“You can thank Galerius for that,” Marios told him. “With your father allied to the House of Maximian by marriage, our new Caesar feared that too much power would be concentrated in the West. He got around that by persuading Diocletian to make Constantius send you to Nicomedia for your military training.”
“Then Flavius will be little more than a hostage!” It was Helena’s turn to be disturbed now. “I didn’t realize that.”
“Constantius wanted it that way,” Marios assured her. “Diocletian has always considered him almost a son, and Flavius here is so much like his father that the Emperor is sure to notice the resemblance, as well as the boy’s good qualities. Galerius is smart but this time I think he outfoxed himself. Unless I miss my guess, Flavius will be Diocletian’s favorite in less than a year.”
Road from Drepanum
It Was midafternoon of a lovely spring day when Marios and Constantine rounded a low bluff on the road from Drepanum where they had left Helena with her family to the Western Roman capital of Nicomedia and reined in their horses for a moment. A scene of rare beauty met their eyes, with rolling hills in the foreground, green clad with vineyard, pasture and field, set against the backdrop of the mountains in the distance.
The land sloped down to the Gulf of Nicomedia, a rather narrow arm of the largely landlocked Sea of Marmara that connected the Mediterranean with the Euxine, or Black Sea. From the hills, streams tumbled toward the gulf through grassy valleys, broken here and there by rocky outcrops. But the land was generally fertile, and rustling bamboos, bays, junipers and rough oaks lined the valleys in their lower courses, while higher up were groves of gaunt looking pines surrounded by fields of yellow flowering broom, heath and bracken.
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