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Constantine I's Moving To Byzantium: Reasons And Consequences

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Constantine I`s Moving to Byzantium: Reasons and Consequences Introduction In Livy’s opus magnum about the history of Rome, Roman Empire was identified with its capital city. The Roman Empire was a republic, and Rome was the heart of the Republic. Rome had a great antecedent, but its future was ambiguous. Therefore, emperor Constantine I changed the capital and its future on 11 May 330 (Ostrogorsky, 1986). This essay will try to explain why Constantine I moved the Roman capital to Byzantium and the consequences of this changing. There are several reasons that are hypothesised by scholars about changing the capital of the Roman Empire, mainly for religious purposes. However, this essay will argue how Constantine I decided to move the Roman capital to Byzantium due mostly to strategic and politico-economic reasons rather than wholly religious aims, and this decision also had several significant and irreversible impacts on Christendom.
1. Background Through the era between 27 BC and 180 AD, which is called “Pax-Romana” by chroniclers, the most powerful political structure of the East was the Roman Empire (Gibbon, 1996). However, after the death of emperor Marcus Aurelius, a crisis in the Empire had been upheld until the reign of Diocletian (Eutropius, 1993). There were diverse reasons for this crisis. …show more content…

Therefore, Constantine I wants to utilise the unifying power of Christianity between the paupers and elites (Burkchardt, 1983). Also, he purposed to use the harmonious cooperation of the religious and otherworldly authority in Christianity. That is, while Constantine was deciding to move the Roman capital, he recognised the power of Christianity due to his political contemplations but not religious

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