CHAPTER XL

THE FUNERAL OBSEQUIES OF THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE

THE body of the emperor was placed in a coffin of gold, and then conveyed to Constantinople, where it was laid out on an elevated bed of state in the palace, surrounded by a guard, and treated with the same respect as when he was alive, until the arrival of one of his sons. When Constantius was come out of the eastern parts of the empire, it was honoured with an imperial sepulture, and deposited in the church called The Apostles: for therein he had caused magnificent tombs to be constructed for the emperors and prelates, in order that they might receive a degree of veneration but little inferior to that which was paid to the relics of the apostles. The emperor Constantine lived sixty-five years, and reigned thirty-one. He died in the consulate of Felician and Titian, on the twenty-second of May, in the second year of the 278th Olympiad. This book therefore embraces a period of thirty-one years.