Another Christian historian of Jerome’s time, Orosius--who does not follow Zosimus, as Gibbon says, but precedes him--makes the same statement (c. xxv), and it is later repeated in the “Chronicle” of Cassiodorus. A writer of the generation after Constantine, commonly known as “Anonymus Valesii,” says (c. ii) that Constantine was “born of Helena, a very common [_vilissima_] woman, in the town of Naissus.” Zosimus, a century later, and a pagan critic of Constantine, says (ii. 8) that he was “born of a woman who was not respectable σεμνή and not legally married to Constantius,” and he later observes that Maxentius resented the raising to the throne of a man whose mother was “not a matron.” Finally, the early mediæval monk, Zonaras, says (“Annals,” xiii. i): “Some say that she was lawfully married to Constantius and divorced ... others that she was not a legitimate wife but a paramour.” The grave and weighty Eutropius, writing in the generation after Constantine, says that he was born of “a somewhat ambiguous [_obscuriori_] marriage.” The Benedictines had an ample authority, both Christian and pagan, for their view, and only one argument is advanced in disproof of it by modern writers. Several of the historians tell us that, when Constantius was made Cæsar, he was compelled by the Emperor to “divorce” Helena, and, it is said, divorce implies marriage. The argument is hardly conclusive. When Eusebius (or Jerome) tells us that the Cæsars were compelled to dismiss their “wives,” he adds, on the same page, that Helena was not a wife, but a concubine. He means merely that Constantius was forced to dismiss Helena and wed the daughter of Maximian, and does not imply that any legal form of divorce was employed. It is quite open to us to interpret the other authority, Aurelius Victor, in the same way; and Zonaras, the only other writer who could be quoted, expressly leaves it open whether Helena was married or not. In any case, the single authority of Aurelius Victor cannot outweigh the others, and even his words do not necessarily imply a legal divorce on the part of both Cæsars.