7 Four Deaths and an Anniversary

Given Constantine’s emphasis on dynastic legitimacy and the hope it gave for the empire’s future, the emperor’s was a family that was often portrayed. Among the earliest of such portraits is the so-called Hague-Cameo (Fig. 7.1), which was produced at around the same time as the Roman paintings possibly depicting a Constantinian family procession that we discussed earlier (Fig. 3.1). The cameo, which seems to reference Constantine’s victory over Maxentius, may have been commissioned to commemorate the emperor’s Decennalia of 315 (the tenth anniversary of his rule), which he celebrated in Rome. Cut into a large layered agate gemstone, it is commonly believed to show Constantine and his wife, a veiled Fausta, facing each other in a mythologized embrace that recalls the divine characters of Zeus-Dionysos and Hera-Demeter-Ariadne. They are positioned sideways on a triumphal chariot rumbling over a fallen krater, and pulled by centaurs trampling young men, one dressed in tunica, an allusion to victory in civil war. Victory herself hovers above the scene, extending a laurel wreath toward the already laureate central male figure. The woman behind Constantine’s right shoulder is sometimes identified as Helena, but has also been interpreted as Constantine’s fictional grandmother Claudia, niece of Claudius Gothicus. Given the cameo’s probably early date and, as we shall see, its focus on legitimate inheritance, she may alternatively and more plausibly represent Theodora, Constantine’s stepmother.¹

If the dating is correct, the little boy in military gear standing in front of Constantine must be Constantine’s first-born and at this point only son, Crispus, the offspring of his earlier relationship with Minervina. Crispus’ frontal depiction, to which both women conspicuously point, made him the focus for the cameo’s viewer. The women’s gesture, including that of his childless stepmother Fausta, highlight how, at this moment in time, Crispus was Constantine’s heir apparent.² Consciously or not, this arrangement echoed one of the earliest examples of a dynastic cameo, a sardonyx carving commissioned by Nero’s mother Agrippina, showing Augustus and his wife Livia, looking at each other from either side of their great-great-grandchild, a very young Nero who is himself confronting the viewer.³

As we have seen, the makeup of the Constantinian family changed rapidly over the next decade, for Fausta gave Crispus three half-brothers and two half-sisters. It is also possible to trace these shifts through the changes in dynastic iconography, ranging from the Ada Cameo showing Crispus and Constantine the Younger, appointed Caesar in 317, in front of Constantine, Fausta, and Helena (Fig. 5.4), to the golden multiplum from Trier c. 324, with its striking image of harmony between Fausta, her son Constantine, and Crispus (Fig. 5.10). Despite Fausta’s belated motherhood, these portraits still recognized her stepson Crispus, therefore, as a fully fledged member of the expanding Constantinian dynasty.

At some point, however, Constantine’s family iconography acquired a new veneer, which would have been utterly unrecognizable to a viewer of the Hague Cameo in 315, despite the similarities in composition. A bronze medallion now at the Musée Dobrée in Nantes, dated by the Christogram it features to the later 320s or even 30s, depicts yet another dynastic scene, with another couple gazing at each other above a group of three children (Fig. 7.2).⁴ Once again Constantine is facing a woman, but this time it is not his wife Fausta, but his mother Helena, identifiable by the characteristic hairstyle with which she had often been portrayed in Rome, featuring the stiff ripples around the face and a braid wound around her head.⁵ Albeit probably posthumously, Helena appeared here, for the first time, in the heavily embroidered robe that mirrored the emperor’s trabea triumphalis, as previously worn by the imperial wives Magnia Urbica, Valeria Galeria, and Fausta on coins (Fig. 4.6 and Fig. 5.10). The medallion thus promoted the idea that the couple at the helm of the empire, by God’s providence, were the emperor and his mother, rather than the emperor and his wife. What is more, Crispus had now disappeared. Although the imperial couple’s facing busts once again frame the heirs apparent, the children depicted here are very likely to represent Constantine’s three younger sons, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, the last of whom was elevated to Caesar in 333.⁶ The Constantinian family tree had been pruned again, into a slenderer shape consisting of Helena, Constantine, and her three grandsons.

Dynastic portraits from the Constantinian period are precious objects, not only for their materials, craftmanship, and antiquity, but also for their historical value. Their beauty and their insistent messages of loyalty, harmony, peace, and faith cannot mask the fact that, in reality, the Constantinian family engaged repeatedly in the replacement of its women and its heirs. So far we have witnessed Helena’s substitution by Theodora, Theodora’s sons by Constantine, Minervina by Fausta, Bassianus by Constantine the Younger, and Licinianus by Constantius II. Finally, we reach Helena’s extraordinary replacement of Fausta and of Crispus by Fausta’s sons. This was a pattern that had started at a domestic level, with Helena’s fateful “casting aside” in the late 280s, but it increasingly followed the brutal logic dictated by public events and the pursuit of power. As such, behind their harmonious facade, Constantinian family portraits reveal a persistent anxiety about the dynastic fragility that derived from the complex sexual relationships entertained by Constantine and his father before him. This anxiety always had the potential to swerve into conflict, violence, and death. Perhaps inevitably, it did. It is true that some members of the family—such as Helena and Constantine’s half-siblings—were not removed altogether. But many were not so lucky. Between the carving of the Hague Cameo and the minting of the bronze medallion from Nantes, at least five of Constantine’s relatives lost their lives. The execution of Constantine’s brother-in-law Bassianus in 316 had only been the beginning. It was during this period that one quality of Helena forcefully emerged. While she did have an interrupted life, she was also a serial survivor of family ruptures.

In early 325, Constantine seemed in full control, both of his empire and of his family. After raising his dynasty’s profile through the award of new titles to his nearest relatives, he set out to transform the territory conquered from Licinius and to connect with its Christian inhabitants. Residing in Nicomedia, Diocletian’s former headquarters, Constantine sent letters to the Christian churches and the inhabitants of the Eastern provinces to announce a string of measures that reversed the results of Licinius’ recent persecutions. The banished were recalled and restored to their former status, those that had been sent to work in the mines or state factories were released, and confiscated property was returned, either to the original owner, their kin, or their local church. Unlike in 313, when Constantine and Licinius had similarly pronounced property restitutions, those who had benefited from these confiscations were not compensated. In addition, Constantine promoted Christians to administrative roles, and prohibited the consultation of oracles and traditional cult practices during the course of holding public office. Instead, he began a campaign of church building, and for this purpose gave bishops access to imperial funds and to the officials who administered them.⁷

However, trouble was brewing for Constantine on both the religious and the dynastic front. At some point the emperor became aware of a theological dispute disturbing Christian communities in the East. It concerned the teaching of an Alexandrian presbyter called Arius about the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son. As far as we know—for the evidence is muddled and Arius’ position was also far from fixed—he had postulated that Christ was not co-eternal with God the Father. This position was considered heretical by Arius’ own bishop Alexander and by other, but by no means all, Eastern bishops. During the winter of 324–325 and into the spring, Constantine tried to end this disagreement through diplomacy, but to no avail. Eventually, he called all Christian bishops to a universal council to settle the matter, to be held in his presence in Nicaea in May 325.⁸

Before the council met, Constantine found time to kill Licinius. As we have seen, the former emperor had been allowed to live in Thessalonica, presumably with his wife, Constantine’s sister Constantia, and his sons. As in the case of other conflicts within Constantine’s kinship group, it is difficult to understand what really happened here. The spin put out by the imperial court was that Licinius had tried to rebel against Constantine by inciting barbarian troops who served in the Roman army to revolt, whereupon other soldiers resisted and demanded his death. In one version of the story, Constantine even brought in the Senate to publicly condemn him, after which Licinius was allowed to commit suicide, a story suspiciously similar to reports of Maximian’s fate in 310. In truth, there may have still been some support for Licinius in some quarters, both in the East and in the West. Although Christians were more numerous in the Eastern Mediterranean, they did not constitute a majority and the emperor’s assertive actions in their favor intervened in many non-Christians’ daily lives and livelihoods in unsettling ways. There may also have been sympathy for Licinius within the pagan aristocracy in Rome.⁹ It is unlikely that resentments stretched to outright conspiracy, but Constantine may have been fearful that it might, so decided it was time for Licinius’ removal. Other authors report that Licinius was secretly strangled, a shameful sort of death. These authors also highlight the role of an imperial woman in the affair. They remembered that Constantine had given his sister an oath (sacramentum/hórkos) that he would spare her husband’s life. Now they found the emperor’s behavior wanting or, in the case of the pagan Zosimus, writing around the year 500, went so far as to deem it a repellent sacrilege.¹⁰

Whatever happened to Licinius, Constantine let his widow live and even received her back in honor at his court. Unlike Licinius, she was, of course, a blood relation, which might have saved her. Constantine may also have remembered the upheaval caused by Licinius’ own earlier killings of imperial widows, not least in Thessalonica. Furthermore, Constantia, who had previously resided at Nicomedia for almost a decade, was valuable to her brother for her Eastern connections. She indeed used her new position to further the careers of men who had been active at Licinius’ former court. Among them was the tutor of her son Licinianus, the grammarian Flavius Optatus, who, as the orator Libanius later bemoaned, made a stellar career under Constantine despite having an unsuitable wife.¹¹

Constantia’s usefulness was a two-edged sword for Constantine. On the upside, it manifested itself almost immediately on the ecclesiastical front. After the Council of Nicaea got underway in May, Constantia managed to convince three leading attendees, the bishops Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicaea, and Maris of Chalcedon, to subscribe to the definition of the relationship between God and Christ decided by the council and promoted by her brother, to which they had initially objected. This was the so-called homoousian formula, which postulated that God and Christ were “of one substance.” Constantia had long been acquainted with the prominent Eusebius, who had arrived to preside over the church of Nicomedia around the same time that Licinius had moved his residence there, in 317. Now, her intervention ensured that the council could almost unanimously (save for two Libyan bishops who supported Arius) agree on the doctrine backed by Constantine.¹²

However, the fragile ecclesiastical unity achieved at Nicaea began to unravel as soon as the council was concluded. By October 325, Constantine had to banish Eusebius, Theognis, and Maris to Gaul for continuing to agitate against the assembly’s sentences of ex-communication of Arius, to which they had not subscribed, and for communicating with malcontent parties in Alexandria. In the letter Constantine wrote to the church of Nicomedia, the emperor among other matters drew attention to Eusebius’ close links to Licinius, his complicity in Licinius’ persecutions, and his spying on Constantine for the “tyrant,” all of which supposedly served as proofs of his criminal mind.¹³

Under such circumstances it was a difficult predicament for his credibility that, in the eyes of his Eastern subjects, Constantine himself had dangerously close links with Licinius, too, as personified by his sister and Eusebius of Nicomedia’s friend Constantia. This also had repercussions for his standing among the supporters of the Council of Nicaea, who still remembered Constantia’s role in these theological disputes even many generations later.¹⁴ Furthermore, for some of his pagan subjects and supporters of Licinius in the East, Constantia offered a link to the past. This was all the more so because at first, Constantia returned to Constantine’s court and her former palace in the company of her children, her 10-year-old son Licinianus, the former Caesar, and possibly also her stepson, Licinius’ offspring from an enslaved concubine.¹⁵

To offset any attempt by enemies to capitalize on lingering popular sentiments, Constantine decided visibly to detach Constantia from Licinius. He chose a variant to the strategy of promoting the face of a Constantinian woman in a space vacated by a former empress, which he had applied before with Helena and Fausta in Thessalonica and Antioch. The difference was that this time he promoted the very woman who had operated in the same space before. She was simply given a different, Constantinian costume, similar to the treatment of Theodora and Fausta in Rome after the victory over Maxentius. When the mint in Constantinople opened in early 326, a series of dynastic bronze coins was struck, the only such issue ever from this mint. On this series, Constantia’s portrait appeared next to Fausta’s and Helena’s (as well as Constantine’s, and those of the three Caesars Crispus, Constantine, and Constantius). The caption of Constantia’s coin proclaimed her to be the “sister of Constantine Augustus,” while a wreath-enclosed legend almost menacingly prophesized her “Love for the State” (Fig. 7.3).¹⁶ The coinage paralleled Constantine’s likely insertion of a statue that Licinius had erected for his wife in Constantinople into a dynastic group featuring himself, his sons Constans and Constantius alongside Constantia.¹⁷

Constantia’s coin caption directly invited the viewer to consider her biological relationship with the emperor. Constantine had presented Constantia as his “sister” before, on a milestone in the West, in Gallia Narbonensis, erected between 317 and 324 that described the Caesar Licinianus as “son of the Augustus Constantine’s sister.” At that time, Constantine felt the need to emphasize to the subjects in his territory that this Eastern Caesar was nonetheless a Constantinian. Constantia’s coin from Constantinople now drew attention still further away from her former status as Licinius’ empress and the mother of his heir. Those remembering this link will have registered it as another humiliation of the former emperor.¹⁸

Within the dynastic series of 326, the coin not only reappropriated Constantia, but also visualized her new status within the hierarchy of the Constantinian dynasty. This status was decidedly junior to that of the other women. Constantia had never been proclaimed Augusta by Licinius, and now she would never be. The title afforded to her at her brother’s court was one from which Helena and Fausta had long graduated, the old tetrarchic dignity of nobilissima femina (noblest of women). All three women were depicted with pearl necklaces on the issues in this dynastic series, but while Helena and Fausta wear their customary spherical hairdo and chignon, respectively, Constantia was portrayed with a thick pearl-studded braid around her head, similar to the style that had been developed for Helena in Rome. This was to create a gallery of distinguishable and distinctive Constantinian women within the context of this series, much as Helena’s new look in Rome was meant to make her distinctive, but not superior. More suggestive is Constantia’s inclusion in the coinage of the new mint of Constantinople, the city that Constantine was building up as his new residence during these years. Constantine thought that it was the population of this city, whose walls Licinius had recently fortified and outside which he had been defeated, that needed reminding that, at least symbolically, Licinius’ empress was no more.¹⁹

If Constantine’s mercy had given Constantia a feeling that she and her children were now safe, it must soon have evaporated. With the Council of Nicaea concluded in July, Constantine turned his mind to the celebration of his Vicennalia, the twenty-year anniversary of his reign. Festivities began in Nicomedia, but were to culminate in Rome the following year, in July 326, where his entire family was to assemble. In the spring of 326 Constantine started to move his court (perhaps including Constantia and her son) through Thrace and the central Balkans, passing Serdica, Naissus, and Sirmium on the way, before arriving in Italy in April.

Here, disaster struck. Intelligence reached Constantine that critically shattered his trust in his oldest son, Crispus. Crispus, now normally resident in Trier, had probably always intended to join his father in Northern Italy to complete the last leg of the journey to Rome and the Vicennalia celebrations together. Now, this would become his life’s final trip. After a trial conducted by Constantine who acted both as emperor and as Crispus’ paterfamilias with power over his children’s life and death, Crispus was transported to a town near Pola in Istria. Here, he was executed or forced to commit suicide, possibly by poison. Throughout the empire, but especially in Italy, his name was erased from imperial monuments to subject him to damnatio memoriae (condemnation of his memory). One such erasure occurred on the base of a statue dedicated to his grandmother Helena, which stood in the city of Salerno.²⁰

News of Crispus’ violent death must have come as a shock to the inhabitants of the empire. Although (or because) Crispus’ mother may have been merely a concubine, Constantine had so far always stayed loyal to his eldest son, as his own father had done with him. As we have seen, even after Fausta’s sons were born, Crispus continued to be included in Constantine’s imperial college of Caesars and was styled as a “Iulius,” implying strong links to his imperial grandfather Constantius. When in 322 Crispus provided Constantine with his first grandchild, probably a boy, this happy dynastic event had been publicly announced in the city of Rome.²¹ What is more, Crispus, by now in his mid-twenties, had grown into Contantine’s trusted collaborator, and not merely in administering Gaul, where he was primarily based. He was a gifted military leader, and decisively contributed to Constantine’s victory over Licinius through the defeat of his admiral Abantes. His achievements and importance to his father ensured that he had not only been prominently displayed in imperial iconography and epigraphy, but also heaped with honors—he was appointed consul no less than three times—and celebrated by poets and writers in search of imperial favor. Most poignantly, Eusebius of Caesarea had conspicuously associated Constantine and Crispus as godfather and godson in the edition of his church history written in 324. In the later version published after 326, the passage was quietly removed. Eusebius would never mention Crispus again.²²

Although the killing of Crispus was clearly public knowledge, the motivation behind it was not. Some authors, generally those earliest in date, were cautious about advancing any opinions, with one directly stating that the reason was uncertain.²³ But rumors inevitably circulated and they also embroiled Helena in the affair, by connecting Crispus’ death with further, even more mysterious developments within the Constantinian family. According to one version of events, it had been his own wife Fausta who had provided Constantine with the initial evidence that made him doubt his son, by claiming that he had raped her. This was a crime that—when it involved a respectable woman, let alone the empress—carried the death penalty. This story further asserted that having dealt with his son, Constantine was confronted by his mother, presumably in Rome where he had proceeded for the celebrations of his anniversary. Here, Helena allegedly presented him with information that Fausta’s accusations against Crispus had been false. Fausta had been in love with her stepson, but when he rejected her advances, she had sought revenge by concocting the rape story. Now believing his mother, Constantine punished Fausta by suffocating her in an overheated bath.²⁴

But other stories circulated, too, describing Fausta and Crispus as accomplices, rather than antagonists. They had supposedly been adulterous lovers and had even plotted against Constantine. The adultery version was peddled with particular enthusiasm by Zosimus, the late-fifth-century pagan historian hostile to Constantine, who also reported that Constantine killed Fausta in the bath to console Helena for the death of her grandson. Plagued by his guilty conscience, he then converted to Christianity, once he learned from a mysterious “Egyptian” introduced by the “women of the palace,” presumably again Helena, that this religion offered redemption for his sins.²⁵

Some of these lurid scenarios painted by late antique authors are not entirely implausible, although to a varying degree. To begin with, we should not a priori exclude the possibility that Crispus raped Fausta and that she was simply not believed, but accused of adultery herself.²⁶ We could alternatively assume a romantic relationship between Fausta and Crispus, who, after all, were close in age and had almost grown up together. They may have contemplated Crispus’ usurpation of power from his father. It has even been suggested that Fausta may have become pregnant by Crispus and that her death was the tragic consequence of trying to abort the child with hot fumes. However, it is difficult to see how Fausta and Crispus could have conducted an affair in the years preceding their deaths, given that they were hundreds of miles apart. An equally significant objection against a plot between Crispus and Fausta, with or without any sexual overtones, is that she would have been working against her own children’s interests.²⁷ Therefore, if we want to follow the literary accounts that connect Crispus’ fate with that of Fausta, we might more reasonably imagine that Fausta was worried precisely about her own sons’ prospects of succession and intrigued against Crispus accordingly, either by accusing him of rape or simply of plotting against his father. When her machinations were subsequently exposed, Fausta would then either have been killed, or forced to commit suicide.²⁸

In either case, Helena may have acted out of devotion to her grandson, or of long-held resentment against her daughter-in-law, the sister to her old rival Theodora. Helena’s deep devotion to Crispus, the corresponding depth of her grief at his death, and her anger at Fausta are indeed often assumed. One historian has recently even argued that Helena had Fausta killed without consulting Constantine.²⁹ Such assumptions of Helena’s devotion to Crispus, however, rely entirely on the stories about her intervention after his death, in a rather circular fashion, for we have no evidence of Helena’s interaction with Crispus (or with Fausta, for that matter) otherwise. Some historians have further pointed to the possibility that Crispus may have been married to a relative of Helena. This woman was, curiously, also called Helena, as announced, unusually, in the imperial law that celebrated the birth of Crispus’ child in 322, in a reference that suggests a certain kind of prominence. It has therefore been argued that this Helena was the daughter of one of Helena’s other children by Constantius. This would mean that Crispus had married his cousin, in keeping with dynastic habits. We hear nothing more of this woman and her child or children after Crispus’ death. His downfall may therefore have dealt a double blow to Helena. The theory about the existence of an otherwise unknown full brother of Constantine, let alone one with children, seems however very difficult to sustain in view of the importance afforded to dynastic succession in many texts about the Constantinian era and in relation to Constantine’s own dynastic strategies.³⁰ It is, of course, also possible that this Helena had been a more distant relative. But it seems far more likely that Crispus’ wife had assumed the name Helena for dynastic reasons, given the ease with which imperial names were changed and added during this period. Her existence alone, in any case, can hardly be said to serve as any proof of the elder Helena’s vengeful emotional state after Crispus’ death.

Meanwhile, there exist other versions of Crispus’ death that complicate this rather neat and romantic story of Helena’s indignation about her daughter-in-law’s behavior toward her favorite grandson. Several sources mention another murder in connection with that of Crispus, that of Constantia’s young son Licinianus. The ecclesiastical historian Orosius, writing in the early fifth century, darkly alluded to the possibility that Crispus and Licinianus died because they were both predisposed toward the “Arian” beliefs just refuted at the Council of Nicaea. Perhaps Orosius’ interpretation offers some distorted echo of a real plot between Crispus and the Licinian faction. But it seems more likely that Constantine had come to regard his legitimate nephew, the son of a former emperor and grandson of at least one, if not two, as a continued threat.³¹ More significantly, the texts that highlight the death of Crispus in conjunction with that of Licinianus were written earlier than those associating it with Fausta’s demise, which some of them do not even mention. And even when they do, they separate her death from that of the two male figures, both textually and in time. Jerome, in his chronicle written c. 380, dates Fausta’s death to the year 328, two years later than those of Crispus and Licinianus. All of this raises further questions about whose death was connected with whose, if any.³²

It was certainly the case that Fausta vanished from public view in the later 320s. Coins ceased to be minted with her portrait after early 327, although again later than coinage with Crispus’ portrait disappeared.³³ There is evidence that her name was also erased from official media, hinting that she had, indeed, committed an offense or was widely understood to have done so by the inhabitants of the empire. One such erasure may have occurred in the heart of Rome, in the splendid residence decorated with frescoes of the Constantinian family in the Lateran area discussed in an earlier chapter, where Fausta’s name appears to have been painted over at some point. Similarly, on an inscribed statue base that had been erected in her honor by the Southern Italian city of Surrentum, her name, as well as her attributes of being “wife,” “mother,” and “stepmother,” were chiseled out. This ritual act, attacking her not only as an individual, but also severing her links to the Constantinian family, clearly highlights that local people believed her offense had somehow been directed against the emperor and the dynasty. Crispus’ name was excised from this inscription, too. However, since his name was removed in this way from a vast range of imperial media following his downfall, this again does not necessarily signify that his and Fausta’s damnatio memoriae derived from a crime they had committed together.³⁴

Numerous questions therefore still surround the events of 326: When exactly did Fausta die, and were her death and that of Crispus really connected? And if not, why did she die? Was she really suffocated in a bath? Why would Constantine, after having found out about Fausta’s alleged slander, not rehabilitate his son’s memory, if only for the sake of his grandchildren, at this stage the only ones he had? And why, if Fausta and Crispus had been having an affair, should Helena have felt able to object to Crispus’ punishment?³⁵ Her son, after all, had only a few months previously legislated against adultery, reinforcing previous emperors’ distaste for this capital crime.³⁶ Was Helena really as devoted to Crispus (or his wife) or as resentful of Fausta as is often assumed? And how, if at all, does Constantia’s son Licinianus—who was surely doomed to die sooner or later because he constituted a dynastic threat—fit into this?

Most of these questions must remain unanswered due to the aura of secrecy created by the imperial court. Late antique authors faced the same problem. The fantasies that sprung up around these deaths show how observers were scrabbling around for explanations, but also for ways to integrate events into their own assessment of Constantine’s reign. These attempts gathered pace as the years went by and were fueled by the benefit of hindsight about other aspects of Constantine’s reign. Orosius’ musings that Crispus and the child Licinianus were similar to “Arian blasphemers” seem misguided, but fit his interest in Constantine’s alleged promotion of Nicene Christianity. Zosimus’ account of Constantine’s killing spree as the trigger to his hypocritical Christian conversion can be traced back to the more generic grievances of disgruntled pagans, supporters of Licinius or slighted members of the Constantinian family of the fourth century.³⁷ Many accounts also borrowed elements from the mythical, biblical, and imperial past to make sense of what had happened. They variously and at times simultaneously alluded to the tales of the Greek hero Theseus’ wife Phaedra who fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus, to the patriarch Joseph’s rejection of the advances by the wife of Potiphar, Joseph’s master during enslavement in Egypt, and to Nero’s murder of his wife Octavia in a hot bath. It is also notable that the story about Fausta revealing Crispus’ offense to Constantine subversively echoed her earlier actions that led to the suicide of her father Maximian.³⁸

Above all, many of our authors, especially those further removed in time from the events, fell back onto one of the most trusted justifications for supposedly irrational male decision making known to mankind, that of female influence. A whole host of well-known gendered stereotypes—the slighted female lover, the sexually promiscuous young wife, the wicked stepmother, the resentful abandoned woman, the spiritually gullible mother, the interventionist mother-in-law, the indulgent grandmother—were deployed in these stories (and in their retelling by modern historians who tend to augment them even further). From a chronological perspective, these more stereotypical explanations form the latest narrative layer surrounding the death of Crispus. But they comprehensively obscure further what really happened, including Helena’s true involvement. Reports of the latter seem to stem from gendered imaginations based on a hazy memory of a few facts: that Helena had originally been replaced by Fausta’s sister Theodora, that she had been in Rome with the emperor at the time in question, that she had restored a bath damaged by a fire in the city, but above all that, after Fausta’s demise, she became the most important woman in the Roman empire.³⁹

What is certain is that when Constantine arrived in Rome on July 18 or 21 of 326 for the climax of the celebrations of his Vicennalia, the profile of his dynasty had already been brutally changed, even if Fausta disappeared only later. On July 25 he held his traditional adventus with the usual pomp and procession, but was heckled by the populace, possibly in the circus where he presided over the games associated with the arrival of an emperor. It has been suggested that these insults were related to pagan senators’ supposed dismay, as reported by Zosimus, that Constantine eschewed the customary sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol before the games. The veracity of Zosimus’ account has, however, also been doubted and, even if such refusal happened, it is more plausibly dated to the aftermath of Constantine’s triumph over Maxentius in 312. In 326, we can imagine that the Roman populace and aristocracy were delighted about the presence of an emperor in their city, but also disturbed and confused by the recent violent events.⁴⁰ After all, they—like everyone else around the empire—had become accustomed to the public expressions of the emperor’s love for this eldest son and of the importance of Fausta Augusta for the stability of his government. If we are to believe reports about Licinius’ conspiracy, we can also imagine that hope for the return of this rival dynasty in the form of Licinius’ son, the former Caesar, existed in some quarters of the city.

To offset any dangerous bewilderment, Constantine was, once again, intent on demonstrating the unity of his now reconfigured (if somewhat disfigured) family. Some historians have claimed that Helena’s name was superimposed on the aforementioned inscription in Surrentum from which Fausta’s name had been erased. Yet, the extant inscription bears no trace of any such intervention.⁴¹ Instead, Constantine found more subtle ways to manipulate the memory of recent disagreeable events, geared once again toward advertising harmony and concord in his family and among his women. He proceeded to devise another brazen rewrite of his genealogy.

It is notable that it was just around this time that Constantine’s half-brothers, at the same time the sons of Constantius and Theodora, brothers of Constantia and nephews of Fausta, reappear in the imperial orbit (for these connections, see this book’s Family Tree). At least two of them, probably Julius Constantius and Flavius Dalmatius, joined the emperor in Rome for his Vicennalia. Julius Constantius’ presence in Italy in 326 is further confirmed by his son Gallus’ birth that year in Etruria, perhaps in a villa belonging to his aristocratic wife Galla. A short while later, these men’s grandmother Eutropia, also Fausta’s mother, re-emerged within his imperial circle, too. Although we cannot verify her whereabouts after the dark days following Maxentius’ defeat in 312, she was reportedly in contact with her son-in-law after 326, even though he was by now responsible for the deaths of not one but two of her children.⁴² During Constantine’s Vicennalia celebrations in Rome, Julius Constantius and Dalmatius allegedly advised Constantine on how to deal with the insults the people of Rome had leveled at him. Constantine wisely followed Julius Constantius’ recommendation to react with clemency and humor.⁴³ The reunion with his half-brothers had probably always been planned, but at this turbulent moment Constantine may particularly have appreciated their unique links to the city of Rome, publicized by their appearance with him in the imperial circus box.

But Constantine was also anxious to send another message to the Roman public. This message concerned the loyalties of his half-sister, the recently twice-bereaved Constantia, and the status of his own mother of obscure background, resident in their very midst, but suspected of meddling in Fausta’s disappearance or death.

Sometime after 326, an honorary statue was erected for Constantia in Rome (Fig. 7.4). Due to the inscription’s fragmentary state, we do not know who dedicated this statue nor exactly where it was displayed, but without a doubt it expressed or at least reflected imperial sentiment.

The inscription on the marble statue base mentioned two Caesars only, so was composed after Crispus’ disgrace. Even more significant was Constantia’s introduction. She appeared, for the first time, with her father’s Constantius’ gentile name Iulia. Constantius had changed from Iulius to Valerius (Diocletian’s gentile name) upon becoming Caesar in 293, a name Constantine had also used for himself and his older sons Crispus and Constantine, alongside that of his fictitious ancestor Claudius. After 317, Constantine had reintroduced his father’s original gentilicium for his two younger sons and occasionally for Crispus, in a clear dynastic move that now also encompassed Constantia.⁴⁴ Furthermore, Constantia’s inscription in Rome echoes the coin minted with her portrait a few months before in Constantinople. She is described as “sprung from an illustrious and divine family,” as the “sister” of Constantine Augustus, and, most significantly, as the “aunt” of the “most blessed Caesars” (Constantine and Constantius).⁴⁵ As with the Constantinopolitan coin, the inscription ignored any links between Constantia and Licinius, and of course also between Constantia and her own son Licinianus, a previous Caesar. As had happened so often during Constantine’s reign, another woman was being reclaimed for his version of history.

Constantia’s inscription, with its attention to kinship relations, echoed well-established formulas on inscriptions erected previously for Helena and Fausta. Public epigraphy of Constantinian women (but not, generally, coin legends) from all places and periods stressed their family relationships to Constantine and his sons. Helena was usually described as the “mother” of Constantine (mater, procreatrix), “grandmother” of the Caesars, and sometimes even “wife” (coniunx) or “partner” (uxor) of Constantius, while Fausta was “partner” of Constantine (uxor) as well as “stepmother” (of Crispus) and “mother” of the Caesars. This sustained focus on kinship was in line with Constantine’s promotion of his dynasty from the mid-320s. Both Helena and Fausta were also commonly addressed as “our mistress” (domina nostra), as Galeria Valeria had already been, and as “venerable” (venerabilis) and “most pious” (piissima). In one instance, Helena was called “most clement” (clementissima), which was a virtue that had hitherto been largely reserved for emperors. This is another sign that the presentation of her public persona was always particularly aligned with that of Constantine, as is also apparent in her coin portrait and her allegorical virtue of securitas.⁴⁶

However, in a diversion from public epigraphy for Constantinian women before 326, Constantia’s inscription also signaled clear hierarchies, as her coin from Constantinople had also done. She was styled once more as a junior nobilissima femina. Since the Augusta Fausta had now disappeared from the scene, this left Helena as the most senior woman in the Constantinian family, ahead of Constantia and replacing Fausta. After 326, and on inscriptions from Rome, Helena was now not only presented as the sole Augusta of the Roman world, but as a near-mythical foremother of its emperor and his offspring. To begin with, Helena was, like Constantia, described with Constantius’ gentile name. Her full name, Flavia Iulia Helena, appeared in public communication for the first time in Rome and only in or after 326. This was all the more unusual in her case, since Constantia as Constantius’ daughter naturally wore his gentilicium, whereas Helena would not have. Of course, for various reasons Helena may have been referred to by this name before, for example, because she had been Constantius’ freedwoman. But the timing of its first public usage implies that Iulia was now added to the rest of her name to link her even more tightly to Constantine’s imperial family lineage.⁴⁷

Even more astonishingly, Helena was now hailed as the “creator” (genetrix) of the Constantinian house, a term that again appears only on inscriptions dated to 326 or afterward, and only on those erected in Rome (e.g., Fig. 7.5). The label genetrix both emphasized Helena’s role as ancestress and associated her with the divine. It recalled the goddess Venus and her role as the divine ancestress of the Roman people through the city’s founder Aeneas, her son. The first Roman emperor Augustus, through his adoptive father Caesar, had also claimed descent from the goddess. Augustus’ wife Livia, in particular, had been associated with Venus Genetrix, but the goddess had been a feature of most Roman empresses’ coins up to Valeria Galeria and the young Fausta. Venus Genetrix was usually depicted holding an apple, just as the female figure did on the obverse of the Roman medallion of Helena discussed in the previous chapter, and, perhaps not coincidentally, as the Venus Victrix on Valeria Galeria’s’ coin reverses had done.⁴⁸ The epithet turned Helena even more directly into the originator of Constantine’s dynasty, in a way that mirrored the mythical foundation story of Rome itself.

By concentrating on Helena as the beginning, the genetrix, of his dynasty, and adding Constantia, Constantine was publicly rearranging his family tree yet again, reshaping it both vertically and horizontally. It is notable that even his father Constantius was relatively absent from this post-326 epigraphy of Constantinian women from Rome, other than indirectly through his gentile name, now oddly carried by his partner, Helena. Constantius is also conspicuous by his absence from the Nantes medallion, equally minted after 326 (Fig. 7.2).⁴⁹ In the process of his efforts to dispel or rectify memories of recent events, Constantine’s genealogy had become a rather matriarchal tree, consisting of his mother, himself, her grandsons, and their aunt. It curiously recalled Galerius’ celebration of his mother Romula, another ancestress without a background or earthly husband, and his sister, Maximinus Daza’s mother. However, Constantine projected this image far wider than the old tetrarchs had ever done, by inscribing it into the heart of the empire.⁵⁰

The material arrangement of Helena’s and Constantia’s public statues may well have matched the wording of their inscriptions in material form. At least in Helena’s case, there is evidence that her statues were at times gathered with those of her son and grandsons into dynastic group portraits, a veritable physical family tree, similar to the one depicted on the Nantes medallion. There are literary references to the erection of such groups in Constantinople, and they existed in Rome, too.⁵¹ In the sixteenth century, a marble base for a statue of Helena with the epithet genetrix (Fig. 7.5) was found behind the church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, the area of Helena’s former palace. At the same time, the remains of statues for Helena, Constantine, and his sons Constantine and Constantius were also discovered. All these men were also mentioned on the inscription on the base of Helena’s statue. In the report on these findings, the statue itself was described as clad in a foot-length “stola” and a mantle, while Constantine and his sons appear “in armor.” Attempts have been made to match this written record of Helena’s statue with existing objects, such as the statue now at the Villa Borghese (see Fig. 6.9, on the assumption that the body is original, too) or a statue now standing on the altar in the Cappella di S. Elena at S. Croce that depicts Helena holding the cross. The latter, an ancient statue originally representing the goddess Juno, is assumed to have been reused for Helena already in late antiquity. In both cases, the identifications are rather hypothetical. Nonetheless, the sixteenth-century finds imply that Helena’s status as “ancestress” of Constantine’s family branch and as “mother” and “grandmother” of emperors was expressed not only through inscriptions and medallions, but also visualized through the spatial combination of her portrait with the images of the male imperial lineage she had engendered. Based on the epigraphic record, we could readily imagine that statues of Constantia were sometimes featured among such groups in Rome, too, as they were in Constantinople.⁵²

When Constantine arrived in Rome in July 326, it turned out to be a very different visit from the one he must have envisaged for the celebrations of his Vicennalia. Much has been written about the “fall-out” between the emperor and the Roman aristocracy on this occasion, allegedly leading the emperor to turn his back on the old capital and concentrate on his new foundation of Constantinople, and to populate it with a new aristocracy. But his abandonment of Rome was not as pronounced as it has been claimed, not even after 326. Although Constantine and his sons would take up residence elsewhere, their links to the city remained strong, not least on account of the continuous presence of imperial relatives in the city even after Helena’s death. As a matter of fact, when the imperial court left Rome again in September, Constantine’s Praetorian prefect Flavius Constantius, very likely another of his relatives, stayed behind, and some of his half-brothers may have done so, too.⁵³ Nonetheless, the contemporaneous promotion of the imperial family through new statues for its previously underrepresented female members such as Constantia, as well as through new titles, new epithets, and new female genealogies, shows that Constantine thought some damage control was needed in the old capital. The dynastic nature of this publicity suggests it was not the emperor’s religion that had been the main problem, but the recent bloodshed in his family. This is not surprising, given the close entanglement between Fausta’s family and Rome over the past thirty years.

Many people had to die before Helena could attain the exalted status of what the early-fifth-century church historian Rufinus would call “queen of the world and mother of the empire.”⁵⁴ But her direct complicity in this advancement remains shadowy. Her peculiar position does warrant speculation about her possible resentment of Fausta, but there is no ultimate proof. What we do know is that Fausta’s death lifted Helena up to dizzying heights that she would otherwise not have reached. Still, unlike some of his tetrarchic rivals, most notably Licinius, Constantine was not an emperor who killed off imperial women lightly. This makes Fausta’s disappearance even more harrowing, and was a powerful warning to those who were ultimately spared the emperor’s wrath. While Constantine’s clemency may have been partly inspired by Christian teaching, it stemmed largely from the fact that he was related to a great many of these widows, who consequently held dynastic value for him. This clemency meant that Helena was not the only survivor of Constantine’s killing spree prior to and during his Vicennalian year. Among the others were his sister Anastasia, the former empresses Constantia and Eutropia, and possibly even Crispus’ widow Helena. But Constantine’s generosity did not necessarily stretch to their children.

We can only imagine how these widows carried their personal grief during their continued presence at this imperial court. The Antiochene priest John Chrysostom’s observation, in the early 380s, of the imperial widow with a son who “trembles that one of those now ruling should kill him out of fear for the future,” may hold true here as well.⁵⁵ We can also only imagine how these women interacted with each other, and with Helena. But what we can see are Constantine’s recurrent attempts to present at least some of them as quintessentially Constantinian, and to reshape their identities by emphasizing their relationship with himself. This strategy began in Rome, partly because Constantine visited the city shortly after the family crisis and partly because the imperial image had always been particularly important here. It was in Rome that Helena was first presented as the origin of the Constantinian house, even obscuring Constantius’ contribution.

The connotations of this special mother–son relationship, as promoted in Roman epigraphy, were couched in pagan “genetrix” language. Their Christian theological potential was to be realized elsewhere and later. As Constantia’s coin from Constantinople shows, careful dynastic branding also mattered to Constantine in the East, and perhaps even more so, given this had been his former co-emperor’s territory and he was espousing deeply interventionist policies, especially on the Christian doctrinal front. Unfinished government business therefore awaited Constantine in the Eastern half of the empire, and it was there he swiftly returned once his Vicennalia celebrations in Rome had been concluded. This time, he took his mother with him, despite her now being around 80 years of age. For what lay ahead, it seems that Constantine deeply valued Helena not only for her potential to be promoted as the pious mother of the most Christian emperor and female originator of his dynasty. He probably also prized the loyalty, diplomatic skills, energy, and diligence she had demonstrated in Rome as well as her prior knowledge of the East.