CHAPTER XL

FALSEHOODS OF THE HISTORIAN ZOSIMUS

ZOSIMUS, a follower of the accursed and foul religion of the Greeks, in his anger against Constantine, because he was the first emperor that had adopted Christianity, abandoning the abominable superstition of the Greeks, says, that he was the person who devised the tax called Chrysargyrum, and enacted that it should be levied every five years. He has on many other grounds also reviled that pious and magnificent monarch; for he affirms that he contrived many other intolerable proceedings against every class of persons; that he miserably destroyed his son Crispus, and made away with his wife Fausta by inclosing her in an overheated bath; and that, after having in vain endeavoured to to procure purification from murders so detestable at the hands of the priests of his own religion (for they plainly declared its impossibility), he met with an Egyptian who had come from Iberia; and, having been assured by him that the faith of the Christians had the power of blotting out every sin, he embraced what the Egyptian had imparted to him, and thenceforward abandoning the faith of his fathers, he made the commencement of his impiety. The falsehood of these assertions I will forthwith shew, and in the first place treat of the matter of the Chrysargyrum.