 The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire . He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself ( the laudatory epithet of " New Rome " came later , and was never an official title ) . It would later become the capital of the Empire for over one thousand years ; for which reason the later Eastern Empire would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire . His more immediate political legacy was that , in leaving the empire to his sons , he replaced Diocletian 's tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession . His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and centuries after his reign . The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype , a point of reference , and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity . Beginning with the Renaissance , there were more critical appraisals of his reign due to the rediscovery of anti @-@ Constantinian sources . Critics portrayed him as a tyrant . Trends in modern and recent scholarship attempted to balance the extremes of previous scholarship . 
