Compare And Contrast Constantine And Ashoka

Tamika Wright
Constantine vs. Ashoka
World Civilization: Jackson State University
Dr. Susan S Maneck

When reviewing the histories of the religions of Christianity and Buddhism, you can not help but come across the names of Ashoka and Constantine the Great. Even though Ashoka and Constantine aided in the spread of their empires and respective religions they had different reasons for doing so. Constantine, the son of a Roman Army officer was trained as a solider early on in his life. While he was growing up the role of emperor changed hands many times. Until and Roman general name Diocletian seized the throne During the leadership of Diocletian, he made a reform where he appointed Maximian, as a co emperor and two others co-rulers who became known as the Caesares. One of the Casesares was Constantius, Constantine the Great’s father,
True enough they would not worship him as a god but by accepting their beliefs it gave him another type of power. It was basically like the saying you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Constantine stopped the killing of Christians started by previous leadership, which made the Christian community grateful. This also put them in Constantine’s corner. So from then on, they mostly agreed with anything he wanted to do. He built on the organization of the empire government by mimicking the chain of power in the Christian leadership. He also assigned some of the positions of leadership in the empire to bishops and priests of the Christian Religion because they already understood how to lead and how important a chain of command is to a thriving culture. By doing this would also increase his political control. He exempted the Bishops and many of the churches from imperial taxation. He also pushed the Christian community to come up with one centralized idea of what a Christian is and rules they should live