Tiridates’ laugh boomed out. “How could I, with my back to the river?”
Dispatches from the Persian campaign soon began to arrive daily, telling of new victories. As Galerius pushed into Armenia, the people there fell in solidly behind their popular monarch, while ahead of the battle lines small bands of horsemen from the Scythian steppes, many of them descendants of the tribe led by Mamgo, of which Tiridates had spoken, harried the Persian supply lines, cutting out small bands of the enemy wherever they could and destroying them mercilessly.
The sturdy Illyrian veterans whom Galerius had taken from the Danube strongpoints, plus a large body of mounted Gothic auxiliaries, were a far more disciplined and dependable force than the largely untrained levies he had thrown against the Persians in his earlier campaign. When finally the Roman army turned southward from Armenia into the fertile TigrisEuphrates basin, it swept everything before it. The climax of the campaign came when the Persian monarch was caught at his headquarters in a swift night attack, wounded slightly and forced to flee to the fastnesses of the desert, where Galerius prudently refused to follow. There was more than enough booty and glory for all, however, since all of Narses’ belongings, including his wives, his sisters and his children, were captured. And with this stunning stroke of victory, the enemy’s resistance largely collapsed.
Eastern frontier
Only when the eastern frontier was at last secure and its limits extended almost to those established for a brief while by Alexander the Great, did Diocletian leave Antioch for Nicomedia. And then it was only to pause there for a brief period, before going to Rome to celebrate with the ceremony known as a “triumph” this high point in the history of the Empire.
And a high point it was indeed. In the West, Constantius had all but finished subduing the rebels who had followed the upstart Carausius and his lieutenant, Allectus, bringing the fertile and important province of Britain once again into the confines of the Empire. To the North, Constantius had also brought peace to the Rhine frontier by displacing many of the rebellious tribes into the interior of Gaul, settling them in areas where they could no longer join together into a force large enough to cause trouble.
The rebellion in Africa had long since been ended by the forthright action of Maximian and Maxentius. And with the Vicennalia, the twentieth anniversary of Diocletian’s reign, approaching close on the heels of the great Persian victory, it was no more than fitting that both be celebrated in the ancient city which even though Maximian had established his capital at Milan would always be the symbolic heart of the Empire.
As soon as he could obtain leave after the arrival of the court at Nicomedia, Constantine rode the short distance to Drepanum and his mother’s modest cottage there. Helena ran to embrace him as soon as he dismounted. For a long moment she clasped him in her arms, then finally held him off with her hands upon his shoulders while she studied his face with eyes that shone with pride and joy.
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