The morning after the battle, the muddy waters of the Tiber gave up their dead. When the body of Maxentius was dragged ashore, bloated and stripped of its dignity, Constantine looked upon the face of his defeated rival without a flicker of emotion. He gave a single, cold order. The head of the tyrant was severed and mounted on the tip of a spear. It would serve as the grim herald of his victory.
His approach to Rome was not the march of a conqueror, but the arrival of a foregone conclusion. The city's populace, freed from the grip of a ruler they had come to fear, poured out through the gates to greet him. They threw flowers before his horse, shouting his name, hailing him as a liberator, a savior sent by the gods. Constantine received their adulation with a stony, impassive face. The roar of a mob, he knew, was as fickle as the wind.
