Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times by Michael Grant (review)

BOOK REVIEWS631 Greek text and his French translation en face (pp. 21-45). The commentary (pp. 49-121) is based on the "vast and wide-ranging files" entrusted by Mme Jeanne Robert to Professors Bowersock and Jones, who have "edited and supplemented them in French so as to incorporate, wherever possible, his original words" (p. viii). Robert's unequalled knowledge of the topography, prosopography, archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, and local calendar and cults of Smyrna converges to shed radiant new light on every one of the twenty-six paragraphs that make up this Martyrium. Above all, he dissipates any lingering doubts about its authenticity, and firmly situates it in the persecution of Decius rather than of Marcus Aurelius. Also included here are eight plates illustrating the agora, the coinage and inscriptions of Smyrna, an extract from a very moving lecture on Pionios, delivered to a Warsaw conference by Robert in 1968 (pp. 1-9) and (for the first time) a French translation of the Old Slavic text by André Vaillant (pp. 123-136). Robert considered the Martyrium Pionii not only authentic but a "jewel" among ancient texts. It is a pleasure to accord the same rating among modern editions to the present work. Thomas Halton The Catholic University ofAmerica Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times. By Michael Grant. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1994. Pp. xii, 267. »27.50.) The renowned and prolific British historian Michael Grant has written several dozen books concerning the different periods, personalities, and phenomena of classical antiquity. In this work, he expands upon subject matter he had touched upon more briefly in his earlier book The Climax ofRome (New York: The New American Library, 1968). Though many of his other works have been thoroughly researched, well written, and useful to students of antiquity, such is not the case with this attempt to portray the first Christian emperor and his times. After a brief introductory section on the ancient sources, and Constantine's rise to power amid the pagan Tetrarchs of the early fourth century (I), Grant divides the core of the book into three parts, dealing respectively with "Constantine at War" (H), "Constantine and the State" (III), and "Constantine and Christianity" (IV). He concludes with a short section on the emperor's last days, succession plans, and significance (V). In the center of the book there are some lovely illustrations of Constantinian coins, statuary, and architecture, but the current locations of these ancient artifacts and structures are given neither in the initial "List of Illustrations" nor in the illustration captions. At the back of the book there are some concise tables on chronology, genealogy, and emperors, a few maps, a short reference section, a brief list of books, and 632 BOOK REVIEWS an index. Unfortunately, few aspects of this work will satisfy either historians of late antiquity or scholars of early Christianity. The root of the problem behind this work is that the author and his team of assistants at "Michael Grant Publications Ltd" have failed to do enough research in the ancient sources and the modern scholarship on Constantine and have slapped the book together too quickly. An unwieldly organizational structure, an uneven writing style, incorrect facts, and incomplete notes are the sad results. By offering a bare political-military narrative first, the author fails to set Constantine's campaign against Maxentius in 312—when he converted to belief in the Christian God, or his war against Licinius in 324— when he fought a "holy war" to determine the right deity for the empire, in their proper religious context. By compartmentalizing the various aspects of Constantine's reign and policies too tightly, Grant constantly has to refer forward or backward to other parts of the book, and offers a writing style that often appears choppy and repetitive, contradictory and disjointed. He confuses Bishop Miltiades and the Synod of Rome in 313 with Bishop Sylvester and the Council of Aries in 314 on one page (166); and both correcüy dates Constantine's victory over Licinius in the east to 324, and then incorrectly dates his first letter to the Arian disputants there to 323 on another page (170). Elsewhere, he dates the...