“I would trust your father with my life and, I am beginning to suspect, you also,” he said. “But Galerius insists that you remain in the East. Daia goes to the Euphrates frontier; he will gain experience quickly there. Maxentius will be assigned to the Prefecture of Italy. He seems to prefer luxury and debauchery to his duty as an officer and will find plenty in Rome to keep him from ambitions that might roil the waters elsewhere. Besides, trouble is beginning to build up in Africa, so he will have an opportunity to gain experience there.”
“He is brave and daring ”
“A little too daring for my liking,” Diocletian said dryly. “As for you, I plan to keep you near me as an officer of the Imperial Guard. Dacius says you not only are a fine soldier but also have a wise head on your shoulders, and I must say that you proved it in the affair of the Gallic prince, Crocus.”
“But you weren’t even there that day, Dominus. I didn’t think you knew anything about it.”
Diocletian chuckled. “An emperor needs eyes and ears that do not show, if he would remain in power. Of course Prince Crocus could not continue as a cavalry instructor after being unhorsed and defeated by one of his own students. But Constantius took your word for his ability and he is now one of your father’s best commanders.”
“I’m glad, for Crocus.”
“You will be transferred to a post as a centurion in my household troops immediately,” Diocletian told him. “And if you are everything I think you are, your rank will soon be higher.”
Overwelmed, Constantine had trouble finding words. “It is more than I deserve, sire.”
“Then prove that you deserve it, and that you are as wise as Dacius says you are, by answering a question for me,” Diocletian said crisply. “With four great armies to maintain and borders to guard, more money must always be found to pay the prices charged by the merchants. The emperors who went before me steadily debased the precious metal in our coin but that only made matters worse. What do you think would be the effect of an edict setting all prices and wages at their present levels?”
Realized that by agreeing
It was not an easy question and Constantine couldn’t be sure whether Diocletian was really asking his advice, which seemed unlikely, or simply testing his powers of reason. Having grown up in Naissus close to the fertile earth of Illyricum, he had absorbed from it and from his parents some of the sturdy individuality which characterized alike the peasant and the nobility of that region, so his first instinct was to oppose the Emperor’s projected scheme. Yet he realized that by agreeing with Diocletian, he might strengthen his own position at court and hasten his elevation into (lie military hierarchy that ranked just below the Emperor himself in the affairs of the Empire. Not for a moment, however, did he yield to the latter temptation.
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