Writing History, Shaping Images in Later Roman Empire

Arnaldo Momigliano drew our attention on the fact that Christians in Late Antiquity did not try to Christianize ordinary political history, i.e. the imperial realm. Indeed, history writing, all the way to Procopius, remained staunchly traditional. A similar phenomenon is present in visual arts. The absence of Christian themes and symbols on Constantine’s triumphal arch in Rome has often been understood as a proof of Constantine’s phony conversion to Christianity. However, if we look closer at the iconography of imperial art throughout the 4^th century, we shall discover that it rarely, if ever, puts an emphasis on religious convictions of the ruler (which may have been taken for granted).