Polychronia and Gerontius cultivated a son, naming him the one  who  opens the land with a furrow; to plant seeds in the ground and hope,  from them a leaf,  some fruit, or a solitary ear of grain.   Yet, mirroring his father, the young man took up the Roman blade. Shielding the Emperor, commanding and stewarding the soldiers’ bread, or witnessing in court, the draft of others' fates.   The irrational, selfish whim that serves the few and compels the rest to ignore their dream and strand their very selves was not welcome in Nicomedia, nor in his native Cappadocia, nor in his mother’s homeland, Palestine.   Flavius Georgios Cappadox, in his late twenties, swiftly tore to shred the very edict Diocletian had just entrusted to his guards so that once again Caesar Galerius could read the omens in the viscera of a sacrifice.   The Tribune would not take  boons,  est...