Constantine signalised Diocletian’s plan of dividing the responsibility of government by founding a new capital at Byzantium. His motives were probably mixed. In the first place he would be free of the awkward republican traditions which still kept reasserting themselves, and in the second place Constantinople was a more central and a much more defensible situation. But, more than all, in this new Rome he could break away from the old religion. Constantine’s plan for restoring the tired and afflicted world was the adoption of Christianity. The Decree of Milan (313) made Christianity the official religion, though not the only religion, of the Empire. It was already the religion of the court--ever since Constantine had seen his famous vision of the Angel descending from Heaven with the sign of the Cross and uttering the words ἐν τούτω νίκα--“Hoc signo vinces.” Still half-pagan, the emperor had made the Cross his mascot, and in the strength of it had defeated his rival at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome.[92] Constantine himself was by no means a saint; in murdering kinsmen he was, in fact, among the worst of the emperors, but unwittingly he saved the world by his conversion. Meanwhile the extravagance with which he adorned his new city afflicted the whole Empire with the burdens of fresh taxations. The scheme of a divided Empire failed. After Theodosius (395) the division became permanent. The Eastern throne remained secure for another thousand years, protected by the admirable strategic position of Constantinople. The contempt with which it has hitherto been treated by historians is now beginning to break down, and it is seen that the Byzantine Empire not only stood as the bulwark for the West against the East but preserved for us the inestimable treasures of Greek intellect. The Roman tradition, now inextricably mingled with the Greek, lingered on there unchanged, even to the very chariot-races which still threw society into a ferment. To this day the inhabitants of Greece and Roumania distinguish themselves from their oriental neighbours by the proud title of “Romans.”