Fausta

For the opera, see Fausta (opera). For the Catholic saint, see Saint Fausta.

Fausta
Augusta
Female head statue
Possible portrait of Fausta, Louvre[1][2]
Roman empress
Tenure307–326
BornRome, Italy
Died326
SpouseConstantine I
Issue
Names
Flavia Maxima Fausta[3]
DynastyConstantinian
FatherMaximian
MotherEutropia

Flavia Maxima Fausta Augusta[a] (died 326 AD) was a Roman empress. She was the daughter of Maximian and wife of Constantine the Great, who had her executed and excluded from all official accounts for unknown reasons. Historians Zosimus and Zonaras reported that she was executed for adultery with her stepson, Crispus.

Family

Fausta was the daughter of the emperor Maximian and his wife Eutropia. As her age is nowhere outright attested, scholarly estimates have ranged from 289/290[4] to the end of the 290s.[5][6] To seal the alliance between them for control of the Tetrarchy, Maximian married her to Constantine I in 307.[7]

Constantine at first tried to present Maximian’s suicide as an unfortunate tragedy, but later started spreading another version where Fausta was involved in her father’s downfall. Barnes observed that the story “shows clear signs of being invented during Constantine’s war against Maxentius.”[8]

During her marriage, she had 5 children.[9] Fausta held the title of nobilissima femina up until 324,[10] when Constantine held her in high enough regard to grant her the title of augusta, which she received together with Constantine’s mother Helena.[3][11][12]

Execution

In 326, Fausta was put to death by Constantine, following the execution of Crispus, his eldest son by Minervina.[3] The circumstances surrounding the two deaths were unclear. Various explanations have been suggested; in one, Fausta is set against Crispus, as in the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus,[13] or conversely her adultery, perhaps with the stepson who was close to her in age, is suggested.

According to the Latin Epitome de Caesaribus and the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius (as epitomized by Photius), Fausta was executed by being locked in a bath which was over heated,[13] in connection with the death of Crispus, which "people [thought]" was caused by Fausta's accusation of unclear nature.

But Constantine, having obtained rule over the whole Roman Empire by remarkable success in wars, ordered his son Crispus to be put to death, at the behest (so people think) of his wife Fausta. Later he locked his wife Fausta in overheated baths and killed her, because his mother Helena blamed him out of excessive grief for her grandson.[14]

Zosimus, on the other hand, suggests adultery as the reason:

He killed Crispus, who had been deemed worthy of the rank of Caesar, as I have said before, when he incurred suspicion of having sexual relations with his stepmother Fausta, without taking any notice of the laws of nature. Constantine’s mother Helena was distressed at such a grievous event and refused to tolerate the murder of the young man. As if to soothe her [feelings] Constantine tried to remedy the evil with a greater evil: having ordered baths to be heated above the normal level, he deposited Fausta in them and brought her out when she was dead.[15]

In Zonaras' version written in the 12th century, Crispus' death was caused by Fausta's retaliatory accusation of rape following her unsuccessful sexual advances toward him. But when Constantine realized his innocence, he punished her, mirroring the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus.[16] Scholars have noted that if Crispus was found to be innocent, his condemnation of memory should have been lifted, but it was not.[17][18][19]

Although Hans Pohlsander dismissed the idea of Fausta’s death being accidental, viewing the condemnation of memory to be certain proof that Constantine intended to kill his wife, David Woods’ response was that, “Accidents continue to happen even to people deep in disgrace.”[20] He suggested that Crispus and Fausta were not actually executed, offering the connection of overheated bathing with contemporaneous techniques of abortion,[21] a suggestion that implies an unwanted, adulterous pregnancy from her relationship with Crispus[22] and a fatal accident during the abortion.

Fausta, as Salus, holding her two sons, Constantine II and Constantius II

Constantine I ordered the damnatio memoriae of Fausta and Crispus around 326 with the result that no contemporary source records details of her fate: "Eusebius, ever the sycophant, mentions neither Crispus nor Fausta in his Life of Constantine, and even wrote Crispus out of the final version of his Ecclesiastical History (HE X.9.4)", Constantine's biographer Paul Stephenson observes.[23] Although Julian praised Fausta in his panegyric to Constantius II,[24] there is no other evidence of her memory being rehabilitated.[25][11]

Fausta is an important antagonist in Dorothy L. Sayers' chronicle-play The Emperor Constantine (1951). In addition, Fausta was portrayed by Belinda Lee in the film Constantine and the Cross (1961).

Notes

  1. ^ She received the honorific Augusta in 324 AD.

References

  1. ^ http://laststatues.classics.ox.ac.uk, LSA-573 (J. Lenaghan)
  2. ^ "statue", Musée du Louvre Collections database, 300–325, retrieved 25 September 2024
  3. ^ a b c Woods 1998, p. 70.
  4. ^ Barnes 1982, p. 34.
  5. ^ Drijvers 1992, p. 502.
  6. ^ Waldron 2022, p. 191 with n. 98.
  7. ^ Drijvers 1992, p. 500.
  8. ^ Barnes 1973, pp. 41–42.
  9. ^ Hans Pohlsander, Fausta (293-326 A.D.)
  10. ^ Drijvers 1992, pp. 500–501.
  11. ^ a b Drijvers 1992, p. 501.
  12. ^ Stephenson 2010, p. 217.
  13. ^ a b Woods 1998, pp. 70–71.
  14. ^ Epitome de Caesaribus, 42.11–12
  15. ^ Barnes, Timothy. Constantine Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire, 145.
  16. ^ Garland, Lynda. Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society, 108.
  17. ^ Drijvers 1992, p. 505.
  18. ^ Stephenson 2010, p. 221.
  19. ^ Woods 1998, p. 73.
  20. ^ Woods 1998, p. 86.
  21. ^ Woods 1998, p. 76.
  22. ^ Stephenson 2010, p. 222.
  23. ^ Stephenson 2010, p. 220.
  24. ^ Julian, "Panegyric in honour of Constantius", 9. The full text of Panegyric in honour of Constantius at Wikisource
  25. ^ Pohlsander 1996, p. 54.

Bibliography

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Royal titles
Preceded by Empress of Rome
307–326
with Galeria Valeria (307–311)
Valeria Maximilla (307–312)
Flavia Julia Constantia (313–324) 		Succeeded by