1The title “Empress” was unknown to the Romans. “Imperator” was a name of military command. The special use of it in connexion with Octavian and his successors was that it was given for life. The more novel title “Augustus” was extended to Livia, who later became “Augusta.”

2Pliny places her birth in the year 54 B.C., but Dio says 57 B.C., and this date is confirmed by Tacitus.

3Improperly, because it is not a distinctive name, but common to the emperors. Livia and Octavia received the title of “Augusta” a few years later, yet even Livia is rarely known by it.

4“Non nisi plena nave tollo vectorem.”

5Writers often convey the impression that Julia indulged even her most vicious inclinations in the Rostra, but Dio merely speaks of “revelling” and “carousing”: ?ste ?a? ?? t? ????? ?a? ?p’ a?t?? ?e t?? ?at?? ????e?? ???t?? ?a? s?p??e??. The emptying of a cup of Falernian wine in the Rostra, on some occasion of especial devilry or intoxication, may be all that is meant.

6Vol. V, p. 353.

7“Annals,” v. 3.

8An apology should be made for retaining the nickname of the third Emperor, but it seems to be ineradicably fixed in history.

9Tacitus, who is followed by Merivale and other historians, makes Claudius also retire to Sinuessa. This is probably an error, as the Emperor fell ill and died at Rome.

10“The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero,” 1903.

11?a? ??t? ?e ?a?t?? d?? p?s?? t?? ????? d???a?e? ?ste ?de?a? ?p?????a? s?e??: lxviii, 5.

12Duruy quotes Aurelius Victor (“Epitome,” xiv) as saying: “It is impossible to say how much Plotina enhanced the glory of Trajan.” The passage is really found in c. xxxix of the “Epitome.”

13Gregorovius points out that the incident may have occurred at Rome, and that we have no positive proof that Sabina accompanied him on this journey. But the narrative of Spartianus seems to imply that she was in Britain, and we shall see that she accompanied him on his longer journey to the East. Duruy and other writers hold that the officers were dismissed for lack, not excess, of respect for Sabina, but the word “familiarius,” coupled with a threat of divorce, seems to demand the interpretation I have put on it.

14See Dr. Bassani’s little work, “Commodo e Marcia.”

15The references on coins and inscriptions to Julia Domna have been industriously collected by Mary Gilmore Wilkins, American Journal of ArchÆology, 2nd series, vol. vi. They do not add materially to our knowledge of her, but are so abundant that they show her to have been an Empress of exceptional prominence and influence. She became Augusta in the first year.

16I conclude that they had already come to Rome because Elagabalus, the son of SoÆmias, was given serious consideration in his later claim that he was the son of Bassianus. He was born in 204, and, unless his mother had been in the palace before that date, the claim could not have been made.

17It is difficult to imagine Elagabalus beginning his appalling career at such an age, and Gibbon, calculating from the age given to Alexander Severus in the “Historia Augusta” at the time of his death, changes the age to seventeen. But the “Historia Augusta” is very commonly wrong in the ages it ascribes to Emperors at their death. Professor Bury admits that Gibbon is probably wrong, and we may follow Herodian.

18Ammianus Marcellinus tells us the one fact, Zosimus the other. Neither mentions her name, but we learn it from coins.

19Some writers have conjectured, from the fact that the legend “In Pace” occurs on the coins of Salonina after her death, that she became a Christian. The phrase is not found otherwise except on Christian monuments. Duruy does not admit the inference, and points out that she built a temple to the goddess of the seasons.

20Her name is variously given as Vitruvia, Victoria, or Victorina. Since it appears as Vitruvia where the “Augustan History” copies from the Acts of the Senate, and no Roman would corrupt Victoria into Vitruvia, I take it that it was originally Vitruvia, and was Latinized, or changed by her when she became Empress, into Victoria.

21It has been suggested that the fifteen months of Lactantius may date from their expulsion from the court of Maximin. This is hardly possible. Galerius died in May, 311, and Valeria was still in mourning for him, and pleaded his recent death, when Maximin sought to wed her. Maximin died in April, 313, so that the deaths of Prisca and Valeria cannot have been earlier than the summer of that year.

22The Greek original of the “Chronicle” is lost, and Jerome informs us that he has added many details in the Latin version which we now have.

23One of the most authoritative works on Roman institutions, Marquardt and Mommsen’s “Handbuch,” says this emphatically: “Ehen, bei welchen der eine Theil der RÖmischen BÜrgerschaft, der Andere den Latinern jÜngeren Rechtes oder den Peregrinen angehÖrte, sind nach RÖmischen Recht nicht gÜltig” (vii. 29). GÖteke, in a special study of the subject (“Constantinum honeste et ex legitimo matrimonio natum”), says that special edicts made it impossible for an officer to marry in the province in which he served. He believes that the effect of these would not be permanent, but he fails to consider Helena’s disability as a peregrina.

24The question may be raised whether St. Augustine had not the case of Constantine in mind when, in his moral treatise “De Bono Conjugali,” he refuses to condemn a man who, having a barren wife, takes a concubine in addition, to provide a family. It is clear, at least, that early Christian opinion was not fixed. Gibbon again improves upon Christian writers by holding that Minervina was an earlier wife, not a concubine, of Constantine; but, as Professor Bury points out, the document on which he relies does not apply to that Emperor.

25It is from the confusion of dates that I ascribe the words confidently to Jerome, and not Eusebius The words “ninth year” can only refer to the ninth year of the CÆsarate of Crispus, or 326. The interval of three years has no significance in view of the confusion of dates.

26Gibbon, Professor Bury, and Mr. Firth make Zosimus coincide with Zonaras. The reader will see from my literal translation of his words that he differs very materially. He does not suggest that Fausta accused Crispus, or that she was really guilty of any misconduct; but he pointedly accuses Helena.

27Miss Gardner observes, in her life of Julian, that we do not know if Helena was older than Julian, But, while Julian is known to have been born in 331 or 332, since he was in his sixth year at the time of the massacre of 337, and died at thirty-two, Helena’s mother had been murdered in 326.

28Philostorgius says that, as she lay ill with her malady, Constantius recalled Bishop Theophilus from exile, and he cured her. But Zonaras makes her die of this very malady, scouting the Arian miracle.

29The Alexandrian Chronicle repeatedly calls her Marina, and we have no coins to determine the full and accurate name. Cohen, at least, gives no coins, though Tillemont refers to them.

30Lib. xxviii. 1: He says that Gratian put a certain man to death “on the advice of his mother.” Zonaras says that Severa still lived at the time of the second marriage.

31Gratian, the youthful son of Severa, had been clothed with the purple by Valentinian, “at the instigation of his wife and father-in-law,” says the epitomist of Aurelius Victor, in the autumn of 367. On the other hand, Justina’s brother was killed, in the service of Valentinian, in 369, The second marriage falls most naturally in 368.

32Yet St. Augustine, who was in Rome the year after the death of Gratian, says in his “Confessions” (viii. 2) that “nearly the whole nobility of Rome” still clung to the old religion.

33Hence Tillemont and others, who give these dates, must be wrong in placing the quarrel with Eutropius in 399. Philostorgius expressly says that she had two daughters in her arms when she appealed to Arcadius.

34See Professor Puech’s “Saint Jean Chrysostome,” 1891.

35The curious reader will find Chrysostom’s surprising strictures of the clergy more than confirmed in the letters of Jerome, and his fierce denunciation of the monks borne out in Augustine’s treatise on them.

36Gibbon makes her survive Chrysostom, and die in 408. But Tillemont has pointed out that the “Life of Chrysostom” by George of Alexandria, on which he seems to have relied, forges letters, and is quite unreliable. The earlier writers put the death of Eudoxia in 404.