The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

As the legislation which followed, bearing the name of Valentinian but breathing the spirit of Placidia, was mainly of an ecclesiastical character, we will not linger over it. She fell ruthlessly upon Pagans, Jews, Pelagians, Manichæans, and every other class who were obnoxious to her clergy. As in the case of most of the later Empresses, her piety so impressed the writers of the time that her personality is almost entirely hidden from us. Apart from her decrees of religious coercion, we know her only as experiencing, not doing, things. Procopius, not a biased historian, severely complains that she reared her son in a luxurious softness that led inevitably to his later vices and his violent death; and it is frequently suspected that she had no eagerness to see him fitly educated in the duties of a prince. Cassiodorus pronounces that she conducted the affairs of the State with wavering and incompetent counsel, just at the time when Rome most urgently needed a firm and enlightened ruler. Tillemont, after praising her piety, admits sadly that she brought great evils upon her afflicted Empire.

Though Rome had been looted by the Goths at their leisure, and barbaric armies commanded every province, the cause of the Empire was not yet lost. A judicious policy might have utilized the mutual hatreds of the various tribes, and have put the able commanders, who were still in the service of Rome, at the head of formidable armies. But the weakness and obtuseness of Placidia led, on the contrary, to the loss of her finest general, her last free province, and a large proportion of her troops. Listening injudiciously to the malignant persuasions of one general, Ætius, she commanded the other, Count Boniface, to relinquish his post in Africa, under the impression that he meditated treachery. Ætius at the same time warned Boniface that the recall was due to suspicion, and the gallant officer was driven into rebellion. He invited the Vandals to Africa, and soon twenty thousand of the tall, fair-haired northerners, with a vast crowd of dependents and followers, spread over the province. Placidia discovered too late the deceit of Ætius. She was induced to send a friendly ambassador to Boniface, and the fraud was at once detected. But the Vandals could not be dislodged. Boniface was slain (432) in his struggle with them, Ætius was driven to the camp of the Huns, and Africa, the granary of Rome, was irretrievably lost.

The next blow that threatened the distracted Empire was an invasion of the Huns. Placidia cannot be held responsible for the subsequent calamities, for Ætius, strong in his alliance with the Huns, had forced his way back into power, and was the real governor of the Empire. But the formidable task he undertook was made more difficult by a romantic and unhappy occurrence within Placidia’s domestic circle. We have already spoken of her daughter Honoria, who came in disgrace to Constantinople in 434. The great distinction of the Constantinopolitan court, the possession of three royal virgins, seems to have excited the pious jealousy of Placidia, and she apparently designed that her court should not lack its Vestal Virgin. We are not told that any vow was imposed on the young Honoria, but she was reared with the discipline of a conventual novice, and given to understand that the exalted state of virginity was assigned to her. In 433 the title of Augusta was bestowed on her, in some compensation of her sacrifice. But the daughter of Constantius had thicker blood in her veins than the daughters of Arcadius, and the claustral regime—the restriction of attendance to eunuchs and women—does not seem to have been rigorously enforced at Ravenna. In 434 the seventeen-year-old princess was discovered to be in a painful condition, and was dispatched to Constantinople, and incarcerated in a nunnery by the indignant Pulcheria.

But the young girl had a spirit beyond her years. She had heard of the formidable nation of the Huns, which awaited, in the neighbourhood of the Danube and the Volga, its turn to fill the Imperial stage; she had heard that the young and powerful Attila had recently acceded to the throne of that nation. In some way she secured a messenger who took from her a letter and a ring to Attila, offering him her heart and her dowry if he would release her. The girlish freak was destined to have terrible consequences for the Empire. The lady herself we may dismiss in a word. She seems to have been kept in close confinement in the East until about 450, sending fruitless messages, from time to time, to her romantic lover. Attila had sufficient occupation during those fifteen years, and was content to put her name on the lengthy list of his wives. When, in 450, he formally demanded her person, he was assured that she was married. It is not impossible that she was released on condition that she accepted a husband chosen for her. But her end is obscure, and one is disposed to doubt if she would ever have resumed her liberty without joining the victorious Hun.

Placidia died in the year 450, leaving the astute Ætius to avert the oncoming disaster by an alliance with the Ostrogoths against the Huns. For a quarter of a century she had had supreme power over the Western Empire. It is, perhaps, only an indication of mediocrity on her part that she could not avert the blows that fell upon it during that period, but it was a calamity for Rome. Her memory survived, in a singular way, for more than a thousand years. The pagan habit of cremating the bodies of Emperors and Empresses had been replaced by the Egyptian process of embalming, and Placidia had built a chapel at Ravenna for the reception of her body. There it sat, in a chair of cedar-wood, until the year 1577, when some children, thrusting a lighted taper into the tomb to see it better, set it aflame and reduced it to ashes.

Meantime, another Empress of the West had appeared. In 437 Valentinian had married Licinia Eudoxia, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Eudocia, at Constantinople, and brought her to Italy. He had parted with a large slice of his Empire to Pulcheria and Theodosius for the honour, and is said to have held it lightly. The sequel will dispose us to believe his irregularities. A youth of eighteen at the time, frivolous, luxurious, and light-headed, he was content to enjoy the palace, and leave his mother, and then Ætius, to discharge his duties. Eudoxia could but idly follow the momentous movements of the nations, and appreciate the defeat of the Huns in the terrible battle of Chalons in 451; or shudder when, in the following year, Attila marched to the gates of Rome, demanding half the Empire as the dowry of his distant bride, Honoria; or when, in 453, the profligate Valentinian plunged his sword in the breast of his great minister Ætius. A grave personal tragedy was upon her.

The court resided generally at Rome, where Valentinian enjoyed the larger and faster amusements of a metropolis. Here, in the year 455, he was stabbed by his soldiers, and a romantic story is told in connexion with his death. The story is rejected by a recent historical writer, Mr. Hodgkin (“Italy and her Invaders”), but Professor Bury has shown that it is probably true in substance. The full story, to which fictitious details may have been added before it reached Procopius, is that Valentinian, gambling heavily with the distinguished Senator Petronius Maximus, obtained his ring as a security for the money he had won. Maximus had a beautiful wife whom the Emperor desired, and he sent the ring to her with a summons to the palace. The unsuspecting lady was conducted to Valentinian’s apartments, and outraged by him. For this crime, and in virtue of the general discontent, Maximus had him slain and occupied his throne.

Maximus was a wealthy Roman, of illustrious family, and peaceful and luxurious ways, so that we have little reason to doubt that an outrage on his wife inspired him with the thought of assassination. The further course of events adds authority to the narrative. His wife died very closely after the death of Valentinian, and he invited or compelled Eudoxia to marry him. In the obscurity and uncertainty of the records we are unable to understand the consent of Eudoxia, even under pressure. Some of the later Greeks affirm that he violated her. It is certain, at least, that she married him within a month or two of her husband’s tragic death, and almost immediately afterwards sought to destroy him. Our authorities, late and uncertain as they are, do not lack plausibility when they affirm that he one day confessed that, out of love for her, he had directed the assassination of her husband. Rome had returned to evil days, and tragedy was brooding over its very ruins.

In a fit of repulsion Eudoxia secretly invited the Vandals to cross the Mediterranean and avenge her. Historians too lightly admit, in extenuation of her criminal act, that she had no hope of help from the East. The aged and upright Marcian was, it is true, intent upon the internal prosperity of his Empire, but it is extremely doubtful, as the sequel will show, whether the deposition of Maximus would have offered much difficulty, and Eudoxia was the niece of Pulcheria. Her vindictive act hastened the end of the Empire. Genseric speedily landed his fierce troops on Italian soil, and the Romans at once slew the sullen or remorseful Maximus and cast his mangled body in the Tiber. The further adventures of Eudoxia, interesting as they must have been, are compressed in a few lines. After fourteen days’ pillage, the Vandals retreated once more from the stricken city of Octavian, laden with gold, silver, women, and all kinds of valuables. Genseric compelled Eudoxia and her two young daughters to accompany him. They were detained at Carthage for seven years. The Eastern court repeatedly asked for their release, but it was refused until, in 462, the elder daughter, Eudocia, was married to Genseric’s son. Eudoxia and the second daughter, Placidia, were then sent to Constantinople. Years afterwards—in one of the legends—we catch a last glimpse of Eudoxia, the last prominent Empress of the West. She is standing before the column of Simeon Stylites, asking him to come and live somewhere on her ample estate. Eudocia lived for sixteen years at Carthage, then escaped to the East, and ended her life in Palestine. Placidia we shall meet again for a moment.

We turn back to the shrinking Empire of the West, to dismiss the last four Imperial shadows that flit about its ruins. The vacant throne was occupied by the commander of the Roman forces in Gaul, Avitus. He had married, since we know that Sidonius Apollinaris was married to his daughter Papianilla, but his wife was dead, and we need only say that, after he had enjoyed the Imperial banquets for a few months, he was degraded to the rank of a bishopric by the commander of the barbaric troops, with the consent of the disgusted Romans, and he died soon afterwards. He was followed by a worthy and able officer, whose rule might have illumined a more propitious age; but we find no Empress in association with him, and must pass over the four years of his earnest effort to redeem the Empire. After his death Libius Severus had a nominal and obscure reign of four years (461–5), and again we find no Empress in the scanty records.