Dynamics

The war band we call the Vandals had crossed the Rhine in 406, far from Rome, when Honorius’s and Stilicho’s attention was focused elsewhere. They appeared in Africa more than twenty years later, under...

The skirmishes at the beginning of Khusro’s reign concluded with what both sides called the “endless peace” of 532, purchased by Justinian for a mere 11,000 pounds of gold. “Endless peace” lasted eight years.But...

Constantine had no reason to suspect that Maximian regarded him as anything other than simply the tribune who headed Diocletian’s personal guard, until he was startled at the beginning of their second week of...

“You will be free. I promise it.”And free he was not entirely to his surprise to meet her chair the next afternoon, according to a note brought to him that morning by a slave...

“This will be ours one day,” Fausta assured him, running her finger across the marble boundaries of nations and seas. “The whole of it, and even more.”“How can you be so sure?”“I know myself...

“Why not go beyond it?” Constantine bent over the map that occupied the top of the table. “Just north of a line drawn eastward at the northern tip of the island of Hibernia there...

Constantine, however, spoke before his father could answer. “I still say I must earn whatever honor shall come to me,” he insisted. “Name me your deputy for now, Father; we will let the future...

Scrupulously treating the giant Bonar with the respect due a local king, he had taken him on a tour of the countryside, letting him see the manifold blessings Roman rule had brought to Britain:...

Totila, indeed, was willing enough to meet him before his city walls, but could not catch him there, since like the rest of the Roman army he was afraid to fight. Wherefore Belisarius recovered...

Now everybody took it for granted that Belisarius had arranged this with his wife and made the agreement about the expedition with the Emperor, merely so as to get away from his humiliating position...