The Conversion of Constantine: Lactantius' On the Deaths of the Persecutors
Chapter XLIVAnd now a civil war broke out between Constantine and Maxentius. Although Maxentius kept himself within Rome, because the soothsayers had foretold that if he went out of it he should perish, yet he conducted the military operations by able generals. In forces he exceeded his adversary; for he had not only his father's army, which deserted from Severus, but also his own, which he had lately drawn together out of Mauritania and Italy. They fought, and the troops of Maxentius prevailed. At length Constantine, with steady courage and a mind prepared for every event, led his whole forces to the neighbourhood of Rome, and encamped them opposite to the Milvian bridge. The anniversary of the reign of Maxentius approached, that is, the sixth of the kalends of November, and the fifth year of his reign was drawing to an end.
Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of CHRIST. Having this sign, his troops stood to arms. The enemies advanced, but without their emperor, and they crossed the bridge. The armies met, and fought with the utmost exertions of valour, and firmly maintained their ground. In the meantime a sedition arose at Rome, and Maxentius was reviled as one who had abandoned all concern for the safety of the commonweal; and suddenly, while he exhibited the Circensian games on the anniversary of his reign, the people cried with one voice, "Constantine cannot be overcome!" Dismayed at this, Maxentius burst from the assembly, and having called some senators together, ordered the Sibylline books to be searched. In them it was found that:
On the same day the enemy of the Romans should perish.
Led by this response to the hopes of victory, he went to the field. The bridge in his rear was broken down. At sight of that the battle grew hotter. The hand of the Lord prevailed, and the forces of Maxentius were routed. He fled towards the broken bridge; but the multitude pressing on him, he was driven headlong into the Tiber.
Lactantius’s account is interesting for two reasons in addition to the similarities it has to Eusebius’ description. The first interesting point is the contrast Lacantius draws between true prophecy and false prophecy. True prophecy, of course, comes from God and is transmitted by God to Constantine in the form of a dream. False prophecy is contained in the religious, oracular literature of polytheistic, pagan Rome. The polemical thrust of Lacatantius’ anecdote, therefore, is also directed against the pseudo-divine nature of traditional Roman prophecy. Second, Lactantius explicitly indicates that Maxentius is not only fighting against Constantine and his army but also directly against God. God, according to Lactantius, is directly intervening in the battle on the side of a Roman emperor and general, much like God did for Joshua in the Hebrew Bible when he conquered the Promised Land after the Hebrews had wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years. The notion that the Christian God would fight on the side of a Roman general – even if against another Roman general – represented a revolution in thinking about the relationship between Christianity and the Roman Empire – a revolution that transformed Rome from the greatest of all enemies of the Christians (it was the Romans, after all, who crucified Jesus) to the divinely chosen home of Christianity itself.
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