The history of one of the most impressive surviving monument in Rome.

Hardly anything might seem more audacious than to deny that the arch of Constantine was built in honor of that emperor; yet the really amazing thing is our failure to attend to the numerous hints that this arch had existed long before Constantine. Artists and archaeologists have always been un-able to explain how an architect of the decadent age of Constantine could have given to this arch its marvellous proportions and silhouette, which set it above all other arches, even those of the golden age (Fig. 1). Historians have been puzzled by the silence of that early catalogue of the buildings at Rome, the Notitia, issued before Constantine's death (334 A.D.), which assigns to Constantine, apparently, only the Janus in the Forum Boarium. The same Notitia increases the mystery by speaking of an Arcus Novus on the Via Lata, which can only be the arch of Diocletian, dedicated in 303. If in 334 the arch of 303 was still the latest of triumphal arches, how could an arch have been built to Constantine in 315 ?

Provides the first full study of the predecessor church of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, from late antique construction to Renaissance destruction.

Combines material and literary cultural approaches to the study of the reception of Augustus and his age during the reign of the emperor Domitian

Peter Leithart weighs what we've been taught about Constantine and claims that in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. He reveals how beneath the surface of this contested story there lies a deeper narrative--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--with far-reaching implications.

Explores two thousand years of radically changing opinions on the emperor Augustus, and what they reveal about the historical individual.