Fausta

Flavia Maxima Fausta Augusta (died 326 AD) was a Roman empress. She was the daughter of Maximian and wife of Constantine the Great, who had her executed and excluded from all official accounts for unknown reasons. Historians Zosimus and Zonaras reported that she was executed for adultery with her stepson, Crispus.

Family
Fausta was the daughter of the emperor Maximian and his wife Eutropia. As her age is nowhere outright attested, scholarly estimates have ranged from 289/290 to the end of the 290s. To seal the alliance between them for control of the Tetrarchy, Maximian married her to Constantine I in 307.

Constantine at first tried to present Maximian’s suicide as an unfortunate tragedy, but later started spreading another version where Fausta was involved in her father’s downfall. Barnes observed that the story “shows clear signs of being invented during Constantine’s war against Maxentius.”

During her marriage, she had 5 children. Fausta held the title of nobilissima femina up until 324, when Constantine held her in high enough regard to grant her the title of augusta, which she received together with Constantine’s mother Helena.

Execution
In 326, Fausta was put to death by Constantine, following the execution of Crispus, his eldest son by Minervina. The circumstances surrounding the two deaths were unclear. Various explanations have been suggested; in one, Fausta is set against Crispus, as in the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus, or conversely her adultery, perhaps with the stepson who was close to her in age, is suggested.

According to the Latin Epitome de Caesaribus and the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius (as epitomized by Photius), Fausta was executed by being locked in a bath which was over heated, in connection with the death of Crispus, which "people [thought]" was caused by Fausta's accusation of unclear nature. "But Constantine, having obtained rule over the whole Roman Empire by remarkable success in wars, ordered his son Crispus to be put to death, at the behest (so people think) of his wife Fausta. Later he locked his wife Fausta in overheated baths and killed her, because his mother Helena blamed him out of excessive grief for her grandson."

Zosimus, on the other hand, suggests adultery as the reason: "He killed Crispus, who had been deemed worthy of the rank of Caesar, as I have said before, when he incurred suspicion of having sexual relations with his stepmother Fausta, without taking any notice of the laws of nature. Constantine’s mother Helena was distressed at such a grievous event and refused to tolerate the murder of the young man. As if to soothe her [feelings] Constantine tried to remedy the evil with a greater evil: having ordered baths to be heated above the normal level, he deposited Fausta in them and brought her out when she was dead."

In Zonaras' version written in the 12th century, Crispus' death was caused by Fausta's retaliatory accusation of rape following her unsuccessful sexual advances toward him. But when Constantine realized his innocence, he punished her, mirroring the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus. Scholars have noted that if Crispus was found to be innocent, his condemnation of memory should have been lifted, but it was not.

Although Hans Pohlsander dismissed the idea of Fausta’s death being accidental, viewing the condemnation of memory to be certain proof that Constantine intended to kill his wife, David Woods’ response was that, “Accidents continue to happen even to people deep in disgrace.” He suggested that Crispus and Fausta were not actually executed, offering the connection of overheated bathing with contemporaneous techniques of abortion, a suggestion that implies an unwanted, adulterous pregnancy from her relationship with Crispus and a fatal accident during the abortion.

Constantine I ordered the damnatio memoriae of Fausta and Crispus around 326 with the result that no contemporary source records details of her fate: "Eusebius, ever the sycophant, mentions neither Crispus nor Fausta in his Life of Constantine, and even wrote Crispus out of the final version of his Ecclesiastical History (HE X.9.4)", Constantine's biographer Paul Stephenson observes. Although Julian praised Fausta in his panegyric to Constantius II, there is no other evidence of her memory being rehabilitated.

In popular culture
Fausta is an important antagonist in Dorothy L. Sayers' chronicle-play The Emperor Constantine (1951). In addition, Fausta was portrayed by Belinda Lee in the film Constantine and the Cross (1961).