justina

the splendour of julian’s reign was soon overcast. in the summer of 363, as he was skilfully extricating his troops from a dangerous position in persia, he was pierced with a javelin, and he expired, with dignity and serenity, amongst his saddened supporters. amid the noisy intrigue for the succession that followed, the name of jovian, a popular and handsome officer of no distinction, obtained the loudest support, and the mantle of the brilliant young emperor was conferred on him. how he secured the retreat of his troops by humiliating concessions to the persians, and the roman soldiers and roman settlers sadly evacuated the provinces on which the blood of their fathers had been freely spent, and the emblem of the cross was borne again at the head of the legions, need not be told here. not only is the wife of jovian, charito, no more than a name to us, but jovian himself died before he reached the luxury of the capital. his brief enjoyment of power had been adorned by neither courage nor temperance. charito sank back into obscurity, with her infant son, and was years afterwards laid by the side of her husband in the church of the apostles at byzantium.

the next reign will introduce us to the stronger and more prominent personality of the empress justina and other empresses of some interest. the hum of intrigue had arisen again in the camp, and the struggle of christian and pagan was resumed. the choice of the army at length307 fell once more on an officer whose chief distinction was that he had a large and handsome person, and had had an energetic father. valentinian had been an officer in julian’s guards, and had one day, as he attended the emperor at sacrifice, cuffed the priest for dropping some of the lustral water on his coat. julian banished him for this violent desecration of his cult, but, though the more lively writers of the time promptly dispatch him to remote and contradictory regions, even tillemont doubts if the sentence was carried out. it is probable that julian had merely dismissed him from the body-guard, as we find him in the army at the time of julian’s death. with two other officers he was sent by jovian to secure the allegiance of the troops in the west. one legion, devoted to the memory of julian, rebelled, and valentinian had to fly for his life. he returned to the east, and resumed his post in the army, as it trailed some miles in the rear of the retreating emperor. and in the middle of february (364) he was amazed to learn that jovian had died, after a too liberal supper, and he himself was called to the throne. he was compelled by the troops to share the power with his brother valens, and, leaving the shorn eastern provinces under the care of valens, he went on to milan to take possession of the western throne.

valeria severa,29 the first wife of valentinian, is one of those shadowy empresses whose form can hardly be discerned in the records of the time. she had borne him a son, the future emperor gratian, five years before, but she does not seem to have secured his affection, and we shall find her retiring in disgrace as soon as the beautiful justina appears at court. albia dominica, the wife of valens, is not more interesting, but an empress whom we have dismissed in a former chapter at once reappears at constantinople in opposition to her.

before they separated valens and valentinian had fallen308 ill together, and, under the pretence that julian’s friends had attempted to poison them, they turned with some vindictiveness upon the pagan officials. the aged and respected sallust firmly controlled the inquiry, and no blood was shed; but large numbers of julian’s officials were displaced—in many cases quite rightly, as julian’s zeal for paganism had had the same evil effect in encouraging hypocrisy as the zeal of other emperors for christianity—and driven into sullen discontent. further, dominica’s father, petronius, a deformed and repulsive person, had risen to power with his daughter, and was grinding the faces of the citizens of the east with the most extortionate demands. a spark soon fell on this inflammable world. procopius, a relative of julian’s, had published a very hazy claim to the empire after julian’s death. he had hastily withdrawn and disowned it, but valens sent men to apprehend him. ingeniously escaping the soldiers, he fled to constantinople, and seems there to have fallen into the hands of abler intriguers. two legions were bought for him, and they made him emperor. there was no purple mantle to be obtained, so they clothed him in a stagy tunic bespangled with gold, put purple shoes on his feet and a piece of purple cloth in his hand, and conducted him, amid the amazed and derisive spectators, to the senate and the palace.

his force grew so quickly that the weak and nervous emperor of the east was disposed to yield him the throne, but his older officers urged him to resist. in the short struggle that followed we meet again the third wife, and widow, of constantius. faustina had been enceinte at the death of her husband, and she was living at constantinople, with her four-year-old daughter, when procopius made his romantic attempt on the throne. with some shrewdness he withdrew her from her retirement, and associated her with him in his claim. the legitimate dynasty seemed to be wresting the throne from usurpers when the widow and daughter of the son of constantine appeared at the head of the troops. even when they marched out to309 meet the forces of valens, faustina, in a litter, accompanied them. but the new hope of faustina died away as quickly as it had been born. the soldiers were persuaded to return to their allegiance, and the power of procopius swiftly melted away. faustina sank again into obscurity, and the adventurous career of constantia was postponed for some years.

dominica returned to her position in the enervated and luxurious court, and the rest of her life offers little interest. the ecclesiastical historians describe her as egging her husband to persecute the trinitarians, but we must read the charge with discretion. there is little positive trace of persecution. one day eighty trinitarian priests came to plead their cause at the court, and valens is said to have ordered them back to their ship. at some distance from port the vessel was found to be aflame, and the priests were burnt to death. the orthodox writers declare that the vessel was purposely fired, at the command of valens, but it is impossible to adjust the conflicting statements of the rival schools of theology. valens was an ardent arian, but he upheld the principle of religious toleration, and confined theologians to the use of theological weapons. the only occasion on which he is known to have ordered or countenanced violent persecution was in the suppression of magic. in some obscure chamber of the capital a group of men resorted to this dark means of discovering who would be the successor of valens. some say that a ring dangling from a mystic tripod spelt out the name on painted letters; some that grains of corn were placed on letters of the alphabet, and, when a cock was admitted to peck them, the order of the letters which it first attacked was noticed. in either case, the result was to give the letters th e o d. it would be a remarkable forecast, if the story did not belong to a generation after the accession of theodosius. however, the attempt became known, and a searching inquiry and savage persecution followed. the despicable trade of the informer was encouraged, whole libraries of valuable books310 were destroyed, and numbers of innocent philosophers and matrons were included in the bloody lists of the condemned.

the name of dominica occurs only in one authentic connexion during the reign of valens. the emperor passed the winter of 372–3 at c?sarea in cappadocia, where he encountered the stern and uncompromising champion of orthodoxy, st. basil. strong no less in his personal haughtiness—st. jerome calls it pride—than in his glowing zeal for his church, basil emphatically refused to obey him, and was threatened with banishment. at once dominica and her boy fell ill. besides two daughters, she had had a son in 366, and this boy fell into a dangerous illness. it is said that dominica learned in a dream that the illness was a divine punishment, but it is not impossible that her waking intelligence could arrive at that conclusion. basil was summoned to the palace once more. theodoret would have it that the bishop courteously breathed on the boy, and declared that he would recover if he received trinitarian baptism. the earlier ecclesiastical writers, however, ascribe to him a firmer attitude. he asked valens if the boy would receive orthodox baptism, and was told that he would not. “let him meet whatever fate god wills then,” said the bishop, quitting the palace. the boy was baptized by the arians, and died during the following night. a power even greater than that of eunuchs, and more imperious than that of emperors, was rapidly growing. when, some days later, one of the favourites of valens, who had risen from the kitchen, attempted to intervene in a discussion between the bishop and the emperor, basil curtly told him to confine himself to sauces and not interfere in church matters.

five or six years later valens perished in the war with the goths, and dominica passed to the fitting obscurity of private life. the one indication of spirit that is recorded of her is that, when the victorious goths pressed on to constantinople and invested it, she paid the citizens out of the public treasury to arm themselves against the barbarians.311 we turn from her vague and retiring personality to the more interesting figure of justina, who had some years before begun to share the throne of valentinian.

valentinian was as fierce and choleric as his brother was timid. a tall and powerful man, with stern blue eyes, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, he enlisted and encouraged his native cruelty in the service of what he regarded as the interest of the state. the pagans he refused to persecute, and he did much to promote the higher culture of rome, which was so closely connected with the pagan beliefs. but, like his brother, he fell with truculence upon all who could be brought under a comprehensive charge of magic and divination, and the blood of italy flowed very freely. his hard, covetous, and brutal officers enriched themselves in the work of torture, spoliation, and execution, and—though the statement recalls rather the savagery of nero or domitian—we are assured by the contemporary ammianus that he kept two monstrous bears in cages near his chamber, and fed them on human victims. the slightest offence might incur sentence of death. “you had better change his head,” he is said to have ordered, in brutal playfulness, when some official desired to change to another province.

it is, perhaps, a circumstance of credit to severa that she failed to retain the affection of valentinian, though a less flattering reason is assigned by some of the authorities. the truth is that, since valentinian is described as most chaste and most christian, the accession of justina to his palace has caused the ecclesiastical historians no little perplexity. the church was peremptorily opposed to divorce, and regarded as adultery a second marriage contracted while the first wife lived. baronius conveniently removes severa by death, but ammianus informs us that severa was living long afterwards at the court of her son,30 and the alexandrian chronicle expressly312 says that gratian recalled his mother to court. tillemont acknowledges this, and can only blush for the guilty connivance of the clergy of the period.

if we could believe the ecclesiastical historian socrates, valentinian avoided the sin of divorce and adultery by promulgating a decree to the effect that it was lawful to have two wives, and promptly marrying justina in addition to severa. of such a law, however, we have no trace, and most writers follow the alternative theory of the authorities.

aviana justina was the widow of the usurper magnentius, who had so dramatically stolen the throne of the worthless constans, and had been crushed by constantius in the year 353. she was a woman of great beauty, the daughter of a high provincial official, a spirited and ambitious young woman. she would be in her later twenties, at least, in 368, when she entered the suite of severa in some capacity. she was soon associated so intimately with the empress that they bathed together, and severa made the fatal mistake of describing what socrates curiously calls her “virginal beauty” to the sensual valentinian. before long it was announced that severa was divorced, and justina occupied her bed. a late authority throws a thin mantle over the action of valentinian. severa, he says, used her imperial position to compel a lady of milan to sell her an estate at a most inadequate price, and valentinian was unable to endure her avarice. the vague description we have of justina’s dazzling beauty will, perhaps, suffice.

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.313 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, l?ta, is a mere name in history. theodosius gave a comfortable income to l?ta 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 frontier314 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.315 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,316 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 the317 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

enlarged from coins in the british museum

theodosius, who is incomparably the leading ruler of the fourth century, had come from the same part of spain as trajan, to whom some of the writers of the time compare him—with no little flattery. his father, count theodosius, had been an able commander and a just administrator, but had been unjustly disgraced and executed owing to some obscure jealousy. later writers, thinking of the magical th e o d of antioch, believed that his name led to his undoing. the younger theodosius, a cultivated and skilful officer, retired to his estates in spain, from which he was drawn by gratian, and presently clothed with the purple. he had, in 376 or 377, married a spanish lady, ?lia flaccilla, who is believed, on slender grounds, to have been the daughter of the consul antonius. their son arcadius, the future emperor, was born during the retirement in spain. a daughter, pulcheria, was born in spain, while theodosius was on campaign. then flaccilla found herself transferred from the quiet spanish estate to the pomp of constantinople, and the second son, honorius, was born in the purple.

although flaccilla is canonized in the greek church, it does not appear that she had a marked individuality. she is one of the crowd of fourth-century empresses who live in the chronicles only as generous benefactors of the church. theodosius was the first emperor to persecute his pagan subjects on the ground of religion, and his successive decrees quickly changed the religious aspect of the east. his modern biographers, ifland and güldenpenning (“der kaiser theodosius”), lay much of the blame318 for these violent measures on flaccilla, but they point out that the coercive legislation begins just after theodosius came under the influence of bishop acholius during a severe illness, and that his efforts to crush paganism by violence relaxed with his advance in age and experience. all that we learn of flaccilla is that she was generous to the church and the poor, and that she occasionally curbed the fiery and vindictive temper of theodosius. she seems to have died in the year 385, and the greek ritual celebrates her memory on september 14th.

theodosius was, therefore, a middle-aged widower—his biographers put his birth in 346—when, in the autumn of 387, justina presented her daughter galla to him. dr. ifland admits that the young girl probably turned the hesitating scale of his judgment. he returned to constantinople, and made energetic preparations for war. a two months’ campaign in the following summer (388) completely destroyed the forces of maximus, and the full empire of the west was restored to valentinian. but justina had little personal profit by the victory. zosimus tells us that she “supplied the deficiencies of her son as well as a woman can” after the return to milan, while sozomen declared that she died before the return. the point is obscure, but the evidence suggests, on the whole, that she returned to milan. it was, however, to a different milan from that she had quitted. theodosius accompanied them, and the strong, earnest character of ambrose made a deep impression on him. valentinian was “converted” to the true creed, and the policy of persecution was introduced into the western world. justina must have remained a powerless and embittered spectator of the ascendancy of ambrose. so great did it become that the coldest decisions of the emperor were reversed by him, and his transgressions were ignominiously punished. the news came to milan that the monks and populace of a small town in persia had burned the synagogue of the jews, and that the prefect had ordered them to rebuild the synagogue and restore its property. theodosius confirmed the just319 sentence, but ambrose assailed him so strongly, in letter and sermon, that he was obliged to give complete immunity to the offenders; and the wave of violence—the burning of temples and synagogues, and the despoiling and slaying of unbelievers and heretics of all shades—continued to roll destructively over the east. the more impressive incident of theodosius, the greatest ruler of his time, standing in the humble attitude of a penitent in the church at milan is well known. the people of thessalonica, stung by the heavy taxation which the extravagant rule of theodosius imposed on the east, and the quartering of barbaric troops on them, took some occasion to riot, and slew the representatives of the emperor. in a fit of passion theodosius turned his troops upon the defenceless people, whom he had treacherously invited to the circus, and a horrible and unexampled massacre was perpetrated. ambrose nobly insisted that the emperor must expiate his crime like the humblest member of his flock. the world was entering upon a new era.

how much of these proceedings justina lived to see it is impossible to determine. she died some time between 388 and 391; the obscurity of her death is a sufficient proof of her powerlessness in her last years. valentinian, whose weakness was hardly compensated by the propriety of his conduct and his docility to st. ambrose, was instructed in the elements of government by the older emperor, who remained three years in italy, to the lasting grief of its pagan citizens. he visited rome, where the majority of the leading citizens still clung to an idealized version of the old cult, and appealed to the senate to abandon the dying gods. no answer was made to his appeal, and he resorted to the growing practice of coercive legislation. in 391 he returned to constantinople.

galla had married theodosius soon after the destruction of maximus. the chronicle of marcellinus puts the marriage in 386; zosimus, more plausibly, implies that it took place in 387 or 388. from a curious statement in the chronicle of marcellinus it seems that she was sent to320 live in the palace at constantinople while theodosius remained in italy. the statement is that the elder son of the emperor, arcadius, a boy of thirteen years, drove her out of the palace. commentators are loath to believe that so young a prince could do this, but it is not in the least impossible, and the authority is respectable. we shall see that arcadius was a peevish and worthless prince, indolently guided by eunuchs and servants, and capable of very cruel decisions. theodosius had departed from the finer imperial tradition of appointing a grave and distinguished scholar as the tutor of his sons, and had committed them to the care of a roman deacon, arsenius, who had a repute for piety. we can hardly regard the authority of a late greek writer (metaphrastes) as weighty enough to commend the statement that arcadius set his servants to take the life of arsenius for whipping him, but the unhappy events of the next chapter will show that the only result of this kind of education was to leave the character unformed, and throw the stress on external observances.

in 391 theodosius returned to constantinople, and galla entered upon her brief imperial career. whether or no we accept the biased picture which zosimus offers us of the eastern court, it is clear that it sustained a soft and excessive luxury at the cost of the enfeebled empire. large numbers of eunuchs found employment, and, with the genius of their class, intrigued for favour in the sleeping quarters, and in the service of the empress and the imperial children. the kitchen employed a regiment of ministers to the heavy and voluptuous table; the circus and theatre supported vast numbers of mimes, dancers, and charioteers. besides this large army of ministers to the imperial pleasure, a second army of idle and avaricious place-seekers beset the palace, and extorted a generous revenue from the offices which were created for them in the army and the administration. it is even said that such offices were openly sold in the public places and in the palace of constantinople. strenuous as theodosius was in the321 field, he was not strong enough to sustain the burden of peace, and he unconsciously prepared the empire for the avalanche that was soon to be cast upon it.

but the drowsy indulgence of theodosius was soon startled once more by a call to arms from the west. in the spring of 392 valentinian was slain, or in despair slew himself, and a frankish commander had put his purple robe upon the shoulders of a roman rhetorician. the young emperor had been so overshadowed by the power of his general that he had attempted to dismiss him, and had then been found dead with a cord round his neck. theodosius again hesitated to exchange the softness of his palace for the rigours of a campaign. galla “filled the palace with her lamentations,” but theodosius sent away the ambassadors of the usurper with pleasant words and presents, and continued for nearly two years to resist the appeals of his young empress. it was not until the summer of 394 that he led out his legions for the punishment of the murderer, as argobastes was believed to be. galla did not live to see her brother avenged. she died in childbirth just as the army was about to start, and theodosius is said to have mourned for her one day and then started for italy.

the issue does not now concern us. we pass on to a fresh generation, a new and more interesting group of empresses and princesses. suffice it to say that, partly by valour, partly by accident and treachery, the forces of argobastes were destroyed, and the empurpled rhetorician was slain. the younger son of the emperor, honorius, was summoned from the east, and placed upon the throne of the west. arcadius remained in feeble charge of the throne of constantinople. and within a few months the powerful emperor sank into the grave, and the empire entered upon the unhappy reigns of arcadius and honorius.