THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN
When the announcement of Constantine’s death had been borne by swift
couriers to the distant provinces, and the body, in its golden coffin,
had been transferred to Constantinople, there was a nervous rush of
aspiring Emperors and Empresses to the capital. The unification of the
Empire under Constantine had cost the State some hundred and fifty
thousand of its finest soldiers, who perished in civil warfare while
powerful nations pressed against its yielding frontiers. In his later
years he had so distributed these provinces, whose unity had been so
dearly purchased, among his sons and nephews, worthy and unworthy,
that dismemberment was certain to follow his death. His eldest son,
Constantine, now in his twenty-first year, ruled Gaul and Britain;
Constantius, the second son, a youth of twenty, was the Cæsar of the
East; the third son, Constans, aged seventeen, held sway over Italy
and Africa. His nephew Delmatius, also entitled Cæsar, controlled
Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, and the younger nephew Hannibalian bore
the ornate title of King of Kings in Pontus and Cappadocia. The two
brothers of Constantine, and the husbands of his two sisters, were not
left without a share of the Imperial provision.
The race to Constantinople after the death of the Emperor may be
imagined, but the suddenness and horror of the consequent tragedy must
have sobered even the most frivolous. Constantius, the second son, was
the first to arrive, and to him the conduct of the impressive funeral
was entrusted. The members of the family gathered round the marble
palace from all quarters of the Empire, and the shade of Constantine
continued for some months to rule the State, until their conflicting
claims should be adjusted. Julius Constantius and Delmatius, the
legitimate heirs of Constantius Chlorus, who had been thrust aside
thirty years before by the vigorous son of Minervina, were now men
in the prime of life. The younger son of the latter, Hannibalian,
the “King of Kings,” strutted in a scarlet and gold mantle, and had
married the fiery and ambitious young daughter of the late Emperor,
Constantina. Anastasia, Constantine’s sister, brought her husband, the
“Patrician” Optatus. The partition of power seemed a formidable task.
But in the weeks that succeeded Constantine’s death a new and sinister
power arose, and its secret designs prepared a ghastly simplification
of the problem.
Constantius became insensibly the central figure of the drama. A
callous youth, with little strength of character, he was selected
by the eunuchs and corrupt officers of Constantine’s court as a
likely instrument of their plans. It was agreed that the interests of
these officers and of the sons of Constantine would be best served
by a removal of all the other competitors, and a diabolical plot
was devised. The details are given at length only by the Christian
historian Philostorgius, of the next century, and are regarded with
reserve; but an Arian writer would hardly inculpate an Arian bishop
and an Arian monarch without some just ground. His story is that
Constantine left a will in which he declared that he had been poisoned
by his two half-brothers. The will was given to Bishop Eusebius. When
the brothers were eager to see the will of Constantine, Eusebius is
said to have discovered a fine piece of casuistry. He put the will
in the hands of the dead Emperor, and covered it with his robes, so
that he might, without injury to his delicate conscience, assure the
brothers that Constantine had indeed shown him a will, but he had
returned it into his hands. The will--or a will--was now produced, and
the people and army were assured by their dead ruler that he had been
poisoned by his family.
The story is regarded with suspicion by most historians. For the reason
I have given, and because it is the only plausible explanation of what
followed, it seems probable that such a will was produced and published
by Constantius. It was probably forged by the palace officials. Whether
they and the sons of Constantine used this device or no, they somehow
directed the tempestuous anger of the troops upon the older princes and
their families, and extinguished their claims in a brutal massacre.
Julian casts the blame on Constantius, admitting that he acted under
compulsion, and the other fourth-century writers do not differ.
Constantius “permitted,” rather than “commanded.” The corrupt power
behind the throne directed the murders, and the sons of Constantine
purchased a larger dominion by the blood of their uncles and cousins.
The two uncles, seven cousins, and other distinguished men, were
included in the bloody list. Then the three Imperial youths divided the
Empire between them, and departed to their provinces.
The wives of the eldest and the youngest of the brothers are unknown
to us, and the first wife of Constantius is so little known that we
may pass rapidly over a number of years. The Imperial sisters of
Constantine--except Constantia, whom we have considered--enter little
in the history of the time. Anastasia disappears after the murder of
her husband. Eutropia will presently mingle her blood with that of
her insurgent son on the soil of Italy. Constantina, the daughter of
Constantine who had married Hannibalian, and who already bore the title
of Augusta, retired into a long widowhood, from which we shall find her
emerging later in a monstrous character.
Constantius had been married to his cousin Galla in 336. She seems to
have been the daughter of Julius Constantius, since Julian says that
her father and brother were included in the massacre. Her personality
is never outlined for us in the historical writings of the time, and we
are left to imagine her shuddering or languishing in the arms that were
stained with the blood of her family. She died some time before 350, as
Magnentius offered his daughter to Constantius in that year. We have,
therefore, no Empress who can engage our attention until 353, and may
be content with a slight summary of the events which lead on to the
appearance of Eusebia and the reappearance of the repulsive Constantina.
Three years after the partition of the Empire Constantine and Constans
quarrelled about their territory. The elder brother led his troops into
the dominion of Constans, and was slain; and his provinces were added
to those of Constans. The character of the youngest son of Constantine
was gross and intolerable. He revived the lowest vice of his pagan
predecessors, and his open parade of the handsome barbarian youths
whom he bought, or attracted to his frivolous court, disgusted his
officers. In the beginning of the year 350 they rebelled against him. A
banquet was given at Augustodunum (Autun) to the notables of the town
and the officers of the camp, and at a late hour, when the abundant
wine had warmed the hearts and obscured the judgment of the diners,
the commander of two of the chief legions, Magnentius, was brought
before them in a purple robe. Constans awoke from his vices to find
that he had lost the throne and the army, and fled toward Spain. He was
overtaken and slain. Some blood-curse seemed to hang over the house of
Constantine. Constantius, who had been long occupied in resisting the
Persians, now wheeled round his troops, and faced the usurper.
In the long struggle that followed there were two incidents of interest
for us. Constantina, the Imperial widow, was living in restless
impotence at the time. Between the rebellious provinces of the West and
the loyal provinces of the East was the intermediate district between
the Danube and the Greek sea. Constantina, it is said, instigated the
commander of the troops in these regions, Vetranio, to assume the
purple. What we shall see of her character presently will dispose us
to believe that she meditated a return to power through Vetranio,
but Constantius astutely disarmed and exiled him, and accepted her
explanation that she had acted with the pure aim of resisting the
advance of the Western usurper. Constantine’s sister Eutropia also
appears in the struggle. Her son Nepotian assumed the purple at Rome,
and led out a motley army to attack Magnentius. They were quickly
annihilated, and mother and son--two of the few remaining members of
Constantine’s family--were slain.
The interest of the student of the time is divided between the clash
of armies and the not wholly bloodless conflicts of theologies. We are
concerned with neither, and need only observe that Constantius defeated
Magnentius, after a long and costly struggle--in one battle 54,000
Roman soldiers perished in civil warfare--and reunited the Empire under
his sole dominion. The young Empress of the defeated Magnentius retired
into widowhood, and will be restored to us in the next chapter. In
the meantime Constantina has returned to the field, and her Imperial
adventures call for our notice.
Two children, the sons of Julius Constantius, had survived the massacre
at Constantinople. Gallus was in his twelfth year, Julian in his sixth.
They were hidden until the fury of the soldiers had abated, and then
their tender age induced the murderers to overlook them. The jealous
eye of Constantius fell on them when they approached manhood, and they
were confined in a fortress, or ancient palace, in Cappadocia. In the
solitude of Macellum no company was offered them but that of slaves and
soldiers. Julian, in whose mind the seeds of an elevated philosophy had
taken root, resisted the pressing temptations, and devoted the long
days to culture; but Gallus, a sensual and ill-balanced youth, adopted
the coarse distractions of his spacious jail. After six years (in
351) they were not only set at liberty, but Gallus was amazed to find
himself clothed with the dignity of Cæsar and married to the Emperor’s
sister Constantina. Constantius was compelled to leave the East in
order to face Magnentius, and he needed a Cæsar to rule in his name.
The three years’ rule of Gallus and Constantina was an Imperial
scandal. Unscrupulous and unbridled, the daughter of Constantine lives
in the literature of the time as a monstrous perversion of womanhood.
With her begins the historical work (as we have it) of Ammianus
Marcellinus, a retired general, one of the most scrupulous and ample
chroniclers of his time. He bursts at once into a vivid denunciation
of her vices. She was “a mortal Megæra,” an ogre, swollen with pride
and thirsting for human blood. It is unfortunate that Ammianus gives
us no personal description of the women of his time. His work contains
charming vignettes of the Emperors and princes, but he seems never to
have looked on the face or figure of their wives. Gallus, he tells us,
was a superb youth in figure and stature, his handsome features crowned
with soft golden hair, and bearing a look of dignity and authority,
in spite of his vices. The strain of cruelty and coarseness in him
was provoked to excesses by his wife. When his savage conduct had
exasperated his subjects he used to send his spies, in the disguise
of beggars, to gather the secret whispers of discontent; and he even
stooped to the practice of wandering himself, in disguise, from tavern
to tavern on the well-lit streets of Antioch to discover his critics.
Antioch had been noted for centuries for its freedom of speech, and the
prisons and torture-chambers of Gallus were busy.
Constantina not only encouraged this criminal conduct, but enlarged on
it. A woman of vicious character came one day to disclose some plot,
or pretended plot, to her. She rewarded her heavily, and sent the
harlot out into the city in the royal chariot, to encourage others.
An Alexandrian noble distinguished himself by resisting the guilty
passion of his mother-in-law. The woman presented Constantina with a
pearl necklace, and the noble was put to death. We need not prolong
the disgusting narrative. Flavia Julia Constantina, a beautiful and
able woman, who can scarcely have passed her thirtieth year, was one of
the worst Empresses in the Imperial gallery. One can but suggest, in
some attenuation of her guilt, that the murder of her husband by her
brother when she was a young girl in her early teens, and the fourteen
years of young widowhood that followed, had provoked the worst elements
of her nature.
As long as Constantius was occupied with the struggle against
Magnentius, he overlooked the excesses of his Cæsar and his sister in
the East. His opponent, Magnentius, was not so compliant, though he
wasted no legions in an effort to dethrone him. He sent a soldier to
assassinate Gallus and seduce the troops. As the man resided, however,
in a tavern near Antioch, he became less cautious over his cups, and
boasted to his associates of his mission. The old woman who kept the
tavern seemed too far removed from politics to be taken into account,
but she promptly denounced her guest at the palace, and he was put to
death. Then Magnentius fell, and committed suicide, and Constantius
turned to consider the scandalous conduct of his viceroy and his sister.
Constantius proceeded, as he usually did whenever it was possible,
by craft instead of force. The Prefect of the East had been slain by
the people of Antioch, with the guilty connivance of Gallus, and a
new Prefect, named Domitian, was sent to Antioch, together with the
Prefect of the Palace, Montius. Domitian had orders to secure, by the
most tactful and seductive means, that Gallus should visit Italy, and
walk into the pit dug for him. He was, however, a sturdy officer, more
sensible of the just substance than the form of his instructions.
Gallus and Constantina were at once insulted because, on the day of
his arrival, he drove insolently past the gate of the palace, and
went straight to his villa. They then condescended to invite him to
the palace. In the presence of the hated rulers he laid aside all
pretence of diplomacy, and roughly ordered the Cæsar to proceed at once
to Italy, or incur the just resentment of the Emperor. Gallus, stung
by his insolence, at once gave the Prefect into the custody of the
soldiers. Montius, who was present, and who also had lost all feeling
for diplomacy in the passionate encounter, remonstrated with Gallus,
adding the taunt that a man who had no power to dismiss one of his
magistrates had no right to imprison a Prefect of the East. We are
assured by Philostorgius that Constantina flew at the official, dragged
him from the tribunal, and pushed him into the hands of the guard.
We may prefer the more sober version of Ammianus. Gallus impetuously
called upon the troops and the people of Antioch to defend their ruler,
and they responded with surprising alacrity. The distinguished officers
of Constantius were bound hand and foot, dragged through the streets
until the last spark of life was extinct, and then flung into the river.
Still Constantius hesitated to enter upon a civil war with the East,
and the unscrupulous cunning which dictated his policy discovered an
alternative procedure. First, the commander of the cavalry in the East
was summoned to Milan, that the danger of a rising might be lessened.
Then, a series of letters, couched in the most friendly and mendacious
terms, were sent to the Cæsar. Constantius was eager to see his beloved
sister once more, and to confer with his Cæsar. For some time they
resisted the invitation, but at length Constantina, less apprehensive
of personal injury, set out for Italy. She died on the journey, at
Cœnum in Bithynia, of fever, and her remains were buried at Rome. She
was still in her early thirties at the time of her death. The single
deed that is recorded in praise of her is that she and Gallus planted
a Christian church in the dissolute grove of Daphne, and drew the
austerity of the new faith upon that region of sensuous superstition
and sensual license. Her share in that act of piety may be put in the
scale against her avarice, cruelty, selfishness, and unbridled temper.
The fate of her husband may be briefly recorded. Lured at length by the
deceitful professions of Constantius, he set out for Milan with his
princely retinue. As soon as he reached Europe, the retinue was brushed
aside, and he discovered himself a captive. When the little party
arrived in Pannonia, he was stripped of the purple, and conducted to
the remote prison at Pola, where Crispus had been executed. There he
was “tried” by a eunuch of Constantius’s court, and within a few days
a breathless courtier--he had ridden several horses to death--rushed
into the presence of Constantius with the shoes of the slain Cæsar.
The Empire was reunited under Constantius, at a cost of the deaths
of twenty princes and princesses of his house and their dependents,
and fifty thousand soldiers; and the eunuchs and courtiers filled the
palace at Milan with the incense they offered to the young conqueror.
Constantius had, meantime, married again, and a more worthy and
commanding Empress engages our attention. Toward the close of his
struggle with Magnentius, in the year 352 or the beginning of 353,
the Emperor married a Macedonian lady, Aurelia Eusebia, of remarkable
beauty, no little ability, and dignified personality. Her father and
brothers had had consular rank in their province; her mother had been
distinguished for the propriety of her conduct and the careful rearing
of her children after the death of her husband. The language in which
the Emperor Julian describes her is enhanced by gratitude, and enjoys
the license of a panegyric; some would say that it is warmed by a more
tender sentiment. But Ammianus, who also knew her, pronounces that the
beauty of her character was not less splendid than that of her form,
and, beyond a peevish complaint of a later writer that she did not
confine herself to the proper and restricted sphere of a woman, she
maintains her high repute among the conflicting writers of the time.
The one grave imputation, which Ammianus seems to find quite consistent
with his superlative praise of her, we will consider later.
We find Eusebia established in the court at Milan at the time when the
heads of the last of Constantius’s rivals are falling. When Gallus has
disappeared, he proudly takes the title of “Lord of the World,” and
endeavours to live up to it, amid his company of eunuchs and fawning
attendants. In the hands of those astute and concordant schemers the
weak and vain monarch was easily persuaded to arrive at decisions
which he attributed to his own judgment, and it is, perhaps, the most
indulgent plea that we can make for him that he was governed by a power
so subtle and insinuating that he never perceived it. The high merit
of a scrupulous chastity is claimed for him; but the monastic writer
Zonaras somewhat detracts from this by affirming that his coldness
deprived him of a dynasty and forced his beautiful and accomplished
wife into a fatal decline. His piety, at least, might be praised; but
it rested on a basis of Arian creed and is exposed to the scorn of the
orthodox, who called him Antichrist.
We may concur in the strictures of Zonaras so far as to admit that
Eusebia cannot have been happy in his court. The eunuch Eusebius, who
had tried and executed Gallus, was the most powerful man in the Empire.
Ammianus observes, with heavy irony, that Constantius was believed to
be not without influence with his emasculated chamberlain. A hierarchy
of lesser, but hardly less corrupt, officials led up to this favoured
minister, and Ammianus, from personal acquaintance with the court,
assures us that their rapacity and unscrupulousness grew with the power
of Constantius. A Persian officer, Mercurius, had the nickname of “The
Count of Dreams,” from the skill with which he could make the most
innocent fancies of the night bear a treasonable complexion, and bring
destruction and spoliation on the dreamer. Paulus, who had risen from
the lowly position of table-steward, was called “The Chain,” because
of the art with which he could involve a man in a charge of plotting.
Torture and confiscation became common experiences once more, and men
began to shrink from even the most innocent conversation.
This unpleasant tenor of the Imperial life at Milan was relieved by
the great controversy of the Arians and Athanasians, which was brought
to Italy for decision. How Constantius and his officers induced the
Latin bishops to condemn Athanasius, in 355, by “stroking their bellies
instead of laying the rod on their backs,” to use the vigorous phrase
of St. Hilary, does not concern us, but it is interesting to see how
Eusebia came in contact with the prelates. When the Roman bishop,
Liberius, bravely--for a time--incurred exile rather than condemn
Athanasius, Eusebia sent him a sum of money. He returned it with the
suggestion that her husband might find it useful for his troops or his
Arian bishops. A new power, besides that of eunuchs, was rising. Suidas
preserves a story that may be given here, though it may or may not
refer to this Council. As the bishops, he says, came to the town where
the court was, for the purpose of holding a Council, they called to
salute the Empress. Leontius, Bishop of Tripoli, refused to visit her,
and she sent word that, if he would call, she would give him the funds
to build a large church. The saintly prelate replied that he would
condescend to visit her if he were assured that she would receive him
with fitting respect--if, he explained, she would rise from her throne
at his entrance, bend for his benediction, and remain standing, while
he sat, until he permitted her to resume her seat.
In the same year (355), however, a more pleasant diversion alleviated
the weariness of Eusebia, and another Empress is introduced to our
notice. We have already said that the unhappy Gallus had for companion
in his Cappadocian jail a young half-brother of the name of Julian.
Imbibing his early culture at the alternate hands of Bishop Eusebius
and the philosophical eunuch Mardonius, Julian had come to prefer the
Greek culture of the latter to the theological lore of the prelate. He
had come out untainted from the lonely fortress at Macellum, and had
passed to Constantinople and then to Nicomedia. There the distinguished
pagan Libanius attracted his allegiance, and from the three years in
which he studied at Nicomedia his mind was wholly given to the older
culture, however much he might be compelled to dissemble his aversion
for the new religion. After the execution of Gallus he was brought
to Milan. With growing apprehension he awaited the decision of “the
eunuch, chamberlain, and cook” who, he says, directed the bloody
counsels of Constantius. But he found an unexpected and powerful friend
in the Empress.
It seems clear that Eusebia first espoused his cause in a pure feeling
of humanity. The officials had impeached the innocent youth of
twenty-three or twenty-four, chiefly on the ground of having visited
Gallus, and his life was gravely threatened. Eusebia threw all her
influence in the scale against the malignant officials, and, though
they prevented Constantius from hearing him, she saved his life. He was
housed in the suburbs of Milan, and was taken one day to see Eusebia.
“I seemed to see, as in a temple, the image of the goddess of wisdom,”
he afterwards wrote in his “Letter to the Athenians.” The splendid
figure of the beautiful Empress can easily be imagined to have made a
remarkable impression on the bookish youth. Eusebia was differently,
but favourably, impressed. Julian was a well-made youth, of moderate
stature and broad shoulders. He had the soft curly hair of his brother,
a straight nose, large mouth, and brilliant eyes. The humane feeling of
the Empress assumed a more tender and personal complexion, and she set
to work to make Julian’s fortune.
He was sent for a time to Como, and, as her influence prevailed,
recalled to Milan, and permitted to reply to his accusers before the
Emperor. He was then permitted to retire to his mother’s small estate
in Bithynia, but Eusebia induced Constantius to impose on him the
pleasant sentence of an exile to Athens. From the beloved schools of
Athens he was, after a few months, recalled to Milan, to hear the
astounding news that he was to receive the purple robe of Cæsar and
the hand of the Emperor’s sister Helena. He shrank in tears from the
political world that opened to him, but Eusebia tactfully overcame his
opposition and guided his conduct. Her eunuchs ran continually between
the palace and his lodging. The beard and cloak of the philosopher
were laid aside, and Julian blushed to find himself accoutred in the
splendid trappings of a commander. The jeers and intrigues of the
court were at length silenced, and, on November 6th, 355, he stood on
a lofty platform before the troops while Constantius invested him with
the purple and exhorted him to sustain the honour of Rome. The marriage
with Helena followed, and in December Julian and his bride, with a
valuable collection of books as the gift of Eusebia, set out for Gaul.
Julian never saw Eusebia again, and cannot have had the least
correspondence with her. Even in Milan he had, on reflection, torn
up a letter in which he modestly wished his patroness the reward
of a succession of children. On his side there was nothing but a
pure feeling of gratitude and reverence. She was, says Zosimus, “a
woman of erudition and prudence above her sex”; a shining example
of spiritual and bodily beauty, according to Ammianus. She had most
probably saved his life, and most certainly made his fortune. But it
is believed by many writers that Eusebia’s feeling for Julian was
of a less ethereal nature. Gaetano Negri, whose life of Julian is
one of the most distinguished biographies of a Roman Emperor, justly
repudiates the suggestion of improper feeling on her part, and it
is a superfluous inference. But one may, without casting the least
reflection on her virtue, hesitate to think that the only link between
them was a sympathy of culture. Such sympathy we may well assume
between a cultivated Greek lady and an ardent Hellenist, but so cold
and spiritual a relation may very naturally and pardonably have been
strengthened by a warmer feeling. Julian had no sensuous attractiveness
for a beautiful woman. But his manly person and character, his vast
superiority to the crowd of ignoble parasites she daily encountered,
and to her weak and mediocre husband, must have excited an admiration
less purely intellectual than an appreciation of his learning.
The person of Flavia Julia Helena remains faint and elusive in the
ample chronicle of the time. She was much older than Julian, who was
in his twenty-fifth year, while Helena cannot have been less than
thirty.[27] She had not been previously married, Ammianus says, and the
long maidenhood would not tend to make her attractive. The marriage
was arranged by Eusebia in the political interest of Julian, and it
probably retained the chill that a _mariage de convenance_, with such
disparity of age, would naturally bear. In Julian’s abundant, and
largely autobiographical, writings she is barely mentioned. It was
the marriage of an old maid--for the Roman world--with an austere, if
conscientious, philosopher. The gradual discovery of Julian’s secret
loyalty to the old gods would not make their relations more cordial.
We may, therefore, regret that the single line of inquiry which we
pursue will compel us to leave almost unnoticed the brilliant episode
of the reign of Julian. The more liberal taste of our time has removed
the violent and conflicting colours which the partisan writers of
the fourth century laid upon the portrait of Julian. To Gregory of
Nazianzum he was a faint impersonation of Antichrist; to the pagan
writers a modest incorporation of Apollo. In modern history he is
a most conscientious thinker, a humane and unselfish ruler, a very
capable commander, a conceited and unattractive personality. His
character, in spite of the shade that clings to it as a trace of the
enforced dissimulation of his early years, is great: his ability and
achievements are just entitled to be called brilliant.
Helena and Eusebia appear little in the years that follow, and we
must narrate the necessary events very briefly. The frame of mind in
which Constantius sent Julian to Gaul as Cæsar is not at all clear.
The frontier was obliterated; the barbarians overrunning the country
in formidable strength; the military force inadequate, except with
fine control. Some writers are disposed to think that Constantius was
sending his cousin to death. At all events, the faith of Eusebia, that
her young and shrinking scholar would surmount these difficulties, was
great; and it was rewarded. Julian at once discovered a bravery that
none had suspected. He cut his way through a region occupied by the
barbarians, surveyed the devastated frontier, and passed the first year
of his inexperience with only one small disaster. The difficulty of his
task seemed greater when, in the winter, he was besieged in Sens, and
the commander of the troops in the neighbourhood refused to go to his
relief. In the trouble that followed Eusebia obtained for him the full
command of the troops, which had been withheld from him, and from that
moment he entered on a career of victory.
It is probable that Helena did not share his peril in this winter
(356–7). We find her at Rome in April, with Eusebia and Constantius,
and a curious story of their relations is put before us. Constantius in
that month bestowed his first and only visit upon the ancient capital
of the Empire. Sitting in a chariot that glittered with gold and gems,
preceded by officers whose spears bore silken dragons, so fashioned as
to hiss in the breeze, on their golden and bejewelled tips, followed by
his legions in battle-array, their breastplates and shields gleaming
in the sun, the Emperor passed with affected indifference between the
dense lines of spectators and the great monuments of Rome; though both
the vast crowds and the ancient structures, shining with a beauty that
his decaying Empire could no longer produce, wrung from him in private
an expression of astonishment. Eusebia had invited Helena to join them
in this visit to Rome.
At a later point in his narrative Ammianus makes a reference to this
visit that has perplexed every thoughtful reader. When he comes to
record the death of Helena, he says that it was due to a poisonous
drug administered to her by Eusebia, during the visit to Rome, to
prevent her from having children, and that in the previous year, when
she was pregnant, Eusebia sent a midwife to destroy the child under
pretence of attending her. It does not seem to occur to Gibbon and
other historians, who adopt this story, that it suggests in Eusebia a
character in complete contradiction to that ascribed to her by Ammianus
himself and every other Roman writer. A jealousy of Helena, whether on
account of her own childlessness or on account of Julian, that could
force her to such a malignant course, is utterly inconsistent with the
description we have quoted of her. The story is peremptorily rejected
by Miss Gardner and Signor Negri, and its discord with all that we know
of Eusebia is noticed by most writers.
One is tempted to inquire if it may not be an interpolation, but the
text of Ammianus lends no support whatever to the idea. We can only
suppose that Ammianus incorporated a piece of idle gossip, and was
inattentive to its inconsistency with his high moral praise of Eusebia.
Many legends, we shall see, sprang up after the death of Helena.
Some of them assail Julian, and are easily traced to their source.
It is possible that the courtiers who opposed Eusebia, and doubtless
misrepresented her zeal for Julian, started the rumour, and Ammianus
heard it in Italy years afterwards. It is a mere feather in the scale
against the authorities for the high character of the Empress.
From Rome Constantius was summoned to repel fresh invasions in the
East, and Helena returned to Gaul. She remains unnoticed until the
spring of the year 360, and we will not follow Julian through the
brilliant campaigns in which he reduced the most powerful tribes of the
barbarians, and restored peace and prosperity to his stricken province.
But while Julian succeeded in the West, the campaign of the troops of
Constantius in the East won for the Emperor few laurels, and entailed
grave disasters. The intriguers now doubled their charges against
Julian, and plausibly suggested that he would be prompted to claim a
higher title than that of Cæsar. It was decided to reduce his power by
removing a number of his finest legions to the East.
Julian was in winter quarters at Paris--as Lutetia was beginning to be
called--when the grave summons reached him. The island on the Seine,
which now bears the Cathedral, had from early times offered a secure
settlement, and, as the province became more settled, the adjoining
slope, where the Latin Quarter of a later age began, was occupied with
a palace, an amphitheatre, and a few of the customary institutions of
a Roman town. Julian loved the little settlement on the broad silvery
river, surrounded by dense forests, and he was spending the winter
there, attending with equal judgment and humanity to the civil welfare
of his province, when the officers of Constantius arrived. He has
described at length the painful perplexity into which he was thrown.
Not only would the sacrifice of four of his best legions seriously
impair his strength, but they were local troops and had enlisted
only for local service. He decided to obey, and ordered the troops
to prepare for departure. An angry murmur arose from the camps, as
the men reflected on the fate that might befall their families in the
ill-protected country. Julian provided that their wives and children
should accompany them, and they gathered at Paris for the dismissal.
In affecting language the Cæsar conveyed to them his thanks and his
admonitions, entertained their officers at a banquet, and retired to
his palace.
The sincerity of Julian has been made the theme of an acrid discussion
between his violent critics and his resolute admirers. But we may,
without serious reflection on his character, doubt whether he entirely
wished the troops to go. Such an order, from such a source, would
plausibly relieve a Cæsar from obedience. Only excessive virtue or
uncertain prospect of the issue would counsel a man to obey it. Both
feelings were at work in Julian’s mind, and there is not ground to
accuse his later account of hypocrisy. But we may surmise that, at the
time, his decision was accompanied by unsanctioned hopes and dreams of
a more satisfactory issue. In those days of anxious deliberation his
imagination, however he might curb it, must have depicted for him the
revival of culture, the arrest of superstition, the purification of the
court and Empire, that would follow his elevation to the throne.
He retired to his palace, where, as he incidentally observes somewhere,
Helena lived with him. But shortly after midnight a great tumult arose
from the direction of the camp, and from the windows one could see the
troops, the light of their torches gleaming on their drawn swords,
coming toward the palace. The doors were at once closed, and Julian
refused to show himself, but the cry of “Imperator” easily penetrated
to his ears. On the following morning they broke into the palace, and
forcibly conducted Julian to the camp. He resisted, threatened, and
supplicated, but the troops were consulting their own interest, now
gravely threatened by their revolt, and there was no other course
possible but to consent. He was raised up on a shield, and the legions
broke into a frenzy of delight at their escape from exile. A diadem
only was needed to complete his new dignity, and Helena, who was
present, seems to have offered a pearl necklace of hers. Julian refused
to wear the feminine adornment, and an officer provided a rich golden
collar, studded with gems, for the coronation.
With the struggle that followed, and the dramatic chapter that opened
in the annals of Rome, we have no concern. Both our Empresses die
before a decisive stage is reached. The date of the death of Eusebia is
not known. It was some time between the beginning of 359 and the middle
of 360, as Constantius married again toward the end of 360. She is
said to have died of an inflammation of the womb, brought on by taking
drugs for procuring fertility. That such drugs were familiar at the
time, and that the Empress would naturally try their effect, we readily
admit, but we need not entirely overlook the statement of Zonaras that
the conduct of her husband and the unhappiness of her circumstances
brought the beautiful Greek into a decline. Had she shared the throne
with Julian, and adopted his views, the story of Europe might have run
differently.[28]
That Helena was won to the views of Julian is improbable. She would,
no doubt, discover soon after her marriage that he secretly cherished
the cult of the old gods. From his first month in Gaul he had, with one
assistant, set up a private shrine to them. There are coins that bear
the names of Julian and Helena and the figures of Isis and Serapis, but
they yield no inference. Nor can we learn the attitude of Helena in the
struggle between her husband and her brother. The complete silence of
Julian suggests that she remained moodily silent or hostile. Several
months were spent in negotiation with Constantius. In December Julian
celebrated, at Vienne, the fifth anniversary of his promotion, and
wore the splendid diadem of an Emperor as he presided at the games and
exercises. In the midst of the festivities Helena died. Zonaras, who
also gives a ridiculous rumour that she had been divorced by Julian,
says that she died in childbirth. We are tempted to think that the
painful development of her unprosperous marriage weighed heavily on
her, and her pregnancy had a premature and fatal delivery. Her remains
were conveyed to Rome, and laid by those of her sister Constantina. We
need not notice the charge of one of Constantius’s officers that Julian
had poisoned her, and paid the guilty physician with his mother’s
jewels. Julian, honestly, professes no grief at her death, and he never
married again.
A third Empress makes a brief appearance at the time when Helena passes
away. Passing from his long campaign on the Danube to the stricken
regions of the East, Constantius had, toward the close of 360, married
for the third time, at Antioch. Maxima Faustina, his third Empress, had
little time to make an impression on history, if she were capable of
it. As Constantius at length set out from Antioch, in the autumn of
361, to crush the mutiny in the West, as he affected to regard it, he
contracted a fever, and died before he reached the European frontier.
Faustina was left with the unborn wife of the future Emperor Gratian,
and will come to our notice again. The Roman Empire was once more
united under a strong, upright, and accomplished ruler. But Julian was
now wedded to his ideals, and, as no woman shared his ascetic life and
arduous labours, we must pass over the reforms, the campaigns, and the
religious struggles of the next two years.