by Lord Acton An Address Delivered to the Members of the
Bridgnorth Institute May 28, 1877 When Constantine the Great
carried the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople, he set
up in the marketplace of the new capital a porphyry pillar,
which had come by raft and rail from Egypt, and of which a
strange tale is told. In a vault beneath he secretly buried the
seven sacred emblems of the Roman State, which were guarded by
the virgins in the temple of Vesta, with the fire that might
never be quenched. On the summit, he raised a statue of Apollo,
representing himself, and enclosing a fragment of the Cross; and
he crowned it with a diadem of rays consisting of the nails
employed at the Crucifixion, which his mother was believed to
have found at Jerusalem. The pillar still stands, the most
significant monument that exists of the converted empire; for
the notion that the nails which had pierced the body of Christ
became a fit ornament for a heathen idol as soon as it was
called by the name of a living emperor, in