And Maximian, his co Augustus stepped down as well, and
the two Caesars were elevated to Algusti, and two new Caesars were chosen.
But without the strong presence of Diocletian, the tetrarchy fell apart.
And Rome and the empire were once again plunged into civil war.
The two main claimants for
imperial power that came out of this civil war were Maxentius.
Maxentius who was the son of Maximian and Constantine.
Constantine who eventually became Constantine the Great,
Constantine who was the son of Constantius Chlorus.
And these two men, Constantine and Maxentius, warred with one another for
imperial power, and they went against one another in one of the most famous
battles of all time, in fact the battle that is as well known,
if not even more well known than the battle of Actium.
And this is the battle of the Milvian Bridge.
The battle of the Milvian Bridge which took place in 312 AD.
And it was at that epic making battle that Constantine was victorious over Maxentius.
The Constantine became sole emperor of Rome.
So a move away from the tetrarchy,
in the placement of power, in the hands of one man, once again.
Constantine becomes sole emperor of Rome.
And it was at that same battle, the battle of the Milvian Bridge.
And one of the reasons it is such an important battle in historical terms.
Is the fact that it was at that battle of the Milvian Bridge that Constantine
was said to have seen the vision of the cross,
the vision of the cross that helped him to be victorious.
The vision of the cross that eventually led him
to convert to Christianity, which he did on his deathbed.
He was baptized a Christian on his death bed.
One of the most interesting things that we'll talk about today and
about the architecture, under Constantine the Great is that we will see,
because he began as a Pagan emperor and ended his life as a Christian emperor.
He has in a sense one foot in the Pagan past and
the other foot in the Christian future, and
we're going to see that reflected in the architecture that he commissioned.
As we look at that today.
A few coins of Constantine,
which I think will help set the stage for this one foot in the past and
one foot in the future that is going to be the light motif of today's lecture.
I show you on the left-hand side of the screen a coin
of Constantine when he first began his rise to power.
It was probably struck in around 306 AD.
And it's an interesting coin because if you remember, I didn't bring it back to
show you, but if you remember the coin of Diocletian that I showed you,
you'll recall that he was represented in a very similar fashion.
It's the sort of bearded blockhead style, as I call it, for the tetrarchy.
A very cubic image, a short military hairstyle, closely cropped,
and a short beard that adheres very closely to the shape of the face.
And the face masked itself with cubic, geometric forms.
So we see Constantine in his very early portrait,
trying to look like a tetrarch, trying to look like his father, Constantius Chlorus.
Trying to look like Diocletian, trying to fit in before he figures out the way
that's going to enable him, in fact, to become sole emperor of Rome.
After he defeats Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge,
we see the greatest transformation in the history of Roman portraiture,
in the history of self-imaging by emperors, by people in power.
And that is this transformation that I can show you from this early coin of 306 to
a coin that dates after the battle of the Milvian Bridge.
And that also represents Constantine.
And what you see is happened here is Constantine has shaved off his beard.
He has lost about 20 years of age, and he is shown with an entirely
different hairstyle, not the short military hairstyle that he wore
because he wanted to liken himself to his father into Diocletian.
But an entirely new hairstyle but one for any of you who know your Roman
portraiture or remember the portraits that I showed you fleetingly of Augustus and
the Julio Claudians, he is wearing a cap of hair that is very similar
to a fuller cap of hair with comma shaped locks over his forehead,
growing long on the nape of his neck.
It is characteristic of Augustus and also of Trajan.
He's in fact a neo Augustus in this image with a neo Tarajanic hairstyle.
Why?
Because he as sole emperor, he has made the decision.
That he wants to now ally himself not with the Tetrarchs, which
are of the past at this point, but rather with the great emperors of the past.
With Augustus, with Trajan, and as we'll see, also with Hadrian and
with Marcus Aurelius, and we can see that very important break here and
we'll see it also in architecture.
Another coin down here representing Constantine
with a bunch of a Pagan regalia.
We see him as so many of the emperors, earlier emperors of Rome
depicted along with the patron god, in this case god Helios, the god of the sun.
And you can see Constantine in the foreground, Helios in the background.
Helios represented with a rayed crown and
that's why we know it's him, silhouetted right behind the emperor.
The emperor shown as war like with military costume, a spear, and
then a shield over here.
And if we look closely at the shield,
we'll see the depiction of someone in a chariot led by four horses coming.
It's represented frontally.
It's the solar chariot, the solar chariot of Helios.
So a coin that is very much in the usual Pagan tradition,
where we see Constantine associating himself with the Pagan
past and with a Pagan god, in this case, Helios.
This coin, however, that was also made after
the battle of the Milvian Bridge shows us a very different Constantine.
It's an interesting frontal portrait, which is rare on Roman coins.
He is still shown as the warrior.
He's in military costume.
He has, he's holding the reins of his horse who's also depicted nicely
in this portrait on this coin.
If you look very closely at his shield, you will actually see that it still is
decorated with a Pagan symbol with the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.
But look up here.
The scepter that he carries is not the usual scepter or
spear that we see in Pagan imagery but a cross scepter.
Across scepter and I don't know if you can see it from where you sit, he wears
a medallion on the top of his very elaborate helmet with plumage and so on.
A medallion that has the chi-rho.
C-H-I-R-H-O, the chi-rho which was the Christian monogram.
So we see him in this image not as the great Pagan warrior, But
as the new Christian crusader.
So a very important change from Paganism to Christianity, that as I
mentioned already, we will see also reflected in Constantine's architecture.
