1 - The successors of Constantine

Summary

THE DYNASTIC INHERITANCE, 337–40

Newly baptized into the faith which he had professed and fostered in the Roman empire for twenty-five years, Constantine died in an imperial villa on the outskirts of Nicomedia at Pentecost (22 May) in 337. Amid public expressions of grief, soldiers of the guard laid the body in a golden coffin and bore it, draped in a pall of imperial purple, into Constantinople, where the dead ruler lay in state in his palace surrounded by brightly burning candles on gold candlesticks, guarded day and night by palace officials. Adorned with the diadem and other symbols of the imperial office, Constantine in death continued to receive the rituals of homage which military and civilian leaders normally addressed to a living emperor – he still reigned in his city (Eus. V. Const IV. 66–7). Of the other members of the ruling dynasty, it was Constantine's middle son, Constantius, who arrived from Antioch (where he was preparing for imminent conflict with Persia) to assume control of the funeral arrangements; although summoned at the news of his father's illness, he came too late to find him still alive (Jul. Or. 1.16c–d, 11.94b; Zon. XIII. 4.28). With Constantius at their head, soldiers and people accompanied the coffin to Constantine's recently completed mausoleum; but here the Caesar and his troops withdrew, and it was left to the ‘ministers of God' and a thronged congregation of the faithful to conduct the final obsequies. Raised on a lofty catafalque, Constantine was laid to rest, as he had intended, in the midst of memorials of the twelve apostles, and now in company with them in God's kingdom he received the prayers of his Christian subjects (V. Const. IV.60, 70–1).