The Origin of the Emperor Constantine

The text is the first of two unrelated fragments that Henri Valois published in 1636 from a single ninth-century manuscript; they are still named after him. Its own title is Origo Constantini Imperatoris. The author is unknown. J. C. Rolfe, its Loeb translator, dates it to about 390 and judges that it rests on good sources.

It is useful as a check on Lactantius and Eusebius because it is a secular narrative with no interest in church affairs: it gives the marriage of Licinius at Milan, the two wars between him and Constantine, his death at Thessalonica and the renaming of Byzantium. A few sentences on religion, among them the remark that Constantine was the first Christian emperor (6.33), are in the words of the fifth-century Christian historian Orosius, as the translator’s notes point out; the comment that the death of Galerius was a punishment for the persecution (3.8) is of the same kind.