11-23-2012, 03:52 AM
Quote:I think the Panegyrist has the praetorians in mind.
Yes! Well spotted - I'd missed that reference. We were just discussing the fate of the praetorians in this thread.
The Barnes book I mentioned above (Constantine: Dynasty Religion and Power in the LRE, 2011) follows a couple of other histories in playing down the significance of Milvian Bridge: just a skirmish, Barnes seems to think - 'a foregone conclusion... [Maxentius'] troops buckled at the first charge...' He likens it to Actium in its minimal military and maximal propaganda value. This seems odd though - if Maxentius lacked the troops to face Constantine, or doubted their morale, would he really have sallied from the walls of Rome and chanced open battle? Since he did, how can we assume that the battle was brief or one-sided?
On the other hand, where did Maxentius get all his soldiers from? He'd already been heavily defeated at Turin and Verona (incidentally, Barnes makes the new-to-me point that Maxentius' field force was based at Aquileia because he was expecting an invasion by Licinius though the Julian Alps, not one from the west...).
Nathan Ross
