The Funeral of the Emperor Constantine.

Chapter XL.—The Funeral of the Emperor Constantine.

The body of the emperor was placed in a coffin of gold by the proper persons, and then conveyed to Constantinople, where it was laid out on an elevated bed of state in the palace, surrounded by a guard, and treated with the same respect as when he was alive, and this was done until the arrival of one of his sons. When Constantius was come out of the eastern parts of the empire, it was honored with an imperial sepulture, and deposited in the church called The Apostles: which he had caused to be constructed for this very purpose, that the emperors and prelates might receive a degree of veneration but little inferior to that which was paid to the relics of the apostles. The Emperor Constantine lived sixty-five years, and reigned thirty-one. He died in the consulate of Felician and Tatian, on the twenty-second of May, in the second year of the 278th Olympiad. 260 This book, therefore, embraces a period of thirty-one years.