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alive." I startled myself with the quickness of my own retort.
    The Bishop's pale face was even ashier than usual. "Why do you say this?"
    "Because it's true. The Emperor killed my father. Everybody knows that. And I suppose he shall kill Gallus and me, too, when he gets around to it." Boldness, once begun, is hard to check.
    "The Emperor is a holy man," said the Bishop severely. "All the world admires his piety, his war against heresy, his support of the true faith."
    This made me even more reckless. "Then if he is such a good Christian how could he kill so many members of his own family? After all, isn't it written in Matthew and again in Luke that…"
    "You little fool!" The Bishop was furious. "Who has been telling you these things? Mardonius?"
    I had sense enough to protect my tutor. "No, Bishop. But people talk about everything in front of us. I suppose they think we don't understand. Anyway it's all true, isn't it?"
    The Bishop had regained his composure. His answer was slow and grim. "All that you need to know is that your cousin, the Emperor, is a devout and good man, and never forget that you are at his mercy." The Bishop then made me recite for four hours, as punishment for impudence. But the lesson I learned was not the one intended. All that I understood was that Constantius was a devout Christian. Yet he had killed his own flesh and blood. Therefore, if he could be both a good Christian and a murderer, then there was something wrong with his religion. Needless to say, I no longer blame Constantius's faith for his misdeeds, any more than Hellenism should be held responsible for my shortcomings! Yet for a child this sort of harsh contradiction is disturbing, and not easily forgotten.
    In the year 340 Eusebius was made bishop of Constantinople. As a result, Gallus and I divided our time between Nicomedia and the capital. Of the two, I preferred Constantinople.
    Founded the year before I was born, Constantinople has no past; only a noisy present and a splendid future, if the auguries are to be believed. Constantine deliberately chose ancient Byzantium to be the capital of the Roman Empire, and then he created a new city in place of the old, and named the result—with characteristic modesty—after himself. Like most children of the city I delight in its vitality and raw newness. The air is always full of dust and the smell of mortar. The streets are loud with hammering. This confusion should be unpleasant, but it is invigorating. From day to day the city changes. Nearly all the familiar sights of my youth have been replaced by new buildings, new streets, new vistas, and I find it a marvellous thing to be—if only in this—at the beginning of something great rather than at the end.
    In good weather, Mardonius used to take Gallus and me on walks around the city. "Statue hunts" we called them, because Mardonius was passionately interested in works of art and he would drag us from one end of the city to the other to look for them. I think we must have seen all ten thousand of the bronze and marble statues Constantine had stolen from every part of the world to decorate his city. Though one cannot approve his thefts (particularly those from Hellenic temples), the result has been that in and around the various arcades along Middle Street, the city's main thoroughfare, there are more important works of art than anywhere on earth, excepting Rome.
    One of our expeditions took us to a Galilean charnel house, close by the Hippodrome. While Mardonius fussed with a map of the city, trying to get his bearings, Gallus and I threw bits of marble at a half-finished house across the street. There are always a satisfying number of things for a child to throw in the streets of Constantinople, chips of marble, splinters of wood, broken tile. The builders never clean up.
    "Now here," said Mardonius, peering closely at the map, "should be the famous Nemesis of Pheidias acquired some years ago by the divine Constantine, and thought to be