THE FOLIO SOCIETY

‘In a genius driven without surcease by ambition and lust for power can be no question of religiosity; such a man is essentially unreligious...’

As the third century neared its close, a hundred years of turmoil had pushed the Roman Empire to the brink of collapse. While a succession of imperial pretenders led armies into endless civil war, Rome found herself threatened with attack from without and revolt from within.

Into this turbulent world stepped Constantine, the last great Roman emperor and architect of the ancient world’s final flowering. The celebrated cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt traces the ­meteoric rise of a man destined to exploit Rome’s political chaos and spiritual uncertainty in his quest for power. We follow Constantine’s early life, his professed conversion to Christianity, his decisive victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312, the establishment of Constantinople as his new centre of power, and the final ­restoration of order. At the height of his power, Constantine held sway from Britain to Syria. His reign encompassed one of the most remarkable periods of change the West has ever experienced – from pagan antiquity to the beginnings of the Christian Middle Ages.

In this, the first illustrated edition of Burckhardt’s classic study, Moses Hadas’s exemplary translation is complemented by a lively and authoritative new introduction by Professor Noel Lenski.

This is the definitive portrait of a man whose rule reversed – for a time – Rome’s decline and fall.

‘He said he saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said “By This Conquer”’ EUSEBIUS