This book was required reading for one of my undergraduate history classes. I've picked it up once again some 12 years after having read it the first time, and am happy to recommend it as a quality history of Constantine's conversion to the faith.

Jones does not spend a significant amount of time with Constantine's vision of the Chi Rho at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. This is proper because the most important thing about that event is what occurs afterwards.

This is a fair history with minimal amounts of speculation. Jones accurately states that we know little of Constantine's personal relationship with God. We have a historical record that, at first, is a witness of a somewhat ambiguous conversion and then speaks to a sort of "learning curve" where Constantine gets comfortable with his new Christian identity.

Constantine's first attitude toward the Christian faith seems to be that of a minimal insider. His first act was to cease persecutions and enact laws that tolerated the Christian faith. Interestingly, this emperor of an uncertain conversion (you get the impression he didn't know what to do with his faith) immediately began to intervene in Christian relgious affairs. Unfortunately, his conversion may have been too much of a "good thing" for the Christian church. Jones develops this theme well.

It had been Roman imperial custom for the emperor to decide what was pleasing to the gods. In this sense, Constantine seems to have struggled with this role in a Christian milieu. As compared to the pagan religions, Christianity had a well established hierarchical priesthood. And this, as Jones relates, is a powerful dynamic in Christian history - a struggle to find the right accommodation between Church and state.

Jone's work is a very good history. It is brief but packed with interesting data regarding not only Constantine but the early struggles of the Church in refuting error. Any student of early Church history or european history for that matter would enjoy this work.

in the course of Roman history, Jones aptly threads the line between historical analysis and narrative. He assuredly begins the book with a brief, yet astute history of Christianity in the Roman empire and carries through to the legal decrees establishing Christianity as the most favored religion of the empire. Yet, he does not forget to speculate on the plebeian reaction to Constantine's refusal to sacrifice to the Capitoline gods after his ascension to the throne.

This book is a wonderful place to begin the exploration of Christianity's role in the Roman empire.

This small, well-written volume does an admirable job of recreating the volatility of the theological-political cusp which the Roman empire found itself in the early 4th century. The primary instigator of this momentous transition, the Emperor Constantine, is rendered in a balanced, but somewhat muted, portrait. Beginning with an excellent explication of the root causes of Roman social and political difficulties in the 3rd century, Jones focuses quickly on the religious milieu of the times. In a few well-crafted paragraphs, he clearly illustrates Christianity's parallels and divergences from the other contemporary popular cults. This is combined with a somewhat bland recounting of Constantine's path to power and reasoned speculation concerning his famous pre-Malvian "vision," acceptance or rejection of which will largely depend on personal taste. Sounds good to me, though. Where the book really shines, though, is in its detailed portrayal of the bitter fractious disputes within the Church, and how they mercilessly frustrated Constantine's wish for theocratic unity. Seventeen centuries later, the Emperor's rage and consternation are still fresh in his letters.

A.H.M. Jones' exhaustive and resourceful two-volume work on the "Later Roman Empire," is a definite recommendation for anyone seeking a deeper perspective of the times, although for informal reading it is not suggested. Over three hundred years are covered elaborately in twelve-hundred pages, and also the appendix itself is roughly five-hundred pages, though much of it will not be intelligible to general readers, since much of the information in it is preserved in the original Latin. Jones' work is a fountain head of research material, broken into two parts: the first is a basic overview of the religious, political, and military conditions of the empire; and the second part, which is more bulky and detailed, is an overview of the social, economic, and administrative aspects of the empire. With this, and J.B. Bury's two-volume work on the "Later Roman Empire," one may boast of holding two of the greater achievements in scholarship on this particular area of study.

This mammoth work guides the reader through all aspects of the later Roman Empire showering facts and sources upon him. It is better, perhaps, as a source of reference than as bedtime reading, for its sheer size and density of fact would exhaust all but the most avid and concentrated historians of the period.

The most useful aspect of it must be the incredibly detailed source references, which comprise the fourth volume of his work. This enables those who have not the time or energy to wade through the entire book to use it as the definitive piece of reference for the period.

I am an absolute fanatic for history, particularly of the ancient and medieval time period. However, there are some books that, however interesting the subject COULD be, simply squeeze all the juice and sparkle out of history. This is one of them. It is bland, tedious, a maze of dry facts and endlessly reiterated names, which leaves you scarcely the wiser about what Augustus did, except for the summarizing paragraphs. I have seldom encountered a book so dreadful, boring, and impossible to read. If you love history, do not, I repeat, do not, waste your time trying to read this grey and flavorless droning.

As other reviewers have iterated, this book is a little dry and bland, yet it is also valuably thorough and complete. The first few chapters detail the upbringing and rise of Octavian (later Augustus) through politics and service to Rome under the banner of his adopted father, Caesar. The next chapters detail the governmental and constitutional process by which he gradually assumed absolute power over Rome in a way that seems to conform with Roman constitutional precepts.
This governmental section is fairly complex and can be a little confusing, as its use of uncommon Latin legal terms and concepts little known to the reader not well associated with Roman constitutionalism makes it extremely difficult to understand if a solid knowledge of Roman republican government is not already known by the reader. To grasp the full meaning of this section, prior knowledge of the period and subject will prove helpful, and the source list given by Jones in the book is thorough and gives some good ideas on where to find such information.
The final chapters are divided between different subjects changed or effected by the rule of Augustus, such as military, finance, religion, social policy etc. These chapters are well written in skillful brevity and give a valuable allotment of insight into the true importance of Augustus' rule and into Roman life at the end of the republic and beginning of the principate. The true value of this book is realized only in these final chapters, for it is in these that Jones skill as an interpretive and analytical historian take root. The earlier chapters feature less such masterful history, but they do give a thorough though dry overview of a major subject. Thankfully these last chapters make up for this and make the title a brief and valuable option for anyone looking interested in Roman or governmental history.

Jones does a good job of painting a portrait of Augustus from Julius Caesar's death to Augustus's own death. What Jones reveals is that Augustus was a wise ruler who tried to conceal his absolute power by putting on the trappings of a Republic, a man who prevented people from worshipping him while he was alive to prevent resentment from the nobles. Jones also shows how Augustus played a part in the great boom of literature and art during his reign (Livy, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid all lived during Augustus's reign). Although his cautious nature prevented him from being a great military leader like his adoptive father, he nonetheless ended many civil wars that plagued the empire before his arrival.