In fact, he sent me other messages, of quite a different tenor, in which he congratulated me on preferring the spiritual life and actually encouraged me in my resolve. He criticized the courtier’s brilliant coloured robes, and praised the rough habit I was now wearing; he crowned me with the victor’s diadem — all because I had risen superior to every enticement.
200. But enough about myself, for it was not my wish that I should figure in this history. Unfortunately, my plans were upset by these digressions. What compelled me to adopt a monastic life was the emperor’s inconstancy. We were afraid of his whimsy and therefore we preferred a monk’s life to the inferior existence of a courtier, the untroubled calm of the Church to the confusion and disorder of the Palace.
201. Now that the emperor was deprived of our comforting presence, and now that he no longer had the lyre of rhetoric to charm him, he took refuge again in worldly pleasures. For instance, in the middle of a park, teeming with all kinds of fruit, he had a deep pond made. It was so constructed that the edge of it was level with the surrounding earth. Water was then directed into it by channels.
Constantine would bathe several times
The result was, that unless someone knew beforehand that the ground in the middle of the park had been excavated, he would walk about unsuspectingly to gather apples or pears, and fall into the pond. Getting into deep water, he would bob up to the surface and swim for it — much to the amusement of the emperor. However, the pond was not made only for fun, and a pleasure-house was built near it, in most beautiful surroundings. Here Constantine would bathe several times a day in the warm water, and it was while going in and out on one of these occasions that he caught a chill. At the time he did not notice it, and although not much troubled by it at first, the poison later spread to his vital organs and affected his lungs.
202. He thought he was going to die, and lay on his bed like an expiring ox that has just been sacrificed. Yet he held no consultation with the empress Theodora about a successor.**152 Instead, he kept his designs secret, and without any reference to her considered by himself who was to be the next occupant of the throne. Such an inquiry, of course, could not remain a secret, and Theodora was told of it. She at once embarked on one of the imperial galleys with her leading advisers and, like a traveller returning home from a stormy voyage, took refuge in the courts of the palace. Having arrived she won over to her side the whole of the imperial bodyguard.
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