Fausta

Some very rare coins in third brass are extant bearing upon the obverse a female head, with the words FAUSTA N. F.; on the reverse a star within a wreath of laurel, and below the letters TSA. Who this Nobilissima Femina may have been is quite unknown. Some have imagined that she was the first wife of Constantius; but this and every other hypothesis hitherto proposed rests upon pure conjecture. Numismatoligists seem to agree that the medal in question belongs to the age of Constantine, and it bears the clearest resemblance to that struck in honour of the Helena supposed to have been married to Crispus [Helena]. (Eckhel, vol. viii. p. 118.) In 1823, the coin figured below was dug up near Douai. It differs in its details from that described by Eckhel, but evidently belongs to the same personage.

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a daughter of the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla by his fourth wife, Caecilia Metella, and twin sister of Faustus Cornelius Sulla, was born not long before B. C. 88, the year in which Sulla obtained his first consulship ; and she and her brother received the names of Fausta and Faustus respectively, on account of the good fortune of their father. Fausta was first married to C. Memmius, and probably at a very early age, as her son, C. Memmius, was one of the nobles who supplicated the judges on behalf of Scaurus in B. C. 54. After being divorced by her first husband, she married, towards the latter end of B. C. 55, T. Annius Milo, and accompanied him on his journey to Lanuvium, when Clodius was murdered, B. C. 52. (Plut. Sull. 34; Cic. Att. 5.8; Ascon. in Scaur. p. 29, in Milon. p. 33, ed. Orelli.)

Fausta was infamous for her adulteries, and the historian Sallust is said to have been one of her paramours, and to have received a severe flogging from Milo, when he was detected on one occasion in the house of the latter in the disguise of a slave. (Gel. 17.18; Serv. ad Virg. Aen. 6.612.) The "Villius in Fausta Sullae gener" (Hor. Sat. 1.2. 64), who was another of her favourites, was probably the Sex. Villius who is mentioned by Cicero (Cic. Fam. 2.6.) as a friend of Milo; and the names of two more of her gallants are handed down by Macrobius (Saturn. 2.2) in a bon mot of her brother Faustus.

the daughter of Maximianus IHerculius and Eutropia, was married in A. D. 307 to Constantine the Great, to whom she bore Constantinus, Constantius, and Constans. She acquired great influence with her husband in consequence of having saved his life by revealing the treacherous schemes of her father, who, driven to despair by his failure, soon after died at Tarsus. But although, on this occasion at least, she appeared in the light of a devoted wife, she at the same time played the part of a most cruel stepmother, for, in consequence of her jealous machinations, Constantine was induced to put his son Crispus to death. When, however, the truth was brought to light by Helena, who grieved deeply for her grandchild, Fausta was shut up in a bath heated far above the common temperature, and was thus suffocated, probably in A. D. 326. Zosimus seems inclined to throw the whole blame in both instances on Constantine, whom he accuses as the hypocritical perpetrator of a double murder, while others assign the promiscuous profligacy of the empress as the true origin of her destruction, but in reality the time, the causes, and the manner of her death are involved in great obscurity in consequence of the vague and contradictory representations of our historical authorities. (Constantinus, p. 835; Crispus, p. 892; Zosim. 2.10, 29; Julian, Orat. i; Auctor, de Mort. persec. 27; Eutrop. 10.2, 4; Victor. Epit. 40, 41; Philostorg. H. E. 2.4; Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs, vol. iv. art. lxii. p. 224, and Notes sur Constantin, xvii; Eckhel, vol. viii. p. 98.)

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(1) Cornelia, daughter of Sulla , and married to Milo, the partisan of Cicero. She disgraced herself by a criminal affair with the historian Sallust (Hor. Sat. i. 2, 41; Schol. Cruq. et Acr. ad loc.).

(2) Flavia, the daughter of Maximian, and wife of Constantine the Great. When her father wished her to join him in a plot for assassinating her husband, she disclosed the whole affair to the latter. After exercising the most complete ascendency over the mind of her husband, she was eventually put to death by him, on his discovering the falsity of a charge which she had made against Crispus, the son of Constantine by a previous marriage (Eutrop. x. 2, 4; Victor. Epit. 40, 41). See Constantinus.