He who changed the world
Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus; 27 February c. 272 AD – 22 May 337 AD), also known as Constantine I was a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD. Constantine was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman army officer, and his consort Helena. His father became Caesar, the deputy emperor in the west in 293 AD. Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military tribune under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius. In 305, Constantius was raised to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia (Britain). Acclaimed as emperor by the army at Eboracum (modern-day York) after his father’s death in 306 AD, Constantine emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324 AD.
As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. The government was restructured and civil and military authority separated. The first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, Constantine played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was professed by Christians. In military matters, the Roman army was re-organised to consist of mobile field units andgarrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers – the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians – even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century.
Victoria, as seen on the first coin’s reverse, was the personified goddess of victory. She was adapted from the Sabine agricultural goddess Vacuna and had a temple on the Palatine Hill. Victoria is often described as a daughter of Pallas and Styx, and as a sister of Zelus, Kratos, and Bia. Unlike the Greek Nike, the goddess Victoria was a major part of Roman society. Multiple temples were erected in her honor. She was normally worshiped by triumphant generals returning from war. Victoria appears widely on Roman coins, jewelry, architecture, and other arts. She is often seen with or in a chariot, as in the late 18th-century sculpture representing Victory in a quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.
The Capitoline Wolf is a bronze sculpture of a she-wolf suckling twin human infants, inspired by the legend of the founding of Rome. According to the legend, when Numitor, grandfather of the twins Romulus and Remus, was overthrown by his brother Amulius, the usurper ordered the twins to be cast into the Tiber River. They were rescued by a she-wolf who cared for them until a herdsman, Faustulus, found and raised them. The legend as a whole encapsulates Rome’s ideas of itself, its origins and moral values.
Sol Invictus (“Unconquered Sun”) was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. In 274 AD the Roman emperor Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Emperors portrayed Sol Invictus on their official coinage, with a wide range of legends, only a few of which incorporated the epithet invictus, such as the legend SOLI INVICTO COMITI (as seen on the third coin’s reverse), claiming the Unconquered Sun as a companion to the Emperor, used with particular frequency by Constantine I. the Great. Furthermore, Constantine’s official coinage continues to bear images of Sol until 325/6.
