Mind-Munitions

The Glory that was Rome 47
major contributions to culture), a good public relations exercise
was essential to political survival. This was particularly true for the
army, upon which the emperor’s power had come to rest by the
third century. As one historian has put it: ‘The emperor at first
ruled through the army. In the third century the army ruled through
the emperor.’
Yet it was not the pagan gods, used so cynically by the Romans
for propaganda purposes, but the Christians who were ultimately
to conquer the hearts and minds of the later emperors. At first, the
peace established by Augustus enabled Christ’s disciples to spread
his teachings and the propaganda techniques they used helped
what began as a cult religion to spread throughout the Empire.
Perhaps it was because it was a religion for the individual, unlike
most other ancient religions, which gave it its appeal.
Rome at first tolerated the cult – as it did scores of other cults;
but Christianity’s claim to recognize a supreme and exclusive
authority higher than the State made it subversive in Roman eyes
since Christians refused to participate in emperor-worship. And,
like the impact of Christ’s death, the more martyrs Rome created,
the more people became impressed with the manner of their deaths.
Rome, in other words, may have believed that it was destroying the
cult in its war against the Christians, when in fact it was helping to
spread its message still further by the cruelty of its persecution. The
early Christian martyrs recognized that actions on the field of
‘battle’ – such as the manner with which they faced crucifixion and
other torments – reinforced the words and the messages that had
caused their death while following their Saviour’s example. ‘The
blood of the martyr’, wrote Tertullian, an early Christian writer, ‘is
the seed of the Church.’
Forced underground by State persecution it was not until the
fourth century, when the cross became the dominant Christian
symbol, that the movement could begin to boast a following wider
than the slaves, aliens, and social outcasts to whom it had at first
appealed. Many historians have argued that Christianity helped to
destroy the Roman Empire; Christians will argue that Rome was
saved by it. Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to be
converted (in AD 312-13), recognized Christianity as the official
religion of the Roman Empire and moved its capital to Byzantium
(Constantinople). Constantine may be seen either as villain or hero,
but in reality it was the Goths and the Vandals who destroyed the