The early Fathers of the Church in general condemned the military service as incompatible with the Christian life.[674] Not till the second century of the Empire do we find any record of Christian soldiers serving in the Roman armies. By this time the early rule of the Church forbidding a member to serve in the army had become relaxed; but members of the Christian body who entered the Roman legions were required to undertake a prescribed penance and to seek absolution before partaking of the Eucharist. By the time of Diocletian Christians appear to have entered with little or no scruple upon the military life.[675] A significant waymark of this gradual transformation is the great victory won by the Emperor Constantine over his rival Maxentius at the battle of Milvian Bridge, 312 A.D. Upon that field the soldiers of Constantine fought beneath the Labarum, a standard which bore as an emblem the Christian cross. The fortunate issue of the battle for Constantine seems to have greatly confirmed the feeling in the Christian community as to the legitimacy of war. The Church conformed more and more positively its teachings and discipline to the requirements of the military service. Saints Augustine (354–430 A.D.) and Ambrose (340–397 A.D.), in opposition to most of the earlier Fathers, were open apologists and defenders of war and of the military life. Thus during the very period when the Church was putting under its ban the cruel and sanguinary amusements of the Romans by the suppression of the gladiatorial games,[676] and thus lifting domestic morality to a new and higher plane, through a strange inconsistency it was first condoning and then finally consecrating the international pagan war system of which these sports were only a mild imitation. [Sidenote: (_b_) The war spirit of the German race]