The silence in the hall at Arelate was absolute following Constantine's pronouncement. Bassianus, his face a mask of disbelief and terror, simply stared at the evidence of his own undoing. He had gambled on the ambition of one emperor and fatally underestimated the cold, calculating nature of another.
His end was swift and without ceremony. There was no public trial, no grand spectacle. Treason against the Augustus required no further judgment. Valerius and the Scholae Palatinae carried out the sentence that same day. The message to any who might consider betraying Constantine was unambiguous: the price was not disgrace or exile, but a quick and quiet death.
With the internal plot exposed and its agent eliminated, Constantine moved to capitalize on the justification it provided. From his praetorium, he dictated a formal proclamation, copies of which were dispatched by swift couriers to every major city in his domain and, more importantly, to the legions guarding the frontiers. It detailed, in stark and unforgiving terms, the treason of the Caesar Bassianus, and laid the blame for the conspiracy squarely at the feet of the Augustus Licinius. "He who claims to be my brother-in-law and colleague has sought my life through treachery," the edict concluded. "For the security of the state and in defense of our own life, we are now compelled to march east and hold this faithless emperor to account."
It was a masterstroke of propaganda, framing his invasion not as an act of aggression, but as a just war against an assassin and a treaty-breaker.
He assembled his army, the full might of the West. The veteran legions from Britannia and the Rhine, the newly integrated Gallic cohorts, the fierce Alemanni under Crocus, and his own unstoppable Scholae Palatinae. It was the war machine he had been building and refining for years, and he now unleashed it. Fausta watched the preparations, her expression cool and supportive. "Licinius was a fool to believe he could outwit you," she told him in the privacy of their chambers. "My sister Constantia chose her husband poorly. See that you remedy her mistake. Destroy him."
The march eastward was not a hasty affair like the lightning strikes into Italy. This was the deliberate, methodical advance of a colossal army intent on total war. The years spent improving roads and filling granaries now revealed their true purpose. The great column of the army flowed eastward like a river of steel, its supply wagons keeping pace without difficulty. But as they crossed the watershed of the Julian Alps and descended into the rolling hills of Pannonia, the nature of the march changed.
Here, they were not greeted by cheering crowds as they had been in Italy. The doors of villas were barred, the fields empty, the faces that peered from the villages were filled with fear, not welcome. The legionaries saw this, and their own mood hardened. The easy triumphalism of Italy was gone, replaced by the grim focus of an army entering hostile lands. They were invaders now, and they knew it.
Valerius's scouts, now operating deep within enemy territory, brought back reports. "Licinius is not hiding, Augustus. He has gathered his full strength. All the legions of the Danube are with him. He is marching to meet us." "His numbers?" Constantine asked. "Roughly equal to our own, perhaps slightly more." "And his location?" "He has made camp near the town of Cibalae. The ground is marshy, difficult. He has chosen his field well."
Constantine nodded, absorbing the intelligence. A pitched battle between two of the most powerful armies in the world was now inevitable. He pushed his own forces onward, closing the distance. The land grew flatter, the air heavier. They were in the heart of Pannonia, Licinius's stronghold.
One evening, Constantine rode with his vanguard to the crest of a low hill. In the vast plain stretching before them, miles away, they could see them: a seemingly endless expanse of campfires, thousands upon thousands of them, twinkling in the dusk like a fallen constellation. It was the camp of Licinius. The army of the East.
The final contest for the Roman world, which had begun with whispers and plots in palaces, would be decided here, on this Pannonian plain, by the brute force of iron and the will of the two men who now commanded the legions of the world. Constantine stared at the distant lights, his single eye cold and sharp, his mind already dissecting the terrain, planning his deployment, anticipating his enemy's moves. The time for strategy and preparation was over. The time for battle was at hand.