October 29, AD 312

Constantine the Great

Constantine enters Rome after defeating Maxentius

Rome's new ruler entered behind the severed head of the man who had ruled the city the day before.

One day after the battle

Constantine entered Rome on 29 October 312 — the day after his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, where Maxentius drowned in the Tiber during the retreat.

Contemporary imperial presentation treated the entry as a triumphal celebration attended by the Senate and the Roman people, whose enthusiastic response is described in Constantinian panegyrics.

The head in the procession

This was not simply a cheerful parade. Maxentius's recovered and mutilated remains were displayed, and his severed head became a focal point of the procession.

Nazarius's later panegyric says the head was afterwards sent across the Mediterranean to Africa, as proof of his death and as a symbol of the new regime's control.

What the sources actually are

Lactantius reports that the Senate and people acknowledged Constantine as emperor with rejoicing, and that the Senate awarded him the title Maximus.

The most vivid accounts of unanimous jubilation are panegyrics written to praise Constantine and to present his conquest of a Roman rival as Rome's liberation.

Even the category is argued over: whether the ceremony should be called a triumph, an adventus, an ingressus or a hybrid civil-war celebration remains a matter of scholarly interpretation.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

The date of the entry is well supported. The battle occurred on 28 October and the entry on 29 October.
Whether the ceremony should technically be called a triumph, an adventus, an ingressus or a hybrid civil-war celebration remains a matter of scholarly interpretation.
The most vivid accounts of unanimous jubilation are panegyrics written to praise Constantine and present his conquest as Rome’s liberation.
The precise sequence in which Maxentius’s body was recovered, decapitated and incorporated into the entry is reconstructed from several ancient and later sources rather than one neutral eyewitness narrative.