Emperor Constantine Moves the Empire's Capital

This day in 330 B.C. marks the start of the Roman Empire’s capital being Constantinople as decided by Constantine for reasons he says will help Rome’s future.

For 432 years now, Rome has always been the capital of the Roman empire. This seems logical, right? Why would you want the capital of your empire to be outside of your city? Well this isn’t what Constantine thought. Reactions to Constantine’s decision have been very negative, although the consequences of this could very easily be positive or negative. Until now, Constantinople was known as Byzantium and was just a colony in Greece that was not of extreme importance. However, when moving the capital, Constantine thought it would be fitting to rename Byzantium after himself. Hence, the name Constantinople.

Now, not only did he completely rebuild the capital, but split it into two halves. So, technically Rome is the capital of the Western Roman Empire, but the Eastern (or Byzantine) Empire has Constantinople. So what motivated Constantine to split the Roman Empire into essentially two empires? He claims that Rome’s large and growing size played a big part in this decision. Disorganization was something he was afraid would happen and was also likely to happen which could lead to decline of the Empire. Also, over the past 200 or so years, the economy has been becoming noticeably more unstable. The same situation applies to Rome politically. However, Rome currently seems to be at it’s peak in urbanization. That’s just one way citizens have been going against this decision, as negativity was the more popular reaction. Opposers can’t really be blamed though, can they?

What are your thoughts on this matter? Was moving the capital a good move or not? Let us know.

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