This remarkable conduct on the part of Valentinian and Justina is put in the year 368.[31] The succeeding years of war and religious controversy throw no light on the character of Justina, and we need not describe them. Valentinian died in 375. Some delegates of the barbarians had come, with deep humility, to implore his clemency for their invasion of his dominions, and Valentinian burst into one of his appalling storms of rage. So violent was his fury in addressing them that he burst a blood-vessel, and left the Western Empire to his son Gratian. Gratian had married in the previous year. His Empress was the daughter of Faustina, who had been borne in her mother’s arms at the head of the troops of Procopius. In crossing the provinces to meet Gratian, Constantia had had a singular adventure. While she was dining at an inn, some twenty-six miles from Sirmium, the tribes broke across the Danube and occupied the village. There was just time for the Governor of Illyrium to snatch up the thirteen-year-old princess and make a dash for Sirmium. She married Gratian in 374, and became Empress of the West in the following year. But Flavia Maxima Constantia has left only the faint impress of her early adventures on the chronicles of the time, and the few years of her Imperial life have no interest for us. The next mention of her is that she died some time before her husband, who was assassinated in 383. He had married again, but his widow, Læta, is a mere name in history. Theodosius gave a comfortable income to Læta and her mother Pissamena, and they were distinguished for their charity in the later misfortunes of Rome.
When Valentinian had died in a fit of rage at Bregetio, Justina and her four-year-old boy, Valentinian the younger, were in the town of Murocincta, a hundred miles away. Justina hastened to the camp, and it was presently announced that the army had decided to associate the boy with Gratian in the rule of the West. Gratian, the most temperate and promising of the Emperors of the period, published his consent. A refusal to acknowledge the boy, and an attempt to punish the intrigue by which Justina retained her power, would have involved a civil war, and the whole of his forces were now needed to stem the flood of barbarism that surged against the northern frontier of the Empire. The last days of Rome were fast approaching. From the remote deserts of Asia a fierce and numerous people, the Huns, had entered Europe, and were sweeping the Goths and other Teutonic tribes southward. Gratian appointed an Emperor of the East, whom we shall meet presently, in the place of Valens, and spent his strength in heroic efforts to defend the threatened frontier.
Justina returned with the boy-Emperor to Milan. As long as Gratian lived, Justina was restricted to the life of the palace, but in 383 the throne was usurped by Maximus, and Gratian was murdered by one of his emissaries. Gibbon generously traces the general dissatisfaction out of which this revolt emerged to a deterioration of the character of Gratian. This deterioration cannot be questioned, but one particular outcome of it, the active persecution of the pagans, was probably his most fatal error. Milan was now dominated by the imperious and zealous St. Ambrose, and the two young Emperors were expressly under his control. At the suggestion of Ambrose, Gratian abandoned Valentinian’s policy of toleration. He rejected the title of Pontifex Maximus, ordered the removal of the statue of Victory from the Roman Senate, and confiscated the estates of the temples. He even admitted the abusive epithet “pagans” (or “villagers”), which the more forward Christians were beginning to use, in his official decrees.[32] This must have inflamed the general discontent, and the army of Maximus marched peacefully over Gaul, and occupied the Empire as far as the Alps. The Emperor of the East, Theodosius, consented that Britain, Gaul, and Spain should remain under the rule of Maximus, and Justina continued to rule the curtailed dominions of her son.
It was now discovered that Justina was an Arian. Whether she had concealed her beliefs during the life of Valentinian, or had been recently won to the sect, it is impossible to say; but Ambrose now found that he had a stubborn opponent of his religious ambition. The trouble culminated in 385, when scenes were witnessed that effectively impress on us the change that had come over the Roman Empire. Justina ordered that one of the Christian churches of the city should be put at the disposal of the Arian clergy. Ambrose sternly refused, and, when he was summoned to the palace, and a sentence of banishment was apprehended, the people flocked to the palace and intimidated the Empress and her counsellors. A little later, the Gothic (Arian) soldiers were sent to occupy the church, and orders were given that it should be prepared for the Empress’s devotions. A renewal of the riot, and the showering of the vilest epithets upon the person of the Empress, forced her to retire once more. In the following year, 386, she passed sentence of exile on the bishop, and her spirit was expended in a final struggle. For the first time in the history of Rome—a true index of its profound demoralization—the troops were prevented by the people from carrying out an Imperial decree. Ambrose was guarded day and night by thousands of his followers. The chief church and the episcopal house were fortified as if for a siege, and the troops of “Jezebel” had to stand inactive before a mob of citizens. On the advice of Theodosius, Justina refrained from any further attempt. Indeed, her attention was soon violently withdrawn to a very different danger.
The ambition of Maximus had once more outrun its bounds, and he coveted the remaining provinces of Valentinian. Justina’s conduct betrays that her ability was inferior to her spirit. Duped by the treacherous diplomacy of Maximus, she was suddenly informed that the hostile forces of Maximus were close to Milan, and she fled hastily to the coast. At Aquileia she and her son took ship for the East. The soldiers of Maximus followed them on swift galleys, but they rounded the south of Greece in safety, and landed at Thessalonica. Her task now was to induce Theodosius to espouse their cause, and it proved to be one of nearer proportion to her talent.
Her pressing appeals to Theodosius for aid were parried or unheeded for some time. If we may believe Theodoret, the only reply which she received was a painful assurance that the heresy she entertained, and in which she was educating her son, was a sufficient cause of all the evils that had come upon them. She was directed to await a visit from Theodosius at Thessalonica, and the visit was much delayed. Historians usually depict the Emperor as held in suspense by a painful dilemma. Not only would it be a serious thing for the Empire, surrounded as it was with peril, to engage the forces of the East and the West in an exhausting civil war, but Theodosius would, in such a war, be attacking an orthodox Catholic in the interest of a fanatical Arian and enemy of the Church; and Theodosius was a most zealous Trinitarian. The difficulty must have occurred to him, and it would not be fantastical to assume that there had been some correspondence between the prelates of the East and the prelates of the West, to ensure that the point did not escape him.
The pagan Zosimus has a different theory of the delay of Theodosius. The character of that Emperor was, he says, a singular union of contradictions. He could blaze with the fury of a Valentinian, or bend his head meekly for the blessing of a bishop; he could lead the troops through a campaign with the most signal dexterity, energy, and success, and then relax into the most ignoble indolence; he could embrace the rigour of a soldier’s life without the least effort to soften it, and then resign himself to the most voluptuous day-dreams in his Imperial palace. Justina, Zosimus says, was so unfortunate as to need his aid during one of his periods of luxury and “insane pursuit of pleasure.” He resented the effort to awaken him from it. His deep indebtedness to Gratian, however, who had conferred the Empire on him, at length forced him to cross the Greek sea, and visit Justina at Thessalonica. From the time of that visit his pulse was quickened, and he began a vigorous preparation for war with Maximus. Justina had with her at Thessalonica, not only the insipid boy Valentinian, but a pretty young daughter, Galla, and Theodosius had fallen in love with her. Justina promptly perceived, and artfully used, her opportunity, and it was arranged that the pretty princess should be his reward for restoring the Western Empire to Valentinian and his mother.
AELIA FLACCILLA
HONORIA