death of Licinius. Gibbon
remarks: "The behavior of Constantia, and her relation to the contending
parties, naturally recall the remembrance of that virtuous matron who
was the sister of Augustus and the wife of Antony." In later years, when
Constantine had become the arbiter of the theological disputes which
rent the newly established Church and had banished Arius for his heresy,
Constantia again acted the part of peacemaker and, on her deathbed,
warned the emperor to "consider well lest he should incur the wrath of
God and suffer great temporal calamities, since he had been induced to
condemn good men to perpetual banishment." It was probably largely owing
to these good offices that Arius was recalled. Notwithstanding her
indulgent attitude toward heretics, Constantia seems to have been a
woman of genuine Christian feeling, honoring her faith by the nobility
of her life, a comment which cannot justly be passed upon all the
Christian princesses of her time.

Anastasia, the second sister of Constantine, was married to Bassianus, a
man of high position, who, on being favored with this imperial alliance,
was further promoted to the rank of Caesar. He was later discovered in a
conspiracy against Constantine and put to death. Further than this there
is nothing noteworthy to be told of Anastasia. Eutropia was espoused to
Nepotianus. Of her history there is nothing remarkable recorded except
that after the death of her great brother she was slain with her son,
who in Rome had headed the rebellion against the usurpation of
Magnentius.

We will return now to the court of Constantine, where we shall find his
mother installed in great honor and dignity and not without an influence
of her own. Whatever may have been the faults of her son, Helena had no
cause to complain of any lack of duty on his part toward herself.

The court of Constantine, nominally Christian though it was, exhibited
the same characteristics of jealousy and intrigue as had the palaces of
the pagan emperors. Before his marriage with Fausta, the emperor had,
like his father, contracted a "left-handed" marriage, in his case with a
woman named Minervina, whom he repudiated for the sake of an alliance
which policy dictated. Some authors, seem to insinuate, as in the case
of Helena, that there was no marriage in the legal sense; but the
testimony rather points to the contrary. However this may have been,
Crispus, the son of Minervina, was retained by his father an