THE fourfold power which Diocletian had prudently set up ensured for the Empire twenty years of uneventful prosperity. The two Emperors and their C?sars 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 fall266 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 his267 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.
Bishop Eusebius, the chaplain of the Imperial family, as one may term him, would not mention such a circumstance in his “Life of Constantine,” even if he knew it to be true; but it is not quite accurate to say peremptorily that the bishop never mentions it. In the second book of his “Chronicle” (ad annum 310) we read that Constantine was “the son of Constantius by his concubine Helena.” We have no means of determining if these words were written by Eusebius or added by St. Jerome.22 Even in the latter case it is a weighty testimony.
Another Christian historian of Jerome’s time, Orosius—who does not follow Zosimus, as Gibbon says, but precedes him—makes the same statement (c. xxv), and it is later repeated in the “Chronicle” of Cassiodorus. A writer of the generation after Constantine, commonly known as “Anonymus Valesii,” says (c. ii) that Constantine was “born of Helena, a very common [vilissima] woman, in the town of Naissus.” Zosimus, a century later, and a268 pagan critic of Constantine, says (ii. 8) that he was “born of a woman who was not respectable σεμν? and not legally married to Constantius,” and he later observes that Maxentius resented the raising to the throne of a man whose mother was “not a matron.” Finally, the early medi?val monk, Zonaras, says (“Annals,” xiii. i): “Some say that she was lawfully married to Constantius and divorced ... others that she was not a legitimate wife but a paramour.” The grave and weighty Eutropius, writing in the generation after Constantine, says that he was born of “a somewhat ambiguous [obscuriori] marriage.”
The Benedictines had an ample authority, both Christian and pagan, for their view, and only one argument is advanced in disproof of it by modern writers. Several of the historians tell us that, when Constantius was made C?sar, he was compelled by the Emperor to “divorce” Helena, and, it is said, divorce implies marriage. The argument is hardly conclusive. When Eusebius (or Jerome) tells us that the C?sars were compelled to dismiss their “wives,” he adds, on the same page, that Helena was not a wife, but a concubine. He means merely that Constantius was forced to dismiss Helena and wed the daughter of Maximian, and does not imply that any legal form of divorce was employed. It is quite open to us to interpret the other authority, Aurelius Victor, in the same way; and Zonaras, the only other writer who could be quoted, expressly leaves it open whether Helena was married or not. In any case, the single authority of Aurelius Victor cannot outweigh the others, and even his words do not necessarily imply a legal divorce on the part of both C?sars.
But there is another aspect of the question, which is usually overlooked. Could there be a valid marriage between Helena and Constantius in Roman law? When we regard the subject from this point of view, we see that Constantius could not possibly have married Helena before the birth of Constantine, and, unless her legal269 condition was subsequently altered by a special enactment, their union could never become a valid marriage. As I have earlier observed, the strict and ancient forms of Roman marriage had fallen very generally out of use under the Emperors. They had had the effect of putting the wife under the despotic power of the husband, and Roman feeling in regard to the position of woman had entirely changed. Looser forms of marriage, which evaded the older tyranny of the husband, were generally employed and legally recognized. If a man and woman lived together uninterruptedly for twelve months—without three nights’ interruption—their union might become a valid marriage. Below this was the legally recognized concubine. The ease with which Christian writers admitted that Helena was a concubine is due to the fact that the Church, as well as the law, permitted a concubine, if a man had no wife. As late as the year 400, the important provincial Council of Toledo decided that such a man and his concubine were to be admitted to communion. St. Augustine, we shall see, went even further. Below these, again, were the ordinary paramours, the mistresses of a month or the playthings of an hour, which Stoic and Christian equally condemned.
The real question we have to decide is, therefore, whether the long association of Constantius and Helena could ever be recognized as a valid marriage in Roman law. That they went through any form of marriage in 273 could only occur to a writer who knows nothing of Roman law or practice. A young officer, taking a girl from a tavern in a small provincial town on his route, would not dream of any such ceremony; and no ceremony would have been valid in Roman law. Whatever the legal condition of Constantius was, Helena was, to Roman law, a barbarian, or peregrina, and could not contract a valid marriage.23 We need little acquaintance with Roman270 life to imagine what happened. Constantius felt for the young woman he found at the country inn a more tender sentiment than that usually entertained by the young centurion or tribune on travel, and he took her to live with him. I do not see how this relation ever could become a valid marriage, nor is there any clear proof that they were ever legally divorced. At the most, it remains “a questionable marriage,” as Eutropius calls it, and it began as a free union.
From Nicomedia Constantius’s troop seems to have passed, possibly after sharing Aurelian’s triumph at Rome, to Thrace, where Constantine is said to have been born in the year 274. Helena narrowly missed the dignity of Empress a few years later, as Carus had some disposition to leave the purple to Constantius. The mother of Constantius had been a niece of the Emperor Claudius, and his father was one of the chief nobles of Dardania. But the accession of Carinus dispelled this hope, and Helena followed her husband from province to province, and grade to grade, until, in 292, he was selected for the lofty position of C?sar of the West. But with the purple came a command that he must dismiss his concubine, and marry the stepdaughter of Maximian, Flavia Maximiana Theodora. From that date until the year of her son’s brilliant triumph Helena passes into complete obscurity.
Meantime other Empresses occupy the pages of the historian. Theodora, of whom we have just spoken, is one of those Empresses whose propriety of conduct and mediocrity of person have not attracted the lamp of the historian. She was the daughter of Eutropia, the Syrian wife of Maximian, by a former husband. Three boys and three girls came of her union with Constantius, and she seems to have been a worthy consort of that judicious271 and happy ruler. The full Imperial title passed to them when Maximian abdicated in 305, and the handsome and spirited Constantine joined them at Gessoriacum (Boulogne), after his romantic flight from Nicomedia, in that or the following year. They crossed to Britain, and suppressed a rebellion that was in progress. But Constantius died at Eboracum (York) in the summer of 306, and the unambitious Theodora passes from our sight.
Constantius had, with a last display of prudence, preferred his eldest son to the legitimate children of his wife, and probably little money needed to be distributed among the legions to ensure that they should recognize his superiority. Constantine was then in his early manhood, a commanding and graceful figure, in the finest phase of his character, and the troops followed him with alacrity from the cold mists of north Britain to more genial and more cultivated Gaul. From Gaul the young C?sar watched with close interest the quarrels in which his colleagues prepared to devour each other. In February of 307 he heard that Severus had opened his veins, and left the purple in the hands of the crafty Maximian and his son Maxentius. Within a few weeks Maximian was in Gaul, seeking an alliance with Constantine. He brought with him his pretty and charming daughter, Fausta, and presently she was married at Arles, with great pomp, to Constantine, the stepson of her half-sister. The old man returned to his intrigues in Italy, from which he was shortly ejected by his son: Galerius expelled him from Illyricum, where he had taken shelter; and he returned to the court of his son-in-law in Gaul.
The portrait-bust of Maximian might be confused with that of a modern pugilist, but he had, in addition to strength and ambition, a restless disposition to intrigue. To rust in a court full of women—for we may confidently place in the court of Constantine his wife, mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, and three young half-sisters, if not also his concubine—was to him an intolerable experience, and he took the first opportunity of enlivening his surroundings.272 An inroad of the barbarians in the north drew away the young Emperor with much of his army, and Maximian rebelled. He gave out a report that Constantine was dead, emptied the treasury into the hands of the soldiers, and assumed the purple mantle once more. But Constantine returned with the stride of a giant, and Maximian shut himself in Marseilles, which was presently surrendered. The aged intriguer returned to the palace, tried to corrupt the loyalty of his daughter, and brought upon himself the punishment of his crimes.
It is a peculiarity of the time that, the more remote an historian is from an event, the more he knows about it. Eutropius and Zosimus merely know that Fausta revealed her father’s plots to her husband; Zonaras, of the twelfth century, is able to tell us the whole story. Maximian, he says, persuaded his daughter to have the guards removed from the Imperial chamber at night. Then, telling the night-attendants that he wished to relate to Constantine a remarkable dream he had had, he entered the chamber and plunged his dagger into the sleeping figure on the bed. Rushing out to announce the fall of the tyrant, however, he found himself in face of Constantine, Fausta, and the guards. Fausta had been true to her husband, and it was “a vile eunuch” that Maximian had slain in the Emperor’s bed. Whatever truth there may be in this romance, we may accept the statement that Fausta betrayed his plots, and Maximian came to the end of his career. Zosimus sends him into exile, and makes him die a natural death at Tarsus. Lactantius, with a stronger sense of propriety, tells us that he strangled himself, and it is the general belief that Constantine did not permit him to leave Gaul alive.
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 position273 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 C?sar, but put no troops at his command—he had just suppressed the Pr?torian Guards at Rome—and refused to grant him the authority that had hitherto been associated with the title of C?sar. 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.
274 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 the275 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.
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