Picked up my first Fausta Follis

@happy_collector Congrats on the coin. The obverse bust is fantastic!

Here’s one of mine from Nicomedia, unlisted from this officina.

Fausta, AE follis, Nicomedia. AD 325-326. FLAV MAX-FAVSTA AVG, bare-headed, mantled bust right, wearing necklace /
SALVS REI-PVBLICAE, Empress standing facing, looking left, head veiled, holding two children in her arms.
Mintmark MN Delta (unlisted).
RIC VII Nicomedia 130v; Sear 16553v.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Well ...

It's hard to say. The earliest sources that offer any suggestion as to what happened are already 100 years after the event, although it would have been scandalous enough that it seems quite plausible a reasonably accurate version of events may have survived (as well as was known at the time).

What we know for sure is that Crispus and Fausta were killed in pretty rapid succession (as confirmed by the coins), apparently suffered damnatio memoriae, and that it was something to be covered up as indicated by the silence of Eusebius.

It seems highly likely that the deaths of Fausta and Crispus were linked since otherwise just too much coincidence for both to have, at essentially the same time, commited separate crimes worthy of death and damnatio memoriae.

The specific methods of death that have been handed down to us are poison for Crispus (at Pola in northern Italy), and suffocation/overheating in a hot bath for Fausta.

It does seem that a crime of adultery would have been more than enough to have had either one executed since Constantine had extraordinarily harsh punishments (even by the standards of the day) put in place for offenses of this nature. The Theodosian Code (section 9.24) records a law passed by Constantine whereby anyone found guilty of "rape" (raptu) would be executed by way of having molten lead poured into their mouth. The law makes it clear that what was considered as "raptu" includes consensual eloping before marriage, in which case any nurse/attendant of the girl who knew what was going on might suffer the same fate. Others complicit in a cover-up would be "burned by fire".

Here's the law - Google translate does a pretty decent job of translating the latin!

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/theodosius/theod09.shtml

Compared to this, the deaths of Crispus (by poison) and Fausta (by suffocation/overheating) seem almost merciful, to the extent that one modern biographer (Charles Odahl) considers Constantine having killed his wife in this manner to indicate his kind personality! (which couldn't be further from the truth).

Certainly an "execution by hot bath" would be unprecedented. Members of the ruling elite don't usually seem to have been afforded any particular mercy other than perhaps the opportunity to take their own life.

I recently read an interesting, and to me plausible, explanation for what might have happened. This is David Woods' "On the Death of the Empress Fausta" which is available on JSTOR (you can create a free account to read it).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/643208?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Woods' theory (in a fair amount of detail - 17 pages) is that there was indeed a dalliance between Crispus and Fausta, resulting in Fausta getting pregnant. He suggests that Crispus's death by poison might have been suicide (perhaps forced), and that Fausta's death might have been an abortion-gone-wrong, again likely forced upon her.

The timing for all this is interesting in that it happened in 326 AD, Constantine's vicennenial year, when the family was traveling together on a slow journey (~ 5 months) from the east (departing from Constantinople, perhaps) to Rome for the celebrations. Normally Crispus would have been located in Trier, and Fausta (his step mother) in the east with Constantine, but now they were together in close quarters, with plenty of time for things to develop (in all regards). Crispus appears to still have been alive when they arrived at Rome (per the coins), then died very shortly after before the return trip to the east.

An alternative theory would be that Fausta, wanting her step son Crispus out of the line of succession (in favor of her own sons) had suggested something to Constantine sufficient for him to meet his end. An alternative to an affair might be disloyalty or excessive ambitions on part of Crispus. Certainly Fausta would have been taking an enormous risk by suggesting anything that implicated herself in any way. In this theory Fausta would then have been killed once her lie had been discovered.

I find Woods' theory quite compelling!

 

Thanks for sharing your Nicomedia example. Good style portrait.