BMCR 2008.11.16, Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine

Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine.  Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.  Pp. xii, 441; map 1.  ISBN
978-0-521-88209-5.  $85.00.

Reviewed by Andrea Sterk, University of Florida ([email protected])
Word count:  2060 words
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"One imposing requirement for interpreting the past is to forget the
future" (9), writes historian Raymond Van Dam in his latest book on the
later Roman empire. This requirement is perhaps nowhere more
challenging than in a study of Constantine the Great, who has long
captivated the popular imagination and consumed scholarly discourse.
>From his ancient biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea, to a host of eminent
modern historians (Norman Baynes (1931), Andrew Alfoeldi (1948), A. H.
M. Jones (1962), Timothy Barnes (1981), and most recently H. A. Drake
(2000)), scholars have not ceased to fashion new images and pose fresh
interpretations of this first Christian Roman emperor.  For his part
Van Dam has attempted to restore Constantine to the world of
fourth-century Roman politics and culture.  He begins with a
description of Ronald Syme's approach to Augustus in his compelling and
immensely influential study, The Roman Revolution (1939). Van Dam
argues that Constantine's reign was as revolutionary for the Empire as
that of Augustus three centuries earlier and that the idea of a
"Christian emperor" was no less contradictory than the notion of a
"Republican emperor" had been.  Studies of Constantine have typically
emphasized the emperor's conversion or religious preferences, making
his involvement with Christianity "the defining characteristic of his
long reign," (10) even when focusing on seemingly non-religious
elements of his policies.  In keeping with the approach of his trilogy
on Roman Cappadocia, however, Van Dam proposes to study Constantine's
career from a variety of different perspectives.  "Before Constantine
was a Christian emperor, he was a typical emperor," he explains, and
"in many situations Christianity was not Constantine's primary concern"
(11).[[1]]

In his introduction, Van Dam warns that a focus on any one man's
biography can distort our understanding of broad historical
developments.  Alternatively, the three main sections of Van Dam's book
consider larger trends during Constantine's reign over which the
emperor himself had little control: "a Roman empire that no longer had
to include Rome, a Greek empire in the eastern provinces that still
used Latin, a Christian empire that was consistently at odds about
defining orthodox Christianity." (16)  Examining in turn a geographical
shift, a cultural transition, and a debate over the nature and
substance of Christian orthodoxy, Van Dam begins each section with an
ambiguous text that has generated conflicting interpretations: an
imperial rescript, a petition, and an inscription.  He provides the
Latin text and an English translation of the rescript, the petition,
and Constantine's responses to the petition in two Appendices at the
end of the book.

Section One, "The Roman Empire without Rome" traces the history of two
important and interrelated developments in Constantine's reign which
are often eclipsed by studies that focus on the emperor's religion.
The section opens with a letter from Hispellum and several other cities
in central Italy requesting autonomy from the dominant city of the
neighboring region of Tuscia.  Chapters 1 and 2 consider the immediate
background to this petition and the broader context which shaped
Constantine's response.  Van Dam focuses on a series of demographic
reversals taking place in the early fourth century:  between capital
and frontier, cities and provinces, Romans and barbarians, center and
periphery.  He particularly highlights the shift from a civilian,
Latin, pagan capital to a military, Greek, and Christian one as "Rome"
became "Old Rome" with the accession of Constantinople.   Indicative of
these transitions was the foundation of several new imperial capitals
on the frontiers (e.g., Trier and Serdica) making it increasingly
evident that "'Rome' could be made elsewhere than at Rome." (52)
Chapters 3 and 4 build on Van Dam's analysis of these requests
highlighting concerns that preoccupied Constantine's thinking through
much of his reign -- imperial legitimacy in the early years and
imperial succession in the latter decades.  He carefully traces
Constantine's creation of a new Flavian dynasty, distinct from the
Valerian dynasty of the Tetrarchs, and his successful efforts to ensure
dynastic succession through his sons.  Returning to the request from
Hispellum, Van Dam effectively captures the city's ambiguous stance
toward religion.   The proposal to construct a new temple to the
Flavian dynasty, despite the emperor's longstanding public support of
Christianity, reflected the reality of Constantine's reign: "his
political needs repeatedly took priority over any religious
preferences." (126)

Section Two, "A Greek Roman Empire," focuses on the linguistic and
cultural transitions that marked the Constantinian era. Despite the
insistence of Eusebius and many modern interpreters on discontinuity
between the reign of Constantine and his predecessors, Van Dam portrays
the emperor as "the scrupulous heir of Diocletian and his fellow
Tetrarchic emperors" (144).  Here he points to three factors that had
become defining characteristics of Romanness:  increased political
centralization, correct religion, and the use of the Latin language.  A
petition to the emperor set in motion a dialogue between Constantine
and the town of Orcistus in central Asia Minor that provides the
vehicle for Van Dam's exploration of these themes (chapter 5).  The
ambiguity of Orcistus with regard to religion mirrored the emperor's
fluctuating religious views (chapter 6) while its choice of Latin over
Greek reflected Constantine's own preferences and the realities of
imperial administration in the fourth century despite the shift to
Constantinople and the eastern empire.  After posing Julian as a
counterpoint to Constantine in cultural as well as religious
preferences, in Chapter 7 Van Dam describes how Julian's "support for
Greekness" and Constantine's promotion of Christianity gradually won
the day in the eastern empire.  Although Orcistus was wrong on both
counts in the long run, the citizens' successful petition for
independence reflects the ambivalence that marked this period.  As
imperial authority was gradually linked with religion and culture,
petitioners tried to be sensitive to the emperor's vacillating
preferences.  Orcistus was right about viewing Constantine's reign as
more of a cultural than a religious revolution, and it is in this
cultural framework that the expansion of Christianity in the eastern
empire should be interpreted. (215)

The most intriguing if not provocative part of the book is Section
Three, entitled "Emperor and God."  Once again Van Dam starts out with
an ambiguous text, a dedication inscribed in the apse of the church of
St. Peter in Rome.  Open to conflicting theological and political
interpretations, the inscription points to overlapping dialogues
concerning the political philosophy of Christian emperorship and the
Trinitarian theology of the Christian God.  Chapter 9 examines the
formation of a tetrarchic theology of imperial rule illustrating how "a
debate about doctrines was simultaneously a debate about Christian
emperorship." (249)  Chapter 10 analyzes the Arian controversy from the
standpoint of political philosophy.  Here Van Dam critiques the
confessional, pietistic approach of many learned surveys of the
development of doctrine which fail to take account of "ancient
criteria" and neglect to connect their narratives "to the society and
culture of the later Roman empire."  To be fair, he also takes to task
recent ahistorical postmodern readings of early Christian theology
noting that "the use of critical theory has become our new postmodern
confessional history." (265-266 and n.19)  Van Dam himself opts for a
symbolic reading of the varieties of early Christianity, a\ la Geertz,
examining all versions of the faith, both orthodox and heterodox, as
"legitimate cultural systems." (267)

In Chapter 11 Van Dam expands his discussion of religion and politics
as he examines the role of Eusebius of Caesarea, who spent the latter
years of his life creating an image of Constantine that undergirded his
non-Nicene doctrinal position. His Life of Constantine expressed a new
theology of Christian emperorship, Van Dam argues, presenting
Constantine as an analogue of Jesus Christ while at the same time
supporting Eusebius's own subordinationist theology.  In contrast,
Chapter 12 considers a Nicene construction of the Christian emperor
shaped by bishops and church historians.  Athanasius's Life of Antony
became an "inverted reflection" of Eusebius's Life of Constantine
promoting Nicene theological views about the relationship between God
the Father and Christ the Son as well s a new model for a Christian
ruler.  For later Nicene theologians and historians Theodosius the
Great embodied the new ideal of Christian emperorship, not an analogue
of Christ but of an Old Testament king, and they reinterpreted and
reshaped Constantine in light of this Theodosian paradigm.  With the
reign of Theodosius the longstanding discourse about the emperor and
religion fundamentally changed as rival models of emperorship were
overturned and Augustus' Roman revolution came to an end.  While
Augustus had co-opted traditional Republican titles to describe his
reign, Christian writers "now subverted the same terminology to define
Theodosius' standing as a Christian emperor." (350)  In the Epilogue
Van Dam reiterates his contention that religion was only one of many
strategies available to Constantine and others for "imagining the
emperor" and uses the reign of Julian to summarize the themes examined
throughout the book.

There is little to criticize and much to praise in this reassessment of
the reign of Constantine and the later Roman Empire as a whole.   Van
Dam's masterful reading of evidence -- literary, documentary, and
material -- is matched by an admirable sensitivity to linguistic and
theological nuance.  To be sure, in his critique of theological
developments he is more deft at deconstructing than constructing.  Van
Dam gives many examples in Chapter 9 of how imperial political
discourse drew upon religious, and increasingly Trinitarian concepts,
about God; yet his discussions of the development of Trinitarian
theology in Chapter 10 rarely go beyond the writings of Arius,
Alexander, and Eusebius of Nicomedia, or Eusebius of Caesarea and
Marcellus of Ancyra in Chapter 11.  What seems oddly lacking, since Van
Dam certainly knows the sources well, is any discussion of the three
Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and
Gregory of Nyssa), major Nicene theologians and primary shapers of the
doctrine of the Trinity.  Granted their careers come a generation after
the reign of Constantine, but since Van Dam deals extensively with
Julian's "neo-tetrarchic theology" (357-362) as well as his reign as
emperor, some attention to his famous compatriots seems warranted,
especially as they were no strangers to imperial and ecclesiastical
politics.  While ignoring the Cappadocians, presumably because their
trinitarian theology has been well studied elsewhere, Van Dam continues
his fixation on Constantine's nephew, Julian.  The pagan emperor is
also the subject of his Epilogue, "A Fourth Cappadocian Father," in his
Families and Friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (2003).  In the present
work he associates Julian with Constantine arguing that the two
together "should be credited as co-founders of Byzantine society."(216)
As Van Dam notes that his theological ideas have been overlooked and
deserve further consideration (360-361, n.8), one wonders whether a
more substantial study of Julian's life and thought may be within his
purview.

Whether or not one agrees with all the arguments in this study, Van Dam
has succeeded in dispelling the myth of the inevitability of
Constantine's conversion and the consequent transition to a Christian
empire.  Studiously avoiding retrospection, he repeatedly exposes the
contingency of the emperor's religious choices.  Van Dam's illuminating
insights and careful scholarship are matched by playful interpretations
of ambiguous evidence and an eminently readable prose.  The details of
scholarly disputes are left to dense but invaluable footnotes making
the work accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as scholars.
The approach of the book is particularly refreshing as it brings
together at least two fields of study which have far too often been
separated in late Roman and early Byzantine scholarship:  political
philosophy and the development of Christian theology.  Van Dam's
analysis of each in light of the other enriches our understanding of
both and exposes the complex internal dynamics of late Roman society
and culture that are obscured by a narrower focus on Constantine's
biography or conversion.  For this reason the book is important for
patristic theologians and scholars of early Christianity as well as for
Roman, late antique, and Byzantine historians.

Like Syme's work on Augustus, Van Dam's study of Emperor Constantine
constitutes a major reappraisal of this pivotal figure for Roman
history and western civilization as a whole.  Despite its importance,
however, the book will surely not be the final word for either popular
or scholarly discussions of the famous Christian emperor.  New
generations will feel compelled to evaluate him afresh in light of
their own interpretive stances.  Indeed Van Dam has intimated as much
in his Introduction, suggesting that "as we repeatedly construct
Constantine, we are Eusebius' true heirs." (15)


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Notes:


1.   Similarly, in Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman
Cappadocia (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 4,
Van Dam describes his aim to study the rise of Christianity in the
region while the book "essentially ignores doctrines, asceticism,
monasticism, and spirituality."