hellespont to confront Licinius' navy, he now had something like 200 ships at his disposal.

Licinius, desperate to prevent the Sea Lanes from falling into enemy hands, ordered his full force of around 350 ships to go down and sink the son of Constantine.

This time, the two navies met near modern Gallipoli, and by all appearances, it looked like the stage was set for a great naval battle.

But just prior to the engagement, a storm kicked up that hit Licinius' fleet particularly hard.

The ships that were not run aground were badly damaged, and the crews were so battered that when Crispus advanced, the battle turned out to be little more than a mop-up operation.

It is reported that only four four of Licinius' ships escaped undamaged or uncaptured.

The sea now belonged to Constantine.

When Licinius found out what had happened, he ordered all the troops in the now indefensible Byzantium to abandon the city and get their butts across the bosphorus on the double.

With Martinianus guarding the coast, Licinius mustered the rest of his remaining troops and tried to figure out what he was going to do next.

Constantine, meanwhile, could smell blood in the water and pressed his advantage hard.

Using light transports to ferry his men across the Bosphorus, he was able to elude Martinianus and had the bulk of his army across before the new Caesar was able to do anything about it.

Licinius then ordered Martinianus to abandon the coast and rendezvous with the rest of the army.

Combined, they would make a stand at Chrysopolis, a fortified city a few miles north.

But Constantine had guessed their plans, and with all the momentum going with him, he raced north and beat Licinius to the punch.

In September 324, the Eastern Augustus arrived at Chrysopolis, and he found Constantine waiting for him.

Here now would be their final battle.

Legend has it that at this point Constantine had gotten so far inside Lycinius' head that the Eastern Augustus had become convinced that the Labarum really did have magical properties.

He ordered his men to avoid attacking whatever part of Constantine's army carried the standard, and then went even further, ordering his men to not even look at the magical talisman.

One gets the feeling that Licinius was, at this point, already beaten.

But that being said, the Battle of Chrysopolis was not at all a foregone conclusion.

Both emperors were still excellent generals, commanding huge veteran forces.

But as happened every time Constantine and Licinius met in the field of battle, eventually the tide turned against the eastern Augustus.

Constantine had not even bothered with clever tactics, and instead went straight for the jugular, ordering a full frontal assault that decisively broke Licinius's line.

But Licinius, and oh man, are you as sick of hearing this as I am of saying it, once again managed to slip away, this time with a force of about 30,000 men.

He drove headlong for Nicomedia and holed up inside the city, but when Constantine arrived shortly thereafter, it appears that the fight had finally gone out of the eastern Augustus.

Using Constantia as a go-between, the two emperors came to terms.

Licinius and Martinianus were to surrender peacefully, and Constantine, giving in to his sister's begging, agreed to let them live.

But that was the only concession he was going to make.

The Empire was now Constantine's and Constantine's alone.

For the first time in more than forty years, Rome was ruled by a single man.

The nasty little epilogue to this story, which I'll deal with now so we can get it out of the way, is that despite the solemn oath that he swore, it does not look like Constantine had any interest in letting his defeated rivals live.

Initially, it appeared that everything was above board, as Licinius was taken to Thessalonica and Martinianus to Cappadocia, where they were both supposed to live out the rest of their days under something like house arrest.

But after about a year, Constantine would decide that no one would really care any more what happened to his beaten rivals, and so he ordered the execution of both.

At least, that's what everyone assumed he did.

They died under suspicious circumstances, and rumors later swirled that Licinius had been involving himself in a plot to overthrow Constantine, which, frankly, sounds an awful lot like the accusation that Maximian was involved in a plot to overthrow Constantine.

And so most modern scholars believe that Constantine simply could not afford to let them live, and so, oath or no oath, he did not let them live.

Licinius was about 60 years old and had managed to survive as emperor for a very turbulent 16 years.

Constantine also appears at this point to have ordered the execution of his nephew Licinius the Younger, now maybe 13 years years old.

We can't have rival dynasties lying around now, can we?

Constantine's sister Constantia was of course horrified, but it was just business, nothing personal.

When Licinius died, the era of the Tetrarchy died with him.

Diocletian had done his best to establish a system that would end once and for all the persistent civil wars that had racked the empire in the third century, and instead he inadvertently had drawn up what amounted to a giant civil war tournament bracket.

In the championship game, Constantine finally had emerged victorious.

Next time, we will get into the ramifications of his victory.

What would Constantine do now that he was the undisputed ruler of the Empire?

It is a question that will have to wait two weeks, though, because, as many of you know, the history of Rome tours begin next Friday, and thus I will have no no time to work on new episodes for a while.

But fear not, knowing full well that I would be taking this time off, I've been working double time lately, and have managed to get the next three episodes written and recorded and ready to go.

So, in the interest of not just cutting you off for the next six weeks, my plan is to remotely post an episode every other week while I'm gone.

So, that means that there will be a new release on May 15, May 29, and June 12, after which we will resume a normal schedule.

I'll say up front that it's my intention to release the episodes on those dates, but given that I have no real idea what my internet situation will be like on any given day, the actual posting time might fluctuate a bit.

But rest assured, the episodes are done, ready for your listening pleasure, and I will get them to you in a timely manner.

So live and in-person me will see you in about six weeks.

Please be nice to pre-recorded me until I get back.

It's time to head back to school and forward to your future with Carrington College.

For over 55 years, we've helped train the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Apply now to get hands-on training from teachers with real-world experience.

And as few as nine months, you could start making a difference in healthcare.

Classes start soon in Pleasant Hill, San Leandro, and San Jose.

Visit Carrington.edu to see what's next for you.

Visit Carrington.edu slash SCI for information on program outcomes.

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