ABSTRACT
Constantines victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge on the northern approach to Rome marked the beginning of a new era, but it took the new emperor more than a decade to eliminate the last heirs of the Tetrarchy. The lasting legacy of the old Dominus was to assert naked absolutism, clothed in the splendour of eastern monarchy, over the fiction of the constitutional 'principate' instituted by Augustus to mollify the Senate: that had been challenged abortively by the Flavians but generally sustained in theory thereafter. Rome was tolerant of foreign religions if they were not seen to be subversive or immoral. Christianity embraces the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, a humble descendant of the house of David, king of Israel, who began his mission in the second decade of the reign of Tiberius, the third of the era that now bears his name. Monasticism had reached Syria early in the 4th century and soon spread throughout Mesopotamia.
