Moreover he increased the burden of taxation throughout the Empire.  The last fourteen years of his reign was a period of apparent prosperity, but the internal strength of the Empire and the character of the emperor sadly degenerated.  He became effeminate, and committed crimes which sullied his fame.  He executed his oldest son on mere suspicion of crime, and on a charge of infidelity even put to death the wife with whom he had lived for twenty years, and who was the mother of future emperors.

But if he had great faults he had also great virtues.  No emperor since Augustus had a more enlightened mind, and no one ever reigned at Rome who, in one important respect, did so much for the cause of civilization.  Constantine is most lauded as the friend and promoter of Christianity.  It is by his service to the Church that he has won the name of the first Christian emperor.  His efforts in behalf of the Church throw into the shade all the glory he won as a general and as a statesman.  The real interest of his reign centres in his Christian legislation, and in those theological controversies in which he interfered.  With Constantine began the enthronement of Christianity, and for one thousand years what is most vital in European history is connected with Christian institutions and doctrines.

It was when he was marching against Maxentius that his conversion to Christianity took place, A.D. 312, when he was thirty-eight, in the sixth year of his reign.  Up to this period he was a zealous Pagan, and made magnificent offerings to the gods of his ancestors, and erected splendid temples, especially in honor of Apollo.  The turn of his mind was religious, or, as we are taught by modern science to say, superstitious.  He believed in omens, dreams, visions, and supernatural influences.

Now it was in a very critical period of his campaign against his Pagan rival, on the eve of an important battle, as he was approaching Rome for the first time, filled with awe of its greatness and its recollections, that he saw—­or fancied he saw—­a little after noon, just above the sun which he worshipped, a bright Cross, with this inscription, [Greek:  En touto nika]—­“In this conquer;” and in the following night, when sleep had overtaken him, he dreamed that Christ appeared to him, and enjoined him to make a banner in the shape of the celestial sign which he had seen.  Such is the legend, unhesitatingly received for centuries, yet which modern critics are not disposed to accept as a miracle, although attested by Eusebius, and confirmed by the emperor himself on oath.  Whether some supernatural sign really appeared or not, or whether some natural phenomenon appeared in the heavens in the form of an illuminated Cross, it is not worth while to discuss.  We know this, however, that if the greatest religious revolution of antiquity was worthy to be announced by special signs and wonders, it was when a Roman emperor of extraordinary force of character declared his intention