Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
Years afterward constantine remembered the battle at the Milvian Bridge as the moment when he had first used a military standard constructed in the shape of a cross. Before the battle, he claimed, both he and his army had witnessed a vision of the cross in the sky, and Jesus Christ himself had appeared in a dream to explain the vision and direct him to build a battle standard. In his Life of Constantine Eusebius subsequently embedded those memories in a religious context and transformed the vision and the battle into moments of conversion to Christianity, of the emperor personally and of the empire in general. In this process of remembering and recording, however, both emperor and bishop had furthermore tried to forget someone else. During the battle outside Rome another emperor had also been present. But when Maxentius had fallen into the Tiber River, he had at the same time slipped into oblivion.
Constantine's memories and Eusebius' reinterpretation of those memories have set the tone for modern scholarship too, and overlooking Maxentius has reinforced the notion that the battle was all about Constantine and Christianity. In contrast, focusing on Maxentius offers an opportunity to avoid highlighting Christianity. The confrontation between these two emperors instead emphasized other consequential trends. One concerned the orientation of the Roman empire. Maxentius symbolized the conventional importance of Rome as the capital, while Constantine represented the increasing significance of frontier zones, in particular in the north along the Rhine and the Danube.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.