138- The New Rome

What It Covers

Constantine builds Constantinople as a strategic Christian capital, implements Diocletian's administrative systems with modifications, introduces the gold solidus currency, and executes his son Crispus and wife Fausta under disputed circumstances.

Key Questions Answered

• •Strategic Capital Selection: Constantine chose Byzantium for its defensibility with water on three sides requiring only one massive wall, central location between east and west, excellent harbor for resupply, and quick access to the volatile Danube frontier.
• •Currency Reform Impact: The solidus gold coin maintained consistent weight and purity for seven hundred years, stabilizing wealth for the rich while copper and silver inflation devastated middle class merchants facing quadrennial lump sum tax payments they could not afford.
• •Administrative Continuity: Constantine preserved Diocletian's separation of military and civilian careers, expanded central bureaucracy, and maintained provincial divisions while expanding senatorial class membership from six hundred to two thousand members to dilute traditional aristocratic power.
• •Unintended Economic Consequences: Commercial taxes pushed large landowners toward estate self sufficiency to avoid taxation, creating independent fiefdoms that withdrew from public life and eventually formed the foundation of feudal Europe after the Western Empire's collapse.