1-9. The Tragedy of Crispus and Fausta
We pass from the Council of Nicaea to a family tragedy. So far Constantine may pass as fairly merciful to the plotters of his own house. Maximian, Bassianus and Licinius had all tried to assassinate him; and if he put to death Bassianus, he had spared Maximian till he plotted again, and so far he had spared Licinius also.
But now in a few months from Oct. 325 he puts to death not only Licinius but his own son Crispus and the younger Licinius, then his own wife Fausta, and then a number of his friends. The facts are certain, but their exact meaning is obscure. It must however be noticed that the dynastic policy of Diocletian had given a new political importance to members of an imperial family. The widows of the third century emperors fall into obscurity; but the widow of Galerius is first sought in marriage by Maximin Daza, then executed by Licinius, who also put to death the children of Severus, Daza and Galerius.
Now Constantine married twice; and there may well have been a bitter division in his family. Minervina was the mother of Crispus, whom we have seen greatly distinguishing himself in the war with Licinius: and there seems no serious doubt that the three younger sons were children of Fausta, though the eldest of them was not born till 315-6, eight years after her marriage. So we come to the questions we cannot answer. Was Constantine jealous of his eldest son, or anxious to get him out of the way of the others? Or was Crispus a plotter justly put to death? And how came Fausta to share his fate a little later? They are not likely to have been accomplices in a plot or connected by a guilty passion, though the story of Zosimus is not impossible, that she accused him falsely, and was herself put to death for it when Helena convicted her. We have not material enough for any decided opinion.
The worst point, it may be, against Constantine is that he did not spare the young Licinius. If he was the son of Constantia, he cannot have been more than twelve years old. But the allusions to him suggest that he was something more than a boy, and we know that Constantia was on the best of terms with her brother when she died a couple of years later. If Constantine suspected the elder Licinius, the new sultanism would involve the younger in his fate; and if Crispus had married Helena his daughter, suspicion might attach to him too. Fausta's fate is the mystery. Or was Constantine more or less out of his mind that winter, as despots occasionally are? One or two of his laws may point that way, and the possibility may help to explain a good deal.
The Abandonment of Rome
Constantine kept his Vicennalia at Rome in the summer of 326. It was an unhappy visit, even if the domestic tragedy had already taken place. Rome was the focus of heathenism, and of Roman pride. She expected to see her sovereigns at the ceremonies, and to treat them with something of republican familiarity. Constantine scandalised her with his Eastern pomp, and gave deep offence to the senate and people by refusing to join the immemorial procession of the knights of Rome to the Capitol. When he left the city in September, he left it for ever.
Rome indeed had long ceased to be a good capital. It was too far from the frontier for military purposes, too full of republican survivals for such sultans as the emperors had now become, too heathen for Christian Caesars. So Maximian held his court at Milan, while Diocletian gradually shifted his chief resort eastward from Sirmium to Nicomedia. There were many signs now that the seat of empire ought to be somewhere near the Bosphorus. The chief dangers had always come from the Danube and the Euphrates; and about the Bosphorus was the only point which commanded both. If these were watched by the emperor himself, the Rhine might be left in charge of a Caesar.
This was much the best course for the present; but in the long run the problem was insoluble. The Rhine and the Danube might be guarded, or the Danube and the Euphrates; but now that Rome had failed to make a solid nation of her empire, she could not permanently guard all three together. Sooner or later it must come to a choice between the Rhine and the Euphrates, between Italy and Greece, between Europe and Asia. Constantine is not likely to have seen clearly all this; but he did see that he commanded more important countries from the Bosphorus than he could from Rome or Milan. These might control the Latin West and the upper Danube; but at the Bosphorus he had at his feet the Greek world from Taurus to the Balkans, flanked northward by the warlike peoples of Illyncum, and eastward by the great barbarian, fringe of Egypt, Syria and Armenia, reaching from the Caucasus to the cataracts of the Nile.
Nobody could yet foresee that by the seventh century nothing but the Greek world would be left. But where precisely was the new capital to be placed? Nicomedia would have been Diocletian's city, not Constantine's, and in any case it lay at the far end of a gulf, some fifty miles from the main line of traffic. Constantine may at one time have dreamed of his own birthplace Naissus, or of Sardica, and at another he began buildings on the site of Troy, before he fixed upon the matchless position of Byzantium.
To obtain a deluxe leatherbound edition of THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, subscribe to Castalia History.
My boy Crispus did nothing wrong