His system of division did not, however, save the Empire from civil wars. No sooner was his restraining hand removed than his colleagues fought among themselves, until Constantine overthrew his antagonists and once more united the entire Empire. Constantine became a Christian.[13]
It has been repeatedly asserted that his conversion was one of policy rather than belief; and there could be no stronger evidence of the changed position of the new faith. Diocletian had ordered a persecution against it, the last and most terrible which its martyrs suffered. But all that was best and most energetic and most living in the moribund Empire seemed to have gathered round the Church. The persecution did but emphasize its worth and influence.
Constantine did not force his followers to change their beliefs with him; but he encouraged and rewarded those who did. Under him was held the first general council of the faith. The bishops gathered from all the different cities of the world to compare ideas and settle more exactly the doctrines to be taught. Christianity stepped out from its hiding-place and supplanted paganism as the state religion of the Empire.[14]
As though the unimportance of Rome were not thus sufficiently established, Constantine abandoned the decaying capital altogether, and built himself a new city, Constantinople, at the junction of Europe and Asia. This became the centre of the changing world. Built upon the site of an old Greek colony, it was almost wholly Greek, not only in the nationality of the people who flocked to it, but in the manners of the court which Constantine created around him, in the art of its decorators, in the language of its streets.[15] The Empire remained Roman only in name. The might of a thousand years had made that name a magic spell, had sunk its restraining influence deep in the minds of men. It was not lightly to be thrown aside.
Julian, a nephew of Constantine, who after an interval succeeded him upon the throne, abandoned the adopted religion of his family, and tried to revive paganism.[16] Julian was a powerful and clever man; he seems also to have been an honest and an earnest one. But he could not turn back the current of the world. He could not make shallow speculation take the place of earnest faith. Altruism, the spirit of brotherhood, which was the animating force of Christianity, might and later somewhat did lose itself amid the sands of selfishness; but it could not be combated by one man with a chance preference for egotism.