Greatest Emperor

Constantine didn't convert to Christianity until his deathbed because if he did he would have to abide by it's tenants, which would mean no more executions.  Christianity was indeed a force merely meant to unify the empire behind him, and it brought the Christians, who were by now a powerful group, if a persecuted one, onto his side.  Although to say that Christianity brought about the downfall of Rome, I can't agree with it.  If so, why didn't the East go with it, which was in fact a Christian theocracy?  The West was already on the downhill by 325 anyway, with only 150 years left.  The Byzantine Empire lasted for nearly a thousand years as a Christian state, longer than any other state in history besides Egypt.

Originally posted by Master of Puppets Personally I don't see why Christianity should have such a decay-improving effect either. Weren't the decline of Roman military and the infiltration of barbarians more important causes for the fall of the Western Empire?

Something should also be taken in consideration too on the decline of the Roman military. It didn't simply bang happen. Over the years of excessive taxation, decline in value of money (therefore reducing trade), and the tremendous effect of the plagues sweeping the Roman Empire, affording the military became impossible. So we also need to search deeper into what caused the decline of the military before we simply assume that it was the cause of the military's decline. Everything that caused the collapse also linked to another thing. For example, the military decline resulted in mass invasions by both the barbarians, and also by the Sassanian Persians.

Blaming Constantine and his subsequent adoption of Christianity as the state religion doesn't take into consideration that the 50 years following the murder of Alexander Severus were one of the lowest points in the history of the Roman Empire.   Severus was murdered only 70 years or so before Constantine.

The troubled times led to a succession of short reigned emperors who far more often than not met a violent death usually at the hands of their own troops.  The empire was basically fighting for its life and was being threatened on almost every front - a resurgent Persia in the east and the Alemanni and Goths of the Rhine and the Danube.  Its during this time we see the first emperor to fall at the hands of the enemy and the only emperor to be captured and die in captivity abroad.

This was a time when the empire temporarily split into two parts - The Gallic Empire and the Roman......and it wasn't the congenial split of East and West.   There are emperors that we have little or no information on because there's little more than a name in the historical records.  Of one emperor - Aemilius Aemilianus - Eutropius wrote "Aemlianus came from an extremely insignificant family, his reign was even more insignificant, and he was slain in the third month."

The seed for the fall were sown long before Christianity rose.

Yes, Rome was already in deep decline way before Constantine came to power. Constantine revived teh empire, it's stupid to blame Christianity for causing the collapse.

WOOPS, I missed the   (-473) thing. Sorry.