CHAPTER XL

HAVING CONFERRED THE DIGNITY OF CÆSARS ON HIS THREE SONS AT THE THREE DECENNIAL PERIODS OF HIS REIGN, HE DEDICATED THE CHURCH AT JERUSALEM

BY this time the thirtieth year of his reign was completed. In the course of this period, his three sons had been admitted at different times as his colleagues in the empire. The first, who bore his father’s name, obtained this distinction about the tenth year of his reign. Constantius, the second son, so called from his grandfather, was proclaimed Cæsar about the twentieth, while Constans, the third (whose name expresses the firmness and stability of his character), was advanced to the same dignity at the thirtieth anniversary of his father’s reign. Having thus reared a threefold offspring, a Trinity, as it were, of pious sons, and having received them severally at each decennial period to a participation in his imperial authority, he judged the festival of his Tricennalia to be a fit occasion for thanksgiving to the Sovereign Lord of all, at the same time believing that the dedication of the church which his zealous magnificence had erected at Jerusalem might advantageously be performed.