[16] I conclude that they had already come to Rome because Elagabalus, the son of Soæmias, was given serious consideration in his later claim that he was the son of Bassianus. He was born in 204, and, unless his mother had been in the palace before that date, the claim could not have been made.
[17] It is difficult to imagine Elagabalus beginning his appalling career at such an age, and Gibbon, calculating from the age given to Alexander Severus in the “Historia Augusta” at the time of his death, changes the age to seventeen. But the “Historia Augusta” is very commonly wrong in the ages it ascribes to Emperors at their death. Professor Bury admits that Gibbon is probably wrong, and we may follow Herodian.
[18] Ammianus Marcellinus tells us the one fact, Zosimus the other. Neither mentions her name, but we learn it from coins.
[19] Some writers have conjectured, from the fact that the legend “In Pace” occurs on the coins of Salonina after her death, that she became a Christian. The phrase is not found otherwise except on Christian monuments. Duruy does not admit the inference, and points out that she built a temple to the goddess of the seasons.
[20] Her name is variously given as Vitruvia, Victoria, or Victorina. Since it appears as Vitruvia where the “Augustan History” copies from the Acts of the Senate, and no Roman would corrupt Victoria into Vitruvia, I take it that it was originally Vitruvia, and was Latinized, or changed by her when she became Empress, into Victoria.
[21] It has been suggested that the fifteen months of Lactantius may date from their expulsion from the court of Maximin. This is hardly possible. Galerius died in May, 311, and Valeria was still in mourning for him, and pleaded his recent death, when Maximin sought to wed her. Maximin died in April, 313, so that the deaths of Prisca and Valeria cannot have been earlier than the summer of that year.
[22] The Greek original of the “Chronicle” is lost, and Jerome informs us that he has added many details in the Latin version which we now have.
[23] One of the most authoritative works on Roman institutions, Marquardt and Mommsen’s “Handbuch,” says this emphatically: “Ehen, bei welchen der eine Theil der Römischen Bürgerschaft, der Andere den Latinern jüngeren Rechtes oder den Peregrinen angehörte, sind nach Römischen Recht nicht gültig” (vii. 29). Göteke, in a special study of the subject (“Constantinum honeste et ex legitimo matrimonio natum”), says that special edicts made it impossible for an officer to marry in the province in which he served. He believes that the effect of these would not be permanent, but he fails to consider Helena’s disability as a peregrina.
[24] The question may be raised whether St. Augustine had not the case of Constantine in mind when, in his moral treatise “De Bono Conjugali,” he refuses to condemn a man who, having a barren wife, takes a concubine in addition, to provide a family. It is clear, at least, that early Christian opinion was not fixed. Gibbon again improves upon Christian writers by holding that Minervina was an earlier wife, not a concubine, of Constantine; but, as Professor Bury points out, the document on which he relies does not apply to that Emperor.
[25] It is from the confusion of dates that I ascribe the words confidently to Jerome, and not Eusebius The words “ninth year” can only refer to the ninth year of the Cæsarate of Crispus, or 326. The interval of three years has no significance in view of the confusion of dates.