ceeded him were the sons of an adulteress. He declares that Fausta was innocent. Helena, the aged mother of Constantine, lamenting the fall of Crispus, soon revenged it; and Fausta was accused of adultery with a slave.[1] Her condemnation quickly followed; although she and Constantine had been husband and wife for twenty years, and had four daughters[2] and three sons, viz., Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, who became heirs to the Roman empire. Gibbon suggests some doubt about Fausta being destroyed. She was murdered privately in the imperial palace, if at all. "Chrysostom, the orator, indulges his fancy by exposing the naked empress on a desert mountain to be devoured by wild beasts."
Mosheim says, "Constantine's life was not such as the precepts of Christianity required." He put to death his own son, and his wife Fausta, on a groundless suspicion, and cut off his brother-in-law Licinius and the unoffending son of Licinius, contrary to his plighted word. Nevertheless, the Greek Church has canonized him, and adores the memory of St. Constantine.—J. R. Schlegel.
After his death, the bishop, to whom his will had been entrusted for Constantius, brought out a document as the will,[3] which represented that the broth-
- ↑ Or soldier of the Imperial Guard. But it was, probably, a false charge. Fausta's death occurred, A. D. 327. Helena died 328. Crispus and his friends were put to death in 326.
- ↑ Constantine's four daughters were: 1, Constantia, wife of Hannibalianus, son of Dalmatius, half-brother to the emperor; 2, Constantina; 3, Flavia Maxima, wife of Gratian, the son of Valentinian; 4, Helena, wife of Julian, son of the emperor's half-brother Constantius.
- ↑ The will was confided to a chaplain, who gave it to Eusebius of Nicomedia, and this bishop not liking to keep it in his hands, put it into the hand of the dead emperor, where Constantius found it.—Stanley, Philostorgius.
