As we have said, there is no evidence of any disloyalty on the part of Crispus, but he may have let incautious expressions fall from his lips which would be carried to the ears of his father, and he may have chafed to see himself supplanted by the young princes, his half-brothers. The boy Cæsar, Constantius, was named consul with his father for the festival year 326, a distinction which Crispus may justly have thought to belong by right to himself, and he may have seen in this another proof of the ill-will of the Empress Fausta, and of her influence over the Emperor. Possibly Crispus was goaded by anger into some indiscreet action, which confirmed Constantine’s suspicions; possibly even he committed some act of disobedience which gave Constantine the excuse he sought for. At any rate, in the July or August of 326, Crispus was arrested in Rome and summarily banished to Pola in Istria. Tidings of his death soon followed. Whatever the manner of his death, whether he was beheaded or was poisoned or committed suicide, all the authorities agree that he came to a violent end and that the responsibility rests upon his father, Constantine. Nor was Crispus the only victim. With him fell Licinianus, the son of Licinius and Constantia. He was a promising lad (_commodæ indolis_, says Eutropius) who could not have been more than twelve years of age and could not, therefore, have been guilty of any crime or intrigue against his uncle. One cannot pass by altogether without mention the story of Zosimus that the reason of Fausta’s implacable hatred of Crispus was not ambition for her own children, but a still more ungovernable and much less pardonable passion. Zosimus declares that Fausta was enamoured of her step-son, who rejected her overtures, and so fell a victim, like another Hippolytus, to the vengeance of this Roman Phædra. Most modern historians have rejected the story, as emanating from the lively imagination of a Greek at a loss for a plausible explanation of a mysterious crime, and we may, with tolerable certainty, acquit Fausta of so disgraceful a passion. If, as we suppose, she was the untiring enemy of Crispus, it is at once more charitable and more probable to suppose that the motive of her hate was her fierce ambition for her own sons. For the moment the Empress conquered. But her triumph did not last long. Eutropius tells us that soon afterwards—_mox_—a vague word equally applicable to a period of days, weeks, or even months—Fausta herself was put to death by Constantine. What was her offence? Philostorgius[110] declares that she was discovered in an intrigue with a groom of the stables—an amour worthy of Messalina herself. But the story stands suspect, especially when taken in conjunction with the legend of her passion for Crispus. The one seems invented to bolster up the other and add to its verisimilitude. The truth is that nothing is known for certain; and the whole episode was probably kept as a profound palace secret. One