The Last Pagan and First Christian Emperor

Constantine is one of history's most influential figures. His world was that of late antiquity and the early Christian centuries, an interesting and complex world that he made more interesting still. For it was Constantine who gave Christianity the support and tools needed to be transformed into a world religion. It was he who put a definitive stamp on an outline of European political geography, where east became East and west became West in a way that seems obvious today even if it was not in his own day. One of the essential things that made Constantine influential within both the city of Rome and the Roman Empire at large was his rare ability to anticipate challenges and opportunities before others did. Not only was he consistently ahead of friends and rivals alike in his plans for war, politics, religion, social reform and much else, but he would also stop at nothing in order to get his way, even when the personal costs and risks to himself were immense. Not unlike the emperor Augustus of some centuries before, his reign was long and assertive enough to be truly transformative. And not unlike Augustus, he made a massive contribution to the heritage of the city of Rome, as well.

Birth and Upbringing in a World of War and Politics

Born in the 270s to the future co-emperor Constantius I Chlorus (ca. 250–306) and his common-law wife Helena, Constantine likely spent his early years in the Balkans, where his father held the post of provincial Roman governor. The lives of both parents had changed dramatically by their son's fifteen birthday and perhaps even earlier. By 288 Constantius had accepted a new post in the western province of Gaul, a career move that turned out to be permanent as he climbed the military and political ladder of the later Roman Empire to become junior emperor of Rome's western provinces in 293. Helena did not join Constantius in his move westward. Indeed, as early as the year 288 but certainly by 293, she was abandoned in favour of his new wife, the politcally connected Theodora.