Constantine's Dream

The readers of Klio might like to know at once why they are being invited to read a (brief) paper on this well-worn subject. The main reason is that, thanks in part to the learned and indefatigable labours of Professor Gregor Weber in collecting and analysing the ancient testimony about the dreams of the Roman emperors,1 it is possible to say something new about the dream that Constantine dreamt (so Lactantius says) the night before the Batde of the Milvian Bridge. In addition, a recent contribution to a closely related problem, the waking .vision' of Constantine as it is described in Eusebius' Vita Constantini — a vision which was supposed to have taken place before Constantine ever reached Italy —,2 requires some methodological comments before it gains any further scholarly respectability. The main question I shall address here is whether we can know what Constantine actually dreamt on the eve of the batde that took place on 28 October 312. It is undoubtedly of greater historical significance to know what Constantine's subsequent assertions and actions signify for his religious state of mind, and what they signify about his troops. At first sight, H. A. Drake seems quite right when he states that „the real issue is not what [Constantine] actually saw but what [he] and others made of it".3 But for those of us who are interested in ancient dreams, the question whether we can know what was dreamt has some significance — and it may turn out that the reality or otherwise of Constantine's dream has at least some minor significance for the religious history of those controversial years. But there will be nothing here about Bishop Ossius of Corduba and what he may have whispered in the emperor's ear, and only a short comment about the religious sentiments of Constantine's soldiers: I shall make no attempt to re-write the history of Constantine's .conversion'. Gregor Weber has written that we cannot know, and should not bother about, what the pretender actually dreamt on the night before the batde.4 The purport of this paper is