Of these wicked ways, and of her husband’s hostility to the Christians, Constantia is said to have kept her brother well informed, and, when Licinius committed the greater enormity of refusing to surrender fugitive offenders to the vengeance of Constantine, the legions were once more led toward the Bosphorus. Several disastrous battles crippled the power of Licinius, and he retired sullenly to Nicomedia. Whether at his request or no, Constantia interceded for him, and Constantine swore to respect his life. In assigning the blame for the war we may, perhaps, hesitate between the contradictory charges of the opposing schools of historians, though modern writers usually follow the neutral and sober Eutropius, and ascribe it to the ambition of Constantine. But there is a sharper indictment of Constantine’s conduct after the war. Licinius, in surrendering, had relied on the oath of the conqueror. He had been stripped of the purple, and exiled to Thessalonica, but he was put to death there shortly afterwards. Zosimus and Eutropius say that this was done “in spite of the oath,” and the statement of Constantine’s more resolute admirers, that Licinius was discovered in treasonable intrigue, has not carried much conviction with later historians. Constantia passed, with her daughter Helena and her boy Licinius, to the court of her brother, who was now (324) master of the whole Empire. The remark of Zosimus, that Constantine degenerated into the most wilful license after his attainment of supreme power--a remark feebly supported by the assurance of the cautious Eutropius that “prosperity somewhat altered his character”--contrasts quaintly with the circumstance that he now became the Imperial patron of the Christian religion. Here, again, we hesitate between conflicting accounts, or rival romances. According to the mediæval Christian writer Zonaras, who supplies a remarkable amount of detail that was unknown to contemporary historians, the conversion of Constantine had a picturesque origin. On his return to Rome, after crushing Licinius, he was afflicted with a painful eruption, and his pagan physicians prescribed a bath in the warm blood of children. “At once,” says the lively writer, “children were collected from the whole Empire,” and dispatched to the palace. The lamentations of the mothers fell on the ear of Constantine, touched his heart, and he left paganism in disgust for Christianity.