Let us glance at the authorities, in the order of their nearness to the event. Bishop Eusebius is naturally silent; he professes to give only the things that edify in the life of Constantine, and is writing almost in his son’s court. Eutropius, the soundest and most impartial writer of the next generation, says (x. 6) that the character of Constantine “was somewhat changed with prosperity,” and that “following the exigencies of the situation [_necessitudines rerum_], he put to death, first his excellent son and the son of his sister, a boy of promising character, then his wife and a number of friends.” St. Jerome, in his Latin version of the “Chronicle” of Eusebius, writes, at the year 329, that “Crispus, the son of Constantine, and Licinius the younger, the son of Constantia, are most cruelly put to death in the ninth year of his reign,” and three years later we read: “Constantine put to death his wife Fausta.”[25] Dr. Seeck believes that we have here only an echo of Eutropius, but Jerome would hardly add “most cruelly” on so cautious a narrative. Aurelius Victor, a contemporary of Eutropius, says that Crispus “was put to death by his father for some unknown reason,” and Orosius, the Christian historian, merely observes that Constantine put Crispus and Licinius to death. From these earlier writers we learn only that the deaths were cruel, and the motive unknown, but later writers have successively built up a story that has provoked endless discussion. Sidonius Apollinaris, the most cultivated and liberal Christian writer of the fifth century, says, with the confidence of a parenthesis (Ep. v), that Crispus was poisoned, and Fausta killed in a vapour-bath; and that a couplet was fixed on the palace-gate recalling the crimes of Nero. The epitomist of Aurelius Victor declares that Crispus was put to death at the instigation of Fausta, and Fausta was “thereupon” killed in a vapour-bath, as Helena bitterly reproached Constantine for the death of Crispus. Zosimus (ii. 29) says: “With no regard for the law of nature he put to death his son Crispus, on the ground that he was suspected of intimacy with Fausta,” and, when Helena heavily reproached him, he, “as if to console her,” suffocated Fausta in an overheated bath. Philostorgius, a Christian writer of the same (fifth) century, declares that Fausta was put to death because she was caught in adultery with a groom. The story culminates in the twelfth-century annalist Zonaras. After telling his incredible legend about Constantine and the babies, he represents Fausta in the character of Potiphar’s wife. She conceived a passion for the handsome Cæsar, was repelled by him, and then denounced him to Constantine as having offered violence to her. Crispus was put to death. Then Constantine learned in some way--Helena is left to the imagination--that he had been deceived, and he angrily killed Fausta in a vapour-bath.