she largely operated hidden from the public view but was still was sinister, brutal and controlling. He suggests that she called for the murder of several people, "Gallus...had just enough strength to reply that most of them had been massacred at the insistence of his wife Constantina". She accepted a necklace as a bribe for securing the execution of a nobleman. In ancient historical sources, she was generally perceived as a cruel and violent but politically dynamic figure. When, after receiving the complaints of the Anthiocheans, Constantius II summoned both Gallus and Constantina, but according to Ammianus Constantina, in her last attempt at using her political power, journeyed ahead to meet with her brother the emperor to try to pacify him in his conflict with her husband Constantius Gallus, during which she died from illness. Character assessment According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Constantina appeared to be extremely cruel and violent. He portrayed her as full of pride and disturbingly violent, "her pride was swollen beyond measure; she was a Fury in mortal form, incessantly adding fuel to her husband's rage, and as thirsty for human blood as he". Later in the 18th century, Edward Gibbon, influenced by Ammianus Marcellinus' rhetoric, likened Constantina to one of the infernal furies tormented with an insatiate thirst of human blood. The historian said that she encouraged the violent nature of Gallus rather than persuading him to show reason and compassion. Gibbon stated that her vanity was accentuated while the gentle qualities of a woman were absent in her makeup when she would have accepted a pearl necklace in return for consenting to the execution of a worthy nobleman. Medieval legend In the Middle Ages, Constantina developed a legend, connected with the life of Agnes of Rome; the origins of this are unclear, though she was certainly buried in a mausoleum, Santa Costanza, attached to the large Constantinian basilica over the catacomb where Agnes is buried. The mausoleum survives largely intact, but now only parts of the wall of the basilica survive. In the version told by the Golden Legend, she caught leprosy, and was then miraculously cured when praying at Agnes' tomb, which is supposed to be at the site of the later Basilica of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura alongside the earlier basilica. (The Ethiopian Synaxarium describes Constantine I sending his sick daughter to Abu Mena to be cured, and credits her with finding Menas'