Arch of Constantine Erected with “Instinctu Divinitatis” Inscription

The valley between the Palatine and the Colosseum filled with the ring of tools. Work crews hauled marble drums; masons set blocks while supervisors shouted over the din. Rising above the Via Triumphalis, the Arch of Constantine turned the Milvian victory into stone and inscription. The dedicatory text—carved in capital letters along the attic—called the Senate and People of Rome the givers, and credited the triumph “instinctu divinitatis” and the emperor’s “greatness of mind” [4].

The phrase did heavy lifting. “By inspiration of the divinity” was both bold and ambiguous. It let traditionalists hear Jupiter or the sun while Christians heard the God under whose sign Constantine said he fought. The inscription’s conservative grammar matched its political purpose: keep the peace in a city whose temples still smoked and whose elite still guarded ancestral rites [4].

Spolia from earlier emperors—Trajanic hunts, Hadrianic sacrifices, Aurelianic victories—were recut with Constantine’s features. Old reliefs framed a new reign. The message was visual policy: Constantine as heir to Rome’s greatest and as the one who restored the res publica “by arms” and “by justice.” The colors were Roman—porphyry accents, creamy marble, bronze fittings—and the soundscape was civic: processions, chariot wheels, and chants on feast days [4].

The arch also mapped a route. Victors entered Rome along the Via Flaminia, turned by the Colosseum, and passed under its central vault. There, above them, the Senate’s words hedged sanctity with statecraft. Those words validated the emperor even as they comforted the old order. They would be read by crowds for centuries, the Latin letters catching the afternoon sun [4].

In an age when Constantine would soon fund churches and convene bishops, the Arch of Constantine shows him mid-pivot, fluent in two idioms. He could tell Eusebius of a cross above the sun and let Rome inscribe “instinctu divinitatis” without a scandal. Marble preserved the compromise [1][4].