135- Brothers in Name Only

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Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome,

episode 135,

Brothers in Name Only.

Following the defeat and death of Maximinus Daia in the summer of three thirteen AD, the Roman Empire was backed down to two emperors for the first time in twenty years.

But unlike the previous partnership between Diocletian and Maximian, the partnership between Constantine and Lycanius was not premised on cooperation and mutual respect, so much as on hostility and mutual suspicion.

Their joint reign was not about working together to solve the problems of the Empire.

It was instead about putting themselves in the best position possible to take the other out as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

The two men resembled no one so much as Octavian and Antony.

They were avowed allies, legally brothers-in-law, and ready to slit each other's throats at the drop of a hat.

And of course, in the end, the climax of their drama played out the same as well, with the man in the west utterly crushing the man in the east.

But, just like that old drama, this new drama would take more than a decade to play out.

Licinius did not have long to savor his victory over Maximinus before the responsibilities he had won for himself came knocking.

After arriving in Antioch to consolidate his rule over Syria, Lycinius appears to have been dragged straight away into hostilities with Rome's Persian neighbor to the east.

There is very little detail in the record about what exactly was going on between the Romans and the Sassanids at this point in history, but one thing was clear.

Whatever fight Maximinus Daia had been embroiled in when Constantine knocked off Maxentius, it was far from over.

But though we don't know the exact circumstances, if we take historical precedents and combine them with one major contemporaneous event, historians reckon that once again the two empires were feuding over Armenia.

That one major contemporaneous event occurred in the late summer or early fall of 314 AD, maybe six to nine months after Licinius began campaigning in the desert.

A new king of Armenia was crowned.

The establishment of a new monarch over the border kingdom at this particular moment is why historians suspect Rome and Persia were fighting over Armenia.

But that said, there is nothing particularly major about Armenia getting a new king.

It happened all the time.

What made it a major event is that the new king Tiridates had recently been baptized a Christian, and when he took over the throne, he declared that the kingdom of Armenia would henceforth recognize Christianity as its official religion.

This, of course, was the first time in history that any government recognized Christianity as its state religion, which, I think you'll agree, is a major event indeed.

While Licinius was thus absorbed in the East, Constantine handled all imperial business in the west.

After satisfying himself that Maximinus was dead and that he would not have to like invade Illyria or something, Constantine headed back north to Gaul and established a headquarters at Trier.

He spent most of the next year dealing with the routine matters of government, petitions here, skirmishes with the Germans there, etc., etc.

But in the summer of 314, Constantine dealt with his own major turning point in the history of Christianity.

This turning point sprang from an internal disagreement within the church, which led to one side appealing to the emperor to resolve the argument.

For the first 300 years of Christianity's existence, the imperial government was not just a separate institution, it was practically the exact opposite of everything Christianity stood for.

But now that Constantine was in power, that was all about to change, and it is the Donatists who get the credit, or the blame, depending on your point of view, for first inviting the emperor into the church.

The stage for this invitation was set by the Great Persecution.

Essentially what happened is that while the persecution was going on, the Christians wound up breaking down into two camps those who complied with the imperial authorities and those who resisted.

Now that the persecution was over, the Christian leadership was faced with the question of what to do with the collaborating clergymen, who were called traditores, or men who had handed over, which gives us the root of our English word traitor.

Could they just return as if nothing had happened, or did they need to be re-baptized, or what?

And more importantly, should they be allowed to return at all?

You'll recall that following the Decian persecution, the church faced a similar situation, and eventually came down solidly on the side of readmittance without the need for rebaptism, and declared the opposing view heretical.

You'll also recall that when we discussed what became known as the Novationist heresy, I said it was a precursor to the much larger fight that would follow Diocletian's great persecution.

Well, here we are.

A faction within the church, centered in North Africa and led by, but not founded by, the Bishop Donatus, believed that collaborating members of the clergy should not be allowed to maintain their positions and that any sacraments they celebrated should be considered invalid.

The position of these so-called donatists was considered unnecessarily harsh by the majority of the Christian clergy, possibly, because many of them could be accused of being trotatorious, and a far more lenient course was plotted.

I don't want to dive too deeply into the minutiae of the arguments because doctrinal disputes like this quickly turn into black holes of esoteric theology, but suffice it to say that it was a very complex issue.

The two sides dug in, and the problem seemed intractable.

After an anti-Donatus deacon was elected to serve as the bishop of Carthage, under highly suspicious circumstances, it should be noted, Bishop Donatus of Numidia decided to outflank his enemies in the church and played an unprecedented trump card.

He appealed directly to Constantine and asked the emperor to help settle the matter.

Now, before we get too far along, I do want to point out that this was not completely uncharted territory.

It is often said that the fight over the Donatist heresy and the subsequent Council at Arles was the first time the church invited the emperor in to help solve their problems.

But there was actually a precedent for this set during the reign of Aurelian.

There was too much else going on for me to talk about it at the time, but as Queen Zenobia was extending her influence into Syria, she made common cause with a controversial bishop named Paul of Samaceda, who agreed to turn his flock in her direction if she supported his claim to the bishopric of Antioch.

Once Palmyra was defeated, a delegation of Christian leaders approached Aurelian and asked him to expel Paul from the city.

Since their religious aims coincided with his political aims, Aurelian granted the request and Paul was exiled.

That, so far as I can tell, is actually the first time an emperor got in the middle of what was, really, an internal dispute between rival Christian factions.

But, that all being said, no emperor had ever gotten involved with doctrinal issues, so Constantine is definitely about to set off into uncharted territory on that front.

It should be noted, though, that when Constantine accepted the petition of the Donatus, it was not because he was itching to stick his nose into church business, but because, as emperor, he felt like he had a responsibility to ensure that justice was done.

Indeed, the petition delivered to the emperor had nothing to do with doctrinal disputes, but instead focused exclusively on the alleged crimes of the controversial new bishop of Carthage.

The Donatist strategy was to smear their rival bishop, get the recent election results tossed out, and then get a new pro-Donatist candidate elected to the bishopric of Carthage.

But despite the fact that he agreed, in the interest of justice, that the Donatist should be heard, that did not mean that Constantine was eager to jump into internal church politics with both feet.

So he ordered the matter to be arbitrated by the Bishop of Rome and a panel of three other impartial bishops from Gaul, who would be selected by the emperor personally to ensure a fair result.

But before the trial took place, the Bishop of Rome, a staunch anti-Donatist and friend of the accused, packed the judge's table with fifteen more bishops, all from Italy and all in his pocket.

As soon as the proceedings began, it became clear that the whole thing was now a setup.

The council not only ruled against the Donatists on the limited issue of whether the Bishop of Carthage was a guilty man, but they also ruled against them on the broader issue of their doctrinal beliefs, which the council declared heretical.

The Donatists were, of course, outraged, and appealed to Constantine a second time.

When the Emperor was filled in on the details of the trial, he agreed that the Donatus had been treated unfairly, and agreed that their case should be retried, this time before a council composed of bishops from every province in the Western Empire, a council that was to be called by Constantine himself.

When the subsequent Council of Arl convened in August of three hundred fourteen, though, the outcome for the Donatus was the same.

Their charges against the Bishop of Carthage were tossed out, and their beliefs were declared heretical.

The Donatus appealed to Constantine a third time, and like most major court cases, there were a few more procedural twists and turns before the matter was finally settled for good.

But in the end, the decision of the Council of Arles stood.

The accused bishop was exonerated, and the Donatus were declared heretics.

When the Donatus continued to pester the emperor about the issue, though, Constantine finally lost his temper.

He had been at the council, though he sat as a lay person,

and saw nothing untoward about the process.

The Donatus had had their day in court and they had lost.

It was time to get over it, drop their complaints, and get on board with the program.

Which brings us to the last two points I want to make about the whole affair.

First, it gives us an initial glimpse at what Constantine's religious priorities really were, specifically how much weight he put in the idea of unity.

As we go forward, we will see again and again that Constantine liked Christianity, supported Christianity, and believed in Christianity, but that it drove him crazy how much Christians fought with each other.

Constantine didn't care what wound up orthodoxy and what wound up heresy, though there is good reason to believe he actually supported the anti-Donatist position, just as long as everyone agreed what was what.

He seemed genuinely afraid that discord within the church imperiled all their souls.

This fear would culminate with the Council of Nicaea, when Constantine pushed for all doctrinal disputes to be settled once and for all.

This fear would also lead to the second point I want to make.

Now that Donatism had been given a fair hearing and still been declared heretical, it was time for it to be purged from the system in order to maintain the all-important unity and purity of the church.

So following the Council of Arles, we see Constantine nodding in approval as the first instances of Christian on Christian violence begin to break out in North Africa.

And then, when the Donatists persisted, we see him threatening to come down there himself and show everyone how it was done.

But he wouldn't get the chance, as war with Licinius interrupted his dabbling for now in the controversies of the church.

After he left Arles in the late summer of 314, Constantine returned to Trier to keep an eye on the Rhine frontier, and Licinius returned from the east to keep an eye on the Danube frontier.

At some point after the first of the year, though we really don't know when, a subtle new wrinkle in the balance of power was introduced, as Constantia gave birth to Licinius's first child, a son who we'll call Licinius the younger.

Though the baby Licinius was just that, a baby, most historians believe that Constantine immediately detected a threat to his long-term dynastic ambitions, so the Western Emperor set in motion a series of events that would eventually lead first to murder and then to war.

Though over the course of the last few years the Tetrarchy as an institution had withered, as no replacement candidates had been elevated to replace Galerius or Maximinus Daia, At some point in 315, Constantine suddenly proposed resurrecting the idea of junior imperial colleagues.

Specifically, he sent a message to Licinius, suggesting a man named Bossianus be elevated to the rank of Caesar.

But one additional Caesar does not a tetrarchy make, which is why scholars suppose that in addition to the documented proposal to elevate Bossianus, that Constantine further intended to elevate his son Crispus at the same time.

Though we have no proof of it, the supposition makes sense on its own merits and conveniently fits with Constantine's general political posture during the period.

Crispus had been born sometime between 299 and 305 while Constantine was in the East at Diocletian's court, and his story mirrors that of his father.

He was the son of Constantine and a woman named Minervina, whose relationship with Constantine, like that of Constantine's own mother Helena, with his father Constantius, is a bit murky.

Minervina may have been an informal mistress, she may have been a legal wife who was divorced to make way for Fausta, or she may have been a legal wife who died before 307.

Like Constantine himself, then, by 315 AD, Crispus stood as the son of a previous marriage who was very possibly illegitimate.

But perhaps drawing from his own experience, Constantine never wavered in his recognition of Crispus, and always acknowledged and supported the boy as his rightful heir, as we are seeing right now in his attempt to make a Caesar of the boy/slash teenager.

The presumption here is that Constantine was looking to overwhelm any claim to power the baby Lycinius might put forward some day by packing a revived Tetrarchy with his own people.

Bossianus, you see, was not just a respected senator, he was also Constantine's brother-in-law.

But But Constantine didn't want to be too obvious in his dynastic maneuverings, which is why, of all his possible male relations, the Western Augustus specifically nominated Bosianus, because Bossianus' brother was a man named Senecio, who was a close friend of Licinius.

Hopefully, Licinius would agree to the proposal, believing that he was getting a Caesar he could trust, and thus accept a tetrarchy essentially composed of Constantine's extended family.

And if you count Licinius, who was himself Constantine's brother-in-law, then you could say that the whole Tetrarchy would be composed of Constantine's extended family.

But the Eastern Augustus was not buying what Constantine was selling.

According to Constantine's later version of events, it was a good thing for him that Licinius shot down Bosianus' nomination, because as it turned out, the would-be Caesar was not nearly as loyal to Constantine as the Western Augustus had supposed.

According to Constantine's later story, not long after refusing the proposal to renew the Tetrarchy, Licinius had actually talked his friend Senecio into talking his brother Bosianus into initiating a plot to kill Constantine, and that Bosianus had agreed to the plan.

No one really believes today that Bosianus was actually involved in a conspiracy against his brother-in-law, but over the winter of 315-316, Constantine's agents allegedly caught Bosianus red handed and the would be assassin was executed.

So if there was no plot, why did Constantine suddenly turn on the man he had been ready to make Caesar just the year before?

The answer appears to lie in the fact that after eight years of marriage, Afausta was finally pregnant.

With another heir on the way, and of course the child would be a boy, Basianus became expendable, so Constantine used him as a convenient conduit through which to accuse Licinius of murderous treachery.

After Fausta gave birth to Constantine's second son, of course it was a son, the ill-fated Constantine II, Constantine I stepped up his rhetoric and demanded that Licinius hand over Senecio so that he too could be tried for attempted regicide.

But Licinius refused to hand over his old friend, and diplomatic relations between the two emperors broke down.

In the fall of 316, Constantine, convenient pretext for war now in hand, led a force of about twenty thousand over the Alps and into Illyria to confront Licinius.

Hearing that his brother emperor was on the march, Licinius mustered thirty-five thousand troops and marched west, ready to do some confronting of his own.

The two emperors met on october eighth, three sixteen AD on an open plain near the Pannonian Siddha of Kibali, and after some brief skirmishing the two infantries got down to business.

Both emperors were no doubt hoping that this would prove to be their final battle for control of the Roman Empire, but both were disappointed.

After a slug fest that lasted all day, Constantine finally led a cavalry charge right before sundown that decisively routed Lycinius' army.

But the breakthrough came too late in the day, and darkness ended hostilities before Constantine could finish the job.

Under the cover of night, Licinius gathered up what was left of his army and drove them first north to Sirmium and then east to Adrianople to regroup.

It seems that it was at this point, just after the Battle of Kibali, that Licinius elevated one of his generals, a man named Aurelius Valerius Valens, to the rank of full co-Augustus.

Valens had been serving as the theater commander of the Danube frontier, and it appears that with his legitimacy badly shaken by Constantine's victory, that Licinius wanted to secure the loyalty of Valens before the general defected to Constantine's side.

The now co-emperors based in Adrianople then quickly raised a new army, and at some point during the winter of 316-317, the peace talks that had been ongoing since Cabali broke down and the armies of East and West met again, this time at the Thracian town of Mardia.

Both emperors hoped that this would be their final battle, but alas, again it was not.

Like the Battle of Kibali, the Battle of Mardia was an extremely hard fought affair that once again saw Constantine get the upper hand, but once again saw night fall before he could finish the job.

Then, once again, Licinius and Valens gathered up their battered army and retreated under the cover of night.

But they were not running scared, and their line of retreat led the so far perfect golden boy Constantine to finally make a mistake.

The most obvious fallback position for Lycinius' army at this point was Byzantium, and this was so obvious that Constantine just assumed that that's where his rival Augustus was headed.

More than ready to end this thing, Constantine plunged east, hoping to take down Licinius before he could fully solidify his defenses.

But Licinius and Valens had not, in fact, headed to Byzantium.

Guessing that this is what Constantine was guessing that they'd do, they instead withdrew north into the hills.

Once Constantine blew past their position, they dropped back down and neatly cut off his supply and communication lines to the west.

It did not take long for Constantine to realize his mistake.

Both sides stalled for time, as Lycinius and Valens waited for Constantine to recognize how dire his position was, and as Constantine waited to see if his porters could somehow slip through the enemy blockade.

As soon as a much needed shipment of supplies was captured, though, Constantine threw in the towel and came to the table.

On march 1, 316 AD, the two sides came together and hammered out a peace.

Now, Constantine was in a tight spot, but he had still whipped Licinius twice in a row, so it's not like he was negotiating with a gun to his head.

He knew that Licinius wanted this over even more than he did, which is why Constantine was able to negotiate such a favorable settlement for himself.

In fact, his only real concession to Licinius was that the Eastern Augustus would not be deposed just yet.

Other than that, though, Constantine dictated the terms, and Licinius accepted them.

First, the Eastern Augustus would unequivocally recognize the Western Augustus as the senior Augustus.

Up until now, it had been a little unclear who outranked who.

Constantine had had himself declared maximum Augustus by the Senate, but there was no getting around the fact that Licinius had been Augustus longer, and so enjoyed a natural seniority.

Now the issue was put to bed.

Constantine was the top dog.

Second, all the territory west of Thrace was ceded to Constantine, giving him control over Greece, which was nice, but more importantly, giving him control over all the legions stationed along the Danube.

Finally, there was the small matter of Valens.

Nowhere in Constantine's dynastic plans was there room for some random general inserted into the imperial college without his approval?

Valens was to be deposed and executed.

Licinius agreed to everything, and Valens, who had enjoyed the novelty of calling himself Augustus for maybe three or four months, was stripped of his rank and killed.

The last little bit of business to attend to was to finally address the long-term future of the Imperial Dynasty.

Constantine had tried to restart the Tetrarchy on his own terms, and Licinius had tried to elevate a new emperor on his own terms, so now both men agreed to a simple compromise that would hopefully settle things.

Crispus, Constantine II, and Licinius the Younger would all be elevated to the rank of Caesar.

Now, since Crispus was at most 17 years old, and possibly as young as 11, and Constantine II and Licinius the Younger were both babies, this compromise does not represent a return to the Tetrarchy, so much as it harkens back to the old days, when a Roman emperor would give his son the title Caesar to signal that he was the official heir to the throne.

Though the idea of the Tetrarchy was not entirely done for yet, as evidenced by the fact that when Licinius and Constantine next went to war, each was supported by a Caesar, clearly the Tetrarchy is about to be relegated to the dustbin of history.

The peace would hold for the next seven years, though clearly neither emperor thought it would last forever, as evidenced by the fact that while Licinius made his capital at Nicomedia, Constantine made his at Sirmia.

Both men campaigned against Rome's enemies to the north in order to justify the location of their respective headquarters, but there was no missing the obvious fact that they were basically living right next door to each other.

The first time either emperor slipped up, the other was going to pounce.

Next week, though, Constantine will eventually be able to stand the suspense no no longer, and instead of waiting for Licinius to slip up, he will simply start poking Lycinius in the eye with a stick.

After enduring the prodding for a bit, Lycinius will finally snap and demand that Constantine stop poking him in the eye with a stick, at which point Constantine will say, Well, why don't you make me?

and then Lycinius will say, Okay, here I come.

This time, it would be their final battle.

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