The strict, isolated upbringing of Constantius Gallus,…

Constantius II returns to Constantinople, reigning alone as Augustus, aided by a meddlesome bureaucracy in which mission deputies (agentes in rebus), informers, and spies play an important role.

Gallus' subordinates have sent unfavorable and sometimes misleading reports about him.

Constantius remains in Mediolanum (Milan) until July 3, 353, moving to Gaul during the late summer of that year.

Near the Cottian Alps, in the area of Mons Seleucus (now La Batie-Montsaléon, four kilometers northeast of Serres), he defeats Magnentius' forces; in 1035, …

…the usurper flees with his few remaining troops to Lugdunum.

His soldiers elect to surrender Magnentius to the emperor.

When Magnentius realizes that there is no escape, he murders, or at least attempts to murder, his own mother and all the relatives who are with him and, on August 10 or 11, 353, commits suicide.

In less then a week, his Caesar Decentius, on his way to aid Magnentius, hangs himself on August 18 at Senonae when he receives the news of his death.

Constantius II dispatches Paulus, an imperial notary, or senior civil servant, to Roman Britain in 353 to control subversive elements.

So harsh are his measures that he earns the nickname Catena meaning 'The Chain'.

His acts in Britain are recorded in Ammianus XIV v. 6-9.

His brief in Britain was to hunt down known supporters of the recently defeated usurper Magnentius in the army garrisons in Britain.

Once arrived however, he widened his remit and began arresting other figures, often on apparently trumped-up charges and without evidence.

Constantius appears to have tacitly approved of the purges initiated by Paulus and to have made no effort to rein in his campaign of arrest, conviction and punishment of leading figures in the Romano-British administration.

Magnentius had counted on British support for the previous three and a half years and it is likely that few in positions of power in the province can have convincingly argued that they had not sided with the usurper.

Similar witch-hunts are taking place in Gaul at this time for the same reasons.

Paulus' methods are so extreme and the injustices he commits so great, however, that eventually the vicarius of Britain, Flavius Martinus, although a loyal supporter of Constantius, feels obliged to end them.

He tries to persuade Paulus to release the innocent prisoners he has taken using the threat of his own resignation as leverage.

Paulus refuses, however, and turns on Martinus, falsely accusing him and other senior officers in Britain of treason.

In desperation, Martinus attacks Paulus with a sword; the attack fails, however, and the vicarius commits suicide.

Paulus' ruthless destruction of so much of the Romano-British ruling class may be one of the reasons for the eventual breakdown of Roman rule in the province over the succeeding decades.

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.

An official register of 354 lists nine hundred and fifty-two baths in the city of Rome.

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.