It was of that which made you offer to eat the poisoned fig in place of Constantine.

Why did you do so?
It is true that, as things have happened, he'll remember it in your favour, for I'll say this of him, he never forgets one who has saved him from harm, any more than he forgets one who has harmed him.

But if you had eaten you would have died, and then how could he have rewarded you ?" "Empress, when I took my oath of office I swore to protect both the Augustus and the Augusta, even with my life.

I was fulfilling my oath, that is all." "You are a strange man as well as a brave man to interpret oaths so strictly.

If you will do as much as this for one who is nothing to you, and who has never paid you a gold piece, how much, I wonder, would you do for one whom you love." "I could offer no more than my life for such a one, Empress, could I ?" "Someone told me--it may have been you, Olaf, or another--that once you did more, challenging a heathen god for the sake of one you loved, and defeating him.