How do you feel about Constantine /his/? Do you think he

I do think he really believed, his patronage of Christianity make little sense from pure political point of view. Christians were a relatively small prosecuted sect with no actual power behind them, and there were no Christians in the army, the very locus of imperial power.

Though I'm not the one that believed that Christianity was the reason Rome fell (East Rome survived 1000 years after Christianity was established there) I do believe that Constantine undid every single based thing that Diocletian try to do.

>split the empire due to growing pains to take care of their own shit; Constantine focuses all wealth and power into the East leaving the west to rot
>Dio retires to bring back the Cincinnatus myth; Constantine takes Rome back to the warlord days

>>2009085
Hell no. A cynical power play

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One of the most over-rated Emperors, and one of the least deserving of all the fame and attention he receives. He was nothing more than an upstart and power-hungry general - it was people like him that caused the Crisis of the Third Century and the institution of the Tetrarchy in the first place. That he came out victorious in the civil wars was due to a fluke in events rather than any talents or qualities of his own, and it could have just as easily have been "Maxentius the Great" or "Licinius the Great".

And no, it is unlikely he was a true believer of Christianity. He used Christianity as a way to consolidate power. For most of his life, he was a pagan who deified his own father and was a believer in Sol Invictus; only after he became Emperor did he shun this, and most likely to curb/undermine the power of the pagan Senate.

>>2009256
What power was there to gain from supporting Christians?

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>>2009242
What makes it worse is half of the great shit Diocletian did was hijacked by later historians as being Constantinian in creation because he was a persecutor.

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>>2009379
Constantine from the start tried to strip away the Senate of its powers and influence. The Roman Senate was a strong bastion of traditional Roman polytheism, and supporting Christianity was a great way to diminish the power of the Senatorial class.

>>2009379
What this nigga said>>2009376. A monolithic and monotheistic Christian faith would consolidate the emperor's rule

>>2009429
> Senate
> powers and influence
What is this, 83 BCE? What power or influence on imperial level Roman senate had at the time? The only power and influence out there were the armies, and they were mostly pagan and possible mithridatic, so it made no sense to support Christianity if he wanted to consolidate his power.
>>2009432
>monolithic and monotheistic Christian faith would consolidate the emperor's rule
Not when the sect you promote is supported by less than 5% of the population. In any way it would take generations to "consolidate" anything, promoting rebellions and dissent in the mean time. There is no reason to think Constantine was in position to plan such a long term investment.

>>2009429
Constantine explicitly SUPPORTED the senate and the senatorial class, and the senate itself, in direct opposition to the reforms of Diocletian.
Indeed, writers at the time remark that he had restored the authority of the senate that had been lost at the time of Caesar.

Regarding "Consolidation of power meme" a lot of anons talk about, I'm in the pro christianity side, even though julian is my hasubando

Christianity from the outside had a tremendous advantage of being unified, Christianity at Rome was the same as Christianity at Jerusalem. Supporing "pagansim" would get you no unity, you couldnt coordinate with say a preist of baal and a pries of zeus and a priest of Cernunnos. There was a lack of coordination and unity, thats why julian tried very hard to consolidate pagans.

Ofc this unity is just a facade, deep down Christians are also divided but constantine chose christianity for its unificary traits, read his letters about arian controversy he does not give a fuck about who is right or wrong, he wants it to be settled and be done with it.

He says how arians and others have %99.9 similarities and debating trivial stuff. This might be used as an evidence of how Constantine see the religion. He saw it as an unified thing to unify the empire but alas it was not as unified as he thougt it was

>>2009457
>What is this, 83 BCE? What power or influence on imperial level Roman senate had at the time?

Lots and lots and lots of money (No seriously, the senate once sent an emperor a ton of gold as a gift), holding a bunch of important offices, and their own private armies.

y'know.
The usual noble shit.

>>2009500
>you couldnt coordinate with say a preist of baal and a pries of zeus and a priest of Cernunnos.
yeah you could, especially since zeus and baal were syncronized. each priest wasn't exclusively interested in the god he served. also there's the bonus of there not being any doctrinal disputes leading to bloodshed. the only time pagan beliefs arguably led to conflict with other pagans on the basis of differing beliefs would be on which town was the true birth place of Zeus in order to get money from pilgrimages.