Chapter 48 - The Treaty of the Damned

The envoy Mestrianus returned to Licinius's camp bearing Constantine's impossible terms. When the demands were read aloud—the surrender of all European provinces, the execution of his newly-appointed Caesar Valens—Licinius did not fly into a rage. Instead, a deathly, cold calm settled over him. He had been a soldier on the brutal Danube frontier for thirty years; he understood an ultimatum when he heard one. Constantine was not offering peace; he was demanding a surrender so total it was indistinguishable from annihilation.