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Constantine had decided, after his defeat of Licinius at Chrysopolis, to make nearby Byzantium his capital, and within three weeks of his victory, the foundation rites of New Rome had been performed.

Immediately upon his return from the West, he had begun to rebuild the city on a greatly enlarged pattern, as his permanent capital and the “second Rome.”

The dedication of Constantinople on May 11, 330, confirms the divorce, which has been in the making for more than a century, between the emperors and Rome.

Constantine's interest in church building is expressed also at Constantinople, particularly in churches of the Holy Wisdom (the original Hagia Sophia) and of the Apostles.

Constantine had decided in 324 to move the seat of the government from Rome to Byzantium, which he had renamed Nova Roma (New Rome).

This name failed to impress and the city had soon become known as Constantinople, the City of Constantine.

Constantine has greatly enlarged the city, and one of his major undertakings has been the renovation of the Hippodrome.

It is estimated that the Hippodrome of Constantine was about four hundred and fifty meters long and one hundred and thirty meters wide; its stands capable of holding one hundred thousand spectators.

To raise the image of his new capital, Constantine has brought works of art from all over the empire to adorn it, as will his successors.

Among these is the Tripod of Plataea, now known as the Serpent Column, cast to celebrate the victory of the Greeks over the Persians during the Persian Wars in the fifth century BCE.

Constantine orders the Tripod to be moved from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and set in middle of the Hippodrome.

The top is adorned with a golden bowl supported by three serpent heads.

(The bowl will be destroyed or stolen during the Fourth Crusade.

The serpent heads will be destroyed as late as the end of the seventeenth century, as many Ottoman miniatures show they were intact in the early centuries following the Turkish conquest of the city.

Parts of the heads were recovered and are displayed at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

All that remains of the Delphi Tripod today is the base, known as the "Serpentine Column".)

Constantine proclaims his fourth (or fifth) son Constans a caesar in 333.

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.

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 been preparing to go to war against the Persians at the time of his death in 337.

This legacy weighs heavily on the shoulders of Constantius, a military incompetent when compared to the energetic Shapur, with whom Constantius in 338 becomes engaged in what will prove to be a dozen years of inconclusive but extremely bloody warfare.

The Emperor's death in 337 had allowed Athanasius to return to Alexandria, but Constantius renews the order of banishment in 338.

Constantius, a weak emperor who relies on his Church advisors, begins a series of anti-Jewish decrees protecting Jewish converts to Christianity, banning Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and forbidding “on pain of death” Christian intermarriage between Jewish men and Christian women and the circumcision of pagan or Christian slaves.

Constantius also does away with the right of Jews to possess slaves.

This prohibition to trade in and to keep slaves at a time when slave labor is common is not merely an attempt to arrest conversion to Judaism; it is also a blow at the economic life of the Jew, placing Jews at a disadvantage with Christian competitors with whom this economic privilege is assured.

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.

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.

Constantius returns east to fight Shapur, who has renewed his attacks on the eastern frontier.