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Constantine was insistent in ensuring that his new capital would have, in effect, an urban mob. These ceremonies had to continue, and to be effective, you had to have an audience. As a Christian emperor, gladiatorial combat was wrong but chariot races were acceptable. Learn more: The Good Life in Rome Building an Urban MobĪt the same time, Rome had an urban population that was necessary to feed and pamper at great festivals, chariot races, gladiator combats. Constantine handed out pensions, tax exemptions, and encouraged men to come and serve in the new Christian imperial Senate, whereas the old Roman pagan Senate Constantine could conveniently ignore. Therefore, at the New Rome, there was a Senate house. The city was to represent Rome in every fashion, except for the detail that it was to be Christian. There was an imperial Hippodrome or stadium where all the imperial races and ceremonials took place.
DOMAINER CONSTANTINE SERIES
It would be surrounded by a series of walls, some 13 miles in length, and was completely made over as the equivalent of the New Rome. Constantine chose an old and strategically located Greek colony called Byzantium as the location of his new capital. It eventually came to number perhaps a half-million-some would say a million-by A.D. Under Constantine, the city was vastly expanded. As a city, it had never been more than 30,000 to 35,000 strong. It was a very important commercial center. It occupies the European side of the Bosporus, the narrow strait that leads from the Sea of Marmara, which in ancient times they called the Propontis, into the Black Sea. He chose the city of Byzantium, where we get the word “Byzantine”-Byzantine civilization.īyzantium was an old Greek colony, established in the 7th century B.C. He decided to establish a capital, “New Rome,” which would be Christian in nature from the start. Constantine made a major difference here. Watch it now, on The Great Courses.Ĭonstantine, therefore, in many ways, was responding along the lines of what other soldier-emperors had done. This is a transcript from the video series The World of Byzantium. However, there was always a move to get the capital out of Rome to a better location. Its importance is due to its political and religious significance. To this day, Rome really isn’t the capital of Italy, at least not in a financial or economic sense. Rome increasingly became a ceremonial capital. Learn more about a conservative emperor named Diocletian A New Rome in Byzantium (Image: Coppermine Photo Gallery/Public domain) Major cities were chosen that were closer to frontiers and closer to the resources necessary to battle barbarians and suppress rebels.Ī Map showing the division of the Roman Empire under the tetrarchy. The junior emperor generally lived at Antioch in Syria.
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The senior emperor in the East was usually somewhere in Turkey Diocletian’s capital was at Nicomedia. The senior emperor in the West usually resided in Milan, in northern Italy. Constantine’s father and Constantine himself ruled in Germany, on the Rhine frontier. During the period known as the tetrarchy, when four emperors ruled, none of them used Rome as their capital. A panoramic view of Constnatinople (Image: User:DeliDumrul/Public domain) Four Emperors, Four Capitalsīy the time of Diocletian in the late 3rd century, it was already clear that Rome no longer occupied the position of the capital of the Roman Empire. One act of his, in the end, ensured the position of Christianity: the establishment of a new capital that would be known as Constantinople. Harl, Ph.D., Tulane University The Christian emperor Constantine was ever pragmatic he could only push his pagan subjects so far.