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discerned his mood. ‘Believe me, when this is over you will heartily thank me.’

C HAPTER F OUR
    T he heat of the city, in the grip of high and continuing summer temperatures, was enough to permeate the thick walls of the palace; even the marble flooring seemed to be too warm. Was it that which contributed to the increased air of disquiet or was what Flavius observed being given greater definition because of what he had become a party to? If the name of the man Amantius wished to elevate was unknown that did nothing to allay suspicion, quite the reverse. Now he was looking at everyone he passed, seeking by whatever senses he possessed to discern if they were the chosen one.
    Matters were not aided by the manner in which Anastasius hung onto mortality, helped by teams of physicians who feared to lose their heads if he died while they were in attendance. Others put it down to tenacity, while the ill-disposed, and they were legion, subscribed to the view that the old goat feared the retribution he might face from an angry redeemer, for if the Emperor had been fired by religious zeal, it had been at the price of much conflict with half of his subjects.
    No words were ever more true than that one man’s heresy was another’s route to salvation. In a previous imperial reign, after muchdissension, matters on dogma had appeared to have been settled. The Emperor called into being a Great Council in the city of Chalcedon, where the dispute about the divine nature of God and the Holy Trinity had been disputed.
    After what seemed like endless argument on arcane points and endless biblical references it had been agreed that Jesus could be both a man and a god, this flying in the face of those who believed that position both impossible and heretical. The seeming acceptance of the conclusion of Chalcedon by those in opposition was just that; soon they were once more pressing for their dogma to be elevated to imperial policy.
    Anastasius had backed them, insisting on adherence to the more mystical and Eastern position. The bishops of Asia Minor and Egypt, known as the Monophysites, had captured the imperial soul and in his passion for their cause Anastasius had cracked down on the proponents of the settlement of Chalcedon, removing divines from their diocese and replacing them with men who shared his doctrinal beliefs. The result had been rebellion on a massive scale in the Imperial Themes to the west and north of Constantinople, led by a general called Vitalian who had three times invested a capital city too formidable to actually capture.
    It was his first attempt to take the city that had brought Flavius, marching with General Vitalian and fleeing certain death at home further north, to Constantinople and the apartments of Justinus, his late father’s old comrade, where if he had not found peace he had felt something akin to a home.
    The religious dispute mirrored in many ways the fissure between the two great groups of the empire, those who clung, and they were often of barbarian stock, to the notion of Imperial Rome as it had been for centuries, set against the greater number of Greeks and Levantines who made up the majority of the population. These were people whoseemed to take more inspiration from Persia than Rome, not least in the way the Emperor was seen as divinely chosen and a certain conduit to God.
    To a committed Christian this harked back to and mirrored too closely the pagan ethos of the pre-Constantine polity. The Roman-inspired also deplored and fought the way Greek modes of behaviour continually wore down on what they called the Ancient Virtues, notions of behaviour more breeched than observed but held to be a better mode of living.
    Their enemies scoffed at these pretensions, seeing them for what they too often were, a hypocritical method of asserting cultural superiority when in truth the reverse was the case; if the Romans had ever had any virtues they were those of Italian peasants and farmers. Learning and