THE MURDERS OF CRISPUS AND FAUSTA
We saw in the last chapter how Constantine presided over the
deliberations of the bishops at Nicæa, mild, benignant, gracious, and
condescending. It is a very different being whom we see at Rome in 326,
suspicious, morose, and striking down in blind fury his own gallant son.
The contrast is startling, the cause obscure and mysterious, but if the
secret is to be discovered at all, it is probably to be found in the
jealousies which raged in the Imperial House.
We must look a little closer at the family of Constantine. The Emperor
himself was in the very prime of middle age, just turning his fiftieth
year. His eldest son, by his first marriage with Minervina, was the hope
of the Empire. Crispus, as we have seen, had won distinction on the
Rhine, and had just given signal proof of his capacity by his victories
over the navy of Licinius in the Hellespont, which had facilitated the
capture of Byzantium. He was immensely popular, and the Empire looked to
him, as it had looked to Tiberius and Drusus three centuries before, as
to a strong pillar of the Imperial throne. But Crispus—if the usually
accepted theory be right—had a bitter and implacable enemy in the
Empress Fausta, who regarded him as standing in the path of her own
children, and menacing their interests by his proved merit and
abilities. The eldest of her sons, who bore his father’s name, was not
yet in his teens; the second, Constantius, had been born in 319; the
third, Constans, was a year younger. Her three daughters were infants or
not yet born. These three young princes, like Caius and Lucius,—to
pursue the Augustan parallel,—threatened rivalry to Crispus as they grew
up, the more so, perhaps, because Constantine had always possessed the
domestic virtues which were rare in a Roman Emperor. In his young days
one of the court Panegyrists had eulogised him as a latter-day miracle—a
prince who had never sowed any wild oats, who had actually had a taste
for matrimony while still young, and, following the example of his
father, Constantius, had displayed true piety by consenting to become a
father.[107] Another Panegyrist praised him for “yielding himself to the
laws of matrimony as soon as he ceased to be a boy,” and Eusebius, more
than once, emphasises his virtues as a husband and parent. Constantine,
we suspect, was a man easily swayed by a strong-minded woman, ambitious
to oust a step-son from his father’s favour.
-----
Footnote 107:
_Novum jam tum miraculum juvenis uxorius_ (_Pan. Vet._, vi., c. 2 et
4).
-----
[Illustration:
“CONSTANTINE THE GREAT AND HIS MOTHER, ST.
HELENA, HOLY, EQUAL TO THE APOSTLES.”
FROM A PICTURE DISCOVERED 1845, IN AN OLD CHURCH OF MESEMBRIA.
FROM GROSVENOR’S “CONSTANTINOPLE.”
]
There was yet another great lady of the reigning house whose influence
upon the Emperor has to be taken into account. This was his mother,
Helena, now nearly eighty years of age, but still vigorous and active
enough in mind and body to undergo the fatigues of a journey to
Jerusalem. Eusebius[108] dwells upon the estimation in which Constantine
held his mother, to whom full Imperial honours were paid. Golden coins
were struck in her honour, bearing her effigy and the inscription,
“Flavia Helena Augusta.” She amassed great riches, and although it is
impossible directly to trace her influence upon State affairs, there is
reason to believe that Helena, who owed her conversion, according to
Eusebius, to the persuasion of her son, was a woman of pronounced and
decided character and a great power at court.
-----
Footnote 108:
_De Vita Const._, iii., p. 47.
-----
There was also Constantine’s half-sister, Constantia, the widow of
Licinius, whose intercession with her brother had secured for her
defeated husband an ill-kept promise of pardon and protection.
Constantia was to exhibit even more striking proof of her influence a
little later on by her skilful advocacy of the cause of Arius and
Eusebius of Nicomedia, and her share in procuring the banishment of
Athanasius. These great ladies move in shadowy outline across the stage;
we can scarcely distinguish their features or their form; but we think
we can see their handiwork most unmistakably in the appalling tragedies
which we now have to narrate.
In 326 Constantine went to Rome to celebrate the completion of his
twentieth year of reign. Diocletian had done the same—the only occasion
upon which that great Emperor had ever set foot in the ancient capital,
and even then he made all possible haste to quit it. But whereas
Diocletian had travelled thither with the intention of abdicating
immediately afterwards, Constantine had no such act of self-abnegation
in his mind. Yet he was in no festival mood. Not long after his arrival,
there took place the ancient ceremony known as the Procession of the
Knights, who rode to the Capitol to pay their vows to Jupiter—the
religious ceremony which attended the annual revision of the equestrian
lists. Constantine contemptuously stayed within his palace on the day
and disdained to watch the Knights ride by. His absence was made the
pretext for some street rioting, which, we can hardly doubt, had been
carefully engineered beforehand. Rome, still overwhelmingly pagan in its
sympathies, had doubtless heard with bitter anger how the Emperor, the
head of the old national religion, had been taking part in a General
Council of the Christian Church, had admitted bishops and confessors to
the intimacy of his table, and had boldly declared himself the champion
of Christianity. Constantine’s pointed refusal to countenance a
time-honoured ceremony which, while itself of no extraordinary
importance, might yet be taken as typical of the ancient order of
things, would easily serve as pretext for a hostile demonstration.
Demonstrations in Rome no longer menaced the throne now that the
barracks of the Prætorians were empty, but the incident would serve to
confirm the suspicions already clouding the mind of the Emperor.
We can read those suspicions most plainly in an edict which he had
issued at Nicomedia a few months before. It was addressed to his
subjects in every province (_Ad Universos Provinciales_), and in it the
Emperor invited all and sundry to come forward boldly and keep him well
informed of any secret plotting of which they happened to be cognisant.
No matter how lofty the station of the conspirator might be, whether
governor of a province, officer of the army, or even friend and
associate of the Emperor, if any one discovered anything he was to tell
what he knew, and the Emperor would not be lacking either in gratitude
or substantial reward. “Let him come without fear,” ran the edict, “and
let him address himself to me! I will listen to all: I will myself
conduct the investigation[109]: and if the accuser does but prove his
charge, I will vindicate my wrongs. Only let him speak boldly and be
sure of his case!”
-----
Footnote 109:
_Intrepidus et securus accedat: interpellet me. Ipse audiam omnia,
ipse cognoscam._
-----
The hand which wrote this was the hand which had flung unread into the
brazier at Nicæa the incriminating petitions of the bishops. What had
taken place in the interval that he should issue an edict worthy of a
Domitian? The authorities give not the slightest hint. Was there some
great conspiracy afoot, in the meshes of which Constantine feared to
become entangled, but so cunningly contrived that the Emperor could only
be sensible of its existence, without being able to lay hands on the
intriguers? Was paganism restless in the East as we have seen it
restless in Rome, at the triumph of its once-despised and always
detested rival? We do not know. Quite possibly it was, though with the
downfall of Licinius its prospects seemed hopeless. Unless, indeed,
there was some member of the Imperial Family upon whom paganism rested
its hopes and to whom it looked as its future deliverer! Was Crispus
such a prince? Again we do not know. There is not a scrap of evidence to
bear out a theory which has only been framed as a possible explanation
of the dark mystery of his fate.
Eutropius, whose character sketches, for all their brevity, usually
tally well with known facts, calls Crispus a prince of the highest merit
(_virum egregium_). Why then did Constantine turn against him? We may,
perhaps, see the first sign of the changed relationship in the fact that
in 323 the Cæsarship of Gaul was taken from Crispus and given to the
young Constantius, then a child of seven. So far as is known, no
compensating title or command was offered in exchange, which looks as
though Constantine was disinclined to trust his eldest son any longer
and preferred to keep him in surveillance by his side. The father may
have been jealous of the prowess and popularity of the son; the son may
have been ambitious, as Constantine himself had been in his young days,
and have deemed that his services merited elevation to the rank of an
Augustus. According to the system of Diocletian, twenty years of
sovereignty were held to be long enough for the welfare alike of
sovereign and of the Empire. Constantine’s term was running out. The
system was not yet formally abandoned; is it unreasonable to suppose
that Crispus considered he had claims to rule, or that Constantine,
resolved to keep what he had won, became estranged from one whom he knew
he was not treating with generosity or with justice?
As we have said, there is no evidence of any disloyalty on the part of
Crispus, but he may have let incautious expressions fall from his lips
which would be carried to the ears of his father, and he may have chafed
to see himself supplanted by the young princes, his half-brothers. The
boy Cæsar, Constantius, was named consul with his father for the
festival year 326, a distinction which Crispus may justly have thought
to belong by right to himself, and he may have seen in this another
proof of the ill-will of the Empress Fausta, and of her influence over
the Emperor. Possibly Crispus was goaded by anger into some indiscreet
action, which confirmed Constantine’s suspicions; possibly even he
committed some act of disobedience which gave Constantine the excuse he
sought for. At any rate, in the July or August of 326, Crispus was
arrested in Rome and summarily banished to Pola in Istria. Tidings of
his death soon followed. Whatever the manner of his death, whether he
was beheaded or was poisoned or committed suicide, all the authorities
agree that he came to a violent end and that the responsibility rests
upon his father, Constantine. Nor was Crispus the only victim. With him
fell Licinianus, the son of Licinius and Constantia. He was a promising
lad (_commodæ indolis_, says Eutropius) who could not have been more
than twelve years of age and could not, therefore, have been guilty of
any crime or intrigue against his uncle.
One cannot pass by altogether without mention the story of Zosimus that
the reason of Fausta’s implacable hatred of Crispus was not ambition for
her own children, but a still more ungovernable and much less pardonable
passion. Zosimus declares that Fausta was enamoured of her step-son, who
rejected her overtures, and so fell a victim, like another Hippolytus,
to the vengeance of this Roman Phædra. Most modern historians have
rejected the story, as emanating from the lively imagination of a Greek
at a loss for a plausible explanation of a mysterious crime, and we may,
with tolerable certainty, acquit Fausta of so disgraceful a passion. If,
as we suppose, she was the untiring enemy of Crispus, it is at once more
charitable and more probable to suppose that the motive of her hate was
her fierce ambition for her own sons. For the moment the Empress
conquered. But her triumph did not last long. Eutropius tells us that
soon afterwards—_mox_—a vague word equally applicable to a period of
days, weeks, or even months—Fausta herself was put to death by
Constantine. What was her offence? Philostorgius[110] declares that she
was discovered in an intrigue with a groom of the stables—an amour
worthy of Messalina herself. But the story stands suspect, especially
when taken in conjunction with the legend of her passion for Crispus.
The one seems invented to bolster up the other and add to its
verisimilitude. The truth is that nothing is known for certain; and the
whole episode was probably kept as a profound palace secret. One
circumstance, however, mentioned by Aurelius Victor and by Zosimus,
merits attention. Both declare that the Empress-mother, Helena, was
furious at the murder of Crispus. Zosimus says that she was greatly
distressed at her grandson’s suffering, and could hardly contain herself
at the news of his death (ἀσχέτως τὴν ἀναίρεσιν τοῦ νέου φερούσης).
Aurelius Victor adds that the aged Empress bitterly reproached her son
for his cruelty (_Cum eum mater Helena nimio dolore nepotis
increparet_). Evidently, Helena favoured Crispus, the son of
Minervina—who, like herself, had been forced by the exigencies of State
to quit her husband’s house, and make room for an Emperor’s daughter,—in
preference to the children of Constantine and Fausta; evidently
therefore, Helena and Fausta were rival influences at court, each
striving for ascendency. If Crispus’s death betokened that Fausta had
gained the upper hand, the death of Fausta shewed that Helena had
succeeded in turning the tables. When Helena violently reproached her
son for slaying Crispus, we may be sure that she was aiming her shafts
through Constantine at Fausta, and that when she succeeded in rousing
the Emperor to remorse she succeeded also in kindling his resentment
against his wife. It is said that Fausta was suffocated in a hot bath,
but every detail is open to challenge. Eusebius passes over the entire
episode without a word. He is not only silent as to the death of Fausta
but also as to the death of Crispus. The courtly Bishop refuses to turn
even a single look towards the crime-stained Palatine, on whose gates
some lampoon writer had set a paper with the bitter epigram:
_Saturni aurea sæcula quis requiret?
Sunt hæc gemmea, sed Neroniana._
(“Who will care to seek the golden age of Saturn? Ours is the age of
jewels, but jewels of Nero’s setting.”) If Constantine, like Saturn, had
devoured his children and had lapsed for the moment into a savage tyrant
of Nero’s pattern, it was not for Eusebius to judge him. He was writing
for edification. Constantine had averred his willingness to cast his
cloak over a sinning bishop lest scandal should arise; ought not an
ecclesiastical historian to cast the cloak of charitable silence over
the crimes of a most Christian Emperor? When, therefore, Eusebius
describes[111] how, after the death of Licinius, men cast aside all
their former fears, and dared to raise their long-downcast eyes and look
up with a smile on their faces and brightness in their glance; how they
honoured the Emperor in all the beauty of victory and “his most orderly
sons and Heaven-beloved Cæsars”; and how they straightway forgot their
old troubles and all unrighteousness, and gave themselves up to an
enjoyment of their present good things and their hope of others to come;
it is a healthy corrective to recall the murderous outbreak of
ungovernable wrath which made Rome shudder as it listened to the
whispered tale of what was taking place in the recesses of the Palatine.
The entire subject is one on which it is as fascinating as it is easy to
speculate. On the whole, it seems most likely that Constantine’s fears
had been worked upon to such an extent that he believed himself
surrounded by traitors in his own family, that the Empress Fausta had
been the leading spirit in the plot to ruin Crispus, and that when the
Emperor discovered his mistake he turned in fury upon his wife. It may
be, as Eutropius suggests, that his mental balance had been upset by his
extraordinary success, that his prosperity and the adulation of the
world had been too much for him.[112] That is a charitable theory which,
in default of a better, we, too, may as well adopt.
-----
Footnote 110:
ii., c. 4.
Footnote 111:
_De Vita Const._, ii., p. 19.
Footnote 112:
_Verum insolentia rerum secundarum aliquantum Constantinus ex illa
favorabili animi docilitate mutavit_ (x., p. 6).
-----
We need not doubt the sincerity of his repentance. Zosimus depicts the
Emperor remorsefully begging the priests of the old religion to purify
him from his crime, and says that when they sternly refused, Constantine
turned to accept the soothing offices of a wandering Egyptian from
Spain. Another account, current among pagans, was that he applied for
comfort to the philosopher, Sopater, who would have nothing to say to so
heinous a sinner, and that he then fell in with certain Christian
bishops, who promised him full forgiveness at the price of repentance
and baptism. The motive of these legends is as obvious as their falsity.
The pagans, in defiance of chronology, sought to explain the Emperor’s
conversion to Christianity as a result of the murders that lay heavy
upon his soul, murders so revolting as only to admit of pardon in the
eyes of Christians. Among the late legends of the Byzantine writer
Codinus, we find the story that Constantine raised to the memory of
Crispus a golden statue, which bore the inscription, “To the son whom I
unjustly condemned,” and that he fasted and refused the comforts of life
for forty days. Of even greater interest is the legend that Constantine
was baptised by Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, and, in gratitude for the
promise of pardon, bestowed upon the see of Rome the _damnosa hæreditas_
of the Temporal Power.
There is no necessity to discuss at length the once famous, but now
simply notorious, Donation of Constantine. The legend is so grotesque
that one wonders it ever imposed on the credulity even of the most
ignorant. For it represented Constantine as being smitten with leprosy
for having persecuted the Church and for having driven the good Pope
Sylvester into exile. The Emperor consulted soothsayers, priests, and
physicians in turn, and was at last informed that his only chance of
cure lay in bathing in the blood of little children. Forthwith, a number
of children were collected for this dreadful purpose, but their cries
awoke the pity of Constantine and he gave them respite. Then, as he
slept, Peter and Paul appeared to him in a dream and bade him let the
children go free, recall Sylvester from exile, and submit at his hands
to the rite of baptism. This was done; the baptism was administered;
Constantine was cured of the leprosy, and in return he made over to
Sylvester and his successors full temporal dominion over the city of
Rome, the greater part of Italy, and certain other provinces. Such is
the story, which was long accepted without demur and confidently
appealed to as the origin of the Temporal Power. It is now universally
admitted that the whole legend is a fraud and the letter of Constantine
to Sylvester announcing the Donation a forgery of the eighth century.
Constantine never persecuted the Church; he never had leprosy; he never
contemplated bathing in infants’ blood; he did not receive the rite of
baptism until he was on his death-bed, and he did not hand over to the
Pope the fee simple and title deeds of Rome and Italy. The Donation of
Constantine belongs to the museum of historical forgeries.[113]
-----
Footnote 113:
We may quote the most striking sentence in the document: _Ecce tam
palatium nostrum quam urbem Romam, et omnes totius Italiæ et
occidentalium regionum provincias, loca et civitates, præfato
beatissimo Pontifici nostra Sylvestro, universali papæ, concedimus
atque relinquimus._ The forger forged boldly, and then went on to add
that Constantine withdrew to Constantinople, because it was not just
that an earthly monarch (_terrenus imperator_) should exercise
sovereignty in the city where the Head of the Christian religion had
been installed by the Lord of Heaven (_ab imperatore cælesti_).
-----
[Illustration:
THE DONATION OF CONSTANTINE.
FROM THE PAINTING BY RAPHAEL IN THE VATICAN. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI.
]
But if the repentance of Constantine did not take the form of stupendous
endowments for the Bishop of Rome, we may be tolerably sure that it did
manifest itself in the increased zeal of the Emperor for the building of
churches, and especially in his munificence to the Christians of Rome.
It is tempting, also, to connect with Constantine’s remorse and his
mother’s sorrow for the murder of her grandson the pilgrimage of Helena
to Palestine and Jerusalem, which followed almost immediately. Around
that visit there clustered many legends which, as time went on,
multiplied amazingly. Of these the most famous is that which is known as
the Invention of the Cross. This, in its fullest form many centuries
after the event, ran something as follows: When Helena reached Jerusalem
she asked to be shown the Holy Sepulchre. But no one could tell her
where the exact spot was. Buildings had been erected upon Mount Calvary
and the adjoining land; a temple of Venus was still standing near the
place where the body of Christ must have been laid. Helena instituted a
careful search, and the authority of the Emperor’s mother would be
warrant sufficient for the disturbance of the occupiers. At first their
toil met with no success. Then a very clever Jew came forward with a
story that he had heard of an old tradition that the site of the
Sepulchre lay in such and such a spot; the direction of the excavation
was entrusted to him; and the searchers were soon rewarded by finding
not only the cave where Christ had lain, but also three crosses. These,
it was at once determined, must have been the crosses on which Christ
and the two malefactors had suffered. But which had borne the Saviour?
There was nothing to show, but so sacred an object was sure to be
invested with wonder-working powers, and the test was, therefore, easy.
So they brought to the spot a dying woman—according to one version, she
was already dead—and touched her with the wood of the three crosses. At
contact with the first two no change was visible; but the touch of the
third recalled her to sensibility and perfect health, and the true Cross
stood at once revealed to the adoring worship of all believers. In the
wood were two nails. Helena had them carefully sent to Constantine, and
he, we are told, had one of them inserted—as something far more precious
than rubies—in the Imperial crown, while from the other he fashioned a
bit for his horse.
[Illustration:
ST. HELENA’S VISION OF THE CROSS.
BY CALIARI (PAOLO VERONESE).
NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.
]
Such is the legend in its most complete form. It directly associates the
finding of the Cross with Helena’s visit to Jerusalem, and attributes
also to her the magnificent church which was raised in the latter part
of the reign of Constantine on the site of the Holy Sepulchre. But it
must also be added that the first historical mention of the “Invention”
is seventy years after the discovery was supposed to have taken place.
Eusebius, in describing Helena’s pilgrimage,[114] knows nothing of the
finding of the Cross, and, while he speaks of the discovery of the
Sepulchre, he does not associate it with Helena, though he attributes to
her piety the new church at Bethlehem. It was Constantine, according to
Eusebius, who built the church on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, and
beautified the cave of Bethlehem and the site of the Ascension, but of
the finding of the Cross there is not a word—a significant silence,
which can only mean that the legend was not yet current when Eusebius
composed his “Life” of Constantine. What cannot well be doubted is that
the site of the Sepulchre was discovered and cleared in Constantine’s
reign. The Emperor built upon it one of his finest churches, but popular
tradition, with a sure eye for the romantic and the extraordinary,
preferred to attribute the origin of the noblest shrine in Palestine to
the pious enthusiasm of the aged Helena. Her pilgrimage over, Helena
died not long afterwards, and was buried by Constantine with full
military honours “in the royal tombs of the reigning city.” The phrase
points clearly to Constantinople as the place of burial, though Rome
also claims this honour.
-----
Footnote 114:
_De Vita Const._, iii., p. 44, _seq._
-----
History is silent as to the events of the next few years. But as the
Empire had been free both from civil and foreign war since the downfall
of Licinius, we may accept the general statement of Eusebius “that all
men enjoyed quiet and untroubled days.”[115] Peace was always the
greatest interest of the Roman Empire, but it was rarely of long
continuance, and in 330 and the two following years we find the Emperor
campaigning in person against the Goths and the Sarmatæ. The account of
these wars in the authorities of the period is so confused and
contradictory that it is impossible to obtain a connected narrative.
-----
Footnote 115:
_De Vita Const._, iv., c. 14.
-----
It was the old familiar story over again. The barbarians had come
raiding over the borders. There seems to have been fighting along the
entire north-eastern frontier, from the great bend of the Danube to the
Tauric Chersonese. Constantine and the legions drove the enemy back, won
victories chequered by minor reverses, and finally the Emperor was glad
enough in 332 to come to terms with the chiefs of the Gothic nation.
Mention is made of a handsome subsidy paid by Constantine to the Gothic
kings, which certainly does not suggest the overwhelming triumph of the
Roman arms of which Eusebius speaks when he says that the Emperor was
the first to bring them under the yoke and taught them to acknowledge
the Romans as their masters.[116] As for the Sarmatæ, Eusebius
declares[117] that they had been obliged to arm their slaves for their
assistance against the attacks of the Scythians, that the slaves had
revolted against their old masters, and that in despair the Sarmatæ
turned to Constantine and asked for shelter on Roman territory. Some of
them, says Eusebius, were received into the legions; others were
distributed as farmers and tillers of the soil throughout the frontier
provinces; and all, he declares, confessed that their misfortunes had
really been a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as it had enabled them to
exchange their old state of barbarian savagery for the Roman freedom.
Probably we shall not be far wrong if we place a different
interpretation on the words of Eusebius, and see in the transference of
these Sarmatians to the Roman provinces a confession of weakness on the
part of Constantine. They were not captives of war. They were rather
invited over the borders to keep their kinsmen out, and the Roman
Emperor paid for his new subjects in the shape of a handsome subsidy.
There can be no other meaning of the curious words of Eutropius that
Constantine left behind him a tremendous reputation for generosity with
the barbaric nations (_Ingentemque apud barbaras gentes memoriæ gratiam
collocavit._—x., 7). Money was not so plentiful in Constantine’s
exchequer that he gave subsidies for nothing. The suggestion is not that
he suffered defeat and bought off hostility; it is rather that he
thought it worth while, after vindicating the honour of the Roman arms,
to pay for the friendship of the vanquished.
-----
Footnote 116:
_De Vita Const._, iv., p. 5.
Footnote 117:
_Ibid._, iv., p. 6.
-----
On the Eastern frontier peace had remained unbroken throughout
Constantine’s long reign. Persia had been so shattered by Galerius that
King Narses made no attempt to renounce the humiliating treaty which had
been imposed upon him. His son, Hormisdas, had likewise acquiesced in
the loss of Armenia and what were known as the five provinces beyond the
Tigris, and when Hormisdas died, leaving a son still unborn, there was a
long regency during which no aggressive movement was made from the
Persian side. However, this son, Sapor, proved to be a high-spirited,
patriotic, and capable monarch, who was determined to uphold and assert
the rights of Persia. It is not known how the peaceful relationship,
which had so long subsisted between his country and Rome, came to be
broken. According to Eusebius,[118] Sapor sent an embassy to the
Emperor, which was received with the utmost cordiality, and Constantine,
we are told, took the opportunity of sending back by these same envoys a
letter commending to his favourable regard the Christians of Persia. The
document contained a very tedious and involved confession of faith by
the Emperor, who affirmed his devotion to God and declared his horror at
the sight and smell of the blood of sacrifice. “The God I serve,” said
Constantine, “demands from His worshippers nothing but a pure mind and a
spirit undefiled.” Then he reminded Sapor how the persecutors of the
Church had been destroyed root and branch, and how one of them,
Valerian, had graced the triumph of a Persian king. He, therefore,
confidently committed the Christians, who “honoured by their presence
some of the fairest regions of Persia,” to the generosity and protection
of their sovereign.
-----
Footnote 118:
_De Vita Const._, iv., p. 8.
-----
This remarkable letter suggests that Sapor had been alarmed at the
growth of Christianity in his dominions, and by no means looked upon his
Christian subjects as lending lustre and distinction to his realm.
Whether he replied to what he may well have regarded as a veiled threat,
we do not know, but in 335 we hear of what Eusebius calls “an
insurrection of barbarians in the East,”[119] and Constantine prepared
for war against Persia. In other words, Sapor had fomented an
insurrection in the provinces beyond the Tigris and was claiming his
lost heritage. Constantine laid his military plans before the bishops of
his court. These declared their intention of accompanying him into the
field, to the great delight, we are assured, of the Emperor, who ordered
a tent to be made for his service in the shape of a church, while Sapor,
in alarm, sent envoys to sue for a peace which the most peaceful-minded
of kings (ἐιρηνικώτατος βασιλὲυς) was only too ready to grant. Such is
the story of Eusebius, but it is evident that the Eastern legions had
been carefully mobilised, and, whether such a peace was granted or not,
the death of Constantine in 337 was the signal for a renewal of the old
conflict between the two great empires of the world, and for a war which
lasted without intermission through the reigns of Constantine’s sons and
that of his nephew Julian.
-----
Footnote 119:
_De Vita Const._, iv., p. 56.
-----
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]