Eusebius says "The city named after the Emperor was filled throughout with objects of skilled artwork in bronze dedicated in various provinces. To these under the name of gods those sick with error had for long ages vainly offered innumerable hecatombs and whole burnt sacrifices, but now they at last learnt sense, as the Emperor used these very toys for the laughter and amusement of the spectators." [VC 3.54.3]

The bishop has misrepresented Constantine's motives - didacticism was surely not the point - but Eusebius correctly notes that the preserved bronzes had ceased to function as cult objects. Whatever people may have thought about the power inherent in these images, they were not tended by priests and they were not the recipients of sacrifice. Rather, they were installed in order to provide Constantinople with the grandeur that it should possess as a New Rome. This is the only context that fully explains Palladas' poem. The usual fate of pagan statues captured by Constantine was to be turned into coins, but some brazen gods managed to avoid this end by converting to Christianity - that is, by leaving their pagan cult behind and taking up residence in the new Christian capital of this very Christian emperor.

[W2; p.181]It is noteworthy, however, that he jokingly attributes the gods' survival to the fact that they converted to Christianity.

This is precisely the story that is told in verse by Palladas. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that both he and Eusebius were writing about the same events. There is no need to suppose any direct literary relationship between the two; both were undoubtedly conforming to the victor's propaganda.

The four epigrams on the converted temple of Tyche, therefore, are a further meditation on the upheaval experienced by the pagan cults under the new Christian regime.

What, if anything, happened at this point to the locus of Tyche-veneration where Pompey had erected a statue and inscription in the goddess's honour? John Lydus says that the place was converted into a tavern at some unspecified point between the first century b.c. and his own day (the sixth century) .... . John Lydus and Palladas both attest that it was transformed into a tavern. And Palladas' testimony allows us to date this transformation with high probability to the reign of Constantine I.

Image from constantine the great coins

Any woman who divorced her husband against his will without being able to prove that he was a murderer, a sorcerer, or a tomb-defiler forfeited all of her property and could be sent into exile. A man was permitted to repudiate his wife only if he could prove that she was an adulteress, a sorceress, or a procuress (conciliatrix) . Should the wife be innocent of these crimes, the divorcing husband had to restore her dowry and he was forced to remain single for the duration of his life. Any future attempt on his part to remarry entitled the first wife to financial compensation. Constantine's legislation did much more than merely discourage unilateral divorce; it seems to have been an attempt to stamp out the practice in all but the most extreme cases. This revolution in Roman divorce law supplies a terminus post quem of A.D. 331 for Palladas' epigram.

One can only imagine that this Constantinian reform was an extremely unpopular measure. But our knowledge of its fate in subsequent years is hampered somewhat by the fact that no manuscript preserves the third book of the Theodosian Code.

"Judicial decisions made by bishops are to be upheld. Enforcement is to be the responsibility of the prefect. If a party to a law suit may request the case to be heard by a bishop rather than a secular judge, the request is to be granted."

[Codex Theod, ref not known as yet]

Palladas should now assume his rightful place alongside Eusebius of Caesarea as an early (if also enigmatic) witness to the very early years of Constantine's city. More important perhaps than the topographical hints to be gleaned from Palladas' epigrams is his perspective on the religious character of Constantinople in the 330s. The conversion of Tyche's temple was one more example for him of the manner in which the traditional cults had suddenly been undermined. And statues of the gods that adorned the city's public spaces had, he says, converted to Christianity. Not only had they ceased to be objects of pagan cult, they had taken on the religious character of the emperor and of the emperor's new capital. Most strikingly of all, Palladas calls Constantinople 'the Christ-loving city'. None of this should be surprising. At about the same time, Eusebius of Caesarea was confidently declaring the birth of a new Christian capital, dedicated to the God of the martyrs and purged of all idol-worship.

In modern scholarship, however, not everyone has found this claim to be wholly credible. Some have detected incongruous elements in the public religion of the capital: from quasi-pagan monuments like the new Tychaion, to the appearance of Victories and other conventional figures, to the Helios imagery of Constantine's statue in the Forum. The presence of these and similar features cannot be denied and may seem to contradict Eusebius' claim. Indeed, if 'pagan' and 'Christian' are to be treated as pure categories, then there can be no doubt that Constantinople contained a 'mixed' or even 'contradictory' religious environment. But on this score others have already pointed the way forward. Because Constantine himself was avowedly Christian, whatever he endorsed in the realm of public religion in his city was also perforce Christian - however much discomfort some elements might have caused a visiting bishop from Caesarea.

Palladas is now our second extant witness from the 330s, and he seems to corroborate Eusebius' testimony on this point. Whatever continuities with the pagan past that we might now detect, Constantinople was perceived by Constantine's subjects to be a Christian city from its inception.