140- My Three Sons

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. Episode 140, my three sons. Well, live and in person me is back. As you know, the history of Rome just spent the last five weeks bouncing back and forth between Italy and Turkey on the official history of Rome, Roman History Tour. It was an absolutely fantastic time. And the answer is yes, we are planning to do it again, and the sooner the better. That said, there's nothing I hate more than beating around the bush, so let's get back into this thing. It's been six weeks since I last thought about the show, and I'm dying to find out what happens next. But there are two minor corrections I need to get out of the way before we can get on with it. First, alert listener Anthony caught me accidentally reversing syllables in episode one thirty seven. So the polarizing deacon, who later became the polarizing bishop of Alexandria, should have been Athanasius, not Anathasius. Sorry about that. The second mistake is from episode one thirty eight and is quite a bit more embarrassing. See, what happened is that I had just gotten missus the history of Rome into the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. So we were pretty much watching it nonstop. At the same time, I personally also happen to be watching a lot of the HBO Rome series. Do you see where this is going? Unfortunately, despite my clear memory to the contrary, Saul Tai never did say no one is a traitor until they are. Although, it really, really sounds like something he might say. In reality, Titus Pulo said it. He said it in Rome season two episode eight, unnecessary fiction. Alert listener Nick mentioned in the comment thread that he remembered Pulo saying something just like that, and I immediately knew I had botched the reference. It was an honest mistake in a time of great stress, and I hope that you will all forgive me. Okay. Now that all the old business has been dispensed with, unless there are any objections, let's move on to new business. We left off last time with the death of Constantine on May. This week, I wanna cover how his sons handled the fact that they were now in charge of the empire. As we will see, they will quickly prove that they are every bit their father's sons. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the boys were at the moment of their father's death, But it appears that Constantine the second, the eldest of the three at 21 years old, was in the Far West, perhaps even as far off as Trier. Constance, the youngest of the three at somewhere between 14 and 17 years old, was likely in Pannonia or Northern Italy. While the middle son, 20 year old Constantius the second, was in the Far East, readying for a campaign against the Sassanids. Of the three sons, Constantius will prove to be the …