Century 11 of 13 · AD 284 – 395
Diocletian, Constantine, Nicaea, and the turn.
28 entries · 19 hours · 21 with a written verdict
Diocletian launched the most systematic Roman attempt to destroy Christianity in 303. It was over within a decade, and the emperor after next was a Christian. This period runs on reversals of that size.
He came to power in 284 and solved the succession by inventing a system with four emperors in it, which worked exactly once. He also stopped pretending: the emperor is now a remote sacred figure in a palace, and historians call the arrangement the Dominate for that reason. His Edict on Maximum Prices in 301 is the largest surviving attempt at ancient price control, and economists have been enjoying its failure ever since.
Constantine wins at the Milvian Bridge in 312 under a sign he later described differently to different audiences, legalises the religion in 313, and calls the Council of Nicaea in 325 to settle what Christians actually believe. He is baptised on his deathbed in 337, and whether he was convinced or calculating is an argument that will outlive all of us. He also moves the capital: Constantinople is dedicated in 330 on a site with walls, fresh water and a harbour, and that decision keeps the eastern half alive for another eleven centuries. Julian tries to reverse the religious change, rules eighteen months and dies in Persia in 363. Adrianople in 378 destroys an eastern army and kills an emperor. Theodosius dies in 395, the empire is divided between his two sons, and it is never governed as one again.
I feel like…
Cogitare, how it was thought and ordered
Sentire, what was lived and endured
Facere, what hands made and did
how it is made
who is talking
how much time you have
With a written verdict
Hypatia in Alexandria, and the only feature film about late antique intellectual life. Takes liberties with her death and is honest about the world she lived in.
Part of The Ancients
With Peter Heather
How a small movement went from persecuted to imperial in three centuries. The demographic arithmetic is the interesting part.
Fifty-eight minutes on what happened to temples, statues and libraries as Christianity took the state, and on how much destruction the evidence will actually carry.
With David Gwynn
The most systematic Roman attempt to destroy Christianity, launched in 303, over within a decade, and followed by a Christian emperor. Also good on the four-emperor system that worked exactly once.
With Rosamond McKitterick
The bishops of Rome before there was a papacy, when the claim to primacy was still being invented.
With Joan Taylor
Joan Taylor on Bethlehem before the nativity, a small place south of Jerusalem with a longer history than the one story it is known for. Fifty-two minutes.
With David Potter
Milvian Bridge, the sign he described differently to different audiences, and a deathbed baptism. Whether he was convinced or calculating is an argument that will outlive all of us, and the episode does not pretend otherwise.
Forty-nine minutes on Constantine's climb from York in 306 to sole rule, and on how much of the Christian account of it comes from writers who needed him to be a convert.
The harbour of Theodosius, found under a modern city while they were digging a railway. Forty-three minutes on the port that fed the capital of the last emperor to rule both halves of the empire.
Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast
With Jason Klazmer
Jason Klazmer on how Diocletian rebuilt an army that had spent fifty years making and unmaking emperors, and on the price of the fix. Forty minutes.
With Dafydd Daniel
What Christians actually argued about in 325, which was not what most people assume, and how an emperor came to be chairing it.
Thirty-one minutes on Valentine of Rome, patron saint of beekeepers and of epilepsy, and on how a martyr with almost no biography acquired one.
Part of Being Roman with Mary Beard
Twenty-seven minutes on the clerks: the thousands of men who kept the provinces fed and watered, and the complaints they left behind about each other.
Part of When in Rome
With Caillan Davenport
Twenty-five minutes on the largest baths Rome ever built, put up in the early fourth century and now holding a church, a museum and a railway station.
Part of Echoes of Empires
Twenty-two minutes on the emperor remembered for one word, Apostate, and on the rest of him: the writing, the reforms, the eighteen months he had.
Twenty-two minutes on Julian sent to Gaul as a junior Caesar with no military experience, and on what he did with it.
Twenty-one minutes on the years after Adrianople, when the empire had a religious civil war on top of a military one.
Seventeen minutes arguing the fourth century was a good time to be alive, which cuts against the decline story most listeners arrive with.
Fifteen minutes on how a small movement became the empire's religion in under a century. The shortest route into the question in this whole catalogue.
Ten minutes on whether Christianity changed how the Roman army fought, recruited and swore its oaths, or only the words it used for those.
Part of Ancient Rome Live
Nine minutes on the last great bath complex built in Rome, raised on the Quirinal around AD 315 and pulled down in 1605 to clear ground for a cardinal's palace. The drawings made before it went are most of what survives.
Everything else, in order
Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed
Part of Greeced Lightning · Myths and movies with a doctor of classics; only the Roman episodes are indexed
Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed
