In the course of almost twenty years as an officer in the Roman army, Varronian had learned the habit of obedience. Orders were orders, and not to be questioned – not out loud, anyway. But that didn't mean a man couldn't have his doubts, or occasionally laugh with his mates over an ale about the stupidity of some of the things they had been asked to do.

The nature of Varronian's current daily assignment seemed to beg for one of those irreverent sessions with his comrades, but he doubted one would occur – not for the foreseeable future, anyway. Some orders were just too sensitive to be laughed about, no matter how ludicrous they might be to any sane person. And when an order came from as far up the chain of command as one of the Caesars, it fell into that category of commands that was beyond the relief of ridicule.

It had been more than a month since the old emperor Constantine had died. His second surviving son, the dutiful Constantius, had come promptly from Nicomedia and taken matters in hand. An honor guard had escorted the dead Emperor's body back to Constantinople, where a vast circular mausoleum, reminiscent of that of the pagan Emperor Galerius at Thessalonica, had already been erected on the fifth hill, out near the city walls. The dead Emperor, who had met his death garbed in the simple white gown of a catechumen, was wrapped once again in the magnificent clothes and purple robes of his imperial rank, and a gold diadem was placed upon his head. Then he was laid in state on a bed of solid gold in the great hall of the new Daphnae palace he had erected a few years earlier in his new capital, Nova Roma Constantinopolis.

It was through the corridors of that palace that Varronian walked briskly this morning, magnificent in the red cloth and gleaming armor of an officer in the corps of the Domestici. Guards in the corridors sprang to attention and saluted him stiffly as he passed. Varronian merely nodded as he passed. His assignment made him uncomfortable, and he wanted to get it over as soon as he could and get back to some real work in the barracks of the Domestici. But he was a soldier, and a good one. Moreover, he hoped that if he did well during his detail to the capital at this sensitive time, he might be granted his wish to be transferred back to his home city of Antioch in Syria. Varronian came from one of the most distinguished old families of that distant province. Although life at the Empire's center in the raw new imperial capital had some compensations, there were many things drawing him back to Antioch. He had a handsome villa there in the lush suburb of Daphne, a pretty and much younger wife with an equally impeccable family pedigree, and a charming six-year-old son with rosy cheeks, bright eyes, and eternally tousled hair that he had not seen for eight months now. He hoped young Jovian was learning his letters well – the boy was smart enough, no question of that, but he sometimes seemed to lack application and diligence.

Varronian entered the great hall of the palace, and the four guards in the center of the room immediately leapt to attention and saluted. In some ways, that was the hardest part of this performance – the fact that there was actually a live audience for it. Varronian felt completely absurd carrying out these orders, and sometimes it was hard not to just break off what he was doing and start laughing. But that would never have done. It wouldn't be good for word to reach his superiors about such a display of levity, and it might be equally dangerous if word of it got back to the old Emperor's German bodyguards. The Germans viewed the old man as a cross between a father and a living god, and they would have reacted with fury to anything that they interpreted as a gesture of disrespect to him.

Varronian strode quickly across the hall and placed himself at the foot of the golden bed. The old man was still there, all right, as he had been every day for the past month and would be until his other sons arrived for the funeral. Varronian couldn't help involuntarily sniffing the air, but thank god there was no aroma of decay. (That was another reason to be grateful that Egypt was part of the Empire, Varronian thought wryly – it produced such exceptional embalmers.)

Varronian drew himself up rigidly to attention, saluted, and cried "Hail, Augustus!" Then he commenced his report. The Sarmatians on the Danube frontier were restless (but weren't they always?). In England, all was quiet. The Governor of Africa reported some problems with border raiders from the Atlas Mountains who were attacking townships along the western frontiers of his province. Along the eastern frontier, scouts probing the Persian frontier from the fortified posts of the limes Diocletiani and other advance posts such as the Moor's Fort, Singara, and Bezabde reported growing evidence that Shapur II was making plans for war. (All the more reason, Varronian thought, for him to have done with this business of making reports to a dead man and get back to his home province, where he might soon be needed to help protect his native city and his young family from the intended depredations of the proud and aggressive young king of Persia.)

The dead man on the bier in front of him took in his report as impassively as he always did. It was odd to see him this way, day after day, dead and lifeless, when Varronian had served Constantine for so many years when he was an active and vital living man. He had entered his service more than a decade earlier. Varronian had been among the crowd of staff officers watching from a distance on the morning when Constantine had marked out the limits of his new capital. Constantine had remade the world, and now the world seemed unable to let him go. The nineteen-year-old Constantius had decreed that his dead father would officially remain Emperor until such time as the Senate officially ratified his accession and that of his two brothers to the status of Augusti. That meant that all the court ceremonial had to continue to revolve around a dead man. One of the things that helped Varronian feel a little less ridiculous was the knowledge that the prefect Ablavius and the patrician Optatus had to go through the same empty ritual of offering their reports to the dead Emperor every afternoon.

Varronian completed his report. He knelt for a moment in a gesture of respect, then rose and strode quickly from the hall, his sandals echoing off the polished marble of its walls. Constantius was foolish, with his determination to show the proper respect to that crowd of timorous old farts with their grand names and puffed-up pretensions in the former capital. These weren't the times of the original Augustus any more, when the memory of the old Republic – and of his uncle's assassination – were still fresh. It wasn't those fatuous old men with names like Cornelius and Fabius and Domitius who counted for anything any more. The Empire ran on the hereditary principle now, and it was silly to pretend otherwise. Their families were so lacking in the old Roman virility that their sons were known to amputate their thumbs in order to avoid military service, leaving the higher ranks to be filled by provincials like Varronian, who still accepted the values that had made Rome master of so much of the world. Nowadays, what a Cornelii or a Scipio thought of anything made a lot less difference than what those semi-civilized barbarians – Quadi, Sarmatians, Goths, Limigantes, Alamanni, and Franks – in the Emperor's bodyguard made of it. The bodyguards would accept no ruler aside from one or more of the sons of Constantine, Varronian felt certain. The old man's nephews – Dalmatius and Hannibalianus – might enjoy their wealthy provinces and their grand titles as Caesars a while longer, but Varronian was convinced that their eventual fall was as inevitable as that of the tiniest sparrow.

Varronian left the halls and shaded walks of the Daphnae behind and made his way across the palace grounds to the barracks of the Domestici. It would be another hot and steamy summer day in Nova Roma Constantinopolis, and he longed keenly for the shaded laurel groves and splashing pools and fountains of the lovely glen of Antiochene Daphne.

Principal Sources:

Edward Gibbon, The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire (J.B. Bury ed.), Volume II, at 233-34 (drawing upon Aurelius Victor and the fourth chapter in Eusebius of Caesarea's Life of Constantine)

Author's Note: Count Varronian was the father of the short-lived Emperor Jovian, who briefly succeeded Julian the Apostate in 363-64. From Book 25 of Ammianus Marcellinus, we know that he retired from a distinguished military career in the early 360's, suggesting that he was probably a staff officer of some significant rank around the time of Constantine the Great's death. We don't know where he was posted in the summer of 337, so I have used some imaginative license to have him serve as my medium for exploring the bizarre interregnum that followed Constantine's death.