The murder of Fausta is even more perplexing. Even if the late and negligible stories of Philostorgius and Zonaras were true, she was not executed, but brutally murdered. The only firm point in the conflicting evidence is the persistent association of her death with the anger of Helena. We have no evidence of any value in regard to her relation to Crispus; but the words of Zosimus, which are not inconsistent with the earlier writers, enable us to extend the above theory to her. Constantine, on this view, put Crispus and Licinius to death because they were possible nuclei of the conspiracy which he believed to pervade the Empire. Adopting a familiar device, however, he concealed his motive under a charge of amorous irregularity, or too great a familiarity with the Empress. Helena, who was greatly attached to Crispus, seems to have insisted that, if there was any guilt, both were guilty, and Constantine savagely completed his work by murdering his wife. The Christian historians describe Fausta as opposing Constantine’s progress in his new faith, and, as we have no evidence that Crispus had embraced it, one may not implausibly wonder whether the two did not attract the favour of the pagan Romans, to the extreme anger of the Emperor. No charge against Fausta was made public. During the lifetime of Constantine’s eldest son, Julian described her, in one of his orations, as not only one of the most beautiful, but one of the most virtuous and noble ladies of her time. Even if we make allowance for the licensed flattery of a panegyrist, the description would be too glaringly inconsistent with any Imperial theory of her infidelity. She was probably in her thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year at the time when she met her appalling death. Constantine hastened to remove the gloomy, stricken court from the disdainful eyes of Rome. The pagans pointed with fierce scorn to these fruits of the new religion, as they expressed it. One day it was found that some one had fastened a Latin couplet--written, the pagans of a later day boasted, by the hand of the Emperor’s chief counsellor, Ablabius--on the gate of the palace: Say ye the Golden Age of Saturn breaks again? Of Nero’s bloody hue these jewels are.