A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

uildings should be handed back to the Christians; now he had two lots of Christians each claiming
they were the rightful owners. The Bishop of Rome sided against the non-compromisers; so did a
council of bishops who met in Aries in 314 A.D. The indignant Donatists rejected their decision
and proceeded to kill their opponents. Belatedly, it must have dawned on Constantine that these
Christians were just as quarrelsome and difficult as the Jews, and that he had made a grave mistake
in substituting their religion for the easygoing paganism of the Romans. It may well have been the
sight of his Christian subjects snarling at one another that decided him to flee to Byzantium. But his
hope of peace was again disappointed. The Greek Church was just as bitterly divided. And the
cause, it seemed, was that a priest named Arius was unable to swallow the notion that Jesus was
actually the God who had created the universe, and that this commonsense notion scandalised the
Bishop of Alexandria. Arius appealed to the historian Eusebius - the one who thought Constantine
was free of all mortal dross - and Eusebius agreed with him. The struggle soon became so fierce
that Constantine was forced to call a special council of bishops at Nicaea, near Nicomedia (just
across the Hellespont from Byzantium). This council came down against Arius and in favour of the
proposition that Jesus was God the Father - a notion that would have shocked the founder of
Christianity, or possibly, since he seems to have had a sense of humour, made him smile. The
decision made, of course, no difference whatever to Arius and his supporters, who remained
convinced - rightly - that commonsense was on their side, whatever the Nicene Creed said to the
contrary. Arius’s opponents declared him a heretic - taken from a Greek word meaning to think for
oneself (which Christians found increasingly reprehensible), and he was refused communion. When
Arius died, his chief opponent, Athanasius, circulated a story that he had been struck down by
direct heavenly intervention, presumably by a thunderbolt.
And while the Christians squabbled and killed one another, the Roman emperors continued to do
the same. Constantine died in 337 A.D., just after being baptised. The fact that his heirs were
Christians did not prevent them from adopting traditional Roman methods of settling the
succession; two nephews whom Constantine had included among his heirs were executed, and his
three sons then ruled the empire jointly, the one called Constantius taking over the throne in
Byzantium (now called Constantinople). His first act was to allay the fears of various uncles and
aunts by personally guaranteeing their safety. His next was to plot against them. The bishop of
Nicomedia entered into the plot and provided a forged document, supposed to be written by the
emperor Constantine, declaring that he had been poisoned by his brothers. The soldiers were shown
this document, and they went off and massacred two uncles, seven cousins and numerous other
kinsmen. The only members of the family who were spared were two children named Gallus and
Julian. Meanwhile, the other two brothers of Constantius quarrelled and went to war; one killed the
other; then the killer was in turn killed by a rebel officer who wanted to seize the throne.
Constantius killed the rebel and so became sole emperor. In due course, perhaps out of guilt, he
appointed Gallus as joint Caesar, but soon regretted the decision and had him arrested and
beheaded like a criminal.
Meanwhile, Constantius’s cousin Julian showed no desire to become emperor. He was a bookworm
by temperament. This did not save him from being arrested and kept at the court of Milan for seven
months, where his life was in continual danger. But he was so obviously harmless that Constantius
finally allowed him to go to Athens to study. There he became absorbed in philosophy and lived as
an ordinary student. And eventually Constantius appointed Julian to be Caesar of Gaul and the
northern countries. There Julian showed himself to be a natural soldier and won some important
victories over French and German tribes. But when he began to suspect that Constantius was
changing his mind, and that he would be next on the list for assassinations, he decided to put up a