Here now is the testament of Aegidius, last Steward of the Order, to Lucius Severus Hiberius, Magister Equitum, Master of Horse and Master General of Rome, Grand master of the Order, Keeper of the Legacy, Heir to the Mystery of Sol Emesa.
There will never be time for me to tell you all there is to know. Praise Mitra, you have found many of your own answers.
How did you know to be annoying enough for Ricimer to send you to the hinterlands, but not annoying enough to kill? How did you manage to appear competent, but not threatening? Trustworthy, but not charismatic?
No matter, it was brilliant, however accomplished. It was with your help that Flavius Aetius broke the Hunni. And you have kept the chaos from Italia for twenty years. Rome ignores the dark outside it's borders.
Aetius was right to make you Keeper. There was so little time. I have lived too long and seen too much. I do not think that I will see the end of this endeavor. My son, Syagrius, might. But Syagrius knows little of Rome and even less of the Order.
Decide for yourself if He should be told, I could never risk his life by exposing him to such knowledge. I give you now the history of the Order. It may be that the fortunes of the Order have come full circle, and that what began with the first Keeper will end with you. If so, I am confident that it will end well.
The policy begun by the 'Vandal', Stilicho, with the Britons and continued by Aetius, with the Goths and Burgundians, will be vindicated by you, Lucius Severus. The Goths will yet again serve Romanitas. There was so much that you did not know. Know at least that you have kept faith with all that we strove for...

FIRST INTERLUDE
THE ORDER OF SOL EMESA
The empire should have ended two and a half centuries earlier. The problems began when Septimus Severus granted universal citizenship, abolishing the Latin and Roman Rights and giving away Romes control of trade. Provincial capitals grew richer. Imperial Governors in the East and West began to contemplate 'Assuming the Purple' themselves.
A military junta arrested the fall in the near term. Inherently unstable due to schemes and quarrels amongst its constituents, a succession of 'soldier emperors should not have been enough in the long term. But then something remarkable happened.
The first Keeper was Lucius Domitius Aurelian, born in 215 by the christian calender, the nine hundred and seventieth year of Rome. He came from nowhere, son of an Illyrian peasant farmer of modest means. Yet he was appointed from the ranks by Claudius to be commander in chief of the Balkan army.
He became Roman emperor on the death of Claudius .By the christian reckoning, the year of their lord, 270. In five years Aurelian reclaimed most of the imperial territory that had been lost through war or secession; They called him "Restorer of the World," he used it on his coinage.
Until then, among the legions, he was known as 'Hand on Hilt'. When the Imperial Governors of Egypt and Syria rebelled, he destroyed their rebel state of Palmyra in 272 and captured its queen, Zenobia. The military recovery of the empire began here.
Here came magi from the east, for the second time in three hundred years. Guardians of the Gurzh. The Hundred-knotted Mace of Mithra. Received of Mithras by Zarathustra. Bestowed in turn upon Cyrus, King of Kings and anointed of Mithra. Bestowed in turn and in the fullness of time upon Alexander the Great, and retrieved upon his death. The Guardians held the Gurzh at the temple of Emesa against the return of the One. The Restorer of the World.
New Persians arose in the East and stretched forth their hand to claim the power. Indeed, they fomented the rebellion of Palmyra against Rome. Not all the heirs to the vision of Zarathustra had been co-opted into the Sassanid Persian state religion.
Their final act of defiance was to choose their own 'Restorer of the light'. Out of the eastern desert, the delegation came, seeking the One. They found Aurelian.
In the end, he was murdered by a military conspiracy in 275. A clerk under investigation for 'irregularities' put about the story that some of his own officers were to be executed.
When the truth of the matter came out, the officers involved were actually contrite enough to ask the Senate to name a successor. Not that it mattered by then. They did do one other thing to honor his memory...
The Order of Sol Emesa. A secret society created within the officer corps. Dedicated to preserving the order that was Rome. Allowing the more unstable claimants to the throne sufficient time to kill each other off, they bade their time.
There has always been a Keeper of their great Legacy. There has always been a Steward. We recruited from the soldiers of Mithras.
One joins the Cult of Light as an Initiate. If they are worthy they are elevated to Corax-Raven, Miles-Soldier, Leo-Lion, Perses-Persian or Aryan, Heliodromus- Courier of the Sun or Sun-Runner, and finally; Pater-Father.
Each did service according to their abilities or station. Ultimately, if they were worthy, they joined the Order.

Eventually the duly appointed Keeper, a former member of Aurelians general staff, took his seat upon the throne.
Diocletian was the second Keeper.
Caius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, was one of the ablest Roman emperors. Born in the province of Dalmatia from a family of limited means around AD 245.
A Staff Officer of Aurelian's, He was elected Keeper after the murder and became commander of the emperor's bodyguard. Within ten years, His fellow soldiers chose him to succeed Numerian as emperor.
The task of governing the Roman Empire had become too taxing for one man and decentralized the empire. Four Prefectures, were created and managed with three Colleagues--Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius Chlorus (another member of the Order). The tetrachy was born.
By 298 this tetrarchy successfully suppressed rivals within the empire and defeated the barbarian tribes and Persians who threatened the border provinces.
Mark you, Lucius Severus. The division of empire began here.
Diocletian sponsored a series of reforms, increased the size of the army and made it more mobile, imposed a uniform system of taxation, and attempted to halt inflation by reforming the coinage again. An edict in 301--unique in Roman history--prescribed maximum prices and wages.
Another mistake, Lucius Severus, they thought to run the markets as they did the Legios! Formalized requisition, forced labor, serfdom, they could buy time, but at what cost? Stabilization is never far from stagnation.
Worse, he ordered the great persecution of the Christians in 303. The followers of Mitras should protect. As He protects the Jews. These might have been allies of the Order, but this opportunity was lost.
Diocletian was concerned that religious conflict might divide the empire. He was right, it seems. But I wish he'd chosen to reconcile with the christians.
Mark you, Lucius Severus, how our strength was squandered in pointless squabbling since between Arian and Catholic, Manichean and Pagan!
In 305, Diocletian voluntarily retired to his magnificent palace at Salona (the modern Split in Yugoslavia). He refused to participate in the ensuing civil war saying only that," Anyone who asks me to re-enter politics has not seen the fine view of the cabbages in my garden." When he died in 313, the Order was ready.
Constantius Chlorus (named for his pale complexion) had been the choice of the order. However, the health of that particular Keeper had been frail.
You won't hear this history at Court, Lucius Severus. Nor would you want to repeat it! Did the grand design begin to go awry here? The legacy was passed to his son, Constantine.
But not all the members of the former junta were of the order. Not wanting two conflicts at once, Constantine chose to co-opt the christians. After the persecutions of Diocletian, their price was high.

Flavius Valerius Constantinus was the Third Keeper and first Roman emperor to adopt Christianity, albeit on his deathbed.. He was born at Naissus (modern Nis, Yugoslavia) about AD 280, the son of Constantius. In 305 his father, Constantius, became senior emperor and augustus in the West.
But he died at York one year later and the British legios proclaimed Constantine augustus in his place. The Eastern emperor, Galerius (not a member) refused to recognize the claim, offering Constantine the lesser rank of Caesar. There were already too many of those.
By 312, he was in a position to challenge Maxentius, a self-appointed caesar who controlled Italy and Africa. Always there had been renegades, remnants of the original junta, many were angry at being passed over as Keeper. Constantine's defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome (Oct. 28, 312) secured his share in the new government formed by Licinius, whom Galerius had appointed augustus of the West in 308.
The arch commissioned by the Senate in Rome to mark his victory bears an inscription that attributes Constantine's success to the "prompting of a deity." Efforts of his peers would have been less inspiring. .
Before 312, Constantine might have been a tolerant pagan, willing to accumulate heavenly patrons but not committed to any one deity. The Order knew better
The death of Galerius in 311--and his successor in the East, Maximinus Daia, in 313--left Constantine and Licinius in control of both halves of the empire. Licinius days were numbered. The conflict was postponed, not resolved.
Between 312 and 324 he officially adopted the Christian God as his protector and on several occasions granted special privileges to individual churches and bishops. His alliance with Christianity was strengthened by his political quarrel with Licinius.
Seeking political support, he courted the larger orthodox faction over the smaller arian one.
Here the Christians became a Political faction , Lucius Severus, and Constantine's conflict with Licinius a crusade against paganism.
Soon after his victory over Licinius at Chrysopolis (Sept. 18, 324), Constantine openly embraced Christianity and became more directly involved in the affairs of the church, favoring the orthodox faction over the arian one. Out of prudence, the Order embraced obscurity.
The civil war following Constantine's death on May 22, 337 did not destroy the new order he had created. The Principate had become the Dominate. The pretense of consultation with the Senate was abandoned.
Nor did it destroy the Order, which supported the victor in the struggle, his son. The Fourth Keeper, Constantius II, was somewhat less vehement than his father and amenable to the purposes of the order. Thus the empire was preserved.
Next came the tale of two brothers, both members of the Order. However one was Keeper and one was not. In the West, things went smoothly enough. Valentinian was our man...
Valentinian I, was The Fifth Keeper and Roman emperor in the West (364-75) Valentinian fought the Alemanni successfully in Gaul and kept Roman power stable in Africa and Britain; he also built a system of frontier defenses in the north.
He was a good man, Lucius Severus, although possessed of a choleric temper. When a delegation of Quaadi from beyond the north insulted him, he burst a blood vessel in his brain. We might have elected his brother, had he not proved himself totally unsuitable.
Valens, was the fool who lost control of the Goths, ruled the eastern part of the Roman Empire after being appointed co-emperor in 364 by his brother. In 369 he defeated the Visigoths, and set terms by which they could live within the empire.
Set them, but could not keep them, he was killed Aug. 9, 378 in the Visigoths' great victory over the Romans at Adrianople. He would not share the glory with Valentinian's son Gratian. So he did not wait for his cavalry. Valens always thought he should have been Keeper.
The next year Theodosius I (who had been Valentinians Steward) was named to replace him as emperor in the East by the western emperor Gratian, upon his father's death. He attempted to control the damage with the help of the Order.
When did the Legacy become more burden than boon? It was thought that after the great plague that came from the east, fresh blood would repopulate the empire.
The Goths could have been better managed. Selling refugees spoiled food at inflated prices was bad policy. Never mind the Court propaganda! Look you at Riothamus, Lucius Severus, and think of the Goths!

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