“The message said you wanted to see me at once.”
“Good! I’m glad to find somebody who obeys my orders.” The Emperor’s face softened. “It has come to my attention that you suffered a loss in your family recently.”
“My wife died in childbirth at Drepanum. The letter was here when I returned.”
“And the child?”
“My mother says he is strong and healthy.”
“As he should be, with the blood of Claudius Gothicus and Con stantius Chlorus in his veins, to say nothing of yours. Do you need to return to Drepanum?”
“No, Dominus. My mother will care for the child.”
“GoodI How soon can you start for Damascus and the Persian frontier in command of five hundred horse?”
It was the sort of question Constantine had come to expect from his years of close association with Diocletian and he had the answer. “Whenever the troops are ready, Dominus. Is there trouble in Damascus?”
“The whole Euphrates frontier has erupted! Narses of Persia has driven King Tiridates out of Armenial”
Counteract the rapidly increasing popularity of Caesar
Constantine needed no further explanation for Diocletian’s anger. For centuries one of the most unstable frontiers of the Roman Empire had been along the river Euphrates, where the Persian kings were ever ready to take advantage of any difficulty requiring the presence of the legions elsewhere. While Julius Caesar had been carrying out his spectacular campaigns in Gaul over three centuries earlier, Crassus, who was serving that year as Consul, had sought a quick victory over the Persians in order to counteract the rapidly increasing popularity of Caesar. Moving eastward from Syria, he had attacked them at Carrhae, but was forced to retreat by their superior cavalry. While conducting an orderly withdrawal, Crassus had been tricked into a conference of war by the enemy and treacherously slain and, leaderless, his army had been almost completely destroyed on the plains around Carrhae in one of Rome’s most humiliating defeats.
Again and again Rome had sought to stabilize the eastern frontier, but every few decades new fighting had broken out and the border had shifted east or west, depending upon the fortunes of war. During the reign of the Emperor Valerian, several decades before the accession of Diocletian, Armenia, a country lying north of Mesopotamia and touching the extreme eastern end of the Eux ine Sea, had been snatched away by the Persians. And only through the bravery of followers of the assassinated Armenian King Chas roes had his infant son, Tiridates, been saved.
Read More about Flavius Valerius Constantinus at the age of twenty two
