Helena Augusta

In the middle of the third century, a girl was born on the north-eastern frontier of the Roman empire. Eighty years later, she died as Flavia Iulia Helena, Augusta of the Roman world and mother of the first Christian emperor Constantine, without ever having been married to an emperor herself. In Helena Augusta: Mother of the Empire, Julia Hillner traces Helena's story through her life's peaks, which generated beautiful imperial artwork, entertaining legendsas well as literary outrage. But Helena Augusta also pays careful attention to the disruptions in Helena's life course and in her commemoration—disruptions that were created by her nearest male relatives. Hillner shows that Helena's story was not just determined by the love of a son or the rise of Christianity. It was also—like that of many other late Roman women—defined by male violence and by the web of changing female relationships around her, to which Helena was sometimes marginal, sometimes central and sometimes ancillary. Helena Augusta offers unique insight into the roles of imperial women in Constantinian self-display and in dynastic politics from the Tetrarchy to theTheodosian Age, and it also reminds us that the late Roman female life course, even that of an empress, was fragile and non-linear.

Using tools developed for feminist historiography, Hillner has retrieved the historical mother of Constantine the Great from the realm of legend. Her reconstruction is engaging, filled with shrewd insight, and well-grounded in ancient sources. She is especially good at using material culture to lead into deeper discussions. Instead of the saintly Helena who discovered the True Cross, we now have a living, breathing person who can teach us a great deal about the history of women in the fourth century.

Julia Hillner is Professor of Ancient History at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. She is the author of Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity.