Apollonius delivered before the senate an elaborate Apologia for his faith. By what Eusebius speaks of as an ancient law (possibly the edict of Trajan) he was beheaded (H. E. v. 21).
Constans I., the youngest of the three sons of Constantine the Great, was born c. 320 and made Caesar in 333; he reigned as Augustus 337‒350 when he was killed by the conspiracy of Magnentius. [ Constantinus II.] De Broglie (iii. pp. 58, 59) in his character of him remarks: "As far as we can discriminate between the contradictory estimates of different historians, Constans was of a simple, somewhat coarse, nature, and one without high aims though without malice. As regards the inheritance of his father's qualities, while Constantius seemed to have taken for his share his political knowledge, his military skill, and his eloquence (though reproducing a very faint image of them), Constans had only received great personal courage and a straightforwardness that did him honour. He was, besides, a lover of pleasure: he was suspected of the gravest moral irregularities. . . . He had firm, though certainly unenlightened, faith, and frequently gave proofs of it by distributing largesses to the churches and favours to the Christians" (cf. Eutrop. Brev. x. 9, Vict. Caes. 41, Epit. 41). Zosimus (ii. 42) gives him a worse character than do the others. Libanius in 348 delivered a panegyric on Constans and Constantius, called βασιλικὸς λόγος, vol. iii. ed. Reiske, pp. 272‒332. St. Chrysostom in the difficult and probably corrupt passage of his 15th Homily on the Philippians, p. 363, ed. Gaume, speaks of him as having children and as committing suicide, statements elsewhere unsupported. The most favourable evidence for Constans is the praise of St. Athanasius (Apol. ad Constantium, 4 sqq.; cf. the letter of Hosius in Hist. Arian. ad Monachos, 44). His conduct with respect to the Arian and Donatist controversies gained him the esteem of Catholics. He was a baptized Christian; his baptism is referred to in Ap. ad C. 7.
Constantinus I.—I. A. Ancient Authorities (Heathen).—Eutropius, Breviarium, Hist. Rom., end of 9th and beginning of 10th book. This historian was secretary to the emperor, and his short account is therefore valuable. The Caesares and the Epitome, current under the name of Aurelius Victor, were doubtless the work of different authors. The first, who wrote under Constantius, was a friend of Ammianus, and praefectus urbi towards the close of the cent.; the second, who excerpted from the first, lived a generation later, and continued his compilation down to the death of Theodosius the Great. They seem to have used the same sources as Zosimus, whom they supplement. The Panegyrists, as contemporary writers, deserve more attention than has been given them, allowance being made for the defects incident to their style of writing. Those relating to our subject—Anon. Panegyr. Maximiano et Constantino (A.D. 307), Eumenii Constantino in natalibus urb. Trevir. (310), and Gratiarum actio Flaviensium nomine (311), Anon. de Victoria adv. Maxentium (313), and Nazarii Paneg. Constantino (321)—are all the product of Gallic rhetoricians. The Scriptores Hist. Augustae contain several contemporary references to Constantine; those in Julian's Caesars are, as might be expected, unfriendly and satirical. The first vol. of the Bonn ed. of the Byzantine historians contains the fragments of Eunapius, Priscus, Dexippus, etc., but these are of little moment, as are the extracts from Praxagoras in Photius, Cod. 62. Indirectly it is supposed that we have more of the matter of these earlier writers in Zosimus's ἱστορία νέα, bk. ii. This historian lived probably c. 450. He was a bitter enemy of Constantine, whom he accuses of various crimes and cruelties, and blames for the novelties of his policy, shewing a particular dislike of his conversion. He falls into several historical blunders. The part of Ammianus's Histories relating to this reign is unfortunately lost. Some remarks on it occur in the part preserved, from which we gather his general agreement with his friend and contemporary Victor. The text of Ammianus, pub. by Gardthausen (Teubner, 1874), may be recommended. He has also given a revised text from the MSS. of the anonymous excerpts generally cited as Anonymus Valesii, Excerpta Valesiana. They received this name from being first printed by H. Valois, at the end of his ed. of Ammianus. Some of these extracts may be traced word for word in Eutropius and Orosius; hence their author did not live earlier than the 5th cent. Others are valuable as coming from sources elsewhere unrepresented.
(Christian.) The earliest contemporary authority is Lactantius, de Mortibus Persecutorum, a tract pub. after the defeat of Maxentius and before Constantine had declared himself the enemy of Licinius—i.e. probably 313 or 314. His bitterness is unpleasant, and his language exaggerated and somewhat obscure, but his facts are generally confirmed by other authors, where we can test them. The most important is Eusebius. Three of his works especially treat of Constantine, Hist. Eccl. ix. and x., down to 324, and probably pub. before the death of Crispus in 326; de Vita Constantini, in four books, with a translation of Constantine's Oratio ad Sanctorum Coetum as an appendix, pub. after his death; and, thirdly, τριακονταετηρικὅς, or Laudes Constantini, a panegyric at his tricennalia, containing little but rhetoric. To harmonize Eusebius and Zosimus is difficult. Fleury's dictum, "on ne se trompera sur Constantin en croyant tout le mil qu’en dit Eusebe, et tout le bien qu’en dit Zosime," may be perfectly true, but Zosimus says very little good of him and Eusebius very little harm. Eusebius has great weight as a contemporary and as giving documents, which have not for the most part been seriously challenged; but he is discredited by fulsomeness and bad taste in his later works, and by inconsistencies of tone between them and his history. He announces, however, that he will only recount those actions of the emperor which belong to his religious life (V. C. i. 11: μόνα τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεοφιλῆ συντείνοντα βίον), and is open to the criticism of Socrates (H. E. i. 1) as τῶν ἐπαίνων τοῦ βασίλευς καὶ τῆς πανηγυρικῆς ὑψηγορίας τῶν λόγων μᾶλλον ὡς ἐν ἐγκωμίῳ φροντίσας ἢ περὶ τοῦ ἀκριβῶς περιλαβεῖν τὰ γενόμενα. We must allow for the natural exultation of Christians over the emperor who had done so much
