A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Faustina, Flavia Maximiana
FAUSTINA, FLAVIA MAXIMIANA,
Was the second wife of Constantine the Great. She was the daughter of Maximian Hercules, and sister to Maxentius. Her father having received the title of Augustus in 306; took her into Gaul, where he gave her in marriage to the Emperor Constantine. She was for a long time a most exemplary wife and mother, and a strenuous advocate with the emperor for all acts of indulgence and liberality to the people. She even sacrificed her father's life to her husband, by discovering to Constantine a plot tor his destruction. She has been accused of staining the last years of her life by the commission of many crimes; among others, that of causing the death of Crispus, the son of Constantine by a former wife, by false accusations; and, it is said, that the emperor revenged his honour, and his son's death, by causing her to be suffocated in a warm bath, in 327. The truth of these latter circumstances has been much doubted.