He must go—­he must leave Gorgo, quit Alexandria, cost what it might.  The travellers’ tales that he had heard from the captains of trading-vessels and ships of war who frequented his father’s house had filled him with a love of danger and enterprise, and a desire to see distant lands and foreign peoples.  His father’s business, for which he was intended, did not attract him.  Away—­away—­he would go away; and a happy coincidence opened a path for him.

Porphyrius had taken him one day on some errand to Canopus; the elder man had gone in his chariot, his two sons and Constantine escorting him on horseback.  At the city-gates they met Romanus, the general in command of the Imperial army, with his staff of officers, and he, drawing rein by the great merchant’s carriage, had asked him, pointing to Constantine, whether that were his son.

“No,” replied Porphyrius, “but I wish he were.”  At these words the ship-master’s son colored deeply, while Romanus turned his horse round, laid his hand on the young man’s arm and called out to the commander of the cavalry of Arsinoe:  “A soldier after Ares’ own heart, Columella!  Do not let him slip.”

Before the clouds of dust raised by the officers’ horses as they rode off, had fairly settled, Constantine had made up his mind to be a soldier.  In his parents’ house, however, this decision was seen under various aspects.  His father found little to say against it, for he had three sons and only two shipyards, and the question seemed settled by the fact that Constantine, with his resolute and powerful nature, was cut out to be a soldier.  His pious mother, on the other hand, appealed to the learned works of Clemens and Tertullian, who forbid the faithful Christian to draw the sword; and she related the legend of the holy Maximilianus, who, being compelled, under Diocletian, to join the army, had suffered death at the hands of the executioner rather than shed his fellow-creatures’ blood in battle.  The use of weapons, she added, was incompatible with a godly and Christian life.

His father, however, would not listen to this reasoning; new times, he said, were come; the greater part of the army had been baptized; the Church prayed for, victory, and at the head of the troops stood the great Theodosius, an exemplar of an orthodox and zealous Christian.

Clemens was master in his own house, and Constantine joined the heavy cavalry at Arsinoe.  In the war against the Blemmyes he was so fortunate as to merit the highest distinction; after that he was in garrison at Arsinoe, and, as Alexandria was within easy reach of that town, he was in frequent intercourse with his own family and that of Porphyrius.  Not quite three years previously, when a revolt had broken out in favor of the usurper Maximus in his native town, Constantine had assisted in suppressing it, and almost immediately afterwards he was sent to Europe to take part in the war which Theodosius had begun, again against Maximus.