A pretty academic but readable biography by a serious scholar. It turns out that contemporaneous information about Constantine is relatively sparse despite his outsized role in the history of Rome and Christianity.

As a result, the early years of Constantine are a blur, and mostly describe his probable experiences in Diocletian’s court. The biography draws from panegyrics (long poems celebrating his achievements) and Constantine’s responses to petitions from around the empire. It reveals an world where people had fixed legal duties and obligations to their communities, much of the petitions were seeking for exemptions from these costly obligations.

The author tries hard to not “back out” Constantine’s life from his conversion. Hence the title “emperor” and reliance on contemporaneous sources like panegyrics and petition responses. Constantine comes across as a supremely pragmatic ruler. He reforms some marriage laws to protect young brides and is concerned about mistakes in status that could deprive a person born free of their free status but never questions slavery or the notion that people are born into fixed statuses itself. His conversation experience is a little more nuanced as well. Early experiences seem to indicate that he wasn’t sure which god was speaking to him, either Apollo or a personal warrior god. The idea of a personal god for the emperor was not particularly new, as a predecessor took sol invictus as his. Eventually Constantine became convinced that the god helping him win battles was the Christian God. There’s some suggestion that Constantine may have adopted monotheism to distance his reign from Diocletian’s. A particularly fascinating argument the book makes is that in the famous moment that Constantine has his soldiers paint the chi-rho in their shields may not have been linked with Christianity at all. The chi-rho could have stood for Christ or simply luck (in Greek they’re apparently similar), and only record of the story of Constantine’s famous dream was not contemporaneous. Constantine is shown as a ruler, who learns from his mistakes, first blundering by reacting harshly the donatist controversy before trying to resolve the Adrian controversy through a more peaceful council at Nicaea where he proposed a compromise.

The book is shorter than it seems, and it is a work of serious historical scholarship. Parts of it are dense (prepare to learn a lot about the period, its complex politics and law. As an aside, I particularly liked a response to a petition setting aside a contract as immoral. A predecessor to public policy?) but interesting historically. A great biography about a great figure ( )

After reading 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' I was looking for another, deeper dive into the post Roman, early Christian era. David Potter's book was solid. It wasn't mind-blowing, but it delivered probably more facts than I was fully prepared for. This is a book that might not compete well against the narrative historians of this period, but I think it is solid academic work.

Can't seem to get into it yet, but will try again. ( )

I love history books that unspool in seemingly endless detail past eras and disputes. This is not to everyone's taste, but what I have often found is that a deeper understanding emerges from this detail. Only when one is immersed in the contradictions, arguments and irrationalities of a period can one induce a pattern in the behavior.

This is exactly the sort of book that attempts to do just that, through detailed discussion of the legal and bureaucratic machinery that allowed Constantine (and many of his predecessors and co-rulers) to rule a vast and stable empire over decades, we come to understand how Constantine helped create the foundations of Christianity and along with it eighteen centuries of western civilization. He was building for the future, but not for our future. He was concerned with his legacy and his religion but in a far more immediate and instrumental way than we have tended to think of him. He created a structure to ensure Christianity could work in the Roman system and as a result created a system that allowed it to exist after the Roman system came apart.

Overall a valuable book and although the writing is was not always scintillating (as one would expect in dealing with property law rulings in Roman Asia Minor or the like)it is well worth the effort it requires.

This biography is a serious work for readers who seek to learn of the life of Constantine in great detail. This should come as no surprise, as it is published by Oxford University Press.

Given that biographies are so often written with political or private agendas, I was very concerned from the book's introduction that the author wrote it to promote his particular religion. (Potter dedicates his book to two colleagues "for the greater glory of the Holy Cross"). Such concerns appear to me to be unjustified. In fact, the author puts no stock in the popular myth that Constantine saw a cross in the sky that inspired him in battle and led him to make Christianity the state religion.

I would recommend this work to readers of a scholarly bent and others with avid interests in the time period; others may find it rather dry. In fact, the ideal reader should already know something of the subject, since the author alludes to controversies that will be unfamiliar to the uninitiated.