Constantina

Constantina may have received the title of Augusta from her father, and is venerated as a saint, having developed a medieval legend wildly at variance with what is known of her actual character.

From her first marriage, Constantina may have had a daughter, Constantia, who later married Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus and become mother of Rusticiana, wife of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus.

[5] Constantina and Constantius Gallus were then sent from Rome to Syria at Antioch to govern that portion of the Eastern Roman Empire.

[7] Her body was sent back to Rome and entombed near Via Nomentana in a mausoleum her father, Emperor Constantine I, had started building for her.

This was when Magnentius revolted against her brother Constantius II causing political upheaval in the Western parts of the empire.

[6] Not only did Constantina exercise influence on her own, she was inherently, as a female member of the imperial Roman family, a political tool.

When, after receiving the complaints of the Anthiocheans, Constantius II summoned both Gallus and Constantina, but according to Ammianus Constantina, in her last attempt at using her political power, journeyed ahead to meet with her brother the emperor to try to pacify him in his conflict with her husband Constantius Gallus, during which she died from illness.

[17] Ammianus Marcellinus portrays Constantina as cruel, violent, and arrogant: "her pride was swollen beyond measure; she was a Fury in mortal form, incessantly adding fuel to her husband's rage, and as thirsty for human blood as he".

[7] Later in the 18th century, Edward Gibbon, influenced by Ammianus Marcellinus' rhetoric, likened Constantina to one of the infernal furies tormented with an insatiate thirst of human blood.

Gibbon stated that her vanity was accentuated while the gentle qualities of a woman were absent in her makeup when she would have accepted a pearl necklace in return for consenting to the execution of a worthy nobleman.

)[19] Constantina took a vow of chastity, and converted her fiancé Gallicanus, and eventually left her wealth to her servants John and Paul for them to spend on Christian works.

The story, with considerable elaborations, survives in various literary forms, and as a figure from the life of Agnes, Constantina appears in the late 14th enamelled scenes on the Royal Gold Cup in the British Museum.

Sarcophagus of Constantina, sculpted around AD 340. Formerly in the Mausoleo di Santa Costanza , part of the complex of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura in Rome, it is now on display at the Museo Pio-Clementino in the Vatican City.
Arm reliquary of Saint Constantina, Santa Maria della Scala in Siena .