In the early spring the little group were inspirited by the news that the tyrant had fallen in a struggle with Licinius, who was now sole Emperor in the East. What follows, in the narrative of Lactantius, is even more obscure, and suggests still more strongly that much is concealed from us. Candidian went openly to the court of Licinius, and was cordially received and promoted. The other young man followed. Licinius was naturally hostile to all who had taken the side of Maximin, but he could hardly be angry with these poor victims of Maximin’s rage. Valeria, however, went in disguise to Nicæa, where the court was, to follow the fortunes of her adopted son.
Suddenly something happened which brought upon them all the sword of the executioner. What it was we can only conjecture. A writer like Lactantius is so accustomed to regard a savage outbreak on the part of one of the last pagan Emperors as a natural event that he disdains to enlighten us. A part of the story has been concealed, and it would not be fantastic to suppose that the spirited, young, and ambitious Valeria meditated an intrigue for the advancement of Candidian to the throne. It is plain that Licinius suspected this. The royal birth and manly bearing of the youth might suffice to draw such a suspicion on him, but do not plausibly explain the treatment of the Empresses. Nor is there any apparent reason for her disguise. She was willing, Lactantius says, to cede her rights to Licinius, and the sentence unjustly passed on her by Maximin would have no weight with him.
Whatever the cause of the trouble was, Valeria learned one day that Candidian and Severian were arrested, and they were presently executed. She fled to the remote Syrian village, but she was so plainly implicated, in some way, that she dare not remain there. Dressing in the rough robes of the common people, the aged mother and her brilliant daughter set out on a painful and aimless journey. Either a sentence of death had been passed on them, or they had ground to apprehend one; for their flight would certainly elicit it. Lactantius says that they wandered in this disguise for fifteen months, but it is difficult to believe that they could so long evade the Imperial troops who hunted them.[21] At length they were recognized and arrested in Thessalonica, and the tragedy of their unfortunate and, so far as we know, innocent lives was brought to a close. Under the eyes of the assembled citizens the wife and daughter of the great Emperor were beheaded, and their remains were contemptuously flung into the sea.
CHAPTER XVII
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.