Death
Like Constantius' first wife (whose name is unknown), Eusebia tried unsuccessfully to give birth to a child. It was said that Eusebia embraced Arianism when the efforts of the orthodox bishops to cure her infertility failed. The ancient historian Philostorgius wrote that the Arian bishop and renowned healer Theophilus the Indian was called out of exile to heal her troubled womb. He is said to have healed her malady, but she still bore no children. Eusebia is reported to have died while in the care of a female practitioner who attempted to restore her fertility.
According to his modern translator and commentator, Philip R. Amidon, Philostorgius "says that Constantius' wife was subject to fits of hysteria, and since he was so deeply devoted to her, he was forced to recall Theophilus from exile, for the latter was reputed to be able to cure sicknesses by divine power. When he arrived, he asked forgiveness for the sins he had committed against him and besought him to cure his wife. Nor did he fail of his request, so our author says. For Theophilus laid his propriatory hands upon the woman and removed the sickness from her". Amidon notes that Eusebia's hysteria is also mentioned by Georgios Kedrenos and Joannes Zonaras.
Constantius married his next wife, Faustina after the death of Eusebia in 360. The period can be estimated by Ammianus who reports that this marriage took place while Constantius was wintering in Antioch, taking a break from the ongoing Roman–Persian Wars. "At that same time Constantius took to wife Faustina, having long since lost Eusebia".
Read more about this topic: Eusebia (empress)
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Then is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death
Ere death dare come to us?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)
“Once one’s up against it, the precise manner of one’s death has obviously small importance.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)