The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

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.