Not long ago Gordian had conceived the project of giving his young sister Aemiliana as wife to Basil.

Maximus favoured this design, but his nephew showed no eagerness to carry it out, and Roman gossip presently found a reason for that.

Among the leaders of fashion and of pleasure--for fashion and pleasure did not fail to revive in Rome soon after the horrors of the siege--shone a lady named Heliodora, the Greek wife of a little-respected senator, who, favoured by Bessas, rose to the position of City Prefect.

With Heliodora's character rumour made very free; the captives of her beauty were said to be numerous, and one of the names mentioned by those who loved such scandal was that of the young Basil.

Gordian, finding that there was some ground for this suspicion, spoke no more of the suggested marriage, and it was at his instance that Maximus, ill in Campania, summoned Basil away from the city.