le mantle of silk richly
embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold. His mind was not
highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and seldom
thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical contempt of
mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a good knowledge
of human nature and administrative energy and tact.

His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity
rare for the time, and a liberality and beneficence bordering on
wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed
the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of
the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates,
and gave free play to the efficiency of the church throughout the whole
empire. Altogether he was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the
most influential of the Roman emperors, Christian and pagan.

Yet he had great faults. He was far from being so pure and so venerable
as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his
bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident
intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes.
It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in the
knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its
virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and
his despotism, increased with his power.

The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes,
which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch
cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the
goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the
very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicaea, he ordered
the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in
breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324). Not satisfied with this, he
caused soon afterward, from political suspicion, the death of the young
Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all
is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred
suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous
purposes toward his stepmother Fausta, but is generally regarded as
innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of
mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip
II. toward Don Carlos, of Pet