Dawn of a New Rome

The news of Galerius's death reached Trier beneath a sky the color of tarnished coin, carried by a courier who had ridden without pause since dawn. His horse collapsed at the palace gate, lungs heaving, foam spattering the flagstones. There were no public cheers, no sacrifices of thanksgiving in the temples. Instead, shutters clattered shut along the market streets and magistrates retreated indoors to calculate what fresh storms the passing of the Senior Augustus might unleash. Constantine accepted the sealed scrolls in the imperial map room, alone except for the faint, metallic tick of a clockwork water-timer and the soft shifting of parchment under his hand. Death, in this place, was not spectacle. It was the subtraction of a single counter, a vacancy that called for new moves.

The silence of the room was complete as Constantine broke the seal. He read without flicker of emotion, his single blue eye ranging from the Tigris to the Alps, weighing distances, supply routes, ambitions. For him, the passing of Galerius was not tragedy or triumph. It was opportunity-a reshuffling of the board, the curtain rising on a new act.

Two days later, Valerius arrived at dawn. His cloak was crusted with frost, his face drawn from lack of sleep. He set a leather case on the map table, unrolling its contents with a briskness that was all business. "Maximinus Daia struck first," he said, tapping Asia Minor on the parchment. "Every province east of the Bosphorus now flies his standard. He's quartered troops along the Hellespont and issued proclamations calling himself 'the chosen heir of Jovius.' The East belongs to him, at least for now."

He shifted his finger west, toward the Balkans. "Licinius has fortified Sirmium and Thessalonica. He's declared himself guardian of Europe and is sending embassies to the Danubian tribes, offering gold for auxiliary levies. The two face each other across the water, both waiting for the other to blink."

Constantine digested the news with a single, measured nod. "Wolves intent on each other's throats are less likely to wander toward Gaul." He motioned Valerius closer. "Spread the news along the garrisons in Raetia. Let them imagine Daia's ambitions turning westward. Fear of invasion sharpens loyalty. Men fight harder for their rations when they think the next enemy is just over the horizon."

With the east balanced on a razor edge, Constantine shifted every resource toward the south. Gallic smithies hammered day and night, forging helmets with reinforced crossbars-the same pattern his Rhine veterans favored after Crocus's raids-and the long spathae that could cut down a Frankish horseman at a gallop. He rode the drill fields in Augusta Treverorum at a walk, eyes sharp as frost, pausing to correct a recruit's shield grip or to ask an optio how many javelins a legionary could carry through snow-choked Alpine passes. Any centurion who stammered or hesitated found himself reassigned to a lonely watchtower in the Ardennes-no rebuke, no appeal, just exile.

His greatest innovation grew in a compound on the east bank of the Moselle: the Scholae Palatinae, five hundred cavalry hand-picked from Batavi, Chauci, and Alemanni nobles, each sworn to him personally. Their training regimen was unrelenting-mounted archery at a full gallop, night maneuvers through black forest, silent charges over muddy ditches. Constantine watched every exercise, his face unreadable, but his orders landed like hammer blows: promote this man, flog that one, double rations for the unit that finished drills in half the time. He shaped loyalty as much through terror as through reward. "The Praetorians guarded a city," he told Valerius. "My guard will guard the empire-and the one man who holds it together."

As swords and saddles multiplied, a quieter campaign unfolded in libraries and scriptoriums. Helena's request for toleration of the Christians had seemed a mother's plea at first, but Constantine saw its value. Where Galerius's officials still closed churches in the East, Constantine's magistrates in Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania were ordered to return confiscated houses of worship and exempt Christian clergy from civic labor. Word moved quickly along the Christians' hidden network-coded letters, fish-carved doorposts, whispered litanies-that in Constantine's provinces, they could breathe and build in peace. Each congregation became a cell of gratitude, forging links between the tin mines of Britannia and the vineyards of Aquitania, all whispering the emperor's name in their morning prayers.

Italy, meanwhile, offered a study in contrasts. Maxentius, barricaded behind Rome's walls, governed with pageantry-abolishing Galerius's taxes, staging lavish games, parading African grain through the streets. Statues of himself rose in the forum, paid for by confiscations from the old patrician houses; the grain arrived only when the winds allowed, and the patience of Carthage's governors wore thin. "A ruler of banquets and circus horses," Constantine said to Valerius, "not of steel or discipline."

The split grew wider with religion. In the East, Maximinus Daia, eager for the old gods' favor, reversed Galerius's toleration and launched a fresh round of Christian persecutions. Bishops fled Antioch, churches burned in Syria, and every lashing east of the Taurus echoed as a sermon in the West. Constantine watched the news without pleasure, but with cold understanding: each outrage sent more exiles, more prayers, more clandestine loyalty across his border.

Fausta, watching the swirl of these events while sharing wine with her husband one evening, read the board as clearly as the squares of their latrunculi game. "My brother trusts the mob's love and the height of his walls," she said, sliding a piece to threaten one of Constantine's guards. "But love is only love until the bread runs out. And stone cracks, given enough winter and enough weight."

"Then our task," Constantine replied, capturing her piece with a flick, "is to supply the cracks. When the time comes, Rome will learn how little love counts against an empty stomach and a marching column."

Logistics became the lever. He summoned the Trier mint's master, ordering a new aureus: his own profile, sharp and unyielding, on the obverse; Sol Invictus on the reverse, radiating spears of sunlight, above the legend SOLI INVICTO COMITI. The weight was precise, the gold content beyond question. "Pay every legionary with these," he said. "Let the merchants carry them south and east. Rome can count its debased denarii while our gold crosses every border in traders' hands."

He dispatched engineers to survey a new, broader road over the Cottian Alps. The work, officially to aid commerce, actually reduced the march-time of an invasion column by four days. Storehouses lined the route-ostensibly for merchant supplies, in reality for grain and fodder set aside for a future army. By autumn, the road was ready, caravans reporting it open even after the first snows fell. Constantine marked the route with a small black X on his map: a silent promise, waiting for the right moment.

As winter deepened over the Rhine, fresh intelligence arrived. Daia and Licinius, now locked in a cold war across the Bosphorus, taxed their provinces to the bone to pay for their standing armies. Refugees drifted westward, bringing tales of Daia's purges, Licinius's conscriptions, and the grinding poverty left behind by their rivalry. Every story found a hungry audience in Gallic barracks and markets. Constantine's scribes compiled the most useful tales, circulating them in barracks and marketplaces, careful to avoid any official stamp yet ensuring they were on every tongue by nightfall.

In early spring, Valerius presented the first minting tallies: nearly fifty thousand aurei in circulation, every one bearing Sol's unblinking gaze. "Merchants hoard them. Legionaries boast they can judge a man by the coins he pays with. Maxentius's bronze tokens are being melted for tool metal in Lugdunum."

Constantine nodded. Propaganda stamped in gold would last longer than any statue.

That night, alone in the map room, he pressed a new aureus into his palm and let his gaze follow the bright line of the Alpine road-south to Segusio, Turin, and Rome. He pictured Maxentius behind the Aurelian walls, fat with flattery and the noise of the mob, trusting the love of a city that had murdered a dozen emperors before dawn. Let him rely on pageants and burning Christians, Constantine thought. Let him mistake noise for loyalty and pageantry for strength. When the time came, iron would answer both.

He closed his fist over the coin, feeling the ridged edge mark his skin. The Unconquered Sun shone through his knuckles. The cold war had begun: gold against bread, toleration against terror, order against chaos. When the moment ripened, the road would open. The Scholae would ride at the head of thirty thousand legionaries, and Rome would learn that walls mean nothing to the sunrise.

Until then, Constantine built. He waited. He watched. Time itself-the purest coin-remained his to spend, and every grain of it was measured with ruthless care.