THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES
The fourfold power which Diocletian had prudently set up ensured for
the Empire twenty years of uneventful prosperity. The two Emperors
and their Cæsars guarded and repaired the frontiers, at which the
strong young nations of the hills and the forests were now gathering
in ominous numbers, while the body of the Empire tranquilly pursued
its sluggish and debilitated life. But no sooner had the balanced
mind and the firm hand of Diocletian relinquished their control than
the system revealed its weakness. The multiplication of dignities led
to a multiplication of aspirants; the distribution of power inflamed
the ambition of the stronger and less scrupulous. In one year eight
generals claimed and bore the title of Augustus, and our stage is
crowded with Empresses. Most of them, however, are so poorly outlined
in the records of the time that we may neglect these faint conjugal
shadows of inconspicuous rulers, and select for consideration the three
or four more prominent consorts of the Emperors.
Possibly the most widely known of all the Roman Empresses, more
familiar even than the very different figure of Messalina, is Helena,
the mother of Constantine. The first Christian Empress, the generous
supporter of the early Church, the first royal woman to find a place in
the list of the canonized, we turn to her with eagerness to discover
the contrast with her pagan predecessors. She does not bear the
Imperial title, and does not properly fall within our range, until she
is advanced in years, but we cannot understand her character unless we
glance first at her earlier years.
In one of his more important sermons (“De Obitu Theodosii,” § 42) St.
Ambrose observes that she “is said to have been a maid at an inn,”
and he so clearly accepts the statement that historians, sacred and
profane, have not hesitated to follow him. The claim of another Roman
writer, that Constantine had illumined Britain “by originating there,”
gave rise at one time to a theory that she was British, and our learned
commentators furnished so august a lady with a royal pedigree. The
phrase is, however, generally understood to refer to the beginning of
Constantine’s Imperial career, and the native town of Helena is sought
either in Dacia or in Nicomedia. Since Constantine gave her name to
Drepanum, in Nicomedia, we may presume that her first humble home was
in that town, and that she moved from there to Naissos, in Dacia, where
the birth of Constantine is usually placed.
A _stabulum_ was, in the language of the time, one of the meaner inns
in the towns through which the Roman roads ran. A _stabularia_--the
epithet used by St. Ambrose--was a woman or girl connected with the
inn; and those temporary resting-places for soldiers or merchants on
their journeys were so easy in their ways that the word was sometimes
used in an unpleasant sense. We may follow the early tradition that
Helena was the daughter of a man who kept one of these inns, possibly
a quite respectable establishment, at Drepanum, on the way to the city
of Nicomedia, which Diocletian had made his capital. Here, in or about
the year 273, the young Roman officer Constantius--later, for some
obscure reason, called Constantius the Pale (Chlorus)--saw and fell
in love with Helena. The road that ran through Drepanum was much used
by the troops, and the encounter is placed at the time when Aurelian
was conducting his campaign against Zenobia. Constantius, an excellent
officer and the son of a provincial noble of some distinction, would
then (273) be in his twenty-third year. Helena, who was over eighty at
her death in 328, must have been two or three years older.
Historians have left us a lengthy and learned debate on the question
whether she was the wife or the concubine of Constantius, and the
grouping of the combatants is singular. In the Migne edition of the
works of the Fathers we find a note appended to the passage of St.
Ambrose, which I have quoted, in which the Benedictine commentators
observe that “all the writers on Roman affairs declare that Helena was
the concubine, not the wife, of Constantius,” and they adopt that view.
Yet the critical Gibbon defends “the legality of her marriage” with a
rare and edifying chivalry, and Mr. Firth, in his recent biography of
Constantine, asserts that it is “beyond question.” With such weighty
encouragement ecclesiastical writers have confidently deserted the
Benedictines and followed Gibbon. Let us first hear the authorities,
and we may not find the problem insoluble.
Bishop Eusebius, the chaplain of the Imperial family, as one may
term him, would not mention such a circumstance in his “Life of
Constantine,” even if he knew it to be true; but it is not quite
accurate to say peremptorily that the bishop _never_ mentions it.
In the second book of his “Chronicle” (_ad annum_ 310) we read that
Constantine was “the son of Constantius by his concubine Helena.” We
have no means of determining if these words were written by Eusebius
or added by St. Jerome.[22] Even in the latter case it is a weighty
testimony.
Another Christian historian of Jerome’s time, Orosius--who does not
follow Zosimus, as Gibbon says, but precedes him--makes the same
statement (c. xxv), and it is later repeated in the “Chronicle” of
Cassiodorus. A writer of the generation after Constantine, commonly
known as “Anonymus Valesii,” says (c. ii) that Constantine was “born
of Helena, a very common [_vilissima_] woman, in the town of Naissus.”
Zosimus, a century later, and a pagan critic of Constantine, says (ii.
8) that he was “born of a woman who was not respectable σεμνή and not
legally married to Constantius,” and he later observes that Maxentius
resented the raising to the throne of a man whose mother was “not a
matron.” Finally, the early mediæval monk, Zonaras, says (“Annals,”
xiii. i): “Some say that she was lawfully married to Constantius
and divorced ... others that she was not a legitimate wife but a
paramour.” The grave and weighty Eutropius, writing in the generation
after Constantine, says that he was born of “a somewhat ambiguous
[_obscuriori_] marriage.”
The Benedictines had an ample authority, both Christian and pagan,
for their view, and only one argument is advanced in disproof of
it by modern writers. Several of the historians tell us that, when
Constantius was made Cæsar, he was compelled by the Emperor to
“divorce” Helena, and, it is said, divorce implies marriage. The
argument is hardly conclusive. When Eusebius (or Jerome) tells us that
the Cæsars were compelled to dismiss their “wives,” he adds, on the
same page, that Helena was not a wife, but a concubine. He means merely
that Constantius was forced to dismiss Helena and wed the daughter
of Maximian, and does not imply that any legal form of divorce was
employed. It is quite open to us to interpret the other authority,
Aurelius Victor, in the same way; and Zonaras, the only other writer
who could be quoted, expressly leaves it open whether Helena was
married or not. In any case, the single authority of Aurelius Victor
cannot outweigh the others, and even his words do not necessarily imply
a legal divorce on the part of both Cæsars.
But there is another aspect of the question, which is usually
overlooked. Could there be a valid marriage between Helena and
Constantius in Roman law? When we regard the subject from this point of
view, we see that Constantius could not possibly have married Helena
before the birth of Constantine, and, unless her legal condition was
subsequently altered by a special enactment, their union could never
become a valid marriage. As I have earlier observed, the strict and
ancient forms of Roman marriage had fallen very generally out of use
under the Emperors. They had had the effect of putting the wife under
the despotic power of the husband, and Roman feeling in regard to the
position of woman had entirely changed. Looser forms of marriage, which
evaded the older tyranny of the husband, were generally employed and
legally recognized. If a man and woman lived together uninterruptedly
for twelve months--without three nights’ interruption--their union
might become a valid marriage. Below this was the legally recognized
concubine. The ease with which Christian writers admitted that Helena
was a concubine is due to the fact that the Church, as well as the
law, permitted a concubine, if a man had no wife. As late as the year
400, the important provincial Council of Toledo decided that such a
man and his concubine were to be admitted to communion. St. Augustine,
we shall see, went even further. Below these, again, were the ordinary
paramours, the mistresses of a month or the playthings of an hour,
which Stoic and Christian equally condemned.
The real question we have to decide is, therefore, whether the long
association of Constantius and Helena could ever be recognized as
a valid marriage in Roman law. That they went through any form of
marriage in 273 could only occur to a writer who knows nothing of
Roman law or practice. A young officer, taking a girl from a tavern
in a small provincial town on his route, would not dream of any such
ceremony; and no ceremony would have been valid in Roman law. Whatever
the legal condition of Constantius was, Helena was, to Roman law, a
barbarian, or _peregrina_, and could not contract a valid marriage.[23]
We need little acquaintance with Roman life to imagine what happened.
Constantius felt for the young woman he found at the country inn a more
tender sentiment than that usually entertained by the young centurion
or tribune on travel, and he took her to live with him. I do not see
how this relation ever could become a valid marriage, nor is there any
clear proof that they were ever _legally_ divorced. At the most, it
remains “a questionable marriage,” as Eutropius calls it, and it began
as a free union.
From Nicomedia Constantius’s troop seems to have passed, possibly after
sharing Aurelian’s triumph at Rome, to Thrace, where Constantine is
said to have been born in the year 274. Helena narrowly missed the
dignity of Empress a few years later, as Carus had some disposition to
leave the purple to Constantius. The mother of Constantius had been
a niece of the Emperor Claudius, and his father was one of the chief
nobles of Dardania. But the accession of Carinus dispelled this hope,
and Helena followed her husband from province to province, and grade to
grade, until, in 292, he was selected for the lofty position of Cæsar
of the West. But with the purple came a command that he must dismiss
his concubine, and marry the stepdaughter of Maximian, Flavia Maximiana
Theodora. From that date until the year of her son’s brilliant triumph
Helena passes into complete obscurity.
Meantime other Empresses occupy the pages of the historian. Theodora,
of whom we have just spoken, is one of those Empresses whose propriety
of conduct and mediocrity of person have not attracted the lamp of
the historian. She was the daughter of Eutropia, the Syrian wife
of Maximian, by a former husband. Three boys and three girls came
of her union with Constantius, and she seems to have been a worthy
consort of that judicious and happy ruler. The full Imperial title
passed to them when Maximian abdicated in 305, and the handsome and
spirited Constantine joined them at Gessoriacum (Boulogne), after his
romantic flight from Nicomedia, in that or the following year. They
crossed to Britain, and suppressed a rebellion that was in progress.
But Constantius died at Eboracum (York) in the summer of 306, and the
unambitious Theodora passes from our sight.
Constantius had, with a last display of prudence, preferred his eldest
son to the legitimate children of his wife, and probably little money
needed to be distributed among the legions to ensure that they should
recognize his superiority. Constantine was then in his early manhood, a
commanding and graceful figure, in the finest phase of his character,
and the troops followed him with alacrity from the cold mists of north
Britain to more genial and more cultivated Gaul. From Gaul the young
Cæsar watched with close interest the quarrels in which his colleagues
prepared to devour each other. In February of 307 he heard that Severus
had opened his veins, and left the purple in the hands of the crafty
Maximian and his son Maxentius. Within a few weeks Maximian was in
Gaul, seeking an alliance with Constantine. He brought with him his
pretty and charming daughter, Fausta, and presently she was married at
Arles, with great pomp, to Constantine, the stepson of her half-sister.
The old man returned to his intrigues in Italy, from which he was
shortly ejected by his son: Galerius expelled him from Illyricum, where
he had taken shelter; and he returned to the court of his son-in-law in
Gaul.
The portrait-bust of Maximian might be confused with that of a modern
pugilist, but he had, in addition to strength and ambition, a restless
disposition to intrigue. To rust in a court full of women--for we
may confidently place in the court of Constantine his wife, mother,
stepmother, mother-in-law, and three young half-sisters, if not also
his concubine--was to him an intolerable experience, and he took the
first opportunity of enlivening his surroundings. An inroad of the
barbarians in the north drew away the young Emperor with much of his
army, and Maximian rebelled. He gave out a report that Constantine
was dead, emptied the treasury into the hands of the soldiers, and
assumed the purple mantle once more. But Constantine returned with the
stride of a giant, and Maximian shut himself in Marseilles, which was
presently surrendered. The aged intriguer returned to the palace, tried
to corrupt the loyalty of his daughter, and brought upon himself the
punishment of his crimes.
It is a peculiarity of the time that, the more remote an historian is
from an event, the more he knows about it. Eutropius and Zosimus merely
know that Fausta revealed her father’s plots to her husband; Zonaras,
of the twelfth century, is able to tell us the whole story. Maximian,
he says, persuaded his daughter to have the guards removed from the
Imperial chamber at night. Then, telling the night-attendants that
he wished to relate to Constantine a remarkable dream he had had, he
entered the chamber and plunged his dagger into the sleeping figure on
the bed. Rushing out to announce the fall of the tyrant, however, he
found himself in face of Constantine, Fausta, and the guards. Fausta
had been true to her husband, and it was “a vile eunuch” that Maximian
had slain in the Emperor’s bed. Whatever truth there may be in this
romance, we may accept the statement that Fausta betrayed his plots,
and Maximian came to the end of his career. Zosimus sends him into
exile, and makes him die a natural death at Tarsus. Lactantius, with a
stronger sense of propriety, tells us that he strangled himself, and it
is the general belief that Constantine did not permit him to leave Gaul
alive.
Galerius died in the following year (311), leaving the Eastern Empire
to Licinius and Maximin, while Maxentius ruled in Italy and Africa.
Four Empresses now lived in the court of Constantine, but before we
seek to penetrate the mystery of their relations to each other, we
must briefly accompany Constantine in his rise to the position of
supreme monarch. Maxentius, who had expelled his father from Italy,
now affected a filial anger against his destroyer, and, after some
exasperated correspondence, sent toward Gaul an army of nearly 200,000
men. Constantine boldly led 40,000 of his soldiers across the Alps,
wore down the strength of his opponent in successive encounters, and,
within a few months, exhibited the grisly head of Maxentius to the
astonished and delighted Romans. He was now master of the Western
Empire. Devoting two months to the settlement of Roman affairs,
he returned to Milan to meet his Eastern colleague Licinius. His
half-sister Constantia was married there to Licinius, who returned to
Asia with his bride, to crush Maximin, and to perpetrate the melancholy
tragedies over which we shuddered in the last chapter. Anastasia, the
second daughter of Constantius, was married to the Senator Bassianus.
Constantine made him Cæsar, but put no troops at his command--he had
just suppressed the Prætorian Guards at Rome--and refused to grant
him the authority that had hitherto been associated with the title of
Cæsar. Bassianus corresponded angrily with Licinius, and before the
end of 315 the Emperors of the East and West were in arms against each
other.
It would be interesting to know what share the daughters of Constantius
had in promoting these disorders. The correspondence of Bassianus
and Licinius suggests a correspondence of their wives, and, when
Bassianus was deposed and disgraced, we may assume that Constantia was
not insensible of the misfortune of her younger sister. The superior
age and ability of Constantine would hardly reconcile the legitimate
children of Constantius to their position of dependence. Constantia is
sometimes represented as a pious peacemaker, but we do not find her
in that character until her husband’s power is irremediably broken,
after the second war with Constantine. She fled in great haste with her
husband after the first defeat, and returned with him to Nicomedia, to
rule his reduced dominions.
The court-life of the West flowed with uneventful smoothness in the
eight years between the first and second war with Licinius. The only
break in the monotony is the birth of three sons and three daughters in
quick succession. Zosimus emphatically asserts that these were not the
children of Fausta, but of a concubine, whom Constantine put to death
on a charge of adultery. We are naturally disposed to regard this as
a piece of reprehensible malice on the part of the pagan writer, but
even the most cautious judgment will find ground for reflection in the
circumstance that Fausta had borne no children whatever for the first
nine years of her marriage, and then children begin to appear with
astonishing rapidity. We know that Constantine had had a concubine,
named Minervina, before he married Fausta. Her son Crispus lived at the
court. It would not be entirely surprising if Minervina had returned
to the court, to rear the Imperial dynasty which Fausta failed to
provide, and was eventually destroyed in one of Constantine’s bursts of
temper.[24]
In the Eastern court the young Empress had, if we trust the
authorities, a more adventurous career. Constantia cannot have been
more than seventeen or eighteen at the time of her marriage, but she
was a woman of spirit and ability, as well as virtue and beauty. It
is said that she, with the whole court, became a Christian after
Constantine’s victory over Maxentius, but the story of the miraculous
sign in the heavens--a story that is not found in any form until thirty
years afterwards--is now rejected, and the conversion of Constantine
is spread over many years. At Nicomedia, however, where Constantia
occupied the magnificent palace built by Diocletian, she met the
accomplished and courtly Eusebius, and induced Licinius to allow him
the position of Bishop of Nicomedia. Two things, it is said, then
transpired in the character of Licinius to excite her disgust. He not
only persecuted the Christians, but made equal war upon virtue. In
brief, he, like all the other persecutors, is depicted by the flowing
pen of Lactantius as an erotic ogre. His eye falls on a Christian
maiden, of dazzling beauty and virtue, in the suite of Constantia,
and he sends an officer to corrupt her. She tells Constantia, who
dresses her as a young military officer, and sends her, with a splendid
equipage, to take an imaginary Imperial commission to a remote region.
In the distant city of Amasia she is embarrassed by her masculine
hosts, and confides in the bishop. Finally, a letter of hers to
Constantia is intercepted, and she escapes by a very timely death from
the embraces or the tortures of Licinius.
Of these wicked ways, and of her husband’s hostility to the Christians,
Constantia is said to have kept her brother well informed, and, when
Licinius committed the greater enormity of refusing to surrender
fugitive offenders to the vengeance of Constantine, the legions were
once more led toward the Bosphorus. Several disastrous battles crippled
the power of Licinius, and he retired sullenly to Nicomedia. Whether
at his request or no, Constantia interceded for him, and Constantine
swore to respect his life. In assigning the blame for the war we may,
perhaps, hesitate between the contradictory charges of the opposing
schools of historians, though modern writers usually follow the neutral
and sober Eutropius, and ascribe it to the ambition of Constantine. But
there is a sharper indictment of Constantine’s conduct after the war.
Licinius, in surrendering, had relied on the oath of the conqueror.
He had been stripped of the purple, and exiled to Thessalonica, but
he was put to death there shortly afterwards. Zosimus and Eutropius
say that this was done “in spite of the oath,” and the statement of
Constantine’s more resolute admirers, that Licinius was discovered
in treasonable intrigue, has not carried much conviction with later
historians.
Constantia passed, with her daughter Helena and her boy Licinius, to
the court of her brother, who was now (324) master of the whole Empire.
The remark of Zosimus, that Constantine degenerated into the most
wilful license after his attainment of supreme power--a remark feebly
supported by the assurance of the cautious Eutropius that “prosperity
somewhat altered his character”--contrasts quaintly with the
circumstance that he now became the Imperial patron of the Christian
religion. Here, again, we hesitate between conflicting accounts, or
rival romances. According to the mediæval Christian writer Zonaras, who
supplies a remarkable amount of detail that was unknown to contemporary
historians, the conversion of Constantine had a picturesque origin.
On his return to Rome, after crushing Licinius, he was afflicted with
a painful eruption, and his pagan physicians prescribed a bath in the
warm blood of children. “At once,” says the lively writer, “children
were collected from the whole Empire,” and dispatched to the palace.
The lamentations of the mothers fell on the ear of Constantine, touched
his heart, and he left paganism in disgust for Christianity.
The pagan Greek, Zosimus, who at least faithfully reproduces the pagan
gossip of his time--as, on this point, we know from Sozomen--gives us
the legend of _his_ school. After committing certain murders, which
will occupy us presently, Constantine applied to the priests of the
temple of Jupiter for purification. The priests sternly replied that
their lustral water had no power to obliterate the trace of such a
crime, and Constantine turned in despair to an Egyptian who was known
to “the women-folk” of the palace. The Christian priest, as he seems to
have been, declared that his religion contained the desired remedy, and
Constantine embraced it.
It will be seen that we now pursue our biographic way amid a forest
of legends. Happily, we may reject both these stories as, at least,
anachronisms. Constantine was already a Christian in 324. He had
abolished the decrees of persecution in the year 313, and had taken
a keen interest in Church matters for some years. The whole court
gradually accepted the new faith. Helena, Eusebius tells us, and Fausta
for some time opposed the change of religion, but Helena at least was
converted. Eutropia appears in the East a few years later as a zealous
opponent of paganism. From their several and ample purses the money
poured into the lean coffers of the Church, and the conversion of the
Empire proceeded rapidly. Villages that embraced Christianity were
raised to the dignity of cities; nobles and officers were encouraged by
promotion; and ordinary citizens were rewarded with a baptismal robe
and a piece of gold.
It is not for us to inquire into the obscure question of Constantine’s
real attitude. Professor Bury and other eminent authorities believe
that his creed was a liberal, or vague, one until his death. Years
afterwards we find him building pagan temples at Constantinople, and
he did not disdain the Imperial title of Sovereign Pontiff of the old
religion. On the other hand, the details collected by Mr. Firth show a
very real interest in the Church. He opened the great Council of Nicæa
in the year 325, and reverently kissed the wounds of those who had
suffered in the persecution. Yet even amid this evidence of orthodoxy
the hesitating student will find trace of his liberality. In the letter
which he sent to the Catholic bishops he complained that the subject of
their vehement quarrel with the Arians was “quite insignificant, and
entirely disproportionate to such a quarrel.” The question at issue was
the divinity of Christ. His experience at the Council would give him a
larger sense of its importance.
From the benedictions of the prelates and the embraces of the martyrs
Constantine returned to Europe, and, within a year, apparently, his
court was rent by a tragedy that has left an irremovable cloud on his
memory. He had gone to Rome, with the court, to celebrate the twentieth
anniversary of his accession. The city exulted in the rare indulgence
of his presence, and the games and festivities warmed it with its old
enthusiasm. The Empire was united and at peace, and the growing brood
of children gave promise of an unending dynasty. Crispus, Constantine’s
eldest son, was now a popular and promising commander, clothed in the
mantle of a Cæsar. Two of the sons of Fausta, or her substitute, were
Cæsars. Then there was the twelve-year-old son of Constantia. Over
these watched the aged Helena and Eutropia, and the mothers and aunts
of the younger children.
In the middle of the festivity Rome was startled to hear that Crispus
had been arrested, by his father’s command, and exiled to Pola, in
Istria. From that remote and solitary region the report at length came
that he had been put to death. Every eye was turned on the palace,
and before long--most of the historians say--the gay figure of the
beautiful young Empress disappeared, and the report spread that she
had been brutally suffocated in the steam of a dense vapour-bath. The
horror was increased, and the prospect of a humane interpretation
lessened, when it was learned that the innocent child of Constantia
also had been put to death. Such is the grave and mysterious tragedy
of Constantine’s mature years. As Fausta has been heavily indicted by
those who have sought to defend her husband, and Helena impeached by
his accusers, we may glance at the evidence on which one’s verdict must
be based.
There are partisan historians who would cast doubt on the whole story;
there are more serious historians, such as Gibbon (who again gallantly
opposes the critics), who say that Fausta, at least, was not slain; and
the rest are divided in opinion as to whether it was a just execution
or a ghastly crime. The first two opinions are now untenable. There
is no serious dispute that Crispus and Licinius were put to death.
That Fausta was killed is now equally established. Gibbon relied
upon a certain anonymous writer to show that Fausta was living long
afterwards, but it has been shown that the writer is not speaking of
Fausta and Constantine. Moreover, Dr. Seeck, in a special study of the
evidence (“Die Verwandtenmorde Constantins des Grossen,” _Zeitschrift
für Wiss. Theol._, Bd. 33), has shown that the coins of Fausta and
Crispus, unlike those of the other members of the Imperial family, end
before the year 330. Dr. Görres, who held Gibbon’s view, consents that
this proof is decisive. The only serious question is that of motive or
justification.
Let us glance at the authorities, in the order of their nearness to the
event. Bishop Eusebius is naturally silent; he professes to give only
the things that edify in the life of Constantine, and is writing almost
in his son’s court. Eutropius, the soundest and most impartial writer
of the next generation, says (x. 6) that the character of Constantine
“was somewhat changed with prosperity,” and that “following the
exigencies of the situation [_necessitudines rerum_], he put to death,
first his excellent son and the son of his sister, a boy of promising
character, then his wife and a number of friends.” St. Jerome, in his
Latin version of the “Chronicle” of Eusebius, writes, at the year 329,
that “Crispus, the son of Constantine, and Licinius the younger, the
son of Constantia, are most cruelly put to death in the ninth year of
his reign,” and three years later we read: “Constantine put to death
his wife Fausta.”[25] Dr. Seeck believes that we have here only an echo
of Eutropius, but Jerome would hardly add “most cruelly” on so cautious
a narrative. Aurelius Victor, a contemporary of Eutropius, says that
Crispus “was put to death by his father for some unknown reason,” and
Orosius, the Christian historian, merely observes that Constantine put
Crispus and Licinius to death.
From these earlier writers we learn only that the deaths were cruel,
and the motive unknown, but later writers have successively built up
a story that has provoked endless discussion. Sidonius Apollinaris,
the most cultivated and liberal Christian writer of the fifth century,
says, with the confidence of a parenthesis (Ep. v), that Crispus was
poisoned, and Fausta killed in a vapour-bath; and that a couplet
was fixed on the palace-gate recalling the crimes of Nero. The
epitomist of Aurelius Victor declares that Crispus was put to death
at the instigation of Fausta, and Fausta was “thereupon” killed in a
vapour-bath, as Helena bitterly reproached Constantine for the death of
Crispus. Zosimus (ii. 29) says: “With no regard for the law of nature
he put to death his son Crispus, on the ground that he was suspected
of intimacy with Fausta,” and, when Helena heavily reproached him,
he, “as if to console her,” suffocated Fausta in an overheated bath.
Philostorgius, a Christian writer of the same (fifth) century, declares
that Fausta was put to death because she was caught in adultery with a
groom. The story culminates in the twelfth-century annalist Zonaras.
After telling his incredible legend about Constantine and the babies,
he represents Fausta in the character of Potiphar’s wife. She conceived
a passion for the handsome Cæsar, was repelled by him, and then
denounced him to Constantine as having offered violence to her. Crispus
was put to death. Then Constantine learned in some way--Helena is left
to the imagination--that he had been deceived, and he angrily killed
Fausta in a vapour-bath.
It is remarkable how many grave writers have favoured this legend of
the mediæval writer,[26] yet, besides its obvious growth through the
centuries, it has the fatal weakness of throwing no light whatever on
the murder of Licinius, the son of Constantine’s most cherished sister.
We are reduced to conjecture in face of this mysterious and terrible
tragedy. That the youths met with some violent death at the hands
of the Emperor, that Helena bitterly remonstrated with him, and that
the savage suffocation of Fausta followed this remonstrance, seems
to be clear. We may further conclude with some confidence, from the
persistent rumour of amorous relations, that this charge was allowed
to reach the outside world in extenuation of the murders. But it is
suspected by many historians, and seems to be suggested by the obscure
language of Eutropius, that the real motive was political.
[Illustration: FAUSTA
FLAVIA HELENA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
Crispus was in great favour with both the people and the troops,
and had distinguished himself in the war with Licinius. If anything
happened to Constantine, who was in his fifty-second year, Crispus
had a clear prospect of the throne. It would not be unnatural for
Fausta to resent this, and one is tempted to see, either an effect
of her importunity or a proof of Constantine’s jealousy of his son,
in the fact that Constantine took away the province of Gaul from
Crispus, without compensation, in 323, and gave it to the eldest of
his legitimate sons. From that time Crispus was retained in idleness,
and probably discontent, under the eye of his father. He would be
a natural focus for all the dissatisfaction in the Empire, and the
Romans, and pagans generally, regarded Constantine and his family with
anger and disdain on account of their abandonment of the old religion.
By the year 326 Constantine was in a state of extraordinary nervousness
and suspicion. Before going to Rome he issued an edict in which he
revealed his frame of mind to the whole Empire. At Rome he flouted the
most cherished customs of the city, and may well have incurred fresh
murmurs. Something occurred that brought his suspicion of Crispus--who
may not have become a Christian--to an acute stage, and he condemned
him to exile and death. This theory is also the only one to explain,
with any plausibility, the execution of young Licinius. He was the only
other rival of Constantine’s legitimate sons. It is impossible for us
to say whether Crispus had incurred any guilt or no, but the silence
of the earlier writers and panegyrists is a grave circumstance. If
there had been plausible evidence of conspiracy they would not have
remained silent. In any case, the sentence on Crispus was harsh and
unjustifiable, and the execution of a twelve-year-old boy was a piece
of brutality that only the worse Emperors would have perpetrated.
The murder of Fausta is even more perplexing. Even if the late and
negligible stories of Philostorgius and Zonaras were true, she was
not executed, but brutally murdered. The only firm point in the
conflicting evidence is the persistent association of her death with
the anger of Helena. We have no evidence of any value in regard to
her relation to Crispus; but the words of Zosimus, which are not
inconsistent with the earlier writers, enable us to extend the above
theory to her. Constantine, on this view, put Crispus and Licinius to
death because they were possible nuclei of the conspiracy which he
believed to pervade the Empire. Adopting a familiar device, however,
he concealed his motive under a charge of amorous irregularity, or too
great a familiarity with the Empress. Helena, who was greatly attached
to Crispus, seems to have insisted that, if there was any guilt, both
were guilty, and Constantine savagely completed his work by murdering
his wife. The Christian historians describe Fausta as opposing
Constantine’s progress in his new faith, and, as we have no evidence
that Crispus had embraced it, one may not implausibly wonder whether
the two did not attract the favour of the pagan Romans, to the extreme
anger of the Emperor. No charge against Fausta was made public. During
the lifetime of Constantine’s eldest son, Julian described her, in one
of his orations, as not only one of the most beautiful, but one of the
most virtuous and noble ladies of her time. Even if we make allowance
for the licensed flattery of a panegyrist, the description would be too
glaringly inconsistent with any Imperial theory of her infidelity. She
was probably in her thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year at the time when
she met her appalling death.
Constantine hastened to remove the gloomy, stricken court from the
disdainful eyes of Rome. The pagans pointed with fierce scorn to these
fruits of the new religion, as they expressed it. One day it was found
that some one had fastened a Latin couplet--written, the pagans of
a later day boasted, by the hand of the Emperor’s chief counsellor,
Ablabius--on the gate of the palace:
Say ye the Golden Age of Saturn breaks again?
Of Nero’s bloody hue these jewels are.
Either at once, or in the course of the next year, the court broke
up. Constantine went to direct the building of the new capital of
the West, which was to bear his name. Later pagans said that he fled
from the theatre of his crimes and the scorn of Rome, but the ample
lines of Constantinople had been traced long before, and the site had
been chosen for its strategical importance. Helena sought the land in
which Christ had lived and died, and her pious munificence won for her
the halo of sanctity. The legend of her finding the cross does not
appear until seventy years afterwards, and Eusebius tells us that it
was Constantine, not she, who found the sepulchre and built a church
over it. But Helena, who had now great wealth, covered the land with
churches, and returned with a great repute for piety. She died soon
after her return--in 328, Tillemont thinks--having passed her eightieth
year.
Europia also went on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and seems to have
settled in the East. We find her a few years later urging Constantine
to scatter the pagans who are defiling some sacred spot with their
impure ceremonies. Theodora seems to have died, at some unknown date,
before the year of the murders. Constantia died in, or about, the year
329. Her Arian friend Eusebius had been banished, at the triumph of the
Athanasians, but she obtained his recall, and adhered to his Unitarian
creed. In her last hours she succeeded in recommending an Arian priest
to Constantine, and prolonged the religious struggle. We pass to a new
generation of Empresses, and may dismiss briefly the ten years which
remain of Constantine’s rule and introduce us to the events of the next
chapter.
In the month of May of the year 330, the new city of Constantinople
was solemnly dedicated. The curious reader will find in Gibbon a
splendid restoration of its princely proportions, its stores of art
gathered from all parts of the Empire, its superb palace, its great
hippodrome, its churches and temples, its spacious fora, and its lofty
column of porphyry, surmounted by a gigantic statue, in which the head
of Constantine replaced that of Apollo, and the various attributes
of the god he still admired were hesitatingly redeemed by emblems of
the jealous God of his new faith. The enormous sums absorbed in the
building of the new city were regarded by the pagans as one of the
causes of the decay of the Empire, and the bitter strife of Arians and
Athanasians, which distracted it, irritated their resentment. But their
day was closing. The arguments with which they clung to a Jupiter and
a Venus in whom they no longer believed were hollow; the rewards of
conversion were great. The grey gods saw their crowds of worshippers
becoming thinner and less joyous. The Empire lifted the humble cross
into the sunlight from Persia to Britain.
The last decade of Constantine’s life was inglorious. We might distrust
the partial and severe accusations of Zosimus, but the substance of
his charge is found in the other authorities. His vast and hurried
enterprise in building forced him to lay heavy burdens on his enfeebled
Empire, and we have the authority of Ammianus Marcellinus that he
“encouraged those about him to open devouring jaws” in a lamentable
degree. Conversion was the first right to favour and wealth. The later
Emperor Julian, we are not surprised to find, pours acrid satire on
him. In the treatise (“Cæsares”) in which he introduces the Emperors
of Rome to the Olympic court, he makes Constantine turn to the
goddess Luxury, as the one congenial deity, and she introduces him
only to her sister Prodigality. He ridicules Constantine’s womanly
finery in dress and jewels, his elaborate crown of false hair, his
complete lapse into effeminate ways. Aurelius Victor gives us the
proverbial judgment of the next generation on Constantine: in his first
decade he was admirable, in his second decade thievish, in his third
decade a squanderer. He made the final blunder of--without naming a
successor--dividing the Empire among his sons and nephews, of gravely
unequal character, and died in 337, leaving them and their supporters
to engage in a murderous struggle for supremacy.