The Funeral of Constantine

The proper officials placed the emperor’s body in a coffin of gold and carried it to Constantinople. There it was laid out on a raised bed of state in the palace, surrounded by a guard and treated with the same respect as when he was alive; and this continued until one of his sons arrived. When Constantius had come from the eastern parts of the empire, the body was given an imperial burial and laid in the church called the Apostles. Constantine had built this church for this very purpose: that emperors and bishops might receive veneration little less than that paid to the relics of the apostles. [a]

The emperor Constantine lived sixty-five years and reigned thirty-one. He died in the consulship of Felician and Tatian, on the twenty-second of May, in the second year of the 278th Olympiad. This book, then, covers a period of thirty-one years.