Emperor and Senators in the Reign of Constantius II: Maintaining Imperial Rule Between Rome and Constantinople in the Fourth Century AD by Muriel Moser (review)

After defeating Licinius in 324 ad, Constantine renamed Byzantium as Constantinople or "City of Constantine" (an elaborate inauguration ceremony would be held in 330). He may also have transformed what had been the city council of Byzantium, but the sources are sparse and murky. The late fourth-century Origo Constantini (also known as Anonymous Valesianus, pars prior) describes Constantine (6.30) founding a secondary Senate in Constantinople, but this source is late and unclear, and scholars have disputed the nature of this Senate for decades.

While allowing (1) that scholars are shifting from a "conflict paradigm" of religious tension between the emperor and Senate in favor of the question of the possible neglect and marginalization of the old senatorial elite in the imperial administration, Muriel Moser sets out in this new book, a revision of her doctoral thesis completed at the University of Cambridge, to show that Constantine and Constantius II intentionally worked with the Senate in Rome. After a short Introduction sketching out the major organization of the book and the scholarly discourse on the political importance of an emperor developing an eastern senatorial constituency, the author turns to a chronological analysis of the interactions with the Senate of Constantine (13–82) and then, in more detail, Constantius II (85–332).

Part I treats the "Unified Roman Empire (ad 312–337)." In Chapter 1, she argues that Constantine continued to use Roman Senators in his administration after 326 (against the argument of Wolfgang Kuhoff who suggested in 1982 that Constantine staffed Eastern positions with senators from his new Eastern Senate in Constantinople). In Chapter 2 she suggests (46–57), based upon a close analysis of the vocabulary combined with numismatic and epigraphic evidence, that an important passage in Eusebius's Vita Constantini (4.1.1–2) has been mistranslated by previous scholars and should instead be viewed as showing that Constantine awarded equestrian status and not senatorial status to Eastern elites (as opposed to recent suggestions by Peter Heather and Alexander Skinner). She then turns to the passage in the Origo Constantini and reminds the reader that the use of the adjective "claros" for the members of the "Senate" in Constantinople was lesser than the "clarissimus" status of the senators in Rome, and examines some important epigraphic evidence from the period. It is possible that if Constantine did anything with this body, he may have reconfirmed their status as the Council of Constantinople and not a "Senate" per se.

In Part II, Moser turns to "Ruling the East (ad 337–350)." Passing quickly over the massacre after Constantine's death, Chapter 3 examines Constantius II's continual use of Senators in the administration of what was at that point his eastern Mediterranean empire, perhaps as a means of legitimizing his rule. In Chapter 4, Moser examines Constantius II's policy toward Antioch and Constantinople. While the former was his working capital in his early reign, Moser plausibly suggests that his continued patronage to Constantinople was a means of legitimization by linking himself to his father; here, she uses numismatic evidence effectively, especially with regard to the coin legend of aequitas.

In Part III, the author examines Constantius II as the "Ruler of Rome and Constantinople (ad 350–361)." In Chapter 5, the author analyzes the impact of the usurpation of Magnentius, who had overthrown Constans in the West at the beginning of 350. Moser makes the intuitive argument that Magnentius's usurpation cut Constantius II off from the Senate in Rome and so he had to elevate the municipal council in Constantinople to be a source of administrators as well as a tool to build support in the East in a difficult time. She uses prosopographic and epigraphic evidence well to support her argument, and it is even possible...