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Updated: May 18, 2025
The Christian emperors, who respected the example of Constantine, displayed in all their military expeditions the standard of the cross; but when the degenerate successors of Theodosius had ceased to appear in person at the head of their armies, the labarum was deposited as a venerable but useless relic in the palace of Constantinople.
The bright oriental sun streamed down upon it, and as the trumpets sounded from beneath the imperial balcony, there filed into the arena the glittering troops of the empire, gorgeous in color and appointments, with lofty crests and gleaming armor, with shimmering spear-tips, prancing horses, towering elephants, and mighty engines of war and siege, with archers and spearmen, with sounding trumpets and swaying standards and, high over all, the purple labarum, woven in gold and jewels, the sacred banner of Constantine.
They knew that Theodosius would soon come to attack them, so they prepared for a great resistance in the passes of the Julian Alps, and the image of the Thundering Jupiter was placed to guard them. Theodosius had collected his troops and marched under the Labarum that is to say, the Cross of Constantine, which had been the ensign of the imperial army ever since the battle of the Milvian Bridge.
They will desert from the labarum, which Constantine carried to victory, to our standards; and those standards are all there, ready for use; they have been made in this city and are lying hidden in the house of Apollodorus. Heaven-sent daemons showed them in a vision to my disciple Ammonius, when he was full of the divinity and lost in ecstasy, and I have had them made from his instructions."
Jovian was educated in the profession of Christianity; and as he marched from Nisibis to Antioch, the banner of the Cross, the Labarum of Constantine, which was again displayed at the head of the legions, announced to the people the faith of their new emperor.
It "became," says Gibbon, with one of his amusing sneers, "extremely fashionable in the Christian world." The story of the vision of Constantine was connected with it, and the Labarum displayed its form in the front of the imperial army. It was thus not merely the emblem of Christ, but that also of the conversion of the Emperor and of the fatal victory of the Church.
I have the book before me, and have selected the following list of persons and allusions; many of which are indeed of so little use or ornament to their stations in this speech, that one would have thought even a republican requisition could not have brought them there: "Sampson, Dalila, Philip, Athens, Sylla, the Greeks and Romans, Brutus, Lycurgus, Persepolis, Sparta, Pulcheria, Cataline, Dagon, Anicius, Nero, Babel, Tiberius, Caligula, Augustus, Antony, Lepidus, the Manicheans, Bayle and Galileo, Anitus, Socrates, Demosthenes, Eschinus, Marius, Busiris, Diogenes, Caesar, Cromwell, Constantine, the Labarum, Domitius, Machiavel, Thraseas, Cicero, Cato, Aristophanes, Riscius, Sophocles, Euripides, Tacitus, Sydney, Wisnou, Possidonius, Julian, Argus, Pompey, the Teutates, Gainas, Areadius, Sinon, Asmodeus, Salamanders, Anicetus, Atreus, Thyestus, Cesonius, Barca and Oreb, Omar and the Koran, Ptolomy Philadelphus, Arimanes, Gengis, Themuginus, Tigellinus, Adrean, Cacus, the Fates, Minos and Rhadamanthus," &c. &c.
They will desert from the labarum, which Constantine carried to victory, to our standards; and those standards are all there, ready for use; they have been made in this city and are lying hidden in the house of Apollodorus. Heaven-sent daemons showed them in a vision to my disciple Ammonius, when he was full of the divinity and lost in ecstasy, and I have had them made from his instructions."
Yesterday the parabaloni came to blows over a body they were out burying, and in the struggle the bier was knocked down, and the dead spilled out. The Greeks, being the most numerous, captured the labarum of the Latins, and washed it in the mud; yet the monogram on it was identical with that on their own. Still I suppose there was a difference." Demedes laughed.
He adopted the Labarum of Constantine, "In hoc signo vinces"; and medals were struck, with the inscription, "Petrus I. Russo-Graecorum Imperator."
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