CHAPTER LXIX

MOURNING ROR CONSTANTINE AT ROME; AND PAINTINGS IN MEMORY OF HIS DEATH

ON the arrival of the news of the emperor’s death in the imperial city, the Roman senate and people felt the announcement as the heaviest and most afflictive of all calamities, and gave themselves up to an excess of grief. The baths and markets were closed, the public spectacles, and all other recreations in which men of leisure are accustomed to indulge, were interrupted. Those who had erewhile lived in luxurious ease, now walked the streets in gloomy sadness, while all united in blessing the name of the deceased, as the friend of heaven, and truly worthy of the imperial dignity. Nor was their sorrow expressed only in words: they proceeded also to honour him, by the dedication of paintings to his memory, with the same respect as before his death. The design of these pictures embodied a representation of heaven itself, and depicted the emperor reposing in an ethereal mansion above the celestial vault. They too declared his sons to be his only successors in the imperial power and the title of Augustus, and begged with earnest entreaty that they might be permitted to receive the body of their emperor, and perform his obsequies in the imperial city.