The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 by John Julius Norwich Page B
Authors: John Julius Norwich
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had since borne her husband five children, a fact which suggests that she must have been at least in some measure reconciled to him. It seems, therefore, that we must look for another solution to the problem.
Unfortunately for Fausta's reputation, at least four ancient historians associate her in one way or another with the fate of her stepson. Aurelius Victor maintains that she encouraged Constantine to get rid of Crispus; Philostorgus agrees, adding that she deliberately fabricated slanders against the young Caesar, while herself having an affair with a man from the circus. Zosimus, however - writing admittedly in the following century - introduces a new element altogether. 'Crispus,' he writes, 'was suspected of having adulterous relations with his stepmother Fausta, and was therefore executed.' 1 One might well be inclined to ascribe this
1 Historia, II, 29.
manifestly improbable story to the chronicler's known hostility towards Constantine and his whole family, were it not for the fact that it is to some extent confirmed by another fifth-century writer, St Apollinaris Sidonius, Bishop of Auvergne, who writes gleefully of the scurrilous couplet said to have been posted up on the doors of the palace on the Palatine Hill when the imperial party arrived in Rome:
Who would now want the golden age of Saturn? Ours is a diamond age - of Nero's pattern. *
If this theory is correct, there are three possibilities. The first is that Crispus and Fausta were indeed having an affair; why then, however, were they not executed at the same time? The second is that Crispus made proposals to Fausta, who angrily rejected them and informed his father; but if so, why was she executed at all? We are left with a third hypothesis: that Crispus had no designs of any kind on Fausta and was unjustly accused by her - perhaps, as Gibbon suggests, because be rejected her advances - and that Constantine, discovering the falseness of her allegations only after his son's death, ordered that she too must suffer a similar fate. According to Aurelius Victor, his informant on this occasion was his mother Helena, who would certainly not have been sorry to see her daughter-in-law receive her just deserts.
Constantine's second visit to Rome had not begun well. It continued, if anything, worse. News of the family upheavals had preceded him to the city, and had done nothing to diminish the sense of mistrust that he had long inspired there, particularly among the nobility. There were several reasons for this: as Romans, they had not forgiven him for holding his real vicennalia elsewhere, and were increasingly concerned by the reports reaching them of the splendid new city that was rapidly growing up by the Bosphorus; as Republicans - or at least inheritors of the republican tradition - they were scandalized at the sight of a ruler who appeared to be less a Roman imperator than an oriental potentate, robed in silk and damask and attended by a multitude of fawning courtiers; and as staunch upholders of the traditional religion, they deplored his desertion of the
* The age of Saturn - commemorated annually in the Roman saturnalia — had been, according to legend, one of unbounded sexual licence; Nero was popularly believed to have enjoyed incestuous relations with his mother Agrippina. The implications could hardly have been clearer.
old gods and his adoption of the despised Christian faith, which they associated with the rabble of the streets and the lowest dregs of Roman society. They saw their Emperor, in short, as a traitor not only to his religion but also - what was to them very nearly as important - to his class. They had watched, powerless, as the walls of his great new basilica rose ever higher next to the old Lateran Palace; and on 3 January 326, only months before his arrival in the city, they had sat in sullen silence while his nominee, one Acilius Severus, formally took office as its first Christian Governor.
And now, after thirteen years, he was
Unfortunately for Fausta's reputation, at least four ancient historians associate her in one way or another with the fate of her stepson. Aurelius Victor maintains that she encouraged Constantine to get rid of Crispus; Philostorgus agrees, adding that she deliberately fabricated slanders against the young Caesar, while herself having an affair with a man from the circus. Zosimus, however - writing admittedly in the following century - introduces a new element altogether. 'Crispus,' he writes, 'was suspected of having adulterous relations with his stepmother Fausta, and was therefore executed.' 1 One might well be inclined to ascribe this
1 Historia, II, 29.
manifestly improbable story to the chronicler's known hostility towards Constantine and his whole family, were it not for the fact that it is to some extent confirmed by another fifth-century writer, St Apollinaris Sidonius, Bishop of Auvergne, who writes gleefully of the scurrilous couplet said to have been posted up on the doors of the palace on the Palatine Hill when the imperial party arrived in Rome:
Who would now want the golden age of Saturn? Ours is a diamond age - of Nero's pattern. *
If this theory is correct, there are three possibilities. The first is that Crispus and Fausta were indeed having an affair; why then, however, were they not executed at the same time? The second is that Crispus made proposals to Fausta, who angrily rejected them and informed his father; but if so, why was she executed at all? We are left with a third hypothesis: that Crispus had no designs of any kind on Fausta and was unjustly accused by her - perhaps, as Gibbon suggests, because be rejected her advances - and that Constantine, discovering the falseness of her allegations only after his son's death, ordered that she too must suffer a similar fate. According to Aurelius Victor, his informant on this occasion was his mother Helena, who would certainly not have been sorry to see her daughter-in-law receive her just deserts.
Constantine's second visit to Rome had not begun well. It continued, if anything, worse. News of the family upheavals had preceded him to the city, and had done nothing to diminish the sense of mistrust that he had long inspired there, particularly among the nobility. There were several reasons for this: as Romans, they had not forgiven him for holding his real vicennalia elsewhere, and were increasingly concerned by the reports reaching them of the splendid new city that was rapidly growing up by the Bosphorus; as Republicans - or at least inheritors of the republican tradition - they were scandalized at the sight of a ruler who appeared to be less a Roman imperator than an oriental potentate, robed in silk and damask and attended by a multitude of fawning courtiers; and as staunch upholders of the traditional religion, they deplored his desertion of the
* The age of Saturn - commemorated annually in the Roman saturnalia — had been, according to legend, one of unbounded sexual licence; Nero was popularly believed to have enjoyed incestuous relations with his mother Agrippina. The implications could hardly have been clearer.
old gods and his adoption of the despised Christian faith, which they associated with the rabble of the streets and the lowest dregs of Roman society. They saw their Emperor, in short, as a traitor not only to his religion but also - what was to them very nearly as important - to his class. They had watched, powerless, as the walls of his great new basilica rose ever higher next to the old Lateran Palace; and on 3 January 326, only months before his arrival in the city, they had sat in sullen silence while his nominee, one Acilius Severus, formally took office as its first Christian Governor.
And now, after thirteen years, he was
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