What if Maxentius had won at the Milvian Bridge?
In 312 Constantine beat Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge and took the West, opening the way to a Christian empire and Constantinople. What if Maxentius had held Rome?
What actually happened
The Tetrarchy set up by Diocletian fell apart after he stepped down in 305. When Constantius died at Eboracum in 306 the army made his son Constantine emperor, and the same year in Rome Maxentius, son of the former emperor Maximian, put on the purple with the backing of the Praetorian Guard. In 307 Severus and then Galerius came to attack Rome, but Maxentius held out behind the Aurelian Walls and drove both off.
In 312 Constantine crossed the Alps, leaving his Rhine garrisons behind. He took Segusium, broke Maxentius's heavy cavalry before Augusta Taurinorum and besieged Verona, killing its commander Ruricius Pompeianus. Lactantius writes that on the eve of the battle Constantine was told in a dream to mark the sign of God on the shields; Eusebius, citing a story the emperor later told him under oath, writes that a cross of light appeared in the sky with the words “In this sign conquer”.
Maxentius seems at first to have meant to stay inside the walls. But according to Lactantius, when the Sibylline Books answered that “today the enemy of Rome will die”, he led his army out across the Tiber on 28 October. Constantine's cavalry broke his wings, and the retreating army was crowded onto the pontoon bridge laid beside the Milvian Bridge. When it gave way Maxentius drowned in the river, and the next day his head entered Rome on a spear.
The turning point
Maxentius had every reason to wait. He had already beaten off two sieges thanks to the walls, and since putting down the revolt in Africa in 310 the grain ships were again reaching Rome. The ancient writers give Maxentius the larger army, and Constantine's army, having crossed the Alps, had to force a decision before winter. Why he came out is unclear: the prophecy, the politics of his accession anniversary, and pressure from a Roman populace shaken by hunger and riots have all been suggested.
The claim that this battle decided the fate of Christianity should be treated with care. Persecution of Christians had already ended in law with Galerius's edict of toleration in 311, and Maxentius had also stopped persecution in his own territory and returned confiscated property to the church of Rome. Historians such as Timothy Barnes and Paul Stephenson nonetheless argue that the emperor's own presentation of the Christian God as patron of his victory changed the relationship between Church and empire thereafter.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: in autumn 312 Maxentius did not come out from behind his walls. The African grain ships fed Rome, and the army that had crossed the Alps starved in rain-soaked camps north of the Tiber. In November the Praetorian cavalry crossed the pontoon bridge and fell on the camp, and Constantine led what was left of his army back over the Alps. Rome stays Maxentius's, and in Gaul and Britain a separate Western Roman Empire arises with Treveri as its capital.
In the game's altered world neither the Edict of Milan nor the founding of Constantinople takes place. A player who started as Constantine receives in 313 Licinius's request, from the East, to marry your half-sister Constantia; builds a red-brick audience hall at Treveri on the Moselle; and in 324, when Licinius and Maxentius fight over Illyricum, chooses which side to take. With no emperor to step into the dispute over Arius, the priest of Alexandria, the bishops of the West ask you to call a council.
Beyond the game, an empire split in three would have dragged out the civil wars that followed the Tetrarchy's collapse for decades more. Christianity would not have been persecuted, but it would have become an emperor-led religion far more slowly, and empire-wide councils like Nicaea would have looked different.
Ripples through time
This outcome carries into the next era. If you carry your house into the Age of Vikings and Coronations, the game tells you that Byzantium on the Bosporus never became Constantine's new Rome, and that the eastern emperors used Nicomedia as their capital.
Other turning points of the same era are the Bar Kokhba revolt, Julian returning from Persia and Adrianople. Julian's attempt to revive the old gods was a reaction against the Christian dynasty Constantine began, so without the Milvian Bridge that conflict too would have taken another form.
- Carries into the next era Age of Vikings and Coronations
Play this turning point
Choose the scenario The Edict of Nicomedia, which begins in 303 as Constantine, a hostage tribune at Diocletian's court. After winning the West at Eboracum in 306, in 311's “A sign in the sky” having the sign beaten in gold onto your standards or crossing the Alps before the snow melts raises Constantine's odds, while waiting another year to gather troops gives you more men but raises Maxentius's odds.
If you started the Roman Empire era in another position, around 311 you can help with Maxentius's wall works and granaries if you live in Italy, or join Constantine's expedition if you live in the West. This turning point opens when the player is not ruling the Roman Empire.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Edict of Nicomedia” →
Questions and answers
Is Constantine's vision of the cross true?
The earliest account, by Lactantius, says only that he was told in a dream to mark a sign on the shields; the cross in the sky and the words “In this sign conquer” appear in the biography Eusebius wrote after Constantine's death. There is also a pagan panegyric saying Constantine saw a vision in a temple of Apollo in Gaul in 310, and scholars discuss whether the same experience was told in different ways.
Did the Edict of Milan make Christianity the state religion?
No. The so-called Edict of Milan, agreed by Constantine and Licinius in 313, granted freedom to all religions and ordered the return of property taken from Christians. Christianity became in effect the state religion around 380, with Theodosius I's Edict of Thessalonica.
Does the Milvian Bridge still exist?
Yes. It is the Ponte Milvio over the Tiber north of Rome, built in stone in the 2nd century BC and repaired many times since. The place where Maxentius's army collapsed in 312 is said to have been a temporary pontoon bridge beside it.
Sources and further reading
Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, chapter 44; Eusebius, Life of Constantine, book 1; the Latin panegyrics of 313 and 321; Zosimus, New History, book 2. Modern accounts: Timothy Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius; Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor.
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