The Origins of Roman Christian Diplomacy: Constantius II and John Chrysostom As Innovators 1st Edition Walter Stevenson

The Origins of Roman Christian
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Walter Stevenson
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The Origins of Roman Christian
Diplomacy
This book illuminates the origins of Roman Christian diplomacy through two case
studies: Constantius II’s imperial strategy in the Red Sea and John Chrysostom’s
ecclesiastical strategy in Gothia and Sasanian Persia.
Both men have enjoyed a strong narrative tradition: Constantius, as a persecuting,
theological fanatic; and Chrysostom, as a stubborn, naïve reformer. Yet this
tradition has often masked their remarkable innovations. As part of his strategy
for conquest, Constantius was forced to focus on Alexandria, demonstrating a
carefully orchestrated campaign along the principal eastern trade route. Meanwhile,
while John Chrysostom’s preaching and social reform have garnered extensive
discussion, his late sermons and letters composed in exile reveal an ambitious
program to establish church structures outside imperial state control.
The book demonstrates that these two pioneers innovated a diplomacy that
utilized Christianity as a tool for forging alliances with external peoples – a
procedure that would later become central to Byzantine statecraft. It will appeal
to all those interested in early Christianity and late antique/medieval history.
Walter Stevenson is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University

of Richmond, Virginia. His research interests include early Christianity, Roman
history, and ancient literature.
The Origins of Roman
Christian Diplomacy
Constantius II and John Chrysostom
as Innovators
Walter Stevenson
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Walter Stevenson
The right of Walter Stevenson to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-21946-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-41501-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To the Memory of My Very Dear Parents
Contents
Preface x
1 Approaching Roman Christian diplomacy in context 1

Challenges to understanding: “religion” 2
Challenges to understanding: “secular” 3
Challenges to understanding: church and state 4
Challenges to understanding: Constantine as symbol
of Christian imperialism 6
The case for Constantine’s mission to the Goths 7
Constantine’s plan to Christianize Persia 11
Other historiographical challenges 11
Plan of the book 14
2 Mission to Himyar and Aksum in context 20

Literary source one: Philostorgius narrates the story 20
Excursus: the importance of the Indian Ocean trade route 22
Literary source two: Rufinus on Christianization of Aksum 23
Literary source three: Constantius’s letters to Aksum and
Alexandria 25
Summary of literary sources 26
The route: precedents 27
Logistics and reconstructing the actual route 28
Reconstruction of literary and logistical sources 29
Perceptions of the Himyarites 31
Perceptions of the Aksumites 31
Perceptions of the Alexandrians 32
Concluding perceptions of Constantius 32
viii Contents
3 Constantius’s bishop management program 41
Constantine’s record on episcopal banishment 44
Constantius forced to innovate by circumstances:
Bishop Paul in Constantinople 48
A first politically successful exile: Paulinus of Trier 50
A western purge: Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercelli,
and Lucifer of Cagliari 51
New approaches to eliminating political enemies:
Liberius of Rome, Hilary of Poitiers, Hosius of Corduba 53
The staged deposition of Athanasius 57
Non-Nicene episcopal exiles: Eudoxius, Basil, and Eustathius 57
4 Constantius’s bureaucracy abroad 72

Constantius’s addressee Strategius Musonianus 73
Constantius creates a network of agents in the 350s 78
Speculation on the missions of these agents traveling to
the Red Sea 85
Chronological and textual problems in CTh 12.12.2 86
Aims and perceived dangers inherent in the act of promulgating
the edict 89
Christian mission in Constantius’s Red Sea policy 90
5 John Chrysostom’s mission to Gothia 98

Why so cosmopolitan? Exotic ethnic lists as guides
to action 108
Eudoxia as patroness 112
6 Marouta of Maiferqat and the mission to Persia 120

Chrysostom and Marouta 120
Sasanian innovation in religious policy 124
Why was John Chrysostom the first bishop to plan a mission
to Persia? 128
Syriac-speaking Christianity and Antioch’s
exceptionalism 128
Influence of Marouta and Sasanian policy on John? 131
Some concluding ruminations on John’s ecclesiastic
diplomacy 131
7 John’s attention to evolving collective religious identities 140

Contents ix
8 First steps toward a new Christian diplomacy 160
Case studies 160
Criterion one: potential for success 162
Criterion two: personnel choices 164
Criterion three: linguistic ability 166
Criterion four: cultural literacy 166
Criterion five: source of origination 169
Criterion six: logistical complexity 169
Criterion seven: religion 170
Conclusions 171
9 Byzantine trajectories 180

Changing diplomatic world: Vandal North Africa 180
Justinian’s diplomacy in the Red Sea theater 184
Justinian and the Black Sea theater 189
Justinian’s mission to Nubia 191
The conversion of Rus’ 194
Index 201
Preface
A diverse but vivid audience engaged my imagination as I composed this book:

colleagues in other fields like anthropology, linguistics, mathematics, modern his-
tory, political science, and so on; the many intelligent people that I chat with at auto
repair waiting rooms, coffee shops, tailgates, funerals, and wedding receptions;
book clubs and church/mosque/synagogue groups; my administrators; confident
left and right wing editorialists; and family members. In the United States we live
in an odd but not unwelcome cultural moment where the (tenured) professor, a
relatively well-paid member of society who spends time writing on “academic”
topics, anxiously ponders: one, the desire to reach past the dozen readers in a well-
defined field; and two, the necessity of public outreach for survival of that field.
Accordingly, I have made a concerted effort not only to make recondite material
accessible but also to make it attractive to my curious and educated fellow humans.
Not that I pretend to have successfully solved the problem often called, some-
what superciliously, “responsible popularizing” in the contemporary academy, but
rather, I am defending what some will condemn as the breezy style of the learned
essayists of the Anglo-American tradition.
This essayist strategy forces me to turn to my specialist colleagues and deliver
a brief defense. I am aware from decades of reading academic referee reports that
you are passionate about defending the dignity of your field, the virtues of recent
scientific progress, and the careers of those who excel therein. I understand and
welcome your dissatisfaction at having an outsider skim the cream, often sloppily,
from your vat to make a crowd-pleasing cheese, one that leaves a cloying aftertaste
in your mouth. I can only hope that someone from each subfield will pay this book
the compliment of attacking the many distortions and lacunae required for the
accessible, synthetic style of this book. I am speaking of African studies, Byzantine
studies, ethnic studies, frontier studies, Gothic studies, historiography (Ammia-
nus, cultural historians, diplomatic historians, ecclesiastical historians, intellectual
historians), Iranian studies, patristics, Syriac studies, theology, and each area’s
subfields in archaeology, epigraphy, history, numismatics, and philology. I made
an effort to read as widely as possible in your fields in the hope that this synthetic
book might bring more attention to your work, work that I believe passionately
deserves a much broader audience. And I took on the voice of an expert lecturer,
not to pretend to lofty expertise, but rather, to avoid the tedium of a relentlessly
Preface xi
cautious academese – “it is perhaps plausible to guess . . . ,” “apparently . . . ,”
“perhaps one could conjecture . . . ,” and so on.
I have indulged in discussions of method throughout the book. Once again,
the practitioners of many well-developed fields of modern academic theory will
be dismayed by the “reductionist” approach I take. My defense here is twofold:
one, my graduate education occurred in the 1980s amid enormous enthusiasm for,
and formal attention to, theoretical musings on method, in which I participated
fervently; and two, this book’s analyses were self-consciously constructed to heed
theoretical teachings while retaining accessible language and brevity. Let me try
to explain this with an example.
The productive recent focus on embodiment in the study of antiquity, among
many others, nourished this book. Though most of this work has been directed
toward illumination of gender and toward a healthy antidote to the somewhat
hidden but surprisingly prevalent ingredient of mind-body or spirit-body duality
in human tradition,1 I made the effort to apply this theoretical approach to ancient
history. Many students of antiquity will spend a satisfying 10 minutes at a con-
ference discussing the challenges of traveling from Austin, Texas, to Berkeley,
California. Not many things bring more awareness to the body than bloodshot
eyes, cricked necks, aching lumbar regions, cramped knees, and throbbing feet. In
this book I frequently tried to extend the reader’s attention from lofty thoughts of
Roman diplomatic theory to the challenges of traveling from Antioch to Ethiopia –
that is, to the corporeal demands of thirst, hunger, and heat as well as the tan-
gible requirements of shelter and transport. This focus on the physical extends
to frequent considerations of material remains and all their ramifications for how
embodied life was lived, especially on the eastern fringes of the Roman world.
One reader’s low tolerance for perceived tediousness will with any luck be bal-
anced by another reader’s appreciation for understanding the embodied world of
late Roman diplomacy.
With this apology humbly delivered, I turn to the content of the topic at hand.
The study of Roman diplomacy begins from the truism that the high Roman
Empire communicated with its neighbors through military threat and violence,
until the 3rd century CE brought Rome its first military equals, Goths and
Sasanids, and the 4th century introduced disasters like the Gothic victory at
Adrianople and frequent defeats due to superior Hunnic cavalry. Realizing that
military might could be used more effectively in a framework of diplomacy,
the Romans gradually developed a diplomatic machine that reached its tangible
climax with the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII’s published works, the De
administrando imperio and De caeremoniis, describing the elaborate workings
of a mature, professional state diplomacy. From these 10th-century classics,
through early-modern treatises,2 to the present,3 the practical necessity of dip-
lomatic training based on past experience has kept the topic front and center.
Though I could enter into a complex discussion of how the above wide array of
modern academic fields has stunted a discussion of the role of Christianity in
the development of Western diplomacy, I would rather let the inherent interest
of the topic speak for itself.
xii Preface
Finally, I would like to publicly thank the many people who have knowingly or
unknowingly supported this work. I can sincerely and emphatically say that none
of these people should share in any of the criticisms or blame for failings that inevi-
tably will follow publication. I have enjoyed the support of my colleagues on the
University of Richmond Faculty Research Committee, the Gloria Wills foundation,
the library at Dumbarton Oaks, and the amazing University of Richmond Interli-
brary Loan Department. My students, both at the University of Richmond and at the
Ukrainian Catholic University, have been a constant inspiration and stimulus to
me over the years. Thanks need to go to Dumbarton Oaks Papers for allowing me
to reuse significant parts of my article published there in Chapter 3.4 Innumerable
colleagues were involved in conversations, criticisms, and suggestions in the writing
of this book, but I reserve the place of honor for one central figure. As a professional
classicist, I came to the late antique world on my own 25 years ago and suffered all
the misfortunes that an academic orphan deserves. But through it all, Susan Harvey
has believed in me, supported me, and pushed me onward. I owe a special debt
of gratitude also to my editor, Michael Greenwood, who likewise stuck with me
through delays caused by my often turbulent life. Last of all, but most important,
I have been blessed with more supportive families than any single person could
deserve: to the Harts, the Kims, and the Stevensons, no less the peculiar families of
my fishing companions and classics department colleagues, you all have my deepest
gratitude and love.
Notes
1 My perception is that the opposition of intellectual/spiritual to body does not origi-
nate with Plato and only infest the West. Readers familiar with the Buddhist, Hindu,
Manichaean, and Mazdaist traditions of late antiquity will be aware that the East also
participated in this very human tendency. Orientalist instincts may often be at work here,
as critiqued in, for instance, E. Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond
Orientalism and the Myth of Holism (Oxford, 2019).
2 Bernard du Rosier, Ambaxiatorum brevilogus (1436), Ermolao Barbaro, De officio legati
(ca. 1500), Etienne Dolet, De officio legati, and De immunitate legatorum (1541), and
Conrad Braun, De legationibus (1548).
3 A. Becker, 2015, continues to refine the sociological conceptions surrounding Roman
changes in diplomacy.
4 W. Stevenson, “Exiling Bishops: The Policy of Constantius II,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers
68 (2014) 7–27. © 2014 Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Trustees
for Harvard University. Originally published in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 68, edited by
Margaret Mullett.
1 Approaching Roman
Christian diplomacy in
context
Twenty years before the Christian era, a group of “Ethiopian” diplomats were
escorted by Roman soldiers to Octavian’s winter palace on the Greek island of
Samos.1 Only recently titled Augustus,2 he had begun officially receiving embas-
sies as an individual.3 Though republican Romans asserted that the senate handled
foreign policy,4 ambitious nobles had gradually paved the road to monarchical
diplomacy by individually cultivating powerful non-Roman clients. Against his
own propaganda of a restored republic, however, Augustus established early in his
reign that all diplomacy would be focused on him as princeps,5 a precedent that
would take root and grow through the 4th century into the celebrated practice of the
Byzantine court.6 Augustus’s legate Petronius had recently repulsed an attack by
the famous Kandake (queen), Amirenas,7 driving his army through weak opposi-
tion all the way south to the cult center of Napata (modern Karima, Sudan, about
300 miles north of Khartoum and 700 miles west of Mecca).8 When the queen’s
ambassadors approached the general seeking peace, he insisted that they must
proceed to Augustus. They pled ignorance of both Augustus and the route to find
him, so Petronius sent a contingent of guides that appeared shortly thereafter on
the Greek island of Samos with Amirenas’s trusted legates. No doubt, the discus-
sions were held in Greek,9 exotic place names beyond the fringe of the empire
were investigated, and Augustus’s court immediately equated the city of Swennet
(modern Aswan), named for the goddess of childbirth, with the familiar goddesses
Eileithuia (Greek) and Lucina (Roman), names that would soon be attached to the
conquered city.10 After these ceremonious discussions, Augustus magnanimously
dismissed the delegation to announce to the Kandake that the Roman emperor had
relieved them of paying their tribute.
In these and similar events of the 20s BCE, Augustus deftly slipped into the age-
old and archetypal role of potentate. Via his posthumously published biography,
now called the Res Gestae, Augustus underscored his supreme geopolitical status
by noting only reception of diplomatic gifts, never donation.11 And the land of the
Kandake, rarely a stranger to diplomacy with potentates from pharaohs to Persian
and Hellenistic kings, immediately fell into a comfortable, shallow détente with
the distant emperor. This condensed tale must serve as our introduction to Roman
diplomacy, a topic this book will explore throughout and summarize in earnest in
Chapters 8 and 9. Foreign embassies would bring gifts, news, and requests to the
2 Approaching Roman Christian diplomacy
emperor, and the emperor would send forth armies, royal assignments, and stories
of conquest. Augustus did commission an exploratory party to South Arabia, but
this became in the Res Gestae a conquering army bringing the furthest regions of
the known world under his rule.12 In this Augustan form, diplomacy started from
armies, from violence applied, and from military commanders’ circumscribed dis-
cretion. Note well that neither the emperor nor the Nubians (“Ethiopians”) nor the
near-contemporary author (Strabo), throughout the episode, took any interest in
differences of language, self-understanding, or religion. Three hundred years later
at the end of the 3rd century, the emperor Diocletian would underscore unity with
the same southern “barbarians” by repurposing the temple compound of Philae on
an island in the Nile (now inundated about 60 miles south of the Aswan Dam), a
grand testimony to common gods and culture.13
But within a century of Diocletian’s gesture, the dramatic eruption of Chris-
tianity on both sides of Roman imperial boundaries would foster the first glim-
merings of a grand shift from Augustus’s to Justinian’s diplomacy (6th century
CE), from potentates receiving generic emissaries to holy kings sending specific
missionaries. This chapter will argue against a long-standing tradition still held
by contemporary scholars that Constantine, upon his conversion and along with
his ambitious Christian allies and successors, immediately set out to convert the
world. Throughout the rest of the book, we will instead turn to two case studies
that illustrate simultaneously how slowly, and ineffectively, Augustus’s diplomatic
precedent was altered and yet how boldly and originally our two innovators, the
emperor Constantius II and the bishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, experi-
mented. But such a story requires a setting. This chapter will argue that the tale
of innovations only makes sense when situated in a murky world of complex and
uneven change, change from clear Roman geopolitical dominance to ambiguous
coexistence, change from settled Roman views of self and subjects to new under-
standings of cultural difference, and change from traditional Roman practices of
diplomacy (Constantine) to new Christian techniques (Constantius).
Challenges to understanding: “religion”

Perhaps the most impenetrable barrier to modern understanding of late Roman
culture confronts us dauntingly in our profound feelings surrounding the concept
of “religion,” feelings ranging from abhorrence to fanaticism. We naturally project
these emotions across the millennia, but how historically useful can this projection
be? For hundreds of years, Western scholars have celebrated the wistfully noble
“pagan” resistance to a destructive Christian intolerance, while learned Christians
have championed the victory of their civilizing truths over polytheistic darkness.
This dialectic, often masked, and usually far more nuanced, has both driven and
benefitted the growth of late antique studies. But this book will try to venture onto
a less traveled course, a quixotic journey to an ever-receding land always just
beyond our cognition, a world meeting “religion” for the first time.
How can we approach the topic of “religion” in antiquity? It requires a vivid
imagination for a modern Westerner to approach traditional Greco-Roman cult.
Approaching Roman Christian diplomacy 3
What was the experience like drinking at a pre-party before attending a comic
performance in Aristophanes’s Athens? Many have had a few drinks before mov-
ing on to the comedy club, but the Athenians were performing a very different
action. First, the whole state was involved. Elected state officials, archons, oversaw
everything from funding of the chorus to selection of the best plays, to judging
of those plays. All Athenians were invited, and a significant portion of the state’s
population might attend (20,000 could easily be 25 percent of citizens).14 This
whole “religious” event, the city Dionysia, was thought to have originated when
the city Eleutherae, having voted to leave the neighboring city-state of Boeotia and
join Athens, sent their holy cult statue of the god Dionysus to Athens’s capital.15
In fact, comic performances may have been a deliberate addition to the festival
in the early 5th century as an expression of democratic leanings – that is, cheap
entertainment for the common citizens through mockery of the powerful. And,
of course, the Athenians “worshipped” Dionysus, the god of wine (and release
from stress), with drinking, dancing, and laughing at pointed satire of the elected
officials. This was the sort of state cult that makes it difficult to imagine walking
past a friend on the way to the theater and hearing him say he was not attend-
ing because he is not very religious. In fact, when Euripides publicly summoned
such a reluctant figure to the stage in 407 BCE, Pentheus in his masterpiece, the
Bacchae, this Dionysus-dissident suffered the tragic flaw that most of us would
connect with religious fanaticism. And he died violently for it. The drinking, act-
ing, and laughing all supported the state and thus were expected from citizenship
in the state while simultaneously forming the essence of the cultic expression to
a divinity – one that would be anathema to modern welfare states with their strict
mechanisms for suppressing drunkenness. This was not going to a bar or going
to the theater or going to a rowdy public festival or going to a church/mosque/
synagogue or some combination of the above. Belonging to an ancient city-state
required “religious” participation in state cults. With religion and state tightly
melded, what were the prospects of ancient citizens even understanding the words
“religious” and “secular”?
Challenges to understanding: “secular”

“Secular” is a Roman word (saecularis) whose modern meaning is expressed bet-
ter by the ancient Latin profanus or Greek bebe^los, “profane” – in the sense of
“outside the circumscribed zone of sanctification.”16 But do these words mean
“secular” in the sense of “removed from religion, not-religious, religion-free”?
Was there a “secular space” in Greco-Roman antiquity? How much of a space is
required to begin to distinguish religion from state? The trial of Socrates in 399,
in which the street philosopher was convicted to death for corrupting the state’s
“religious” institutions (our modern language), at least according to Plato’s and
Xenophon’s versions thereof,17 revealed no trace of an argument that the state
lacked a right to judge a citizen’s religious beliefs and accordingly to punish using
its full judicial power. No doubt Athens, and a few other city-states, had philoso-
phers on the fringe of society who espoused a rationalist agenda similar to some
modern secularist views,18 but these remained on the sidelines of policy throughout
antiquity. A rare and exhaustive insight is afforded through Cicero’s dialogue De
Natura Deorum, in which extraordinarily well-educated Roman aristocrats are
depicted staking out philosophically sophisticated positions on something close to
what our modern term “religion” suggests. But most of their utilitarian ratiocina-
tion, for instance, with respect to politics, assumes that the state requires religion in
its current form – that is, as a state cult fronted by priests selected from the political
elite.19 Readers who deny that this state cult had a presence in the people’s day-to-
day lives should consult a Roman calendar or the pages of imperial literature.20 The
so-called Skeptical, or Academic Skeptical, school of philosophy represented by
Gaius Cotta, in Cicero’s dialogue, had its influence in the empire, especially in the
late 2nd–century figure Sextus Empiricus. But this “school” never overtly taught that
religion should be sequestered from public life and was eventually absorbed into
Augustine’s theology.21 Gaius Velleius’s detached view of the gods in the dialogue
may have been influential in the modern undermining of traditional theological
positions,22 but nowhere does the character produce a hint at even understanding
what “secular society” would be. In short, the philosophical discussions emanat-
ing from ancient salons and schools never affected society to the extent that any
community would have understood the modern term “secular.”
Challenges to understanding: church and state

So without a socially functional conception of the secular, how distinct could
church and state become? The answer is, thanks to the advent of Christianity, sur-
prisingly distinct. The origins of Roman interaction with Christianity established
new political and social divisions.23 Augustus’s autocratic political system, the
“principate,” feared secret meetings, as seen from the liberal, but telling, letter of
Pliny as provincial governor to the emperor Trajan (112 CE) asking how to pun-
ish Christians for such meetings.24 From the Roman perspective, the fanaticism
of this exclusive cult, in which devotees would face torture and death rather than
recognize imperial divinity, automatically set it apart. Of course, as the fanatic
sect spread, the opposition fitfully mounted until in the early 4th century, persecu-
tion of Christians in eastern cities had become manifestly counterproductive.25
When Constantine relaxed Roman suppression of Christianity, there was already
a natural division. Devout Christians would be loyal to their bishops, and tra-
ditional Romans would resent this. What happened thereafter represents one of
the most fascinating political and sociological events in history. The Christian
church sprang out from the underground as an improbably parallel institution to the
Roman state. Wherever a Roman official was collecting taxes or meting out justice,
a Christian bishop was taking collections and overseeing courts. The awkward
Christian imitation of Roman provincial units (still called “dioceses” today) went
unchecked, and by the middle of the 4th century, we will see that bishops may well
have outstripped provincial governors in political influence as well as resources,
especially in intensely Christian areas like Egypt. In this book we will specifi-
cally investigate competition between the emperor Constantius and the bishop
of Alexandria, Athanasius, in which two aspects of church-state relations should
become clear: one, Constantius’s court recognized the danger of losing political
control of the empire to bishops, especially Athanasius; and two, the devout Chris-
tianity of the imperial court often contrasted and melded with the ruthless political
tactics of Roman aristocrats-turned-bishops to such an extent that lines were often
blurred.26 So while there was no discussion of a secular space in ancient society,
there was certainly a distinction between church and state; this distinction between
the emperor’s court and powerful bishops finds no parallel in modern experience.
It may be naïve to try to banish the influence of Voltaire, or even Khomeini, from
our consciousness. But the effort will be made to repress the “war on Christmas”
and conjure something more like state law enforcement against mafia in Sicily.
As for “state,” the Roman polity of the 4th century presents itself as a curi-
ous specimen. On the scale of modern statehood, between Switzerland and South
Sudan,27 where would we place the Roman state that Constantine inherited? Start-
ing from basic modern criteria for fragile statehood – that is, ethnic and religious
division, widespread corruption and inequality of wealth, and factionalism of
elites, we would have to consider Diocletian’s Rome on the South Sudan–end of
the spectrum: frequent religious conflicts, border wars with hostile ethnic groups,
disastrous taxation efforts, an oppressed tenant farmer class, and violent rebellion
by almost every member of the elite who gained an army. Between 306 and 324,
the emperor Constantine did almost nothing but battle incursion and insurgence
including bloody conflict in the streets required to retake the capital city (312)
and a long campaign against a brother-in-law, Licinius, who had stolen the east-
ern empire (ca. 316–324). Meanwhile, Christian strife was widespread, ranging
from the Donatist factionalism to the Arian schism. The enormously influential
courtier Eusebius of Caesarea’s accounts of rule in the East, however tendentious,
paint a picture of cruel and open oppression under the Eastern rulers Galerius and
Maximinus II, both of whom strove to topple Constantine. The emperor Galerius,
who grew up in Dacia, was even said to have initiated his brutal head tax as a
punishment for Trajan’s tribute inflicted centuries earlier on the newly conquered
Dacians.28 Chapters 3 and 4 of this book will tell a small part of the story of state
building under Constantine’s son Constantius – a remarkable tale, given the cha-
otic forces whose impetus Constantine reversed but whose significant residue was
inherited by his sons. Suffice it to say here that basic cohesion or unification, no
less functional bureaucratic and juridical structures, essential to our conception of
a state were sorely lacking in 4th-century Rome.
As for church, the diversity and vigor of Christianity in the early-4th century sud-
denly came into display when Constantine’s court (preceded by Licinius’s) ended
persecution. In fact, months after the Edict of Milan was published, Constantine
confronted the leaders of a bloody conflict between “catholics” and Donatists who
arrived in Rome to seek his justice,29 and shortly after that meeting (concilium),
the Council of Arles (314) would condemn Donatus and perpetuate centuries of
conflict in African Christianity. That conflict concerned the condemnation of per-
ceived traitors to the faith during the persecutions of Diocletian, but theological
conflicts in the East concerning the nature of Jesus’s divinity spilled over from the
Council of Nicaea (325), a meeting designed to contain them. The power of bishops
became apparent as they raised impressive funds; sat in judgment in their courts;30
and, most importantly, connived with each other to create factions, eject enemy
bishops, and manipulate the imperial court. While the creative chaos of the 4th
century would give final shape to the canonical Christian scriptures, generate many
of the fundamental formulations of Christian theology, codify an impressive body
of canon law, and drive the basic shape of ecclesiology for the next millennium, the
“church” did not remotely achieve institutional stability. As the rest of this book will
make obvious, modern or early-modern conceptions of an organized, expansionist,
unified national church must be scrapped when visiting the 4th century. This riot-
ous gathering of bishops, rich widows, monks, visionaries, ardent believers, and
calculated converts presented an ever-moving target to all ancient imperial designs
for unification, or modern scholarly hopes for generalization.
Challenges to understanding: Constantine as symbol of

Christian imperialism
As heroic and successful as Constantine was in reversing the forces of political
dissolution, we need to keep this success in context. In fact, because the demon-
stration of Constantius’s innovation over his father is central to this book, it will
be necessary to briefly demonstrate that Constantine, in the midst of his endless
struggles as well as his creation of a new capital, did not harness Christianity
to any significant diplomatic activity. This claim, in turn, runs into age-old and
grand traditions of glorifying and vilifying Constantine for his ardent Christian-
ity, an irrepressible piety that supposedly burst forth in a fireball of Christian
triumphalism both within and without the empire.31 We cannot take on a critique
of the whole liberal tradition from Gibbon through the Whigs to our contemporary
rationalizers, but a terse and pointed inspection of particulars may help to frame
Constantius’s innovation.
Timothy Barnes’s provocative arguments that Constantine intended to Chris-
tianize Gothia and Persia will serve our purpose well.32 This project was followed
and set in a broader frame by the fascinating work of Garth Fowden.33 And both
were revived recently by Elizabeth Fowden’s focused piece on Constantine and
easterners.34 These studies attempted to hammer down in detail the origins of how
Christianity altered Roman imperialism, and Garth Fowden’s in particular set this
new style of imperialism in the context of the transformation of Rome’s eastern
neighbors in late antiquity. While it will be obvious that this book was partly
inspired by the brilliant work of these scholars, it will be necessary to argue against
some of their details and chronology.
The scattered evidence that Constantine sent imperial Christian missions, or
even planned them, is ambiguous at best and, even when massed together and
carefully interpreted, only illustrates the first Roman Christian emperor stumbling
on modest and opportune missionary propaganda. We will focus on two serious
and detailed arguments in favor of it: first, that Constantine was involved in the
Christianization brought about by Wulfila among the Goths; and second, that
Constantine had a plan to Christianize the Sasanian Empire. For each putative
mission, court rhetoric and its later emanations via ecclesiastical historians present
a possibility, but in each case, a close reading of our sources illuminates a lack of
imperial policy. In reviewing these, we will see that the case for Constantine as
the first missionary emperor is weak.
The case for Constantine’s mission to the Goths

We start with the Goths whose Christianization Barnes asserts was at least claimed
by Constantine. It is clear that Gothic evangelization began in the 3rd century, and
Chapter 5 will argue that, after Constantius II and Valens took some interest, John
Chrysostom was the first Roman official to actively foment it. But due to contradic-
tions in our sources, it is possible to push some missionary activity back in time
to the very end of Constantine’s reign and tangentially connect it to his imperial
program. The assertion has been made that Constantine had a hand in the ordina-
tion of Wulfila, the first bishop of the Gothic peoples. This assertion is built on a
technical, chronological argument that has not been widely discussed.35
The most sympathetic sources for the life and work of Wulfila come from openly
Arian authors, Auxentius and Philostorgius.36 These two authors’ accounts are
harmonized to give us the standard life:37 Wulfila was the grandson of a Cappado-
cian who was captured and taken as a slave in the Gothic raids of the 250s; from
this, he is presumed to have been Greco-Roman on his maternal side, which might
explain his fluency in Greek and Latin, and Gothic on his father’s side, leaving him
with his name “little wolf” in Gothic. He was born around 310 in Balkan Gothia
to a family of sufficient influence that it was able to send him to Constantinople to
be ordained bishop of all the Goths either at the end of Constantine’s reign or at
the beginning of Constantius II’s sole reign in Constantinople (337). He returned
to shepherd those living in Balkan Gothia for seven years until he was driven out
by the first Gothic persecution of Christians in the late 340s. After this, he guided
his flock into the Roman province of Moesia for 33 years, during which time he
wrote a good deal and apparently produced the Gothic translation of the Bible and
his Gothic grammar, both partially extant today.38 He was present at the Council
of Constantinople of 360 at which he signed the Homoian creed of Eudoxius and
may have been involved in the negotiations the Goths held with the Arian emperor
Valens in the mid-370s, before the battle of Adrianople. Philostorgius diverges
from Auxentius by stating that the young Wulfila was sent with an embassy to
meet with Constantine. Barnes builds upon the latter to suggest that the meeting
with Constantine may have coincided with Constantine’s tricennalia in 336, and
thus, Wulfila may have been ordained bishop to be paraded, in Roman triumphant
style, as a new Christian version of Roman imperialist propaganda.39
The heart of the Arian version has the merit of being based on Wulfila’s student
Auxentius’s direct personal knowledge, and we can presume that, as Arian, it is at
the least a sympathetic narrative. But the striving for biblical overtones undercuts
confidence in these accounts’ historical veracity. In these sources Wulfila appears as
a combination of Jesus, David, and Moses, starting his ministry at 30 years old like
Jesus, serving seven years in his kingdom and 33 years out like David, and as the
Gothic Moses leading his people to freedom across the wilderness.40 Philostorgius’s
less intimate relation to Wulfila and more tendentious approach can only add to skep-
ticism with his account. In fact, the only clear merit of privileging Philostorgius’s
chronology is to show Constantine’s imperialistic/missionary zeal. Barnes seems to
be pushing the sources as far as possible in this direction, and his argument is thus
left hanging. Certainly, if we privilege one unique detail in Philostorgius’s account,
which had many opportunities for corruption and interpolation between the author’s
composition and the transmission in Photius, and we explain away the numerous
accounts opposed to this, and we push the chronology to its furthest possible extent,
we can establish the possibility that Wulfila was ordained under Constantine. But
the context of Constantius’s more extensive interest in missions makes it that much
more likely that Wulfila’s imperial support began under him, if there ever was such
support. Why Auxentius, student and friend of Wulfila, would deliberately falsify the
ordination of his mentor is not clear, perhaps to set his glory in the time of the more
Arian-friendly Constantius? But it seems less likely that all the orthodox authors
would agree with their Arian brethren and that we would wind up with only one
voice promoting a Constantinian ordination. Even if Wulfila were ordained under
Constantine and were paraded in the tricennalia, this would hardly be evidence in
itself that he had a profound interest in, or strategy to, Christianize Gothia.
Barnes cites more evidence for Constantine’s interest in Gothia elsewhere,
claiming that Constantine intended, or at least wanted to appear intent, to Chris-
tianize Gothia:
When Constantine concluded a treaty with the Goths in 332 . . . he insisted

on including religious stipulations, which enabled him (and his panegyrist
Eusebius) to claim that he had converted the northern barbarians.41
He bases this contention on three sources, which deserve some scrutiny. Barnes’s
first piece of evidence is drawn from Athanasius’s Apology against the Arians (86).
In this section Athanasius, whose relations with Constantius in the mid-350s as
bishop of Alexandria, as we will see in Chapter 3, were greatly strained, is quot-
ing a letter from Constantine to the eastern bishops chiding their contentiousness:
For indeed through my devotion to God, peace is preserved everywhere, and

the Name of God is truly worshipped even by the barbarians, who have hith-
erto been ignorant of the truth. And it is manifest, that he who is ignorant of
the truth, does not know God either. Nevertheless, as I said before, even the
barbarians have now come to the knowledge of God, by means of me, His true
servants, and have learned to fear Him Whom they perceive from actual facts to
be my shield and protector everywhere. And from this chiefly they have come
to know God, Whom they fear through the dread which they have of me. But
we, who are supposed to set forth (for I will not say to guard) the holy myster-
ies of His Goodness, we, I say, engage in nothing but what tends to dissension
and hatred, and, in short, whatever contributes to the destruction of mankind.42
If we can trust Athanasius to have quoted accurately, and we have little reason to
doubt him, this statement comes close to Barnes’s contention that Constantine was
claiming to have Christianized barbarians. The letter manifestly shows Constan-
tine taking credit for barbarian Christianity. But the context of this letter should
not be lost. Of all places to make the claim that one has Christianized, and intends
to continue Christianizing, external people by the sword, a letter sent to quell
the squabbles of eastern ecclesiastics seems an unlikely place. Even if Constan-
tine were already contemplating a crusade against the Sasanids (to be discussed
below), an announcement of intention to Christianize beyond the borders of the
empire would call for more than a side comment in a letter. It seems more likely
that Constantine merely made this comment in passing to shame the bishops: how
could they continue to fight when even the barbarian hordes have settled down in
Christian peace? The lack of detail also undermines any sense that Constantine
was claiming a successful policy of Christianizing the barbarians.
The second testimony comes from Eusebius’s Life of Constantine (4.5) and
requires full quotation. Here, at the end of the work, Eusebius praises Constan-
tine’s purported pacification of the northern barbarians:
What need is there for me to mention even incidentally how he subjected bar-
barian races to Roman rule, how he was the first to subjugate the Gothic and
Sarmatian tribes which had never before learnt to serve, compelling them to
accept the Romans as their masters even against their will? Previous rulers had
even paid tribute to the Goths, and Romans served barbarians with yearly pay-
ments. Such a reckoning was not acceptable to the Emperor, nor did it seem
good enough to the Victor to make the same payments as his predecessors.
Confident in his Saviour and brandishing the victorious trophy over them too,
he very soon subdued them all, sometimes taming the refractory with the mili-
tary arm, sometimes pacifying the rest by reasonable negotiations, converting
them from a lawless animal existence to one of reason and law. In this way the
Goths learnt at last to serve Rome. As to the Sarmatians, it was God himself
who thrust them under the feet of Constantine, defeating men who gloried in
their barbaric mentality in the following way. When the Goths attacked them,
the masters armed their servants to repel their enemies. But when the slaves
had won, they turned their arms against their masters and drove them all
from their own land. The masters found no other safe refuge than Constantine
alone. He knew the meaning of rescue, and received them all as subjects in
Roman territory. Those who were suitable he enrolled in his own forces; to
the rest he apportioned land for cultivation of the means of subsistence, so
that they acknowledged that the disaster had turned out good for them in that
they enjoyed Roman liberty instead of barbaric bestiality. Thus God bestowed
upon him victories over all the nations, so that of their own accord all sorts of
barbarian tribes were willing to submit to him.43
It is not clear how this passage demonstrates that Constantine and Eusebius were
claiming that they Christianized the barbarians. Eusebius stresses a military and
political pacification of the Goths and only adds that God’s hand was clear in the
similar pacification of the Sarmatians. Emphasis at the end is placed on civilization
and not Christianization. In fact, the passage presents an excellent opportunity for
Eusebius to praise Constantine’s external missions, but Eusebius not only does
not include such a statement in the passage above but continues the narrative by
discussing the outrageous appearance of the barbarians when they arrived in Con-
stantinople to pay tribute (4.7).44 Rather than underlining Constantine’s intention
to Christianize external peoples, this section of the Life of Constantine underscores
Constantine’s (and Eusebius’s) remarkable lack of interest in external missions.
Beyond reference to the Christian God’s hand in domesticating the Sarmatians,
the whole passage reads like any traditional triumphal account of barbarian tribes
brought under the Roman yoke.
Further reason to doubt Eusebius’s (and Constantine’s) missionary intentions
can be drawn from two other genres. It is well known that Eusebius is the father
of ecclesiastical history but less well recognized that his own historical writing
all but ignores missionaries outside the empire.45 If Constantine were so intent
on Christianizing the northern barbarians, it is strange that Eusebius ignored the
topic in his own history. Furthermore, we would expect that an emperor and his
supporters would want to extoll successful policies like Christianizing foreigners
in their propaganda. But the panegyrics to Constantine fail to include any mention
of Christianizing foreigners. The burden of proof seems to be on those like Barnes
who suggest that Constantine wanted to Christianize barbarians. The very lack of
intentional discussion of the topic in Eusebius argues that neither the author nor
his ruler considered external Christianization important.
Barnes’s last piece of evidence appears in the ecclesiastical history tradition-
ally attributed to Gelasius of Cyzicus.46 In this section, the historian, writing in
the late-5th or early-6th century, is discussing how the Iberians (ancient people
living in Caucasus) were converted, in which he closely follows his predecessors
Rufinus,47 Socrates,48 Sozomen,49 and Theodoret50 in describing how a captured
Roman slave woman performed miracles among the Iberians and convinced them
to convert, after which they sent to Constantine for priests (or a bishop). The
historian then adds a few details at the end of his account of the conversion of the
Iberians (people in the Caucasus):51
The reverent and Christ-loving emperor Constantine received their delegation

kindly and he rejoiced when he received their request. He ordered the bishop
of Constantinople, Alexander, to appoint a bishop for the Iberians, at the same
time comprehending that it was the will of God to subject the foreign tribes
to him.52
In this section, our historian was following Rufinus’s Ecclesiastical History – these
are the only two accounts to mention their source, a certain Bacurius who was
acquainted with Rufinus in Palestine.53 Since the sentiment expressed in Rufinus,
that Constantine was happier with the conversion of this unknown people than
he would have been by conquering them, stands out as typical of the apologetics
practiced by church historians, there is little reason to presume that the anonymous
historian did anything more than echo Rufinus. Such testimony can hardly demon-
strate that Constantine intended to Christianize northern barbarians.
Constantine’s plan to Christianize Persia

Barnes, and the Fowdens following Barnes, extend this argument to suggest that
Constantine’s planned expedition to Iran was part of a strategy to Christianize the
peoples under Sasanian rule.54 After building a convincing case that Constantine
was concerned for the Christian subjects of Shapur, and that he was planning an
attack on Sasanian territory, Barnes extends himself to this:
Constantine proposed to conduct his Persian expedition as a religious cru-

sade. Bishops were to accompany the army, a Christian version of the Old
Testament tabernacle was prepared to accompany him, and he proclaimed his
intention to be baptized in the River Jordan before he invaded Mesopotamia.55
The only source for this assertion is Eusebius’s Life of Constantine, which makes
no mention of crusade or a goal of conquering Persian lands in the name of
Christ.56 Most of even Eusebius’s account could apply to the traditional Roman
habit of mounting a Persian expedition. If almost every significant emperor from
Trajan to Julian attempted such an expedition, why should we see Constantine’s
as unique in motivation? It seems obvious that a Christian emperor would bring
along Christian devotional trappings. Why do these imply a crusade? It is more
likely that Constantine had achieved enough control of the traditional empire that,
as had his predecessors, he sought out new methods of bolstering his reputation.
Other historiographical challenges

The scarcity of source materials manifest in discussing Constantine’s career above
calls for some introspection. Do we really have enough historical information
to discuss topics like missions outside the empire and diplomacy? Do we even
have enough to discuss relations with the world east of the Roman Empire? For
those interested in Roman military campaigns or early relations with the Parthians/
Persians, authors like Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus provide a relatively
bountiful and trustworthy narrative. What do we know about imperial relations
with far-flung regions of the world? What we do learn from scattered sources
often provides its own aura of caution. For instance, Pliny the Elder’s Natural
History, a goldmine of scattered and arcane information, offers us this story. When
Annius Plocamus was collecting taxes on the Red Sea, one of his freedmen got
caught in a storm off the east coast of Arabia and was swept to Sri Lanka.57 This
freedman spent six months there, achieved fluency in their language, and ended
up conversing with the king about Rome. When the king tested various Roman
denarii and discovered that they all had uniform amounts of gold, he decided that
he should become acquainted with these unusually just people. So he sent to the
emperor Claudius an embassy from whom the Roman court learned a good deal
about the culture, economy, and geography of Sri Lanka. Judging by Augustus’s
record alone, we have every reason to believe that these sort of embassies were
frequent and that the wealth of information shared was not systematically recorded
and archived. How did Pliny learn of this story?58 As tempting as it may be to
imagine that Claudius’s court kept an archive of such information from which
curious scholars like Pliny could draw, it is unlikely.59 Most likely, Pliny was liv-
ing in Rome at the time and received the story orally.60 As for an account shared
by Annius’s freedman, we can be certain this in itself would have been ignored.
Strabo, writing in his Geography shortly before the story quoted at the beginning
of this chapter, candidly states:
As for the merchants who now sail from Egypt by the Nile and the Arabian
Gulf as far as India, only a small number have sailed as far as the Ganges; and
even these are merely private citizens and of no use as regards the history of
the places they have seen.61
We will see in the next chapter that these merchants not only served as the
undoubted source of the most reliable information on the nautical world to Rome’s
east but also as the agents of exchange, eventually becoming informal ambassadors
for Christianity. To know that major authors like Strabo, and most likely Pliny
the Elder, openly and categorically rejected merchants’ testimony due mainly to
class bias opens up to us the complexity and depth of our source challenges. An
unlikely concatenation of events brought Pliny’s report to us: storm-tossed freed-
man survived, he made significant contact with foreign king, embassy arrived at
Roman court, someone remembered the embassy’s report and shared it orally,
Pliny retained this information and chose to include it, and the text of Pliny sur-
vived. If our ancient authors were ignoring the best source material – that is,
merchant stories – and if we needed a near miracle to luck into the wisdom of
the Sri Lankan king’s embassy, and of course, if we can sift out the misinforma-
tion sneaking into the transmission from ambassadors to courtiers through Pliny’s
cognition and writing (and textual problems) to us, then we are not surprised that
the ancient extant record should not be considered more than a random sampling
of stories about diplomacy and foreign peoples.62
No doubt, caution is due. But on the bright side, as long as modern critics pro-
ceed cautiously with our spotty record, there are reasons for guarded confidence.
One example can be drawn from Pliny’s same story, what might be called an
unguarded aside. Pliny states, as though a commonplace, that Annius Plocamus
had won the franchise to tax the Red Sea region and that he was taxing all along
the Arabian coast. This exposes to us the frustrating question: what were the under-
stood boundaries of empire? Most maps draw the line of empire roughly along the
eastern boundaries of what are now the modern nations of Jordan and Syria. While
more than a few will grant Augustus his boast and draw the province of Egypt
extending not only down the Nile to Aswan but drawing a line east across to the
Red Sea, thus including the important port of Berenike,63 none draw a provincial
line that would include the Arabian Red Sea coast; add on that Annius’s freedman
must have been taxing along the coast of modern Oman and Yemen on the Gulf
of Aden or the Arabian Sea in order to plausibly be blown east to Sri Lanka. Who
would have known that Roman tax agents were granted such franchises? Who
would have thought that Roman freedmen were sailing the Arabian Sea in the
40s shaking down local ports and merchants? And yet the very unguardedness
of Pliny’s comment lends it more credence.64 Such tidbits of information open
up whole new areas of investigation in Roman eastern policy. Finally, and per-
haps most importantly, we rely on the industriousness of modern scholars to have
gathered all these pertinent details from highly scattered literary remains and on
modern archaeologists to have excavated, interpreted, and collated the far more
plentiful physical remains. Synthesizing the smattering of literary clues with the
robust archaeological record should bolster enough faith to confront the formi-
dable challenges inherent in reconstructing Roman diplomacy.
On the topic of methodological challenges, anachronism, in all its layers and
manifestations, demands attention. We have already passed quickly over the prob-
lem of projecting our strong modern feelings regarding “religion” and “church and
state” onto the 4th-century context. Lovers of history will always have to negotiate
their dilemma that the very passion driving interest in past events can distort clear
understanding of those events. Other facets can quickly be added. For instance, all
our 5th-century ecclesiastical historians naturally imagine the well-formed institu-
tions of their own time as already in place in the inchoate 4th century. In Chapter 4
we will review assumptions that the familiar and well-defined roles fitted to ranks
like agens in rebus or notarius (high-level messengers and functionaries of the
imperial court) under Theodosius II are assumed to be operative in the free-form
nascent bureaucracy of Constantius. On the other hand, while antennae are kept
tuned to anachronism, a fanatical anti-anachronistic stance cannot be fruitful. We
understand the past by building bridges from our own current experience across
the many accrued layers of storytelling and mythmaking back to an often scantily
documented object. For this reason, analogies and metaphors from the present will
be used in apparent contradiction to cautions against anachronizing.
Finally, this book’s method will be to borrow a convention of crime fiction
and so to build a strong circumstantial case for our early missions. On the one
hand, all the little clues above, when organized carefully into a clear narrative,
can add up to a convincing case. On the other hand, abundant clear evidence and
pure certainty come along rarely. Little in ancient history can be proven beyond
a doubt, and many well-accepted accounts have been overturned. For instance, to
turn to a famous example, in 1900, it was accepted fact, and an important part of
aesthetic approval, that ancient Greek sculpture and monumental architecture was
designed to be unpainted. So powerful had been the aesthetic pleasure of gazing
upon weathered monochrome ruins – and this aesthetic had been so deeply instan-
tiated in modern monumental buildings from Rome to Washington – that it took
decades for the countervailing evidence to sink in that all ancient sculpture and
buildings were painted. Millennia of sunshine and rain wore the paint off. Assum-
ing that ancient buildings were stark and white was a reasonable certainty whose
many layers of “narrative” in modern experience spoke convincingly to us from
the east facade of the Louvre (1670) through the U.S. Supreme Court Building’s
facade (1935) to the present. Now the enormous aesthetic and cultural authority of
an unpainted neoclassical building still leaves many of us resisting the fact that the
Parthenon was painted brightly. Undoing a lifetime of visual instruction requires a
great effort, but at the same time, our interest in, and affection for, the Parthenon’s
symmetrical columns was born from both observable facts and the “narrative” of
modern buildings. The layered narratives surrounding late Rome and early Chris-
tianity are no less powerful and omnipresent in our consciousness, so they will
require a similar effort for us to begin revising.
Plan of the book

Girded with cautions against treacherous source material and nagging anachro-
nisms, we lurch forth to discover a strange diplomatic land between Augustus’s
supercilious reception of embassies (1st century) and Justinian’s aggressive Chris-
tian outreach (6th century). The quest requires gathering as many scattered sources
as possible and then organizing them in a narrative that will often extend into
speculation. Most critical throughout the project is building a gradual context
up from the known to the unknown. We will start with a smattering of evidence
surrounding Constantius’s mission to the peoples on the far end of the Red Sea,
which, once carefully organized in a chronology, gains credence by its coherence
and its ability to explain details previously underutilized or disconnected from
this narrative. The context is then expanded to Constantius’s overall career, with
particular interest paid to his management of bishops, most of which ended up
focused on Athanasius whose relations in Aksum bring us full circle. With this
remarkable mission initiated by the imperial court (or state) described, we move on
to the first organized external missions initiated by Greco-Roman clergy. Enough
clues remain of John Chrysostom’s program to structure Gothic Christianity that
a responsible reconstruction can be pieced together. Though less is known on his
efforts directed toward Christians living under Sasanian (Persian) rule, an exten-
sion based on analogy with the Goths reveals tantalizing speculation both about
John’s motives and the general context of Christianization that made the religion
susceptible to diplomatic exploitation. Perhaps most speculative will be the effort
to put these two innovators in perspective within the development of the mature
Byzantine “commonwealth” of Christian kingdoms/states.65 No doubt, such specu-
lation will naturally elicit criticism. It can only be hoped that the process of open-
ing a new area of investigation on the origins of Roman Christian diplomacy will
initiate a fruitful discussion.
Notes
1 Strabo, Geography 17.1.54, who calls the people of Meroe Ethiopians, who might more
accurately be called Nubians. Cracco Ruggini, 1974, explores the line between history
and romance in this story.
2 Res Gestae 34.
3 Badian, 1958, p. 262: “The Empire was based on the personal loyalty of leading men
throughout the provinces to leading families at Rome, and this attachment proved to
be independent of political vicissitudes and . . . on the whole unaffected even by the
fortunes of those families. It was the foundation on which the emperors were to build.”
4 Polybius, Hist. 6.13, or, for instance, Sherwin-White, 1986.
5 Benoist, 2012, expounds on the language of Augustus’s diplomatic shift.
6 Millar, 1982 and Luttwak, 2009. Gagé, 1959, pp. 227–228, reminds us of the perhaps
more telling precedents of Marc Antony in Alexandria, including the public beheading
of the Judaean king Antigonus and the triumphal parading of Artavasde, king of Arme-
nia, in gold chains.
7 Török, 1997, pp. 448–467.
8 Strabo, Geography 17.820.
9 Strabo, Geography 15.719, quotes Nicolaus of Damascus who met three ambassadors
in Antioch on their way from the Indian king Porus to Augustus. They had a letter
handwritten in Greek on vellum by the king himself. The rulers of India from the time
of Ashoka had proven their familiarity with the language of the neighboring Hellenistic
kingdoms.
10 Beaumont, 1871, p. 260, for example: the city’s name could derive from language of
trade also and was famous in antiquity for its quarries. It was known as Syene through-
out the period of interest in this book.
11 Res Gestae 26–33, summarizes the “foreign policy” of Augustus. All credit for subjec-
tion of new kingdoms as well as all glory for reception of emissaries is focused mani-
festly on Augustus (“me” in the first person in the document).
12 Res Gestae 26, where a fabulous claim of conquering all the way to the border of
Himyar (modern Yemen) is floated. Strabo’s account is discussed in Chapter 2.
13 Procopius, Wars 1.19. Nautin, 1967.
14 Henderson, 1991, illuminates the role of women as spectators at Athenian drama.
15 Rhodes, 2003, p. 111. In spite of his article’s title, Rhodes is merely trying to correct
perceived overemphasis regarding democracy’s intimate relation to Attic drama.
16 Thuc. 4.97, for instance, where the Boeotians charge that the Athenians performed
profane acts (ὅσα ἄνθρωποι ἐν βεβήλῳ δρῶσι) in the sacred precincts of Delium.
17 Plato, Apology, and Xenophon, Apology and Memorabilia.
18 Protagoras of Abdera and Theodore of Cyrene (the “atheist,” not the mathematician)
jump to mind, both of whom generated many mythical stories and no secularizing policy.
19 Cotta, for instance, at De Natura Deorum 3.5–6, after spending all of book one criticiz-
ing the intellectual foundations of theology, vehemently defends his priesthood, the
Roman state cult, and the traditions behind them. That is, traditional ritual, auspices,
and prophetic warnings are conventions beyond philosophical questioning.
20 Responsible estimates have over 100 festival days per year with theatrical events from
the time of Nero through to Constantius, DuPont, 1985, p. 63.
21 Augustine, Contra Academicos.
22 For instance, Fosl, 1994.
23 Rives, 2009, illuminates how Jews, both within and without the empire, held diplomatic
relations with the emperor and how the Christians appear to have followed this prec-
edent. Beyond these two religions, and the semi-religious cult of athletes, only cities
were in the habit of sending embassies to the emperor. Such a practice in the 2nd and
3rd century would also contribute to the division of “church” and state.
24 Pliny, Ep. 10.96. A similar fear is still present in the late-2nd century when Millar, 1982,
p. 15, reminds us that Commodus’s treaty with the Marcomanni stipulated no more than
one public meeting a month and that with a centurion always present.
25 Both Eusebius and Lactantius celebrate the accommodation forced on Galerius in the
eastern empire in 311, most likely caused by resignation that torturing and killing Chris-
tians had become countereffective.
26 Milner, 2015, details a fascinating story of the placement of Constantius II’s statue in
place of an athlete-hero in a provincial city whose setting illuminates Christians’ new-
found comfort participating in emperor cults. Salzman, 2000, summarizes the mentalité
of Western aristocrat-bishops.
27 South Sudan edged out Somalia in the Fragile States Index for 2018.
28 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 23, paints a vivid scene of suffering in the east-
ern empire under Galerius.
29 Girardet, 1989.
30 Humfress, 2011, provides a judicious view of the hazy world of bishops and their legal
courts (episcopalis audientia). But there are many other interesting perspectives – for
example, Slootjes, 2004, Kauffman, 2003, and Lenski, 2001.
31 Eusebius of Caesarea is often seen as the source of Christian triumphalism, for instance,
in Trompf, 2000, p. 213, discussing Sokrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret: “Those extol-
lers of the pro-Nicene Christian ‘establishment,’ that intellectual triumvirate who con-
firmed for all time the role of Church history as a necessary act of rhetoric and a distinct
literary genre, followed their most notable predecessors, Eusebius of Caesarea, Rufi-
nus of Aquileia and Philostorgius of Cappadocia, in documenting the apportionments
of divine justice in ecclesiastical and wider affairs. From Eusebius . . . they imbibed
confident providentialism, if not triumphalism, reassuring their readers that God was
protecting His people against error and political disorder.”
32 Barnes, 1986, 1990.
33 Fowden, 1993.
34 Fowden, 2001.
35 Barnes, 1990, p. 544: “It may be suggested that he associated the consecration of Wulfila
with the celebration of his tricennalia in order to give the traditional clichés of Roman
imperialism a specifically Christian colouring.” Against this position, see Kulikowski,
2005, p. 361.
36 Heather, 1992, builds the most detailed narrative of early Gothic history, though Gothic
religion gets little attention.
37 Gryson, 1980, pp. 244–251, for Auxentius, and for Philostorgius, Winkelmann, 1981.
For more early biography, see also Sivan, 1996.
38 See PL18 or Streitberg, 2000. For an exciting epigraphic discovery, see Harmatta, 1997.
39 Barnes, 1990, p. 545: “It may be suggested that he associated the consecration of Wulfila
with the celebration of his tricennalia in order to give the traditional clichés of Roman
imperialism a specifically Christian colouring.”
40 See Philostorgius 2.5: καὶ τὸν Οὐρφίλαν διὰ πλείστης ἦγε τιμῆς ὡς καὶ πολλάκις ὁ ἐφ’
ἡμῶν Μωσῆς λέγειν περὶ αὐτοῦ. λίαν δὲ οὗτος τὸν ἄνδρα θειάζει, καὶ τῆς αἱρετικῆς
αὐτοῦ δόξης ἐραστὴν αὐτόν τε καὶ τοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτὸν ἀναγράφει. ([The emperor Valens]
held Urphilas himself in such high honor, that he would often speak of him in conver-
sation as the Moses of his day. [Photius’s comment:] Philostorgius obviously defines
the man as one sharing in his heresy.) See Auxentius 307r, Gryson, 1980, p. 246: vir
beatus Wulfila cum grandi populo confessorum de varbarico pulsus in solo Romanie
athuc beate memorie Constantio principe honorifice est susceptus. ut sicuti Deus per
Moysem de potentia et violentia Faraonis et Egyptioum populum suum liberavit et per
mare transire fecit et sibi servire providit, ita et per sepe dictum Deus confessores sancti
Fili sui unigieniti de varbarico liberavit et per Danubium transire fecit et in montibus
secundum sanctorum imitationem sibi servire dedit.
41 Barnes, 1986, p. 131.
42 Translation from Robertson, 1892.
43 Translation from Cameron and Hall, 1999, p. 155.
44 Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4.7.
45 Brock, 1995, p. 26, “Eusèbe passe presque totalement sous silence l’histoire de l’Église
située à l’est de l’Empire romain.” See also Stevenson, 2003, for a discussion of eccle-
siastical historians’ reticence to discuss external missions.
46 The latest edition, Hansen, 2002, persuasively argues that the author was not Gelasius
of Cyzicus and that this anonymous author wrote around 480.
47 Rufinus HE, 1.10.
48 Socrates HE, 1.20, Hansen, 1995.
49 Sozomen HE 2.7.
50 Theodoret HE 74–76.
51 Barnes quotes 3.10.10, but in Hansen’s edition, his point is illustrated at 3.10.20–21.
52 The translation is mine. οὓς προσηνῶς δεξάμενος ὁ εὐσεβὴς καὶ φιλόχριστος βασιλεὺς
Κωνσταντῖνος, χαίρων ἐν τῷ κυρίῳ παρέσχε τὴν αἴτησιν, τὸν τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως
ἐπίσκοπον Ἀλέξανδρον παρορμήσας χειροτονῆσαι τῶν Ἰβήρων ἐπίσκοπον, ὁμοῦ
συνορῶν θεοῦ νεῦμα εἶναι τοῦ τοὺς ἀλλοφύλους αὐτῷ καθυποτάσσοντος.
53 Rufinus HE 1.10: “Quibus (Iberian ambassadors) illo (Constantine) cum omni gaudio
et honore transmissis, multo amplius ex hoc laetatus est, quam si incognitas Romano
imperio gentes et regna ignota iunxisset. haec nobis ita gesta, fidelissimus vir Bacurius
. . . exposuit.” Theophanes Confessor (24), following our anonymous historian or the
Greek translation of Rufinus, also reports the story with Bacurius as source. For a
thorough study of Rufinus, Thélamon, 1981. For more detail on Bacurius, Haas, 2008,
p. 108.
54 Barnes, 1986, pp. 126–136, and 1990, pp. 541–545; Fowden, 1993, 2001, pp. 377–398,
that revives and strengthens some of the former’s claims.
55 Barnes, 1986, p. 130.
56 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.56 and 4.62.
57 Weerakkody, 1997, provides a good survey of source materials on ancient Sri Lanka.
58 Dihle, 1964, is the classic source for caution on this topic.
59 Millar, 1982.
60 Meredith, 1953, p. 39.
61 Strabo Geography 15.4.
62 In the next chapter the Periplus Maris Erythraei, the best early source for the world east
of the Roman Empire will be discussed. The text appears to be based on the experience
of merchants.
63 Cottier, 2010, pp. 142–143.
64 De Laet, 1949, pp. 306–311, explains Annius’s franchise by comparing severe import
duties of 25 percent exacted along the Syrian border also, perhaps as an expression of
Augustus’s and Tiberius’s repugnance for eastern luxury goods – for example, Tacitus
Annals 3.52–54.
65 Obolensky, 1971, is the classic formulation. Kaldellis, 2017, p. 278, questions its his-
torical foundation. Contemporary examination of 19th- and 20th-century historiography
underscores the complexity – for example, Ignjatovic, 2016.
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2 Mission to Himyar and
Aksum in context
The story of Constantius’s mission to the end of the Red Sea demands retell-
ing in order to embrace fresh understandings of the growth of Christianity and a
recently reconstructed economic system. In spite of more than a century of inten-
sive scholarly labor that has coalesced into a rewarding consensus, the sprouting
of Christianity in the lower Red Sea region remains hidden to most readers. For
this reason it will be best to frame the account of the first imperially sponsored
Christian mission in the context of Christianization in Aksum and Himyar, two
ancient civilizations flourishing in the areas we call Ethiopia and Yemen today.
Even scholars of the ancient world often react with surprise when confronted with
the importance of the Indian Ocean trade for the Roman economy, so the ancient
Mediterranean world’s interactions with what ancient authors called “India” must
be emphasized.1 More specifically, the three principal strands of textual evidence
surrounding Constantius’s mission will have to be considered together in all their
complexity: the original story of the mission related only in Philostorgius’s Eccle-
siastical History; the related story of the Christianization of Aksum first told in
Rufinus’s extension of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (as supported with a great
deal of archaeological, epigraphical, and numismatic evidence); and the two let-
ters of Constantius that Athanasius quotes: one to the rulers (turannoi) of Aksum
ordering their bishop, Frumentius, to return to Bishop George in Alexandria for
reeducation; and another to the people of Alexandria condemning their exiled
bishop, Athanasius, and commending the newly assigned Bishop George. By pull-
ing all disparate contextual and source material together, this chapter will make
the novel effort to reconstruct the best informed and most compelling account of
the first imperially sponsored Christian mission.
Literary source one: Philostorgius narrates the story

The kernel of the story can be quickly told. Philostorgius, as we have seen, a dis-
sident Christian writing in the first half of the 5th century, portrays a pious Con-
stantius benevolently leading the non-Roman world to the true faith. First, we are
told that Constantius decided to send an embassy (presbeia) to win the Himyarites
over to Roman Christianity. He appointed as leader a certain Christian cleric,
Theophilus “the Indian,” who was born and raised on an island in the Gulf of Aden
Mission to Himyar and Aksum in context 21
near Himyar but was later taken hostage and reached adulthood in Constantinople.2
Philostorgius stresses that the mission was expressly sent to convert the people of
Himyar but adds that 200 fine horses were sent along to “make an imposing show
as well as to conciliate the people.”3 Theophilus performed several miracles that
enabled him to undermine the local religious beliefs, and he was able to silence
the Jewish leaders in debate.4 Then the Himyarite king reportedly converted to
Christianity and built three churches from his own funds, one in his capital city,
another at the site of the Roman market in the port city of Adane, and another at
the Persian market in a second port city (Qana?) – Philostorgius underlines that
this king built these churches at his own expense and not with the money that Con-
stantius’s ambassadors brought for the purpose.5 After converting the Himyarite
king, Theophilus visited his home island of Divus6 and then proceeded on to the
“Indians,” or most likely some peoples in the horn of Africa, where he corrected
their heretical Christianity – they were seated while listening to Gospel readings.
Then, after Philostorgius’s confusing travelogue on the Red Sea region, we are left
with a pregnant sentence at the end of the account: “Theophilus visited the Aksumites,
set everything straight there, and returned to Roman territory where he was honored
by Constantius.”7
No doubt it is easy for the average modern reader to project the last few centu-
ries of European colonialism onto this narrative: Constantius as a sort of ancient
Belgian King Leopold II inflicting Christianity on unsuspecting foreigners (Con-
golese) in order to exploit economically desirable territories (rubber in the Congo
valley). But we should be reminded of the cautions against anachronism raised in
the last chapter. On the one hand, the idea never occurred to any Roman official
before Constantius to apply Christian clergy as diplomats to an external trading
partner – this was a surprisingly innovative invention that surely would have struck
most Romans of the time as impractical (as it was).8 And, on the other hand, the
Romans hardly had the navy or infrastructure to occupy these areas thousands of
miles from their closest city or to build colonial structures either economic, physi-
cal, or social or to enlist foreign subjects as cheap labor or to modify the local
economy for Roman profit or to create any of the other essential trappings of mod-
ern colonialism.9 In addition, we need to repress natural loathing of 19th/20th cen-
tury colonialism if we are to gain any real insight into Constantius’s experiment.
Constantius could not anticipate the inhuman exploitation of labor in the Congo
valley rubber industry, nor could anyone living in the 4th century ever imagine the
power that mature colonialism would wield. Rather, in this chapter, we are looking
at a mostly ignored and failed minor episode in Constantius’s administration. And
the first salient detail in our inspection of this episode stems from building, but far
from the elaborate Spanish mission compounds built in Mexico or even gymnasia
built by Greek-speakers in Hellenistic Afghanistan.10
Another problem will also occur to readers immediately. Why does the story of
Constantius sending horses to, and building churches in, Himyar appear in no other
source? Presumably, the other ancient ecclesiastical historians, Rufinus, Socrates,
Sozomen, Theodoret, and the rest, decided to edit this missionary episode out as
misleading propaganda for the disgraced emperor Constantius whose posthumous
22 Mission to Himyar and Aksum in context
reputation had withered under the political attacks of the emperor Julian and the
theological attacks of Athanasius. Only the proudly Arian Philostorgius included
it in his history to enhance his favorite emperor’s reputation for piety. But in spite
of Philostorgius’s transparent bias, he did not restrict the detail in his account to
aspects of Constantius’s piety and concern for potential Christians throughout
the non-Roman world. In fact, he seems to have included far more detail than
necessary, ranging from the method for transporting the horses to digressing on
Alexander the Great’s resettlement of ethnic groups.
Excursus: the importance of the Indian Ocean trade route

Amid all this detail, we will start with the point that Constantius wanted to build
churches for the Romans who traveled through the area on business, since these
Roman travelers played such a central role in the Christianization of the region.
Rome’s part in the powerful and thriving west–Indian Ocean market has been illumi-
nated by a remarkable, international, and inspiring group of scholars patiently recon-
structing a fascinating story.11 The extant ancient work titled Periplus Maris Erythraei
(“Circumnavigation of the Red Sea”) presents us with a 1st-century CE merchant’s
idiosyncratic views of trade routes, an invaluable resource that we all welcome. But
the archaeological work of several major teams has provided the most vivid and con-
vincing material. For instance, at the turn of this century, a Belgian team investigated
the caves of the island now called Socotra situated at the limit of the Gulf of Aden
(the author of the Periplus called the archipelago of four islands the Dioscurides).
Deep in a mile-long cave were found all the trappings of a cult site lined with inscrip-
tions mainly in the Brahmi script (derived from Sanskrit) but also in South Arabian,
Ethiopic, and Palmyrene (Syria).12 The latter is represented by a beautifully preserved
tablet complete with author’s name, Abgar; a votive text; and a date in July 258 CE.13
Here we see a vivid manifestation of the polyglot world of India-to-Mediterranean
trade. The absence of Greek and Roman inscriptions in this site could be explained
by both chronology and religious inclinations. Though the Romans took an interest in
trade with India beginning in the period of the Julio-Claudians (Augustus), there was
an understandable lull during the crises of the 3rd century followed by a boom during
the confident 4th-century Roman expansion initiated in the period of Constantius. In
spite of alluring tales of the apostle St. Thomas’s sojourn in Socotra, it is far more
likely that Christianity came to the islands with Roman merchants in the 4th century
following the robust west–Indian Ocean trade routes.14
Excavated pottery also has a vivid story to tell.15 Sites ranging from Pattanam
in southern India to Ras Hafun in modern Somalia to Khor Rori in Oman, Qaná
in Yemen, and Zula in Eritrea have yielded fascinating ceramic evidence. On the
one hand, these confirm much of the information that the Periplus shares on the
actual items traded: from the Mediterranean, wine, oil, glass, metals, clothing, and
coins; from India, silk (from east Asia), pepper, nard, transparent gems; from east
Africa, tortoiseshell, obsidian, ivory, several aromatics, wood, and fruits; and from
South Arabia, principally, high-quality frankincense. Almost all the ports’excavations
abound in Italian amphorae (used for transport by ship of almost all commodities),
but likewise Berenike has yielded pottery that appears to originate from the local
techniques of Kerala in southern India. The less broad dispersal of local Egyptian
pottery in the Indian Ocean ports presents a current riddle in trade patterns, but for our
purposes, current pottery finds only underline the message of polyglot texts: ships full
of sailors speaking languages from Tamil to Greek,16 ships full of goods originating all
around the trade route packaged in a wide variety of pottery, continuously sailed the
monsoons from Alexandria through Berenike, nearby Myos Hormos, Adulis, and other
Red Sea ports to Socotra, to the coast of modern Somalia, to multiple ports in modern
India, around to the modern Oman and Yemen coasts, and back up the Red Sea.
The volume and value of this trade is manifested by the archaeological remains
of the various ports. Best studied are the Roman remains of Berenike where,
along with Constantius’s improvement of the way stations along the Koptos land
route, we see the city and the port expanding during the emperor’s reign.17 Add
on the archaeological and historical record’s clear indications that both Himyar
and Aksum enjoyed significant wealth accumulation in the 4th century, and there
should be little doubt that the Red Sea was thriving with the benefits of a robust
Indian Ocean–Mediterranean trade. Accordingly, both the Alexandrian merchant
community and Constantius had a considerable interest in the Red Sea as a major
trade route, and this interest informs Philostorgius’s point that building churches,
even though he does not mention merchants, was central to the mission.
In spite of Philostorgius’s claims for Theophilus’s miracles, recent studies, apply-
ing sophisticated anthropological parallels, point to our Red Sea/Indian Ocean mer-
chants as the chief agents of Christianization in Himyar and Aksum.18 The evidence
states clearly, against persistent stories of apostles (Thomas) and emissaries (Pan-
taenus), that Christianity preceded missionaries in most of the major ports of the
Red Sea–Indian Ocean trade.19 And the best explanation for early Christian com-
munities in cities unclaimed by evangelists stems from the ways that the Christian
community would serve merchants far from home in strange and potentially hostile
lands. Local Christian meeting places provided a sense of familiarity and security
in ports across the Indian subcontinent, as well as the east African, South Arabian,
and Red Sea coasts. So we are not surprised that Constantius instructed his emis-
saries to build churches specifically in the merchant communities of Himyar where
archaeological investigation has provided evidence of their full integration into the
Red Sea–Indian Ocean trade network.20 Few will believe that the Himyarite leader
converted to Christianity, especially those who know the abundant and fascinating
record of inscriptions pointing toward a gradual movement from local, traditional
cults to a particular Himyarite Judaism in the 4th–6th centuries.21 But, as it turns
out, the story of Christianization in Aksum also includes networks of merchants.
Literary source two: Rufinus on Christianization of Aksum

Philostorgius’s now fragmentary history focuses on Himyar and surroundings, but
as we have seen, flies over Aksum with a terse conclusion: “Theophilus visited
the Aksumites, set everything straight there, and then returned to Roman territory
where he was honored by Constantius.”22 In this case, we pick up the story with
the dawn of Christianity in Aksum, an episode that will lead us back to what Con-
stantius wanted Theophilus to “straighten up” in Aksum. Rufinus, as we have seen,
a well-connected and influential author who continued Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical
History with two books in Latin, introduces the story at the root of the Roman
tradition.23 A philosopher of Tyre named Meropius, following the example of the
celebrated Metrodorus, decided to travel to India in search of wisdom and touristic
novelty. As part of their education, he chose to bring along two nephews, Aedesius
and Frumentius. They visited India, and on their return journey, they stopped at
a port for provisions. As Rufinus reports, the local barbarians had a custom of
killing all Romans whenever they heard from their neighbors that relations with
Rome were broken. Everyone on the ship was killed, but the two young students
were found doing their homework under a tree on the shore. The barbarians had
pity and brought the boys to their king who immediately assigned Aedesius to be
his cupbearer and Frumentius to work in his accounting department.24 The boys
comported themselves so well and were held in such high honor at the time of the
king’s death that the queen offered them regency of the realm while her infant son
grew up. The young Romans agreed, and Frumentius set right to work paving the
way for Christianity, especially by encouraging any Roman merchants who came
through to set up Christian meetings (conventicula) in all the towns they passed
through. When the young prince came of age, in spite of the queen’s plea that
they stay, Aedisius returned to his family in Tyre and Frumentius to the bishop of
Alexandria for instruction. Athanasius enthusiastically recommended that Frumen-
tius return to Aksum and sent him back east as bishop. Upon his return, he had
enormous success spreading Christianity in the Aksumite kingdom.25
The first part of the story, however romantic, merely confirms our understanding
of the freedom of trade and travel between the Mediterranean and India. Rufinus’s
audience would have struggled to make sense of it as history, if it had not been
understood that a wealthy Roman could travel to India for educational purposes. But
Western scholars have rightly focused far more attention on the process of Christian-
izing Aksum.26 Because of the relative wealth of inscriptions and coins extant from
4th-century Aksum, a puzzle was left regarding the chronology of King Ezana’s
public conversion to Christianity.27 In parallel, the chronology of Frumentius’s initial
appearance in Aksum – and later, his ordination as bishop by Athanasius in Alexan-
dria – has also spurred much consideration. It will be best to present how a growing
consensus on both fronts helps us to understand the context of Constantius’s mission,
while it fits together the timelines to inform the complex chronology of Constantius’s
actions between the winter of 356 and 358 (to be discussed in detail in Chapter 4).28
Since Athanasius was appointed bishop of Alexandria in 328 and exiled from that
post in 335, most scholars have recognized that he must have ordained Frumentius
in this period, with the generally accepted date of 330 for ordination and 333 for the
Aksumite king Ezana’s public conversion. But thanks to scholars carefully coordi-
nating coins with the extant public inscriptions of Ezana, a convincing timeline has
emerged. King Ezana was the infant king for whom Frumentius acted as regent. The
year 324 stands out as a chronological anchor. On the one hand, this was the year that
Constantine published his reforms that standardized weights and the gold content of
coins. All of Ezana’s coinage, including his first Christian issues, were made in pre-
reform weights. Even if we assume that Constantine’s reforms took over a decade
to take hold in Aksum, it remains reasonable to conclude that Ezana started issuing
coins with traditional divinities and iconography in the 320s, as had his predecessors
for generations, and that his first Christian coins belong not much later than 334,
when the Aksumite shift to the Roman reform began.29 On the other hand, according
to inscriptions, he appears to have come of age about 324 from which point scholars
have amassed a timeline that explains the major pre-Christian military campaigns
advertised on his inscriptions. Once again, the inscriptions imply about eight years of
campaigning under traditional gods with a sudden conversion to monotheism. This
chronology fits well with the coins and Ezana’s accession to power around 324 and
official conversion to Christianity in the early 330s.
A later inscription, dated by its original editors to 349, 356, or 360,30 displays
Ezana’s mature Christian propaganda:
In the faith of God and the power of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
to him who has preserved for me the kingdom by the faith in his son, Jesus
Christ, to him who has aided me and aids me always, I, Ezana, king of the
Aksumites . . . son of Ella Amida and servant of Christ, I tender thanks to the
Lord my God, and I am unable to fully express his favors, for my mouth and
my spirit cannot (indicate) all the favors which he has done me; he has given
me power and might, he has favored me with a great name by his son, in whom
I have believed and he has caused me to be guide of all my kingdom because
of my faith in Christ, by his will and by the might of Christ; it is he who has
conducted me, I believe in him, and he made himself my guide. . . . I rose up
in the might of the God Christ in whom I have believed, and he guided me.
Not only does this inscription make clear Ezana’s commitment to Christianity in
Aksum but it also suggests support for Athanasius in its explicit references to the
Trinity.31 Chronologically, it is easy to postulate Frumentius returning to Alexan-
dria by 325 after Ezana’s accession. The years of 325–329 could plausibly have
been taken up with education and the many ecclesiastic distractions engaging
Alexandria’s Bishop Alexander from the Council of Nicaea: Meletian discord,
Arius’s challenges, and Athanasius’s ordination as bishop (328). At the end of
this educational period, Athanasius would have sent Bishop Frumentius back to
Aksum, where he participated in the conversion of king Ezana. The ensuing 20
years were kind to Frumentius’s project, and by 356, the king was posting evan-
gelical and theologically nuanced inscriptions for his subjects.
Literary source three: Constantius’s letters to

Aksum and Alexandria
Into this year 356 comes our 3rd major piece of evidence: Constantius’s letter to
Ezana and his brother Sazana. In this, the emperor begins by generously explaining
that he has decided to extend the spiritual concerns he holds for his subjects beyond
the borders of his reign. It should be noted that at the end of the 3rd century, Diocle-
tian had withdrawn the southeastern border of the Roman Empire to the island in the
Nile called Philae and had set up the local tribes, Blemmyes and Nobatae, as paid,
federated allies.32 That is, Aksum lay over a thousand miles beyond the current Roman
border. Constantius continued to demand that the bishop Frumentius be sent back to
Alexandria’s Bishop George for trial (krinein) since his episcopacy was tainted by
connection to Athanasius, whom Constantius depicts as a man “guilty of ten thousand
crimes.” If Frumentius will not submit to trial in Alexandria, then it will be clear that
he is still under the influence of Athanasius. At this point in the letter, he expounds
his anxiety concerning the bishop he drove out of Alexandria on February 9, 356:
The fear is that he (Athanasius) will enter Aksum and corrupt your people by
importing and supplying corrupt statements. Not only will he inspire agitation
and faction in the churches and blaspheme the supreme God, but also through
these he will introduce utter rebellion and ruin to the Aksumite people.33
I interpret the last part of the quotation to demonstrate Constantius edging beyond
spiritual concern for the Aksumites into a thinly veiled threat. If the kings were to
accept the exiled Athanasius into their realm, the Roman emperor would under-
mine royal authority with their people (tois kata to ethnos).
The letter has created a good deal of discussion over its dating, a discussion we
will have to enter into in depth in Chapter 4, but the basic time frame is clear. As
stated, Athanasius was driven from Alexandria by an armed guard on February
8, 356. The substitute bishop, George, the George of Cappadocia famous for tutor-
ing Constantius’s nephew Julian, however promptly he was sent, did not arrive in
Alexandria until February 27, 357.34 Finally, Athanasius’s Apology to Constantius,
the work that quoted Constantius’s letter to the princes of Aksum, must have been
published before early fall 357.35 In fact, Athanasius claims that he was on his way
to Constantius’s court to explain himself when he received copies of the above
threatening letter along with one other perhaps more threatening.36
As with the letter to the Aksumite kings, Athanasius quotes Constantius’s entire
letter to the people of Alexandria.37 In this, the emperor commends George and attacks
Athanasius vehemently. At one point he echoes the fear expressed in the previous
letter, “Now it is up to the barbarians to get rid of him (Athanasius), so he does not
win some of them over into transgression. Like a distressed character in a play, he
will complain to the first people he meets.” In the context of the Apology, Athanasius
quotes both letters consecutively as the reason he realized how far out of favor he had
fallen and why he dared not visit the emperor, but rather, ran into hiding. So we know
that Constantius sent these letters sometime between the expulsion of Athanasius
(February 356) and the publication of the Apology to Constantius (early fall of 357).
Summary of literary sources

To summarize the kernel of our three sources from the perspective of Constantius,
sometime around 354–355, he must have begun organizing his mission to Himyar.
Apparently, part of this mission entailed enhancing written threats to the bishop of
Aksum, Frumentius, who had over some 30 years established a church both formed
by Athanasius’s guidance and warmly supported by the powers of Aksum. Early in
356, the emperor expelled Athanasius from Alexandria and ordered that George of
Cappadocia take over. Somewhere in this year and a half span from February 356 to
September 357, the two letters, one to the kings of Aksum and one to the people of
Alexandria were sent. The mission to Himyar could have left Antioch anywhere from
late 355 to early 357, though it is clear that Athanasius did not know about it before
he published his self-defense by early fall 357. But somehow the banished Athanasius
got hold of copies of the two letters that he was thus able to include in his published
Apology. And Constantius left us one more key piece of evidence in either 356 or 357
– an edict forbidding emissaries on their way through Alexandria to Aksum to delay
more than one year.38 The latter along with a precise discussion of the clearly complex
chronological problems avoided above will be the subject of the fourth chapter.
The route: precedents

Our discussion of trade routes prompts an interest into how the Roman delegation
traveled from the northeastern Mediterranean to the southeastern Red Sea, a daunt-
ing journey.39 Roman nautical transportation on the Red Sea has not received much
scholarly discussion, though we do have several ancient authors who touch on the
subject. When Strabo narrates the adventure of Augustus’s legate Aelius Gallus on
his expedition to reconnoiter South Arabia, he reveals some detail on shipping.40 As
often with logistics and the Roman army, our imaginations are challenged by Strabo’s
story. We are told that the Romans marched 11,000 men to Arsinoe (a few miles from
Clysma/Suez) where, deceived by their Nabataean guide, they built 90 biremes and
triremes to prepare for war. They recognized their mistake and then built 130 transport
ships to get the soldiers up and down the Arabian coast of the Red Sea. We are left to
ponder the supplying of lumber and shipwrights for such work in the remote area of
modern Suez. Strabo goes on to describe many ships lost on the treacherous reefs and
inhospitable coasts; the disabling and deaths of many soldiers from disease; and the
return by Myos Hormos – an old Ptolemaic port 200 miles northwest of Berenike – a
seven-day march to Koptos, and then up the Nile to Alexandria. However suspicious
the details, Strabo has left us a route that surely was used in antiquity and that most
likely he traveled along with Gallus’s expedition in the 20s BCE.
The author of the Periplus leaves us a few clues. The late-1st-century CE ship
captain tells us:
On the whole, the voyage along the coast of the Arabian mainland is danger-
ous, the country being without harbors, with bad anchorages and a foul shore,
unapproachable by reason of rocks, and in everyway formidable.41
He also shares a wealth of details from his career including the superiority of the
special, non-Roman-style ships sailed in the east and the importance of the harbors
of Berenike and those on the south end of the sea, Adulis, Mouza, Okellis, and so
on. The breakdown in Roman maintenance of, or perhaps even contact with, their
Red Sea ports in the 3rd century makes the 1st-century information little more than
an outline of earlier practice and a sketch of what was considered possible at the
time. For some reason, Gallus chose the route to Clysma for his approach to the
Red Sea and the route from Myos Hormos to Koptos to Alexandria for his return.
The logistics of transporting over 10,000 men across vast desert as well as shipping
them over treacherous waters solicits skepticism, especially for the number of men
and ships. But the level of detail has led some to believe that Strabo accompanied
the expedition, so we are left to admire, even if we are really imagining 2,000 men,
the ability of the Romans to accomplish challenging tasks.
Logistics and reconstructing the actual route

By the 4th century, there were three major routes available for Roman embassies
to travel to the end of the Red Sea, now known as the Bab el-Mandeb, whether
the 200 horses accompanied by soldiers and Theophilus, imperial agents deliver-
ing Constantius’s letters, or Athanasius’s ecclesiastics shuttling back and forth.
These routes focus on the three major Roman Red Sea ports of the time: Aila,
Berenike, and Clysma.42 It seems most likely that the mission traveled via Aila
and that the embassy passed through Berenike. Clysma could be considered
another possibility for the embassy, but most evidence points to its diminished
importance in the 4th century, though ruling it out will not affect the central
points of this scenario.43
A prominent consideration for estimating the mission’s route stems from the
200 horses. It is well accepted that an average horse requires about eight gallons of
water per day and about 20 pounds of forage, so 200 horses would need about 1,600
gallons of water and 4,000 pounds of forage per day.44 Given the long marches, the
stress of sailing the Red Sea, and the probable heat of the journey, it is very unlikely
that the horses could skimp on watering or feeding along the way to their port.
Thanks to recent archaeological work on the Berenike route, the 12 Roman way
stations from Koptos on the Nile to Berenike have been systematically studied.45
Because few of these stations, including the port city Berenike itself, have year-
round and reliable sources of potable water nearby, it is all but impossible that any
but the largest of them could handle such a huge expense of water (over 1,500 gallons)
at once and continue to operate through the whole dry season. For this reason, it
appears unlikely that the mission would have traveled this way. Since an older and
much more heavily traveled trade route could take the horses from Gaza to Petra
and then along the relatively well-watered via nova traiana to Aila, this seems the
best route for the horses.
Another consideration has to be the time of year. Since the prevailing winds
blew from the northwest (and drove the currents) in the summer months,46 this
had to be the sailing season. In mid-summer, the roughly 275-mile trek across the
desert from Koptos to Berenike, even if forced at night, would be unattractive.47
On the other hand, the 175 miles from Gaza to Aila, while equally hot, would not
have been as remote or dry as the high Egyptian desert and be passable in seven or
eight stages or only a bit more than half the time of the Egyptian crossing.48 Liter-
ary and archaeological sources show these two ports to have revived activity in the
mid-4th century, so either route was clearly available. But the logistical problem
of watering and feeding the horses points toward Aila.
The problem of horse transports should not be neglected.49 Modern scholarship
has yet to seriously investigate the ancient methods of transporting horses (and ele-
phants) by sea, but a few clues gathered together should guide us since the nautical
technology appears to have changed little over 1,500 years. Thucydides reveals
that Pericles invented the horse transport at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War (430 BCE) to allow him to deliver 300 cavalry units intended for ravaging the
coast of Sparta. He also mentions that these distinct ships carried 30 horses each.50
Plutarch relates what may be the greatest, and most calamitous, cavalry shipment
of antiquity when Pyrrhus prepared to bring his army from Epirus over to Tarentum
in order to attack the Romans (280 BCE).51 He set out with 3,000 horses and 20
elephants; we are told that the transports arrived in Epirus (Albania) from Taren-
tum. This would mean 100 horse transports with 30 horses each. If such a number
was available in south Italy, then we must assume that these were in regular use or
that some standard ship type could be quickly adapted. Pyrrhus lost almost all of
them in a storm, but Plutarch notes that two elephants survived. Presumably this
means that elephants were transported two to a ship. Remembering that Berenike
was built to supply Ptolemy’s warrior-elephant needs,52 we can assume that large-
animal transport was a familiar business on the Red Sea, but the military need for
transporting cavalry in the area faded from the historical record centuries before
our mission. So it is safe to guess that it would require a good deal of organization
and forethought to ensure that seven horse transports, along with the other shipping
necessary, were ready and waiting in Aila at the time of departure in summer 356.
Athanasius’s own writings support that Constantius sent a separate embassy
with his letter through Alexandria. As we have seen, in the Apology to Constantius,
composed by the end of the summer of 357, the exiled bishop quotes the letter
Constantius sent to the Aksumite kings. While it is possible that his copy of the
letter reached Athanasius after it had been delivered to Aksum, it seems far more
likely that Athanasius, stationed as he often was at that time in or near Alexandria,
was able to intercept a copy as it passed on its way south. In addition, thanks to the
Codex Theodosianus,53 we know that numerous imperial agents were being sent
through Alexandria. So, most likely, the letter and its agents passed through the
metropolis and, doing so, chose the better developed route from there via Koptos
and Berenike rather than cutting east across the desert to Clysma. But in either
case, the higher probability is that the letter traveled through Alexandria.
Reconstruction of literary and logistical sources

If the details of the above scenario are accepted, we can venture a plausible chro-
nology and narrative. Constantius began planning his expedition against Persia
in earnest early in 354. As we will see in Chapter 3, he set in motion plans to
neutralize Athanasius and his allies by the winter of 356. As soon as the court
established the right man in Antioch to administer the new designs, Strategius
Musonianus, in 354 (Chapter 4), Constantius began planning, among many other
things, the mission to Himyar, the improvement of the port at Aila and the trade
route through Berenike, and the suppression of Athanasius’s influence in Aksum.
He recruited Theophilus in Antioch at some time in 355, gathered the horses by
late in 355, sent agents to arrange for the horse transports in Aila, and organized a
group of agents and soldiers to accompany this well-endowed mission. The mis-
sion would have sailed from Antioch to Gaza in late spring 356, marched down to
Aila in a week or so, sailed from there, made frequent stops along the west coast
to water and forage the horses along the way,54 and with the help of the following
winds and currents, reached the Bab el-Mandeb in two weeks. After a week’s trek
up-country to Zafar,55 they met with the local king, offered the presents of horses
and money, and according to Philostorgius, won him over to Christianity. Such a
meeting would have required at least a few weeks. Philostorgius tells us of enough
money to build three Christian churches, but the Himyarite king refuses the money
and builds the churches himself in his capital, Zafar, and in Adane and in another
port city, possibly the Mouza56 of the Periplus or on the Gulf of Aden. Philostor-
gius tells us that Theophilus oversaw the construction, decoration, and blessing
of these churches. If we take this literally, then he spent at least another year57 in
Arabia during the completion of the churches and thus could not have passed over
to Divus (and the horn of Africa?) and Aksum till 357.
Philostorgius then confuses geography by placing Aksum between Aila and
Syria, at which point it becomes difficult to follow his narrative. Did Theophilus
take the mission to Aksum sometime in spring or summer of 357 (depending on
the size and elegance of the churches built)? Or does the historical narrative imply
that he sailed back north to tend to theologically straying Christians in Nabataea
on the way to Antioch? Or both? Since Philostorgius continues to use the term
“India” for the region of Theophilus’s preaching and to discuss the prevalence of
dark-skinned people living near the sun and elephants, it seems best to interpret
Theophilus traveling to the horn of Africa and finishing with Aksum. There is no
reason to doubt that he would preach to Nabataeans on his way back through Aila
and Petra in addition. But given the church construction and preaching in Divus
and Ethiopia, it would seem at the earliest that the mission returned with the fresh
southeast wind in October of 357. This may explain why Athanasius does not
mention the mission in his first open tirade against Constantius published in early
fall of 357, because it geographically avoided Alexandria and temporally revealed
itself after the publication of the Apology to Constantius. With Alexandria out of
Theophilus’s travel loop, word from the Aksumites, who had been visited in late
summer 357, would not have reached Athanasius until later in the fall of 357.
Meanwhile, frequent groups of agents were sent to Alexandria to oversee the
refurbishment of the stations along the Koptos route to Berenike as well as the
rebuilding of the port city itself. In the midst of this work, it was not difficult
to have some agents sail Constantius’s threatening letter down to the Aksumite
kings. No doubt, Constantius would have wanted his threat to Aksum to coincide
with the expulsion of Athanasius (February 356) and the installation of George.
As we have seen, the sailing season south to Bab el-Mandeb was late June to
early September, so it seems the soonest the letter would have arrived in Aksum
would be July of 356. The accession of George, however, to the throne of Mark
in Alexandria raises a chronological problem: how could Frumentius be sent to
George in Alexandria in July 356 when the bishop did not arrive there till Feb-
ruary 24 of 357?58 The letter could have been sent no later than the summer of
357 for Athanasius to quote it in his Apology to Constantius. Did Constantius and
his court fail to anticipate the popular resistance in Alexandria and the ensuing
military suppression required of the governor Cataphronius and count Heraclius
begun in June 356?59 When was the letter to the Aksumite princes composed and
when was it sent? Because it had to be written and sent before George was in
Alexandria, it seems most likely that it was conceived in the winter of 356 and
sent that summer. The copy that made it to Athanasius’s hands must have been
leaked by an imperial agent.
Perceptions of the Himyarites

Rounding out the story of the first Roman Christian mission requires consideration
of each party’s perceptions. From the perspective of the people of Himyar, the
emperor of Rome showed his eagerness to enhance trading possibilities with an
impressive gift of horses, and the local king responded by building three Chris-
tian churches for Roman merchants as a sign of his own wealth and generosity.60
While it is unlikely either the Himyarite king or any of the Himyarites themselves
pursued Christianity, it is most likely that they were eager to make the Roman
Christian merchants welcome in their ports. If it took one year to build the three
churches, and as Philostorgius tells us, Theophilus oversaw this building, then at
least some part of the mission must have spent quite a while in Himyar after the
horse gift was delivered and the wishes of Constantius were shared. The Himy-
arites themselves, hardly affected by the visit and the three churches, would have
watched the Roman delegation cross over to Somalia and Ethiopia sometime in
357. But the Himyarite ruler could reasonably be perceived as showing favor for
the enhancement of Roman trade in his major ports.
Perceptions of the Aksumites

As we have seen above, the Aksumite people were much further along the path
to Christianization than the Himyarites.61 From their perspective, Constantius’s
mission would leave an even weaker impression than that on Himyar without the
200 fine horses and building program. It seems unlikely that the court at Aksum
shared the letters or opinions of Constantius with the people, nor do we have any
reason to believe that they acted on the advice to remove Frumentius. That is not to
say that Ezana, the Aksumite king, was ignoring the benefits of increased Roman
trade, since we have seen that Frumentius was busy making (Christian) Roman
merchants welcome throughout the kingdom.62 But it seems plausible that this
king had little to fear from a Rome whose soldiers were a thousand miles away
and ships to transport them even further. In addition, as far as trade was involved,
their loyalty was to their principal trading port, Alexandria – a city that clearly
supported Athanasius and consistently resisted Constantius’s will. In short, the
Aksumites were not influenced by Constantius’s mission.
Perceptions of the Alexandrians

While it may be even a bit more speculative to reconstruct the attitude of the
Alexandrians than that of the Himyarites and Aksumites, this perspective is criti-
cal to our understanding of the mission. Of course, it would be simplistic to sum
up the thinking of the empire’s biggest, most diverse, and quite probably, most
divisive city. But both Constantius’s treatment of the city and the city’s treat-
ment of Constantius’s appointees are instructive. It should be remembered that
Constantine had exiled Athanasius from Alexandria in 335, though the bishop
himself stated that it was done for his protection.63 In 345 Constantius was forced
to allow Athanasius’s return to his see, a return that turned into an obvious dis-
play of dissidence against the emperor. By 350 it was clear that Athanasius, and
his following in Alexandria, had flirted with the rebellion of Magnentius against
Constantius’s reign.64 By 356 Constantius must have been convinced that Atha-
nasius was not only a dissident but also a danger to his control of Alexandria,
so he chose to remove him. But this removal was not executed in the manner of
an autocrat expressing complete authority over the situation. The military com-
mander of the region snuck Athanasius out of a church on February 8, 356, with-
out any public decree or real show of force. The aftermath involved Athanasius’s
successor, George of Cappadocia, wisely delaying his arrival for over a year to
let the resentment settle. But, in fact, the resentment did not settle, and the Alex-
andrians drove George out in a riot on August 29, 358 – about a year after his
arrival, with the “Athanasians” holding out against the imperial will for months
after that.65 The open rebellion – one that appears to have been supported even
by non-Christian Alexandrians – was finally forcefully quelled in December
358, but the event indicated that the attitude of Alexandria toward Constantius
in 356–357 was intensely negative.66 This status explains why Constantius most
likely sent his mission through Aila and not Alexandria. It also explains why
apparently the Alexandrians did not know about the mission even by mid-357
when Athanasius published his Apology against Constantius. The new imperial
institution of the bishop helped to focus resistance against Constantius. The
Alexandrians openly advertised their dissidence and perhaps independence from
the interventions of Constantius’s various officials in Egypt; from these officials’
superior, the praetorian prefect of the east Musonianus in Antioch; and from the
imperial court itself.
Concluding perceptions of Constantius

Constantius, upon entering his sole reign in 354, was driven by the dream of
invading the Persian Empire. Almost all his many remarkable initiatives can
be traced to this overall goal, and the mission to Himyar fits nicely for a vari-
ety of reasons. We will probably never know how or when the Romans became
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The Origins of Roman Christian Diplomacy: Constantius II and John Chrysostom As Innovators 1st Edition Walter Stevenson

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The Origins of Roman Christian Diplomacy: Constantius II and John Chrysostom As Innovators 1st Edition Walter Stevenson

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The Origins of Roman Christian

Diplomacy : Constantius II and John

The Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom Chrysostom

Providence and Narrative in the Theology of John

The Origins of Human Rights Ancient Indian and Greco

American Diplomacy and the Boer War John H. Ferguson

The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Orthodox

Origins of Eastern Christian Mysticism AD 330 1022 Sabo

John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War

Turtles as Hopeful Monsters Origins and Evolution Life

Walter Stevenson is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University

1 Approaching Roman Christian diplomacy in context 1

2 Mission to Himyar and Aksum in context 20

4 Constantius’s bureaucracy abroad 72

5 John Chrysostom’s mission to Gothia 98

6 Marouta of Maiferqat and the mission to Persia 120

7 John’s attention to evolving collective religious identities 140

9 Byzantine trajectories 180

A diverse but vivid audience engaged my imagination as I composed this book:

Challenges to understanding: “religion”

Challenges to understanding: “secular”

Challenges to understanding: church and state

Challenges to understanding: Constantine as symbol of

The case for Constantine’s mission to the Goths

When Constantine concluded a treaty with the Goths in 332 . . . he insisted

For indeed through my devotion to God, peace is preserved everywhere, and

The reverent and Christ-loving emperor Constantine received their delegation

Constantine’s plan to Christianize Persia

Constantine proposed to conduct his Persian expedition as a religious cru-

Other historiographical challenges

Plan of the book

Literary source one: Philostorgius narrates the story

Excursus: the importance of the Indian Ocean trade route

Literary source two: Rufinus on Christianization of Aksum

Literary source three: Constantius’s letters to

Summary of literary sources

The route: precedents

Logistics and reconstructing the actual route

Reconstruction of literary and logistical sources

Perceptions of the Himyarites

Perceptions of the Aksumites

Perceptions of the Alexandrians

Concluding perceptions of Constantius

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

START: FULL LICENSE

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