ABSTRACT
In 2013, academic conferences celebrated the publication of the joint resolution of the emperors Constantine and Licinius, commonly known as the Edict of Milan.1 The version of that resolution that is perhaps most familiar to us was in a letter from Licinius posted at Nicomedia in June 313. By then, Constantine was more than 1,500 miles away, at Trier on the northern Rhine frontier. We modern scholars nevertheless associate the resolution primarily with Constantine because its preamble mentioned him first of the two emperors and noted that they had met earlier and agreed on the directives of the resolution at Milan in northern Italy, which was included in Constantine’s share of the empire. We also connect it to Constantine because of the inordinate influence we have attributed to the narratives of Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, and Lactantius, a rhetorician who taught at both Nicomedia and Trier.
