Constantine II (emperor)

• 1. Introduction

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  In June 337, Constantine II had not yet been named emperor, but he was already acting like one. He issued an order returning the exiled bishop Athanasius to Alexandria, a city under the jurisdiction of his brother Constantius II. To justify the move, he claimed to be carrying out their late father's unfulfilled intentions. His true motives remain debated. Proposed explanations range from genuine belief in Athanasius's innocence to a deliberate attempt to antagonize Constantius.

  That act of overreach captures the defining tension of Constantine II's reign. He was the eldest son of Constantine I and a general who would build a record of victories on the empire's northern frontiers. Yet within three years of taking the throne, he died in an ambush near the northern Italian city of Aquileia. His name was later excised from official records so completely that later orators praised his brothers while omitting him entirely. He was elevated to the rank of caesar at Serdica on the 1st of March 317, just one year after his birth in Arles.

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• 2. A Caesar at War

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  After accompanying his father on a campaign against the Sarmatians in 323, Constantine appeared on the commemorative coins minted to celebrate the victory. It was an early public signal of his value to the dynasty.

  By 328, his father had given him his own court at Trier. A stone inscription from between 328 and 330 records the title Alamannicus. The title commemorated a victory his generals achieved over the Alamanni tribe.

  Constantine's military involvement sharpened further in 332, when his father appointed him field commander for a winter campaign against the Goths. The campaign ended with the surrender of the Gothic ruler Ariaric and a reported death toll of 100,000 Goths. Festival games were launched in Rome to celebrate his role in the campaign. It was a deliberate public demonstration that the dynasty intended him to rule.

  He had married before 336, though his wife's identity has never been confirmed. The mystery of her origins would later intersect with the political crisis that followed his father's death.

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• 3. A Massacre of Cousins

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  Constantine I died in May 337, and the dynasty he had spent decades building immediately began to fracture. The army murdered several male relatives of the imperial family, including Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, on the orders of Constantius II. These killings cleared the path for Constantine and his two brothers to rule without rivals.

  All three brothers had previously refused to issue coins bearing the name of Dalmatius, a practice their father had maintained. The scholar Burgess identified this as a telling sign of their prior sympathies. Burgess concluded they had likely coordinated on this stance, suggesting they never fully accepted Dalmatius as a legitimate heir.

  After the massacre, the brothers issued coins depicting Theodora, an ancestor of the men who had just been killed. By minting Theodora's image, they supported the story that the killings were the work of mutinous soldiers rather than a coordinated family decision. Most of these coins were produced at Trier, Constantine's own capital. The concentration of minting there suggested he was the driving force behind the initiative, with his brothers following his lead.

  David Woods speculated that Constantine's wife may have been a granddaughter of Theodora. If so, his sponsorship of those coins carried a personal dimension that his brothers may not have shared.

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• 4. The Question of Seniority

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  The three brothers formally became emperors on the 9th of September 337, gathering in Pannonia to divide the Roman world among themselves. His portion of the empire covered Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania. Unlike his brothers, Constantine had gained comparatively little from the new arrangement.

  Even after successfully campaigning against the Alamanni in 338, Constantine continued to press for more. He remained convinced that his age entitled him to a form of seniority over his brothers, particularly over the teenage Constans.

  The Theodosian Code preserves a concrete illustration of that pressure. In 339, Constantine issued an edict to the proconsul of Africa, a province that formally fell within Constans's realm. By April 340, Constantine was no longer satisfied with diplomatic and legislative pressure. He had decided to take Constans's territory by force.

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• 5. The Ambush at Aquileia

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  Constans was at Naissus when word reached him that his brother had crossed into Italy. He dispatched troops north to confront the invading force. Those troops intercepted Constantine near Aquileia, where he was killed in an ambush. Constans then absorbed his brother's territories. The people within those provinces appear to have accepted the transition with little resistance.

  Constans issued legislation repealing Constantine's acts shortly after the ambush and branded the dead emperor as "the public enemy and our own enemy." He was subjected to damnatio memoriae, a formal condemnation that erased a person from the official record. Years later, when the orator Libanius delivered a panegyric honoring Constans and Constantius, Constantine was absent from every line. Within a generation, the general who had accepted the surrender of the Gothic king Ariaric was a name history was not permitted to speak.

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