An official register of 354 lists nine…

Gallus, in an exhibition of his presumed soon-to-be Augustus powers, stages a chariot race in Constantinople's Hippodrome and crowns the victor, an honor reserved only for those that are Augusti.

This insolence of Gallus enrages Constantius, further adding to his dislike for the upstart Caesar.

In an attempt to further isolate Gallus from any form of military protection, Constantius has the garrisons removed from the towns in Gallus's path to Mediolanum.

Some sources (Philostorgius) claim Gallus' generals won a campaign against the Sassanids.

Others, basing their views on an almost-peaceful situation between Sassanids and Romans, dismiss this claim.

In 354, Gallus sends the comes Orientis, Nebridius, against the Isaurians, who had been raiding the city of Seleucia on the Tigris.

As a consequence of the need to gather food for the troops of a Persian campaign or because of drought, the grain supply in Antioch has decreased.

In order to counter the higher price of grain, Gallus forces the passage of some laws regardless of the opinion of the Senate, thus alienating the support of the senatorial class of Antioch.

Ammianus Marcellinus, a philo-senatorial writer, tells how the anger of the people of Antioch for the famine was diverted by Gallus towards the consularis Syriae Theophilus, who was killed by the mob.

Ammianus reports also that Gallus and Constantina started several trials for magic against wealthy people, ending in the execution of innocents and in the confiscation of their wealth.

The same source claims that Gallus walked anonymously in Antioch by night, asking passersby for their opinion on their caesar, while Julian records the great amount of time spent by Gallus at the Hippodrome, probably to obtain popular support.

Doubting his cousin's loyalty, Constantius reduces the troops under Gallus, and sends the Praetorian Prefect Domitianus to Antioch to urge Gallus to go to Italy.

Different sources tell different stories, but all agree that Gallus arrested Domitianus and the quaestor Montius who had come to his aid, and that the two officers were killed.

The arrest of Montius leads to the discovery of what seems to be a plot to elevate an usurper against Gallus.

The conspirators have the support of two tribuni fabricarum (officers of the weapons factories) who had promised the weapons for an uprising (Ammianus Marcellinus, 14.7.18), and probably of the troops in Mesopotamia, as well as of the rector of the province of Phoenice.

All of those involved in the plot are sentenced to death.

Constantius, during a campaign against the Alamanni, had been informed of the trials in Antioch held by Gallus.

Having signed a peace with the Germanic tribe, Constantius decides to settle the matter with his cousin.

First he summons Ursicinus to the West, whom he suspects to have been inciting Gallus in order to create the occasion for a revolt and the usurpation of his own son.

Next, Constantius summons Gallus and Constantina to Milan.

Constantina leaves first, in order to gain some of her brother's trust, but dies at Caeni Gallicani in Bithynia.

Gallus, his bonds to Constantius thus further weakened, stays in Antioch.

Constantius tries to lure Gallus, sending the tribunus scutariorum Scudilo to tell Gallus that Constantius wants to raise him to Augustus.

Gallus desiring to finally obtain the rank of Augustus, takes Constantius's bait and leaves Antioch to meet him.

Gallus arrives to Poetovio in Pannonia, and Barbatio, an officer who had been supporting Gallus' dismissal within Constantius' court, surrounds the palace of the caesar and arrests him, stripping Gallus of the imperial robes, but assuring him that no harm will come to him.

Gallus is led to Pola in Istria (now Pula, Croatia), where he is interrogated by some of the highest officials of Constantius' court, including the eunuch praepositus cubiculi Eusebius and the agens in rebus Apodemius.

Gallus tries to put the blame of all of his actions on Constantina, but Constantius sentences him to death; the emperor later changes his mind, and orders the caesar to be spared, but Eusebius orders that the news is not to reach the executioners.

Fu Sheng had been one of the generals that Fu Jiàn commissioned to lead the army against the Jin general Huan Wen when he launched a major attack against Former Qin in 354, nearly destroying it.

Fu Sheng had been personally successful in battles, killing many, but was not particularly successful as a general.

Eventually, Huan was forced to withdraw when his food supplies ran out, but Fu Sheng's older brother Fu Chang, the Crown Prince, suffered an arrow wound during the campaign, and died in winter 354.

Initially, his mother Empress Qiang wanted to create his younger brother Fu Liu, the Prince of Jin, crown prince, but Fu Jiàn, reading a prophecy that contained the phrase "three goats shall have five eyes," believed that the prophecy indicated that Fu Sheng should succeed him (because one of his eyes was blind), and therefore created Fu Sheng crown prince.

After a failed coup in 355 by his cousin Fu Qing, the Prince of Pingchang, Fu Sheng succeeds to the throne when his father dies thereafter.

He honors his mother Empress Qiang as empress dowager, and creates his wife Princess Liang empress.

Fu Sheng almost immediately displays his violent and cruel nature, however.

Fu Jiàn's will had commissioned a number of high level officials to serve as Fu Sheng's assistants, but all of them (with the possible exception of his granduncle Fu An, the Prince of Wudu, who might or might not have been named in the will) perish rather quickly under his violent rule.

Duan Chun is executed in 355, the same day that Fu Jiàn becomes emperor, after Fu Sheng is offended at his suggestion that changing era name in the middle of a year was improper.

Lei Ruo'er is executed in 355 along with his sons and grandsons after false accusations by Fu Sheng's associates Zhao Shao and Dong Rong; Mao Gui, uncle of Fu Sheng's wife Empress Liang, is executed in 355 along with Empress Liang, Liang An, and Liang Leng after astrologers prophesied that there would be a great funeral and high level officials would be killed.

The civil war between Constantius II and the usurper Magnentius has exacerbated the already troublesome shortage of manpower—over seventy thousand Roman soldiers had died during the conflict.

This has denuded the frontier of much needed troops, allowing the Alamanni and Franks to take advantage of the situation and cross the Rhine, taking several important settlements and fortifications.

The Lentienses, an Alamannic tribe in the region between the river Danube in the North, the river Iller in the West, and Lake Constance in the south, in what is now south Germany, appear in history in the year 355 when Constantius orders the Roman commander Arbitio to fine them for several riots against the Roman Empire.

Arbitio, a general of Constantine I, had reached the highest military positions in the Roman army under his son and successor Constantius II and become magister equitum (commander of the cavalry).

On January 1, 355 he is made consul together with Quintus Flavius Maesius Egnatius Lollianus.

A well trusted courtier of Constantius, some modern historians have suggested Arbitio was his military strongman.

Arbitio intrigues against Claudius Silvanus, Ursicinus and Barbatio, and plays a role their downfall.

Historian Ammianus Marcellinus says he was "keen and eager in plotting treachery", and describes him as "fickle flatterer" to Constantius II.

Claudius Silvanus, born in Gaul, is the son of Bonitus, a Frankish general who had supported Constantine I against Licinius.

He held the rank of tribune in 351 and was recorded as having defected to Emperor Constantius II at the Battle of Mursa Major, after initially supporting the usurper Magnentius.

Silvanus had eventually risen to the rank of magister militum: Constantius in 352-353 had entrusted him with the task of driving the Germanic tribes attacking Gaul back beyond the Rhine, a task Silvanus fulfilled by bribing the Germans with the taxes he had collected, thus ending a ten-month Frankish siege of Cologne.

Some of the courtiers of Constantius have now smanaged to persuade him that Silvanus is planning to seize power.

The praetorian prefect Lampadius and the ex-treasurer of the Privy Purse, Eusebius, according to Ammianus had used a sponge to alter a letter sent by Silvanus to his friends in Rome.

The fake letter suggested that Silvanus was attempting to win support within the city for a coup.

Constantius's camarilla, with the exception of the Frankish generals Malarich and Mallobaudes, is uniformly against Silvanus, and the courtiers Apodemius and Dynamius compose additional fake letters.

Constantius holds a trial in which Silvanus' allies are successful in defeating the spurious charges against the general.

Silvanus, unaware of the success of his supporters, on August 11, 355, responds to the threat of condemnation and execution by actually proclaiming himself emperor in Colonia Agrippina (modern Cologne).

Constantius, who is in Milan, orders Silvanus to come to him, and names Ursicinus to take over Silvanus' post.

Ursicinus is himself at odds with Constantius's camarilla and Silvanus no doubt trusts the veteran general.

The letter that Ursicinus had given to Silvanus does not indicate that Constantius already knew of Silvanus' bid for power, so Silvanus considers himself safe.

Ursicinus, however, arranges the murder of Silvanus by co-opting some of the rebel soldiers, who kill the usurper's guard, drag Silvanus from the Christian church in which he is worshiping, and hack him to death.

Constantius, after dealing with the rebellions of Magnentius and Sylvanus, feels the need for a permanent representative in Gaul.

His twenty-three year-old nephew Julian is in 355 summoned from Greece to appear before the emperor in Mediolanum.

This is a difficult decision for a paranoid ruler who regards all his relatives with intense suspicion and has already put to death two uncles and seven cousins, including Julian's half-brother Constantius Gallus, but Constantius' own family purges had left him little choice: Julian is his sole surviving adult male close relative.

Julian, who has studied at Pergamon, at Ephesus, and lately at Athens, has adopted the cult of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun.

He had arrived at Sirmium “still wearing his student's gown.”

Julian is on November 6 duly proclaimed and invested as Caesar of the West, an honor that he accepts with justifiable foreboding, and marries Constantius' sister, Helena. (She will die after five years of marriage-the fate of their issue, if any, is unknown.)

After his experience with Gallus, Constantius intends his representative to be more a figurehead than an active participant in events, so he at once packs Julian off to Gaul with a small retinue; Constantius' prefects in Gaul will keep him in check.

Julian, at first reluctant to trade his scholarly life for war and politics, will eventually take every opportunity to involve himself in the affairs of Gaul.

Wang Duo is executed in 356 after offending Dong, who had then advised Fu Jiàn that a high level official needed to be executed in accordance with astrological signs.

Because Fu Sheng is blind in one eye and apparently apprehensive that people would be making fun at him or be contemptuous of him due to this disability, he orders that words such as "missing," "lacking," "slanted," "less," and "without" not be used.

He also engages in heavy drinking, and he often either ignores officials' petitions altogether or makes irrational decisions on them in the middle of his stupor, allowing his attendants to make random decisions on his behalf.

For example, Xin Lao is killed in 356 by an arrow Fu Sheng launches during the middle of a feast after Fu Sheng had become displeased that he, as the master of ceremony, was not getting everyone drunk.

Fu Sheng also carries out cruel punishment—in addition to frequent executions, he also likes to cruelly treat animals—including throwing them into boiling water or skinning them alive; the latter punishment he sometimes applies to humans.

When his uncle Qiang Ping, Empress Dowager Qiang's brother, tries to correct his ways in 356, he breaks Qiang Ping's skull by hitting him with a hammer him, then executes him, causing Empress Dowager Qiang to die in sorrow and fear.

Also in 356, Fu Sheng's brother Fu Liu, the Prince of Jin, is able to persuade the Former Liang regent Zhang Guan to have the young Former Liang ruler Zhang Xuanjing become a vassal.