This book explores political memory and disgrace in the reigns of the emperor Constantine and his sons. The familiar designation is , which is used to describe the wide range of actions the Romans used to suppress, distort, or denigrate the memories of prominent individuals who were deemed to be disgraced. Though the phrase is convenient and common in modern scholarship, belongs to the early modern rather than ancient world. This book uses the conditions of the early to mid-fourth century to argue that the deconstruction of political legitimacy should be viewed, first and foremost, as a collective phenomenon, the result of the thoughts and actions of a diverse range of people responding to political change, rather than the centralised procedure that is often assumed. The book also confronts and challenges many positivist and teleological narratives of the ‘Age of Constantine’. Its methodology shifts the focus from the emperor and his sons onto their rivals and opponents, challenging their exceptionalism by placing them back into the messy and ambiguous political environment from which the Constantinian dynasty emerged.weiterlesen