[5][2] She was applauded for her wisdom and kindness, as well as her loyalty to Constantius,[8] who honoured her by renaming the Dioecesis Pontica as Pietas, the Latin equivalent of the Greek name Eusebia.

[5] She was welcomed, with much ceremony, by the Roman Senate and general populace, and distributed monetary gifts "to the presidents of the tribes and the centurions of the people.

Again defying the opinion of the court officials, Eusebia convinced Constantius to appoint Julian, his last surviving male relative, as Caesar.

[16] Julian himself attributes Eusebia's behavior to kindness and to respect for their familial ties: "no other reason can I discover, nor learn from anyone else, why she became so zealous an ally of mine, and an averter of evil and my preserver, and took such troubles and pain in order that I might retain unaltered and unaffected the Emperor's good will.

"[17] Modern historians Shaun Tougher and J. Juneau suggest that Eusebia's role may in fact have been part of Constantius's own strategy, using her as a "front woman" in negotiations with Julian, as the two men had a contentious relationship.

[18][19] In 357, Constantius celebrated his Vicennalia, the twentieth anniversary of his reign, by moving his court temporarily to Rome, and Eusebia accompanied him in her second recorded visit to the city.

[22] While Edward Gibbon did not dismiss it outright, he preferred to suppose that "public malignity imputed the effects of accident as the guilt of Eusebia".

[23] "A History of Medicine" (1995), by Plinio Prioreschi, dismisses the account as an example of a common error in early medical thought, "the attribution to drugs of properties that they could not have".

A potion which Helena consumed just once ostensibly retained its effect for years, which Prioreschi calls "an obvious impossibility in the light of modern pharmacology".

On speculating Ammianus’ reasoning for the accusation, he suggested that the historian was trying to defend Julian from allegations of divine ill-favor by attributing his wife’s miscarriages to human interference.

Court partisans of Arianism "found an efficient coadjutor in the presbyter who had obtained from Constantine the recall of Arius… he became an intimate of the emperor's wife, and of the powerful eunuchs of the women's sleeping apartments.

At this period Eusebius was appointed to superintend the concerns of the royal household, and being zealously attached to Arianism, he induced the empress and many of the persons belonging to the court to adopt the same sentiments.

[30] The Suda gives an account of Eusebia's apparent conflict with Leontius, bishop of Tripolis, who held aloof from her at an imperial Synod.

[31] She was credited in Christian legend with translating the relics of St Theodore from Amasea, the site of his martyrdom by immolation, to Euchaita,[32] which became a center of pilgrimage.

[34] Philostorgius recorded that the Arian bishop and renowned healer Theophilus the Indian was called out of exile to attempt to reverse her infertility.

[34] Shaun Tougher notes that the panegyric in honor of Eusebia "tends to be neglected" in favor of two orations Julian wrote about Constantius II.

[36] Tougher notes that Julian reveals her influence on the decisions of Constantius, but constantly reminds his audience that the authority to decide on any given matter rests with the Emperor, not with the Empress.