Parallel Lives: Donald Trump and Constantine the Great
January 14, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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Making Rome Great Again, Making America Great Again

It is perhaps too early to compare Donald Trump, about to enter his second term as President of the United States of America, with Constantine the Great, a Roman Emperor crowned in 306 AD. Yet the parallels, and divergences, in their lives offer many lessons worthy of study. The consideration of the Roman Empire during this period, despite the vast transit of time since those days, may offer some light on what could happen in the United States, and the world, in the next few years or decades.

Assuming readers have at least a passing knowledge of Donald Trump, I will begin with a brief review of the life of Constantine. His life, particularly once he became Emperor, is well-documented. For those who like to read, I would recommend The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. There are many shorter, more focussed, but nevertheless detailed, histories of Constantine available as well. Even the Wikipedia article on Constantine will give you more data than I provide here.

The Roman Republic is believed to have been founded around 509 BC. It transitioned to the Roman Empire in 27 BC. Imperial families came and went, often as the result of bloody battles. Flavius Valerius Constantius, or Constantine, was born in 272 AD in what is now Serbia to a father who seemed in no way lined up to be a Roman Emperor. His father, also Constantius, was Illyrian, his mother Greek. Constantius, aged 22, was likely already a Roman army officer in 272 AD. Constantius worked his way up through the ranks, then became the governor of Dalmatia (now Albania and thereabouts). He then went back to generaling for a while along the Rhine River. Another step up was marrying the daughter of the Emperor Maximian (despite the prior marriage to Constantine's mother, Helena, whom he divorced). Then another break came when the Emperor Diocletian decided the Empire needed two Emperors and two assistants called Caesars. In due time Constantius became the western Emperor. He died in England during a campaign against the Picts (Scots).

When daddy Emperor died, in 306, his soldiers decided they wanted Constantine as their new leader and declared him Emperor. Other fellows around the vast Empire had different ideas. It took until 324, in two decades of civil wars, for the bloodthirsty Constantine to become sole Emperor of the Roman world. Even as Emperor he murdering many people, including some of his relatives. But allow me to turn to Donald Trump.

You would not have picked Donald Trump for a future President of the United States at birth. His father, Fred Trump, had started out in a middling well-off family. Fred went into home construction and then became head of a real estate business owned by his parents. Subsidized by federal loans, Trump began building homes and apartments at a rapid rate. By the time Donald was born, in 1946, his father Fred was a very rich man.

Donald eventually, at an early age, became second in command to his father. His own ventures tended to end in bankruptcy, but his father's money kept a floor under him until he inherited the business (sharing with siblings). In 2004 Donald became a media celebrity, pretending to be an executive on the TV show The Apprentice. In 2015 he decided he would make a good Chief Executive Officer, or President, of the United States. He used his celebrity and his long practice in bullying and taunting people to overcome his Republican primary opponents. Then he beat Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. He became President of the United States of America in January 2017.

It is hard to imagine a draft-dodging coward like Donald Trump, who never served in the military, coming to power in the same violent way that Constantine did. Yet the parallels between the United States in this era, and Rome in the 300s, are worth noting. Rome was having trouble holding itself together. While the core U.S. 50 states have been reasonably unified so far, the post-World War II empire of the U.S. appears to be dissolving. The dominance of the U.S. economy after World War II, when the factories of most rival industrialized nations had been bombed, has given way to a new order. China, India and Japan all are significant economic rivals. The alliance with Europe has become tense. Where the nations with smaller economies will line up in the future is uncertain. The global ecological crisis, while easy to predict in general, may have specific effects that help or hurt the United States in its global pursuits.

Constantine's troubles were far greater than Trump's. He did not want the Roman Empire to fall back into the past pattern of civil wars. He tried making reforms, including moving the capital of the world to a new city, Constantinople, now called Istanbul. He tried to strengthen the empire's borders, though he depended on troops that were often peoples who had migrated across those borders. Most importantly, he ended the Roman policy of religious tolerance.

The story of religion and tolerance is often told backwards because of the dominance of Christianity in European and American society. In reality Rome was remarkably religiously tolerant from its founding until the reign of Constantine. In addition to the traditional Roman gods and cults, the gods and cults of the conquered nations were permitted to be worshipped. The Christians were a problem because they refused to tolerate the other religions. No one took a poll, but they made up perhaps 10% to 20% of the population at the time Constantine came to power. He decided that the Empire needed a single religion to remain cohesive. But there was another problem: the Christians, steeped in intolerance (and greedy to control tithes) quarrelled with one another. So first Constantine tried his best to get the Christians in agreement. This was the famous Council of Nicea, in 325. Any Christian who did not agree with the consensus of the council was declared a heretic. By the way, even at this late date, the Bishop of Rome was not yet the Pope in the modern sense of the term. He was just the bishop of the former capital of the Empire, not the divinely chosen head of all Christians, as would be claimed in later centuries. The Catholics later made Constantine one of their Saints, overlooking his murderous life.

Constantine is supposed to have been baptized a Christian just before he died. Despite his efforts to promote Christianity, it took a while for Christians to persecute other religious sects into oblivion, or at least into hiding. His children fought over the succession. When a younger son, Constans, finally became Emperor, he banned the pagan religions.

Donald Trump realized that (conservative) Christians were an important voting block that could be easily fooled. He promised to ban abortion and in other ways promote the conservative Christian agenda. He appealed in particular to Christian Nationalists, catering to the lie that America was founded as an explicitly white Christian nation.

In office Donald Trump was able to appoint Christian Supreme Court justices who ruled that the Roe. v. Wade decision was wrong. Hence States could ban or restrict abortions. It also led Christians to hope that they could restore male dominance to our culture.

It is likely President Trump would have been re-elected in 2020 if it had not been for the consequences of the Covid pandemic. People were unhappy with the need to get vaccines and the impact on the economy. When Trump lost he acted like no prior American President. Instead of accepting defeat gracefully, he tried to overturn the results of the election. Despite his efforts, including the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress, he was forced out of office.

Constantine's measures had some immediate effects on the Empire. It is not likely his fault that the Empire had become too decadent to survive long in its old form. The civil wars returned. The Empire split in two. Christianity, with its insane belief system, became dominant, causing Rome to lose its scientific, philosophical, and technical advantages over rival nations. The Goths invaded in 376. In 402 Rome lost its status as the capital of the Western Roman Empire. In 568 the Lombards successfully invaded Italy. In 634 the Islamic caliphate invaded and eventually took over most of the Middle East, North Africa, and even Spain. The rump Eastern Roman Empire lingered on until the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

The decisions President Trump makes in his second term may alter the course of history, but there are many other people making decisions in the U.S. and the World. The worst thing Americans can do is to put Christians in a position of power where they can control the schools and end freedom of speech and the press. Christians teach faith, but in the modern world rational thought is necessary to maintain an economic and technological lead (or at least stay in the race). It is likely that by elevating Christianity the Roman Emperor Constantine guaranteed that the Empire would break up and Europe would experience the Dark Ages.

Let us hope that President Trump, having used Christians to regain power, will not enable them to send the entire nation back to the Dark Ages. As to the parallels between the two men, a full accounting will need to wait until Trump is retired from the Presidency.