User:G.W./Persian campaign

Persian campaign

Eusebius's account in book four of the Vita Constantini, which had previously been a "series of random and repetitious observations" spanning twenty years of time, returns to a chronological narrative in 335: the year of Constantine's tricennalia. It was an event marked by the Council of Tyre and the dedication of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, just as the Council of Nicaea had marked his bicennalia. Constantine was still sound in body and mind, and he continued to write and argue until the end of his life, but men began to take advantage of his generosity; Constantine, Eusebius wrote, was "forced into conduct unworthy of himself" by unruly persons, especially those who called themselves "Christian". At some date between 324 and 337, Constantine wrote a letter to the Persian king Shapur II, asserting that Iran's subjection to Christ was a foreordained fact. Constantine's rule had become seemingly universal. One priest pronounced that Constantine was not only chosen by God to rule over all men on Earth, but would also rule alongside the Son of God in the life to come. Eusebius records the arrival of Indian ambassadors at Constantine's court, with gifts of jewels and exotic beasts, in these years, noting thus that Constantine's sovereignty extended "even to the Indian Ocean, and that the princes of the land of the Indians ... acknowledged him as emperor and king." Such bold proclamations formed part of the intellectual culture preceding the coming conflict with Persia.

Eusebius account of the Persian conflict begins with reports of stirrings among the "barbarians of the East". Constantine, observing that he had not yet achieved a victory over the Persians, then decided to conduct an expedition against them. He mobilized his legions, and announced the plan to a number of his bishops, so that they might provide for the divine worship of the mission. Constantine constructed a tent of embroidered linen on the model of a church, as Moses had done in the wilderness. It was designed to be carried about, so that he might have a house of prayer ready in even the most desert regions. He set out from Constantinople with his triremes, set to shore at Soteropolis/Pythia, and there took the waters. But plans for war were then abandoned, because, in the words of Socrates of Constantinople, "it had already been extinguished through fear of the king [Constantine]". The church historian Gelasius of Cyzicus claimed that the plan was abandoned for the sake of Iranian Christians.

The rhetor Libanius writes of Persian re-armament and Persian hostility, contradicting Eusebius's account of an aggressive Constantine. In Libanius's version, the Persians had been preparing for a renewed offensive against Rome in response to the loss of those Western territories that were ceded to the Romans in 298. They had sent embassies and gifts in the meantime as a means of disguising their hostile intentions. The Persians realized that their defeat was the result of their inferior weaponry, and so set themselves on a comprehensive re-armament program, involving their whole adult male population. The Persians were handicapped, however, by insufficient supplies of iron ore. Shapur sent an embassy to Constantine's court, requesting permission to import iron from Roman lands, using renewed barbarian invasions as pretext. Constantine granted the Persians' request, because, although fully aware of their deceit, he wished his sons to have enemies worthy enough to fight against. The Persians, now rich with iron, introduced the mailed cavalry, which rode with both rider and horse heavily armored. A second Persian embassy was then sent to Constantine's court, demanding the cession of Roman territory in exchange for continued peace, but was angrily rejected for its arrogance and presumption. Constantine mobilized his armies and began to move against Persia, but died in Nicomedia, leaving the laurels of 'barbarian victories' to his sons.

Eusebius's account of the war is incomplete; it breaks off just as Constantine begins to plan with his advisors. A lacuna of half a page exists in all the surviving manuscripts of Eusebius's Vita, and the surviving parts of the Vita have no description of the conduct of the Persian war. There are suggestions that Eusebius, and whoever was reponsible for the lacuna, was attempting to conceal the incomplete commission of the Persian war, a tale that had been taken up by unscrupulous later pagans as a means of deriding Constantine's legacy. Libanius's account, too, is not universally accepted as truthful: Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, writing in The Classical Quarterly, argues that Libanius's account reproduces a story disseminated by Constantius, noting that the tale seems founded on official views, because the tale contains, within its fictional framework, some reliable statements of fact—that Highland Iran is lacking in iron ore, and that the export of metals was then forbidden— and, finally, that the story served to justify the foreign and military policies of Constantius, by demonstrating that he was not responsible for the outbreak of war, nor for the failures of his troops, since Persian military superiority had been assured by the misguided policies of Constantine.

Sickness and death

The Baptism of Constantine, as imagined by students of Raphael.

Eusebius's account resumes following the abortive Persian campaign, with Constantine set about building a martyrion for the apostles in Constantinople, and, within it, a final resting-place for himself. In the course of one Feast of Easter, Constantine fell seriously ill. He left Constantinople for the hot baths near his mother's city of Helenopolis (Altinova), on the southern shores of the Gulf of İzmit. There, in a chuch his mother built in honor of Lucian the Apostle, he prayed, and there he realized that he was dying. Seeking purification, he became a catechumen, and attempted a return to Constantinople, making it only as far as a suburb of Nicomedia. He summoned the bishops, and told them of his hope to be baptized in the River Jordan, where Christ was written to have been baptized. He requested the baptism right away, promising to live a more Christian life should he live through his illness. The bishops, Eusebius records, "performed the sacred ceremonies according to custom". He chose the Arianizing bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia as his baptizer. Constantine died soon after at a suburban villa called Achyron, on the last day of the fifty-day festival of Pentecost directly following Easter, on May 22 337.

Although Constantine's death follows the conclusion of the Persian campaign in Eusebius's account, most other sources report his death as occurring in its middle. The pagan Emperor Julian, writing in the mid-350s, observes that the Sasanians escaped punishment for their ill-deeds, because Constantine died "in the middle of his preparations for war". Similar accounts are given in the Origo Constantini, an anonymous document composed while Constantine was still living, and which has Constantine dying in Nicomedia; the Historiae abbreviatae of Sextus Aurelius Victor, written in 361, which has Constantine dying at an estate near Nicomedia called Achyrona while marching against the Persians; and the Brevarium of Eutropius, a handbook compiled in 369 for the Emperor Valens, which has Constantine dying in a nameless state villa in Nicomedia. From these and other accounts, some have concluded that Eusebius's Vita was edited to defend Constantine's reputation against what Eusebius saw as a less congenial version of the campaign.

In postponing his baptism, he followed one custom at the time which postponed baptism until old age or death. Following his death, his body was transferred to Constantinople and buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles there. He was succeeded by his three sons born of Fausta, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. A number of relatives were killed by followers of Constantius. He also had two daughters, Constantina and Helena, wife of Emperor Julian.