The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

The course of our inquiry has led us through five centuries of change. We have passed from the sober and virile integrity of the first Imperial pair, the golden age of Roman life and letters, to the successive depths of the Cæsars. We have then seen the decrepit and corrupt city refreshed with an inflow of sound provincial blood, the enervated patrician families replaced on the throne by vigorous soldiers, and a new period of sobriety and prosperity open under the Stoics, to sink again under the burden of vice and luxury. Diocletian restores its strength, and then a singular and momentous change comes over the face of the Empire. The white homes of the gods perish or decay, the gay processions no longer enliven the streets, the cross of Christ heads the legions and towers austerely above the public buildings and monuments. The ante-chambers of the Emperors are filled with Christian bishops, and the rulers of the world bend meekly before the ragged figures of monks and tremble at the threats of lowly priests.

We return to the Western world to find another and a greater change. Rome has fallen, the frontiers are obliterated, the provinces, even to Africa, are cowering under the armies of the barbarians. Poverty, misery, and violence are scattered over the Empire, as if the departing gods had sown its fields with salt or with dragons’ teeth as they retired to Olympus. Civilization, law, culture, art, seem to be doomed, and the end of the world is confidently expected. But amid the crumbling frame of the vast Empire a few shades of Emperors and Empresses linger for a generation, and we may glance briefly at their sobered features and adventurous experiences.

The chief figure of interest is Ælia Galla Placidia, the sister of Honorius, whom we found visiting Constantinople in 423. Her adventures began when the Goths invested Rome in 408. She is then mentioned as concurring with the Senate in the pitiful execution of her cousin, the widow of Stilicho. Placidia was then in her eighteenth year. Bearing a heavy ransom, the Gothic army went away to harass her useless and trembling brother at Ravenna, and Placidia thought fit to remain at Rome. It still contained wealth enough to capitulate to barbarians on fair terms. But the Goths returned in 410. Rome was awakened in the dead of night by the blare of their trumpets, and looked out to find palaces in flames, the streets filled with the terrible Goths, and the work of looting already begun. After six days of pillage they retreated northward, taking Placidia with them. We cannot follow her closely in that extraordinary march. She was treated as a princess, however, and two years later was sought in marriage by the new king of the Goths, Ataulph. Ataulph was a barbarian only in name; a large, handsome man, princely, intelligent, and amiable. He aspired to be a Roman Emperor. Honorius weakly resented the proposal, and demanded that he should prove the friendship he offered to Rome by returning Placidia. For two years she had wandered over Italy in the Gothic army.

It appears that Placidia was attracted to the graceful and courtly Goth, and they were married at Narbonne—the Goths having now returned to Gaul—in 414. When she reflected on the splendour of the wedding gifts, she may have thought that even an alliance with a Roman prince could not be more magnificent. Fifty beautiful youths, clothed in silk, brought to her one hundred dishes laden with the gold and jewels which the Goths had brought from Rome. But Ataulph was assassinated in the following year, and Placidia sank again to the position of captive. She had to walk twelve miles on foot, amid a crowd of captives, before the victorious barbarian who had slain her husband. Within another year her persecutor was slain, and his more humane successor restored her—or sold her—to the court at Ravenna.

The Roman commander Constantius, into whose hands she was committed, at once claimed her in marriage. Honorius had promised that he should marry her if, by whatever means, he recovered her from the Goths. Placidia shrank resentfully from his embraces, and found his coarse, large, surly person a poor exchange for her handsome Gothic husband. The wedding took place, however, in 417, and Placidia settled down to the prosy duties of a matron, giving birth, in succession, to the princess Honoria and the future Emperor Valentinian III. In 421 her husband compelled the weak-minded Honorius to clothe him with the purple. Placidia received the title of Augusta, and a better prospect seemed to open before her. But Constantius died within a few months, and it was not long before she fell into a violent quarrel with Honorius. The cause of the quarrel is, as usual, obscure. Some of the later writers suggest that Honorius became enamoured of his sister in her young widowhood. We know only that the palace at Ravenna was filled with bitter recriminations, its courts were stained with the blood of their followers, and Placidia fled to Constantinople with her children.

PLACIDIA

ENPHEMIA

ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Honorius died a few months later (August 423), and Placidia, confirmed in her title of Augusta by Theodosius, was sent in the following year to claim the throne for Theodosius, at the head of a considerable force. A secretary had usurped the vacant throne during her absence. It was the spring of 425 before they set out from Thessalonica for Italy; Placidia was with the cavalry, which reached and took Aquileia with great speed. There, after a short time, she received the captive usurper. His hand was cut off in the public Circus, he was placed on an ass and conducted round the town, amid the jeers of the crowd and the actors of the Circus, and was finally beheaded. They then proceeded to Ravenna. Valentinian, a boy of six years, was created Emperor of the West, and Placidia settled down to a long period of government in his name.