Gods and Legions

V

He rode in triumph through the streets of Constantinople on a white stallion that had been groomed for Constantius' own planned triumphal entry, past the magnificent churches of Saint Sophia and Saint Irene, the famous library known as the Royal Porch, at which he gazed longingly, the colonnades of the jewelry makers, the Baths of Zeuxippus located between the Imperial Palace and the Hippodrome, and two miles down the length of the High Street. For the entire distance he was preceded by a thousand priests and bishops in the finery of their office, intoning a solemn hymn and asperging the genuflecting crowds with conifer sprigs dipped in holy water. The street was thronging with celebrating citizens, and had been decorated with thousands of wreaths and silken banners. Even the paving stones were strewn with petals. Children threw flowers and called to him, and women screamed at the sight of him, reaching out their hands to touch his foot or even his horse's braided tail as he rode by. The remainder of the thirteen thousand Gauls who had not deserted him on the cold mountain pass three weeks before marched proudly in formation behind, fitted with new bronze and polished leather, feted with the customary gift of five pounds of silver per man from the new Augustus, and basking in their appointment to his personal guard.

At each of the great forums through which we passed — Arcadius, the Amastrian, Brotherly Love — the prefects of each city district approached with heads bowed, seizing his hands to make obeisance and offering words and gifts of welcome. At the Ox Market, he leaned down and picked up a small boy, perhaps five years old, who had run up to his horse and begun waving wildly to him. Placing him on his lap, Julian and the lad rode to thunderous cheers from the onlookers. I reflected that the boy was about the same age that Julian's own son would have been, and that had he lived he would have been riding in exactly that same position, on his father's legs, heir to the throne of the entire Empire. Upon finally arriving at the massive Square of Constantine, a fanfare of horns was sounded, the city militia marched out in a precision drill, and the Emperor Julian Augustus saluted Constantinople, the first city of the Eastern Empire.

The fame of his victories in Gaul, and the audacity of his break with his mentor, had made him a celebrity to the population, relieved at being spared the prospects of a civil war that might have destroyed the unity of the Empire. The capital was a whirlwind of celebration and well-wishing, despite the funeral services being held simultaneously for the dead Emperor, over which Julian himself presided as the deceased's nearest living relative, and for whom he even managed to squeeze a tear or two in a reasonable semblance of grief. As it happened, Constantius had suffered an untimely bout of fever at Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, and died shortly afterwards, at the age of forty-four, having reigned for twenty-four years. Julian's first significant act was to order a generous pension to be awarded to his predecessor's bereaved widow, Faustina, who had been married to him for only several months and who, against all expectations and without the assistance, it is assumed, of any intermediaries save for the saints, had managed to conceive by the former emperor. The baby girl was born early the following year.

His second act was to order the liberation and recall of Sallustius, who had been awaiting execution in a prison in Milan, and to promote him to chief magistrate of the court trying political crimes under Constantius' administration.

As he entered the Imperial Palace for the first time as Emperor, he peered around at the magnificence of the marble and mosaics, the richness of the wall tapestries, the sheer, overwhelming opulence of all he encountered, and immediately requested that a small pantry off the enormous kitchens be cleared, in which he would prepare his unpretentious study. The crowds of fluttering eunuchs around us were aghast at such slovenliness, but at his insistence did his bidding. That night, as I settled in with some medical texts in a chair in his room, munching a piece of flat bread I had filched from the kitchen just outside the door, he leaned back on his hard stool and surveyed the small, dim space with as much satisfaction as if it had been the most lavish throne room of King Sapor himself.

'Caesarius,' he said to my dismay, 'now do you doubt the significance of your fall in the mud?'