What significant did emperor Constantine make to Romans history?

Answer 1

Constantine was one of the most significant of the Roman emperors, for the eventual outcomes of his policies.

Constantine's ruthless desire for unfettered rule and for his family to succeed him, reversed the progress that Diocletian might have made away from an autocratic form of government and perhaps ultimately towards democracy. Diocletian had created a formal power sharing arrangement, with two Augusti, or senior emperors, and two Caesars, or minor emperors, with a defined progression from Caesar to Augustus, and election on merit not family lineage. Constantine gradually defeated his main imperial opponents until becoming undisputed ruler of the Roman Empire, and used the style of Diocletion's tetrarchy to ensure that his fmaily members succeeded him. There were to be no more attempts to move the empire towards responsible government.

Constantine is most well known for setting in train the process that made Christian domination of the Roman Empire inevitable. While it was beyond the ability of one man in a single lifetime to convert the citizens of the empire from devout faith in the pagan gods to Christianity, the process had become almost inevitable by the time of his death. He achieved this by giving the Christian Church state patronage, publicly repudiating his pagan responsibilities, and eventually by persecuting and plundering the pagan temples. Constantine created a culture that paganism had to be totally destroyed, which subsequent Christian leaders used to justify destroying the intellectual property of the empire, including all books that did not encourage the Christian faith. Without Constantine, Christianity might have remained a minor sect within the Roman Empire. The fact that Europe is seen today in terms of being Christian, is a legacy of Constantine.

Taxes had already been high in the time of Diocletian, but Constantine added not only the vast administrative machine, but extravagant building programmes which were needed for the new Christian faith, the construction of Constantinople, as well as his much commented on personal lavishness. In consequence, taxation had to be fixed at an extremely high level. Michael Grant (The Emperor Constantine) says that Constantine's crushing tax system ultimately defeated its own purpose, because it destroyed the very people who had to pay the taxes. His policies contributed largely to the failure of trade and agriculture, and caused widespread hostility to the state, an alienation which in turn played a part in the downfall of the western empire.

The pagan historian Zosimus ascribed the subsequent downfall of the westem empire to Constantine's reorganisation of the army, dividing its military strength into two unsatisfactory parts. Constantine appears to have deliberately picked a quarrel with the Persians, resulting in vast expenditure and loss of life under his successors.