Rome: The Roman Empire becomes Christianised

This is Constantine the great. Noooo! He's not that great. He is called 'great' because he is the first emperor in a long time who succeeds in governing the whole Roman empire on his own. In the year 330 he moves the capital of the Empire from Rome to Byzantium.

Constantine re-names Byzantium to The New Rome - Nova Roma. Though most people just call it Constantine's city: Constantinople. This later becomes the city's official name. Constantine is the first Christian emperor. How come?

The Christians had been persecuted in the Roman Empire since Christianity began. And in the days when Constantine was one of four emperors he also persecuted the Christians. Why does he change? Well, the legend says that Constantine is heading for an important battle. He is to fight one of the other emperors.

Then he sees a shining cross in the sky. And he hears a voice saying: "In this sign you will conquer." Constantine makes his soldiers paint this Christian symbol on their shields. And they win the battle... Constantine introduces freedom of religion for the Christians. Now they are no longer persecuted and can stop meeting in secret.

But right now Christianity is not one sect, but many different ones. Constantine gathers the leaders of the biggest groups to a 'church meeting' - a concilium - in Nicaea. Here they decide what Christians should now believe. The ones who don't believe in this are getting it wrong, and are persecuted. This emperor, Theodosius the first, or Theodosius the great, goes even further than Constantine and makes Christianity the 'state religion'.

Now it becomes forbidden to worship other gods than the Christians' God. At the same time, the Roman Empire is under attack from several tribal groups: Huns, Goths and many others. Theodosius builds a wall around Constantinople to protect the city from outside attack. But he also enlists several Goths in his army. For example this Goth; Alaric.

But he will bring trouble in the future. Theodosius becomes the last emperor to rule the entire empire. Although the Roman Empire has, for a long while, been divided into a western and an eastern part, the Romans have seen it as one - and only one - empire. Now this changes. Theodosius has two sons and he wants them to inherit one empire each.

So at his death in 395 the empire is divided into two parts: The Western Roman Empire and The Eastern Roman Empire. They are useless rulers, so it goes badly for both empires under them. And then Alaric comes back to mess things up even more. How will this turn out?