Dawn of a New Rome

The proclamation spread through Gaul like winter fog, slipping under doors and settling in every forum, every market square, every echoing basilica. Worded with the bland mercy of officialdom, it read: Maximian Herculius, stricken with remorse for his rebellion against Constantinus Augustus, has taken his own life. Traders repeated it in low voices, magistrates carved it into waxed tablets and pressed the imperial seal, soldiers nodded to it at roll call without question-at least as long as daylight ruled the streets.

After dark, in the corners of smoky taverns and behind the locked doors of private houses, a quieter consensus formed. There, the sentence was not recited, but lived. Men who had once praised Maximian's iron will now exchanged wary glances. Constantine's reach was longer than any exile's hope, his justice a blade that neither kinship nor past glory could blunt. In Gaul and beyond, rumor grew fangs: the West had a new master, and no rival-old or new-would live long to dispute it.

Valerius delivered that unspoken verdict three days after the burial, hands clasped behind his back as he stood beneath a sunbeam slicing the imperial study in two. "Publicly, they mourn an old emperor," he said, voice almost bored, as if stating a military report. "Privately, they understand your rule is not to be tested. The legions say the same."

Constantine sat at his writing table, quill poised above a half-finished letter to the council in Londinium. He allowed himself the faintest incline of the head. "Fear," he said, returning his gaze to the map of the western provinces, "is a more reliable foundation than love." His stylus tapped Trier, then traced the arterial roads south to Arelate, west to Lugdunum, and east to the old Rhine line. "And foundations must be reinforced, or they crack."

Reinforcement began not with stone, but with flesh and loyalty. The old Praetorian Guard in Italy had proven, again and again, that an emperor made by their favor could be unmade by their whim. Constantine would not wager his life on the mood of a city he did not yet control. Orders went out under his seal for the creation of a new bodyguard-the Scholae Palatinae. They were to be a mounted corps drawn from the fiercest Batavi horsemen, the steadiest Alemanni lancers, and veterans of the Rhine wars whose allegiance lay not with Rome, but with Constantine himself. They would wear no urban insignia, answer to no prefect, and camp within the palace walls wherever the Augustus made his seat. When Valerius raised a brow at bypassing the traditions of centuries, Constantine answered with a shrug and a simple sentence: "The Praetorians serve privilege; my guard will serve survival-the survival of the Empire, which is to say, me."

So the yards of Augusta Treverorum and Arelate rang with the clash of spear on shield, the snorting of horses, and the drill-sergeant's roar. In rain and sleet, the Scholae Palatinae trained until the last doubt was pounded into muscle and habit. Valerius watched them with the keen eye of an old centurion. "They'll stand longer than Rome ever did," he muttered.

While Constantine forged a new defense, Helena arrived in the audience chamber. No longer merely the grieving widow of Constantius, nor an intercessor for her disgraced husband, she came as supplicant for a cause older than any dynasty: the outlawed faith of the Christians. "Your father tolerated them," she began, skipping ceremony, her tone iron beneath the silk. "He saw no threat in their worship, only in open rebellion."

Constantine set aside his stylus, studying her with the measured gaze that had unnerved more than one adversary. "He saw none because Galerius hunted larger game," he said. "Christians were too busy keeping their heads down to rebel."

"And yet they endured," Helena answered. "They are many, organized, and for now, grateful to anyone who lets them breathe."

It was not sentiment that moved him, but calculation. A persecuted sect, united by ordeal, could become a hidden lattice binding disparate provinces-if harnessed, not hounded. That afternoon, an edict left the chancery, drafted in Constantine's own tight script: Throughout Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania, let assemblies of the Christiani meet unmolested, and let their seized property be returned without penalty. The cost was a few lines of parchment; the gain was a network of quiet, fervent allies who would whisper his name in every dawn liturgy. Helena's gratitude shone in her eyes, and Constantine accepted it the way a general accepts a captured standard-useful, but not cherished.

As spring edged forward, rumors from the East crossed the frontiers, born on merchant caravans that traveled faster than any imperial courier. The first reports described Galerius, the Senior Augustus, ravaged by a malady so foul that physicians recoiled from his presence. Valerius summarized the lurid tales with a wrinkled nose. "A living corpse, they say-flesh rotting where it clings to bone. The court in Nicomedia masks the stench with incense, but it leaks through the corridors."

Constantine listened, outwardly unmoved. A dying emperor meant lines of allegiance refolding across the Empire; it also meant that whatever settlements Galerius had forced upon the tetrarchy would soon unravel.

Then, one morning, a sealed dispatch arrived, its wax still moist, bearing the imperial sign of Nicomedia. Valerius stood at attention before the Augustus, reading aloud with only the faintest flicker of disbelief. Galerius, once the scourge of every Christian, had granted legal existence to their sect. He had ordered all confiscated churches to be restored and begged the prayers of those he had sought to eradicate. His signature shook at the base of the parchment, letters crooked and faint, as if written by a hand already halfway to the grave.

Constantine's lips twisted into a thin smile. "The wolf howls repentance when the forest catches fire." The edict was not mercy, but calculation-an emperor's final wager on the prayers of men and the gods of the desperate. If prayers had power, Galerius would purchase them; if not, the gesture cost him nothing.

Days passed, the Alpine snows melted, and another courier, cloak crusted with dust and salt, rode into the forum. He knelt, handed over a bundle of tablets, and gasped out a single sentence: "Galerius is dead." The words fell in the council chamber with the finality of a dropped sword. Constantine dismissed the messenger, closed the doors, and stood before the great lacquered map that measured his future in miles and in blood.

Four emperors remained. Licinius held the Danubian provinces, newly raised by Galerius's dying favor. Maximinus Daia controlled Egypt and Syria, treasuries bursting with Alexandrian grain and ambitions as swollen as the Nile in flood. Maxentius squatted in Rome behind Praetorian swords, buying loyalty with bribes and games, bleeding the city with taxes. And Constantine-master of Gaul, Britannia, Hispania, and the Rhine-held the loyalty of the western cities, the discipline of the Rhine legions, and now the silent gratitude of a religion that spanned every workshop and market in the Empire.

He rested two fingers on Trier, then swept them south across the Alps to Rome, east to Sirmium, farther to Antioch and Alexandria. It was not distance that daunted-it was sequence. Strike too soon and the others would unite against him; wait too long, and another would tip the scales. The death of Galerius had not settled the world; it had merely unlocked the cages, loosing every hungry predator to the hunt.

Valerius entered quietly, boots silent on the mosaic floor, awaiting orders that had not yet been given. Constantine spoke without turning. "Send envoys to Licinius-congratulations on his elevation, condolences on our mutual loss. Offer him friendship, marriage alliances, the usual coins and courtesies." His fingertip paused on Pannonia. "He will think me cautious." A second tap, measured and inevitable, landed on Rome. "Meanwhile, we test the cracks. Grain shipments, trader permits, rumors about Praetorian arrears-anything that widens the divisions in the city."

"And Maximinus Daia?" Valerius inquired.

"Let him glare at Persia and count the cost of guarding both the Tigris and the Nile. Our task is to keep the board fluid, keep every rival off balance until I choose which piece to remove."

He walked to the window overlooking Arelate's forum. Below, the Scholae Palatinae drilled in formation, dragon-tailed standards snapping in the late spring wind. Beyond them, a knot of Christians emerged from a half-repaired basilica, heads bowed in evening prayer. Soldiers and worshippers mingled in the same square, neither group giving ground, both knowing who permitted their peace.

Night fell, lamps blossomed along the colonnades, their flames small but defiant against the dark. Constantine watched the light spread, each lamp a fragile point pushing back chaos. He remembered Maximian's final, desperate glare; remembered the hush that followed the thrust of a dagger. Rule, he knew, was never an absence of threat, but the certainty that every threat would meet its end.

His empire was still a quarter of the whole, but fear traveled faster than any legion, and loyalty-bought by coin, by blood, or by the hope of mercy-could be driven into the bedrock of an age. Galerius had died begging prayers; Maximian had died by his own hand; others would fall, until no rival names remained to be carved into proclamations.

Constantine turned from the window, cloak whispering over the tiles, and returned to his maps. The candles burned low, but his gaze remained steady, tracing rivers that would soon carry armies, and borders that would, as always, break and remake themselves in iron.