In the year 826 he repaired to Milan, and then to Rome, being consul, for the seventh time, with his son Constantius ; he remained at Rome but a short time, and left it in disgust, never to return to it. According to Zosimus and Libanius, the Romanis were dissatisfied with him for having forsaken the old religion, and expressed their discontent by biting satires. By the end of the year we find Con stantine at Sirmium, in Pannonia. In this same year is recorded the tragical death of Crispus, the eldest son of Constantine, by a former wife or concubine ; a young man who had been educated by Lactan ties, who had been praised by Eusebius, and who had given proofs of his courage and abilities on many occasions. He was falsely accused by his atep-mother, Fausta, of having endeavoured to seduce her, some say of having aspired to the sovereign power, and upon one or other of these charges his father had him beheaded. At the same time he put to death young Licinius, his sister's eon, who was charged apparently with being concerned with Crisptis in his alleged treason. But it was son after discovered, some say through Helena, the mother of Constantine, that the young prince was innocent, and that Fausta herself had been repeatedly guilty of adultery, upon which she also was put to death with several of her accomplices. Constantine's auspicious temper added to the number of the victims.
About the year 328 Constantine began to build his new capital, which was called by his name, and the spot was judiciously chosen. It was a Christian city, chiefly inhabited by Christians, and no heathen temples were built in it. In May 330 the new town was solemnly dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Meantime the emperor was repeatedly engaged against the Goths and other barbarians on the banks of the Danube. In the year 328 he recalled several Arian bishops, Eusebius of Nicomedia among others, who had been exiled by the council of Nicma. This change is said to have happened at the suggestion of Conetantia, who was herself in the Arian communion, and retained to tho last much influence over her brother Constantine. Athanasins having opposed the re-admission of the Arians into the church corn mnnion, a long controversy ensued between him and the emperor, which lasted till the death of the latter. [Asessisestus.] Constantine was fond of religious polemics, and himself wrote on the Arian and Donatist controversy. The remaining years of Constantine's life were chiefly spent in embellishing his new capital and attracting inhabitants, especially Christians, to it ; the rich by privileges, the working men by daily distributions of corn and oil. He made a division of the empire, to take effect after his death, among his three sons, whom he had named Caesars: giving to Constantine, the eldest, the Gauls, Spain, and Britain ; to Constans, Illyricum, Italy, and Africa ; and the East to Constantine. To Dalmatius, one of his nephews, he gave Mace donia and Achaia, and the- other, Aunibalienus, he made king of Pontes and Cappadocia. He likewise, divided the authority of the priefect of the prietorium among four prrefecte—of the East, of Mace donia and Dacia, of the Gauls, and of Italy. These four great govern
ments were subdivided into provinces, administered by vicars or pro-pi-infects. He took away from the prrefects all military power, constituting them merely as civil and political officers. He is charged by &sirens, who is strongly biassed against Constantine, with having effected another change which proved fatal to the empire, namely, the removal of the military stations on the frontiers, and the placing of the soldiers in garrison in the towns of the interior ; but perhaps this was only on some particular points, where the barbarians had encroached and were likely to out off the old border stations. We and that he gave lands In Thrace and other provinces south of the Danube to the Sarmatisne, who had been driven from their country by the Goths. Constantine probably thought of making one race of barbarians a rampart to the empire against the other. In the year 337, when preparing to march against the Persians. who had com menced hostilities, he fell ill at Nicomedia, and died there, In his sixty.fourth year. He is and to have received baptism on his death bed from an Arian bishop; for although long converted to Christianity he was still only a catechumen, as was frequently the case with converts in that His body was transferred to Constantinople, where it was after a sumptuous funeral. The senate of Rome placed him among the gods, and the Christians of the East reckoned him among the saint.: his festival is still celebrated by the Greek, Coptic, and Russian churches on the 21st of May.
The character of Constantine has been the object of various and contradictory judgments, according to the religious and political spirit of the various writers. Eusebius, Nazsrius, and other Christian con temporaries, grateful for the protection afforded by the emperor to the Christian religion, may be considered his panegyrists, while Zosimue and other heathen writers, animated by an opposite feeling, were his enemies. The brief summing-up of Entropies is perhaps nearest the truth. " In the first part of his reign he was equal to the best princes, in the latter to middling one.. He had many great qualities ; he was fond of military glory, and was successful. He was also favourable to civil arta and liberal studies; fond of being loved and praised, and liberal to most of his friends. He made many laws ; some good and equitable, others superfluous, and some harsh and severe." He has been blamed for dividing the empire, but that had been done already by Diocletian ; in fact it was too large and straggling to remain in the possession of a single dynasty. By founding another capital in the East he probably did not accelerate the fall of the West, while at the same time he established a second empire, which lasted for more than a thousand years after his death.
(Eusebius, Life of Constantine; Zosimus ; Aurelius Victor ; Entree pins, and other numerous writers, a list of whom is given by J. Vogt; Llisloria Liveraria ainstanani Magni, 1720.)