Emperor

by Colin Thubron

The Emperor Constantine crosses the Alps at the head of a great army from the Rhineland in AD 312, and marches south to take Rome from the tyrant Maxentius. As he lays siege to the city of Verona, Constantine waits for the arrival of his wife, Fausta - his enemy's sister - whose cool detachment torments him. "Emperor" is a superbly imaginative reconstruction of the dramatic weeks leading up to Constantine's triumph in Rome. Written in the form of extracts from his own journal and letters from his empress, her frivolous female companion, his cynical secretary and a Christian bishop who is travelling with the army, the novel records a train of events which will change the world. Constantine is plagued by spiritual doubts, tortured by his wife's coldness, but he defies the omens to win a great victory at Verona and to lead his army south. On the road to Rome, the conqueror becomes the conquered as a blinding vision strikes him from his horse in an astonishing conversion to Christianity. "Emperor" summons up the Roman world of two thousand years ago, the everyday life of soldiers on campaign and the intrigues at court. But it is also the many-faceted story of a man's loss of faith in God and in human love, told with uncanny brilliance.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Ancient History

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful! Epistolary novel giving us an startlingly original and imaginative view of the Emperor Constantine. We relive the two fall months in 312 AD from preparations before the Battle of Verona, journey South, until the eve of Constantine's battle with his brother-in-law, Maxentius, at the Milvian Bridge. The author has written a numbing interpretation of what Constantine saw in the sky, as reported from several different characters' viewpoints--Synesius, his private secretary; Geta, the head of secret police; Fausta, his wife; a bishop traveling with the army; and summing up given by Tetricus, Praetorian Prefect.

From a [fictional] collection of letters, private diary entries, memoranda, crisp police reports the author has fashioned a masterly work detailing Constantine's "dark night of the soul" and his feelings of abandonment by his god, the Invincible Sun. Battle scene at Verona was equal to best descriptions of fighting I've read elsewhere. All of the characters were fully-fleshed: the intense, emotional, saturnine Constantine; his enigmatic wife, Fausta; the various civilians and military officers. We witness Constantine's extreme reaction at the death of his good friend, one of the legates, and we are privy to Constantine's tempestuous marriage. Public events, such as Verona and the vision, are described by several different figures. Very well-written; it was hard to believe a sheaf of documents could put me right into the story--and into the heart of the protagonist. The striking cover was a detail from a mural of Constantine's vision in a church on Cyprus.
Most highly recommended.

[Ozymandias · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are far too many Christian propaganda works set in the Roman Empire. Much as I enjoy watching films like Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, and The Robe, I know that they’re nonsense and deplore the simplicity and (well-intentioned) fundamentalism they represent. Christianity as a religion of flawless men preaching peace, justice for all, a sort of egalitarianism if not democracy, and an end to slavery? It’s like people never heard of the Dark Ages. And by that I don’t mean that Christian kings were worse than pagan ones, rather that they were much the same. And this lack of depth or insight (or even interest) in contrasting ancient religion with Christianity is why I’m exceedingly cautious about reading novels on the subject, despite the topic being immensely interesting. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I picked up this book on the conversion of the first Christian emperor.

I’m glad I did. Right from the start this book makes clear that it’s aiming to engage seriously with the topic. When we first meet Constantine he’s full of self-doubt and uncertainty about his religion, but it’s never a question of the false Olympian gods vs. the pure and personal Christian god. Constantine worships Sol Invictus (true fact!) and enjoys a very personal relationship with him. He feels himself to be the god’s champion, the bright shining force of the sun. Yet lately he has lost his assurance of the god’s favor. Does the god even know he exists? Is he even there? At no point in this novel does the idea that his initial beliefs were childish or wrong appear. Indeed, most of the POV characters remain pagan to the end. And they all have different takes on his experience.

Constantine is a bit of an enigma to me. I’ve studied him and read a lot of books on him and you know what? Every time he seems completely different. His personality is just too poorly documented and opinions too varied to make any assessment about him. Gaze upon his face in the Arch of Constantine and you see an emperor. Look upon his colossal head resting against a wall in the Capitoline Museum and you see a god. But who was the man?

This book has an answer. A lot of answers. Using the power of fiction the author really makes Constantine come alive in a way history books can’t. His powerful and unchecked outpourings of feeling, his burning uncertainty, his self-awareness and almost intellectual curiosity about the world around him (at least insofar as it relates to him and his goals). He’s a man struggling to find his faith, with his feelings of inadequacy and abandonment almost overwhelming him. His need for certainty finds little comfort in aged philosophers who admit they know nothing. He craves perfection, and not finding it in his wife Fausta, he seeks it in a personal relationship with God. Now I don’t know if I believe that this is who Constantine was, but it’s certainly a valid interpretation.

The book is structured in an epistolary format. This is not my favorite type of storytelling device but I understand why it was chosen here: the book is trying to portray the complexity and subjectiveness of truth. The characters are precisely drawn and we’re limited to their viewpoint, but how they perceive events and how others perceive events are often radically different. Constantine’s inner voice, for example, is desperate and inconsolable, whereas to others he seems a collected and terrifying man. The characters speaking are a mix. They include Constantine himself (via journal), his wife Fausta, his magister memoriae Synesius, and Bishop Hosius of Cordoba.

I have a lot of things to praise about this book, but there’s also something missing. The entire story is told in just over 200 pages, and it truly does feel like we get only the faintest snippet of his life. As a result, there’s a certain emptiness to it that didn’t have to be there. Probably the biggest element the book‘s missing is the Battle of the Milvian Bridge where Constantine had the chi-rho (☧, formed from the first two letters of Christ in Greek) painted on his soldiers’ shields before they defeat Maxentius and seize Rome. This felt like it would be the climax of the book, but instead we pull up just short on the day of the battle with Constantine’s vision and conversion. Dramatically, I think it’s a mistake. We’re all anticipating this grand finale. Character-wise I think it’s equally mistaken. Constantine converts because he’s convinced the god driving him on is the Christian God, and how can he know that without a divine victory? I don’t see how you can have a story of his conversion without accounting for the effect this unexpectedly easy triumph had on his mindset. This also removes any ambiguity about the vision itself, or rather it replaces the ambiguity of a divine vision that his priests persuaded him was Christian in origin with the much less interesting and nuanced one of whether he imagined it entirely. On a related note, it also omits the god appearing to him in a dream, as mentioned by both Eusebius and Lactantius (who curiously doesn’t appear). In all, I found it a lousy payoff for such ambiguous characterization.

In terms of accuracy, I thought this book was excellent, keeping in mind the limitations of the time. It mostly avoids the common mistake of making everything exactly the same as it was in the early empire (except for his legions of 6,000 men) and instead manages to slot in the basic structure of late antiquity without making it seem too alien. Although I suspect that many of his posts (the magister officiorum in particular) were innovations from later in his or his sons’ reigns. The description of warfare, geography, and especially religious practices were very good. He even shows a strong knowledge of events outside the time period, although he misrecords Vespasian as leading his soldiers against Vitellius and has a “Vegetian” order of advance appear 150 years before that author wrote.

This book was very strong through much of its length, but as it went on I found myself realizing it had really run out of things to say. Constantine’s conversion was too sudden and definitive (he was still cagey about the identity of his God after this point) and not major enough to form the climax this story badly needed. We needed to get some sort of payoff for all his agonizing, and that could only come from the battle and its aftermath. That said, the characterizations remained good, the shifting of Constantine’s internal agonies were curious, and the ideas engrossing throughout most of the book’s length. If it’s not as smart and ambitious as it could be, it at least isn’t dumb. So if you’re at all curious about the man who reshaped the empire ignore the bland title and give this book a try. Just don’t expect to be blown away.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emperor by Colin Thubron is a mightily ambitious novel. It describes the conversion to Christianity of the emperor Constantine the Great, the circumstances of which are unknown. But this was an event that changed human history. This single event elevated Christianity, previously a minority sect amongst many, to the status of official religion of the Roman Empire. Thus it became the religion of a continent, a status it has never lost.

What is so original about Colin Thubron’s book, however, is its form. The novel is constructed as if it were a sheaf of documents by different authors. The entries are arranged by date, but are constructed as if assembled from a jumble of material stuffed at random by an incompetent clerk into a satchel that was then lost. The author thus assumes many voices, many forms, many perspectives.

Constantine has embarked upon the final phase of his conquest of Rome to establish himself the undisputed leader of the empire. He was in York when his father died and Maxentius, his wife’s brother, usurped the throne. Constantine must therefore raise an army and conquer his way to power all the way from the north of England to the imperial capital. Emperor takes us from the boundaries of Verona to the outskirts of Rome, the progress described via the jottings of several characters.

Constantine’s own journal is the centre-piece. In it the emperor muses on military tactics and the progress of war. But we also discover a sensitive, emotional character often preoccupied with significance deeper than the mundane. The letters and jottings of Fausta, Constantine’s wife and sister of the pretender Maxentius, show how little those involved are able to express or trust their own feelings. Constantine is besotted with her, but she always demands a distance. We are never completely sure of her motives – or loyalties, for that matter.

Synesius, Constantine’s secretary, has seen it all before. His often witty musings offer both context and interpretation. Hosius, Bishop of Cordoba, is the Christian voice that travels with Constantine’s army. His reactions to events are always fundamentally different from what the other characters expect or predict. And there are other minor characters, lesser voices that add further detail and different perspectives.

One of the book’s great achievements is its highly effective portrayal of the pan-European character of Constantine’s alliance and its consequent religious diversity. It seems that there was a real free market in Gods at the time and we quickly feel the need for a unifying cultural and ideological force to match the political and military presence of Constantine. And so the Emperor’s personal needs and pragmatic concerns suddenly coincide and the charismatic presence of Hosius assists.

Overall I felt that Emperor did not quite achieve the ambition of its inspiration, however. In the end the originality of the form became a limitation, constricting the author’s ability to convey both background and context. The story he told was considerably bigger than the form could sustain and so the climax was unsatisfactory. As criticisms go, however, it’s a very small one.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written but oddly depressing. The atmosphere felt oppressive and all the characters were suffering crises of faith. I think the accuracy of how they were written made them feel alien to me- I've read Augustus by Alan Massie and loved it because I could put myself in Augustus' place. That was impossible here. To be frank, the sense of impending doom really put a kink in my day!

[Cole Maynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thubron's novel 'Emperor' is a superb achievement to compose such an engaging narrative via the fictitious notes and letters compiled by our mysterious editor and novelist. It reads so well and takes you into the minds of the main protagonists, be that the anguished Constantine, his frigid wife Fausta, or the disparaging and arrogant Synesius, his private secretary. The novel is both compelling and informative being based upon vigorous research. Highly recommended.

[Adrian Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well structured with an interesting use of letters, journals and diaries to advance the narrative and yet I still felt it was a little lightweight. I guess I wanted more detail and drama - a novella rather than a novel.

[Paola Franceschini · Rating 2 out of 5]

Accurate? Probably.
But boring to read, the first book of Colin Thubron that has left me struggling, yawning even.
Maybe it.is interesting, but it did not fascinate me at all

[John Ollerton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. When I was half way through I remembered I read it many years ago