Constantina not only encouraged this criminal conduct, but enlarged on it. A woman of vicious character came one day to disclose some plot, or pretended plot, to her. She rewarded her heavily, and sent the harlot out into the city in the royal chariot, to encourage others. An Alexandrian noble distinguished himself by resisting the guilty passion of his mother-in-law. The woman presented Constantina with a pearl necklace, and the noble was put to death. We need not prolong the disgusting narrative. Flavia Julia Constantina, a beautiful and able woman, who can scarcely have passed her thirtieth year, was one of the worst Empresses in the Imperial gallery. One can but suggest, in some attenuation of her guilt, that the murder of her husband by her brother when she was a young girl in her early teens, and the fourteen years of young widowhood that followed, had provoked the worst elements of her nature. As long as Constantius was occupied with the struggle against Magnentius, he overlooked the excesses of his Cæsar and his sister in the East. His opponent, Magnentius, was not so compliant, though he wasted no legions in an effort to dethrone him. He sent a soldier to assassinate Gallus and seduce the troops. As the man resided, however, in a tavern near Antioch, he became less cautious over his cups, and boasted to his associates of his mission. The old woman who kept the tavern seemed too far removed from politics to be taken into account, but she promptly denounced her guest at the palace, and he was put to death. Then Magnentius fell, and committed suicide, and Constantius turned to consider the scandalous conduct of his viceroy and his sister.