Christian Virtus - Ryan Hodgkinson (UCLA)

Constantine’s battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D. not only opened the way for Christianity to become the state religion of the Roman Empire, but also changed Christians’ perceptions about the nature of God.  Jesus of Nazareth preached to his followers about God’s love of peace and his favor of the meek.  The God depicted in Eusebius and later Christian writers was a deity that helped his faithful vanquish foes as well as one who favored the strong.  After Constantine, Christianity was used to justify war upon pagans and those decried as having acted impiously.  The rhetoric of Roman war changed dramatically; monarchs declared war on the grounds of defending the religion and Christian generals called upon God’s favor to aid them in battles. 

This paper seeks to trace the history of Roman war rhetoric found in pagan and Christian primary sources such as Tacitus, the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Eusebius, and Procopius from the first century AD to the sixth, seeking to distinguish between pagan and Christian justifications for war and optimism in battle.  The aim of the paper is to find common themes in pagan war rhetoric, when the earliest examples of Christian elements were introduced and how this introduction changed the Christians’ beliefs concerning the characteristics and roles of the divine.