CHAPTER II
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
BORN PROBABLY A.D. 274; DIED A.D. 337
The name of Constantine marks the commencement of a new era of history both in the empire and in the Church. The transition from the old form of government which was nominally republican, with the emperor as prince of the Senate, commander-in-chief of the army, Pontifex Maximus, and much else, accumulating in his own person the chief republican offices, to the new form of government which was frankly despotic, must be attributed to Diocletian. It was that keen-sighted ruler who saw that the time had come for the abolition of empty formulæ and a readjustment of the whole machinery of government. Diocletian abandoned all pretence of maintaining the stern Roman simplicity of manners, and introduced into his palace the pomp and ceremony of an Oriental court. By centralising the government, and then subdividing it, so that there were two Augusti—an Eastern and a Western—and two Cæsars under them, he so knit up the imperial authority that when the senior Augustus died the junior Augustus took the first place as a matter of course, and one of the Cæsars became junior Augustus. Each Augustus nominated his own Cæsar. All decrees affecting the whole empire were signed by the joint rulers, the supreme authority resting
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