PUTTING up that statue was bad enough. Now our York 'Romaniacs' want us to celebrate Constantine's "coronation".

Coronation indeed!

Roman squaddies were notorious for nominating candidates for the purple even when, as in this case, there wasn't a vacancy.

Still, July is the treason season, so Constantine was able to square things with his superiors, repudiate the embarrassing honour and settle for a kind of Gordon Brown job instead. All these shenanigans occurred a long time ago and are really best forgotten.

Hardly anyone has a good word to say for contemporary military despots.

We send armadas half way round the world to clobber them, lob smart-bombs down their palace chimneys, and whoop to see their statues toppled. Then, as the years go by, the naughtiness is indulgently overlooked, and we begin to think what jolly interesting chaps they were, and very likely misunderstood.

Some talk of Alexander, and some of Caesar, and Cromwell and Napoleon. I wish they wouldn't.

William Dixon Smith,

Welland Rise,

Acomb,

York.

Updated: 10:07 Tuesday, July 27, 2004