9.) And now it gets gruesome and controversial. Seemingly out of the blue, Constantine (now the last and only Emperor standing; he's already hosted the Council of Nicea and started to move his capital to Byzantium) has his son Crispus executed, and then his wife Fausta, the later in a very brutal way, by having her boiled alive by having her locked in her bath which was then overheated. What happened? Depending on the chronicler and historian, either:
a) Crispus and Fausta had an affair, and Constantine found out
or
b) Fausta, seeing Crispus as competition for her own sons or because she wants him but he doesn't want her, accused him of raping her, and Constantine, never having read any version of the Phaedra myth, it seems, first falls for it and kills his son, then, finding out the truth, orders Fausta dead
or c) paranoid Constantine was jealous of Crispus' popularity with the troops and suspected him of wanting to topple him.
Now, as much as b) sounds like the plot of Phaedra and thus fake, apparantly one thing historians agree on is that Constantine between the death of Crispus and the death of Fausta met with his mother Helena. In the audio series Caesar!, the Constantine episode, "The Maker of all Things" does have Helena convince Constantine that Crispus was innocent and Fausta is a lying liar, but they also use this last mother-son meeting for another turn, to which, Constantine from using Christianity and Christian support pragmatically (because Christians are a big part of his power base) to, use it to atone for what he did. He needs someone to forgive the unforgivable. The dialogue goes something like this:
C: I want you to go to Jerusalem for me. Go to the place where the Nazarene was executed. I will pay for a church there.
H: It's going to take more than building a church, my son.
C: Christianity will now be not only a legal religion in the Empire, but the only religion. I myself will acknowledge the Christian God not just as God but the only God.
H: When do I start?
The series Caesar! does not use Latin at any point except in this episode at the end, when Constantine, for the rest of the episode a hard nosed pragmatist, after all is said and done and the report of Fausta's death has arrived monologues that he still loves Crispus and Fausta and he only sees one way out to live with himself, and then he starts with: "Pater noster quis est in caelum, sanctificetur nomen tuis" etc, the Our Father in Latin.
Constantinian Aftermath
a) Crispus and Fausta had an affair, and Constantine found out
or
b) Fausta, seeing Crispus as competition for her own sons or because she wants him but he doesn't want her, accused him of raping her, and Constantine, never having read any version of the Phaedra myth, it seems, first falls for it and kills his son, then, finding out the truth, orders Fausta dead
or
c) paranoid Constantine was jealous of Crispus' popularity with the troops and suspected him of wanting to topple him.
Now, as much as b) sounds like the plot of Phaedra and thus fake, apparantly one thing historians agree on is that Constantine between the death of Crispus and the death of Fausta met with his mother Helena. In the audio series Caesar!, the Constantine episode, "The Maker of all Things" does have Helena convince Constantine that Crispus was innocent and Fausta is a lying liar, but they also use this last mother-son meeting for another turn, to which, Constantine from using Christianity and Christian support pragmatically (because Christians are a big part of his power base) to, use it to atone for what he did. He needs someone to forgive the unforgivable. The dialogue goes something like this:
C: I want you to go to Jerusalem for me. Go to the place where the Nazarene was executed. I will pay for a church there.
H: It's going to take more than building a church, my son.
C: Christianity will now be not only a legal religion in the Empire, but the only religion. I myself will acknowledge the Christian God not just as God but the only God.
H: When do I start?
The series Caesar! does not use Latin at any point except in this episode at the end, when Constantine, for the rest of the episode a hard nosed pragmatist, after all is said and done and the report of Fausta's death has arrived monologues that he still loves Crispus and Fausta and he only sees one way out to live with himself, and then he starts with: "Pater noster quis est in caelum, sanctificetur nomen tuis" etc, the Our Father in Latin.