Note 41 — Chapter I · CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY[3]

His reasons for this step can only be surmised. A political motive is scarcely suggested. A second capital cannot have been required to maintain what Rome had conquered, and was soon made an excuse for dissolving the unity of the Empire. His nascent zeal for Christianity, by which he incurred unpopularity at pagan Rome, has been supposed to have prejudiced him against the old capital, and moved him to build another in which the new religion should reign supreme, but these opinions emanate only from writers actuated more or less by bigotry. Although he virtually presided at the Council of Nice and accepted baptism on his death-bed, that he was ever a Christian by conviction is altogether doubtful. For a résumé see Boissier, Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1886; also Burchardt’s Constantine.