Both parties meet Constantine at Constantinople at the end of 355.

Athanasius is accused of threatening to interfere with the grain supply from Egypt, and without any formal trial Constantine exiles him to the Rhineland.

At the same synod, another opponent is successfully attacked: Marcellus of Ancyra had long opposed the Eusebians and had protested against the reinstitution of Arius.

Accused of Sabellianism, he will be deposed in 336.

Flavius Dalmatius, the son of Constantius Chlorus and Flavia Maximiana Theodora, and thus half-brother of the Emperor Constantine I, had spent his youth in the Gallic Tolosa.

It is probable that his two sons, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, were born there.

During the mid-320s, Flavius Dalmatius had returned to Constantinople, to the court of his half-brother, and been appointed consul and censor in 333.

In Antioch, Flavius is responsible for the security of the eastern borders of the realm.

During this period, he examines the case of bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, the important opponent of Arianism, who is accused of murder.

In 334, Flavius had suppressed the revolt of Calocaerus, who had proclaimed himself emperor in Cyprus.

In the following year he sends some soldiers to the council of Tyros to save the life of Athanasius.

The Eusebians, now that Eustathius has been removed, proceed against Athanasius, a much more dangerous opponent.

Athanasius has devoted the first years of his episcopate to visitation of his extensive patriarchate, which includes all of Egypt and Libya.

During this time, …

…Athanasius has established important contacts with the Coptic monks of Upper Egypt and their leader Pachomius.

Soon began the struggle with imperialist and Arian churchmen that will occupy much of his life.

Athanasius is in 334 summoned before a synod in Caesarea; he does not attend.

He uses political influence against the Meletians, followers of the schismatic bishop Meletius of Lycopolis, who have gone back on the plans made at Nicaea for their reunion with the church; but …

…he refutes specific charges of mistreatment of Arians and Meletians before a hostile gathering of bishops, over which Eusebius of Caesarea presides, at Tyre (in modern Lebanon) in 335, which Athanasius refuses to recognize as a general council of the church.

Foreseeing the result, he goes to Constantinople to bring his cause before the emperor.

Murong Huang and his son Murong Jun, who initially claim the Jin Dynasty-created title "Prince of Yan," establish Former Yan, a state of Xianbei ethnicity, in 337.

The Arian leaders, exiled after the Council of Nicaea, have from 325 to the death of Constantine in 337 tried by intrigue to return to their churches and sees and to banish their enemies.

They have been partly successful.

After some months of confusion, the emperor's three surviving sons each adopt the title of Augustus on September 9 and divide the empire among themselves.

Constantius II takes the eastern provinces (Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Asia, and Egypt) for himself.

Simultaneously, the troops massacre many of his relatives, including Constantine's half-brother, Julius Constantius, consul in 335 and father of the future caesar Gallus and the six-year-old future emperor Julian, who is exiled with the rest of his family to Cappadocia.

(In Julian's 361 Letter to the Athenians, he will openly accuse Constantius of murdering his father.

The historian Eutropius felt the new emperor had “permitted but not ordered” the killings.)

Constantius expands Roman anti-Jewish legislation; Jews are labeled “a pernicious sect”.

Constantine had hoped to be baptized in the Jordan River, but perhaps because of the lack of opportunity to do so—together possibly with the reflection that his office necessarily involves responsibility for actions hardly compatible with the baptized state—he has delayed the ceremony.

It is while preparing for a campaign against Persia that he falls ill at Helenopolis.

When treatment fails, he makes to return to Constantinople, but …

…the emperor is forced to take to his bed near Nicomedia.

Here, Constantine receives baptism, putting off the imperial purple for the white robes of a neophyte; and he dies on May 22, 337.

He is buried at Constantinople in his Church of the Apostles, whose memorials, six on each side, flank his tomb.

This is less an expression of religious megalomania, however, than of Constantine's literal conviction that he was the successor of the evangelists, having devoted his life and office to the spreading of Christianity.

One of his final decrees had been the abolition of crucifixion within the Roman Empire.

The Syro-Christian populations of Mesopotamia and …