Constantinian dynasty

• 1. Introduction

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  The Constantinian dynasty ran from the death of Constantius Chlorus in 306 to the death of Julian in 363. Constantine the Great, its most famous member, took sole control of the Roman Empire in 324. Every emperor in this family carried the name Flavius. That matched the naming practice of the original Flavian dynasty from the 1st century, and it earned this later family a second name: Neo-Flavian. Behind those two names lies a genealogy that stretches into empresses, half-siblings, murdered relatives, and rival emperors who married into the same bloodline. How did marriages inside one family decide who ruled Rome? And which later dynasties tried to borrow that same bloodline for their own legitimacy?

• 2. A Web Of Marriages

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  Constantius I's relationship with Helena produced Constantine I. Constantine's own marriage to Minervina produced a son, Crispus, and his second marriage, to Fausta, produced five more children. Two of those children, Constantine II and Constantius II, later ruled as emperors alongside their half-brother Constans I, Fausta's third son. Fausta's two daughters were Constantina, who married first Hannibalianus and then Constantius Gallus, and Helena, who married Julian. Constantius II outlived two childless marriages before he had an heir of his own. His first wife, a daughter of Julius Constantius, bore him no children, and neither did his second wife, Eusebia. Only his third wife, Faustina, gave him a daughter, Constantia, who went on to marry Gratian. Constantius Chlorus had a second family alongside his relationship with Helena, this one with a wife named Theodora. Their children included Flavius Dalmatius, Julius Constantius, a son also named Hannibalianus, Anastasia, Flavia Julia Constantia, and Eutropia. Flavius Dalmatius went on to marry an unnamed wife and had two sons of his own, a younger Flavius Dalmatius and another Hannibalianus, who would marry Constantina. Julius Constantius married twice. His first wife, Galla, had three children: a son who died in the purges of 337, a daughter who became Constantius II's first wife, and a son, Constantius Gallus, who would later marry into the family himself. Julius Constantius's second wife, Basilina, had one son, Julian, and Julian's own marriage produced no children. Theodora's son Hannibalianus is thought to have died before the purges of 337, since his name never appears among that purge's victims.

• 3. Ties To The Tetrarchs

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  Maximian, one of the tetrarchy's other rulers, was both adoptive father and father-in-law to Constantius Chlorus. The same Maximian was also father-in-law to Constantine and grandfather-in-law to Licinius. Maxentius, another tetrarch, was Constantius Chlorus's adoptive brother and brother-in-law, and Constantine's brother-in-law as well. Licinius married into the family himself, taking Flavia Julia Constantia, one of Theodora's daughters, as his wife. That marriage made him son-in-law of Constantius Chlorus and half-brother-in-law of Constantine. Licinius and Flavia Julia Constantia had a son, Licinius II, carrying the connection into a fourth generation. Centuries after Julian's death, other ruling families would look back at these same bloodlines and try to attach themselves to them.

• 4. Echoes In Later Dynasties

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  The Valentinians and the Theodosians, two dynasties that later ruled the Eastern Roman Empire, linked themselves to the Constantinians through marriage. Four further ruling houses, the Palaiologos, the Komnenos, the Doukas, and the Phokas, are named among the families that tied themselves to the Constantinian line. Unlike the Valentinians and the Theodosians, no marriage or specific relative explains how these four later houses made their claim, only that they made it.