The Story about Crispus Refuted

I am aware that the pagans tell this story. Constantine, after killing some of his nearest relatives, and especially after agreeing to the murder of his own son Crispus, repented of his evil deeds and asked Sopater the philosopher, who was then head of the school of Plotinus, how he might be cleansed of his guilt. The philosopher, so the story goes, answered that such moral defilement could not be cleansed. The emperor was grieved at this rebuff. But he happened to meet some bishops, who told him he would be cleansed from sin if he repented and submitted to baptism. He was delighted with what they told him, admired their teaching, became a Christian, and led his subjects to the same faith. It seems to me that this story was invented by people who wanted to slander the Christian religion. Crispus, on whose account Constantine is said to have needed cleansing, did not die until the twentieth year of his father’s reign. He held the second place in the empire and bore the title of Caesar, and many laws in favor of Christianity, issued with his approval, still survive. This can be proved from the dates attached to these laws and from the lists of those who issued them. [a]

Nor does it seem likely that Sopater had any dealings with Constantine, whose government was at that time centered in the regions near the ocean and the Rhine. His quarrel with Maxentius, the ruler of Italy, had stirred up so much strife in the Roman dominions that it was no easy matter then to live in Gaul, in Britain, or in the neighboring countries. And it is agreed by everyone that it was there that Constantine embraced the religion of the Christians, before his war with Maxentius and before his return to Rome and Italy. The dates of the laws he passed in favor of religion are evidence of this. But even granting that Sopater happened to meet the emperor, or that he corresponded with him by letter, it is unthinkable that the philosopher did not know that Hercules, the son of Alcmena, obtained cleansing at Athens by celebrating the mysteries of Ceres, after he had murdered his own children and Iphitus, his guest and friend. That the Greeks held that guilt of this kind could be cleansed is plain from the example I have just given. Whoever claims that Sopater taught the opposite is a false slanderer. I cannot accept that the philosopher was ignorant of these facts, for at that time he was considered the most learned man in Greece.