The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (52 page)

Meanwhile, doctrinal controversy raged within the Christian Church, centring principally on a long-simmering debate over the true nature of Jesus Christ. While the orthodox view, established by Constantine’s Council of Nicaea in 325 and memorialised today by the Nicene Creed, affirmed that the Son was ‘of the same substance’ as the Father, believers who followed the teachings of the heretic Arius insisted that the Father and the Son were similar, but distinct, entities. Both Eusebia and Justina were followers of Arianism, which fomented suspicion against them in orthodox Christian quarters. Many held Eusebia responsible for her husband Constantius II’s strong sympathy with these unorthodox beliefs, while Justina’s Arianism brought her into conflict with church fathers such as Ambrose of Milan, whose biographer Paulinus accused her of having once sent an assassin to try and kill the bishop in his bedroom.
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Clashes between women of the imperial family and powerful men of the Church were to be a recurring theme for Eusebia’s and Justina’s successors, earning for several the condemnation by Christian writers as Eves and Jezebels. Such conflicts have fuelled the image of this generation of empresses as powerful regents dominating their feeble, coddled sons and brothers and presiding over their own courts, making executive decision independent of the emperor. But they are also a reflection of the battle for the ownership of the empire’s soul that was taking place between the Roman emperors and the Christian Church during this period, a battle in which the women of the imperial family were beginning to play an increasingly significant role as foot-soldiers not of their husbands’ and fathers’ divine cults, but of God’s.
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When Spanish-born Theodosius picked up the reins of power at the eastern capital of Constantinople in January 379, his wife Aelia Flaccilla became the first empress of the Theodosian dynasty, the last house to reign before the rule of the Roman emperors was ended in the west in 476. Like founding matriarchs of previous years, Aelia Flaccilla laid down a behavioural benchmark for the women of her dynasty. She was of Spanish lineage, and her name
Aelia
would henceforth be adopted as an honorific title on the coins of Theodosian empresses.
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She had married Theodosius, the son of a once celebrated but later disgraced war hero, in around 376. In contrast to her western counterparts Eusebia and Justina, Aelia Flaccilla espoused the same Nicene Orthodox faith as her husband, and was credited on one occasion with persuading Theodosius not to grant an interview to the radical outcast Arian bishop Eunomius of Cyzicus, lest the emperor should prove susceptible to the bishop’s powers of persuasion.
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Such vigilance for her husband’s religious health cast Aelia Flaccilla as the antithesis to Eusebia and other Arian empresses who tried to turn their husbands towards heresy, and earned the Spanish empress a reputation for piety among the Christian writers who monopolise the historiography of the period.

Aelia Flaccilla was famed for her philanthropy and charity work, particularly towards the disabled, and praised by one church historian for her bestowal of ‘every kind of attention on the maimed and the mutilated, declining all aid from her household and her guards, herself visiting the houses where the sufferers lodged, and providing every one with what he required’. The same historian added reverently that the empress ‘also went about the guest chambers of the churches and
ministered to the wants of the sick, herself handling pots and pans, and tasting broth, now bringing in a dish and breaking bread and offering morsels, and washing out a cup and going through all the other duties which are supposed to be proper to servants and maids’.
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The distribution of charity was hardly a novel act for an empress – the elder and younger Faustinas had, for example, established alimentary funds for girl orphans in the second century. Now though, such munificence was painted as the act of a good Christian lady, helpfully evoking comparison to another benefactress of recent memory: Helena, who had also tended the sick and needy.
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Aelia Flaccilla’s status as heiress to the legacy of Helena and role model to future empresses was cemented when, in around 383, she was awarded Livia’s old title of
Augusta
, an accolade withheld from Eusebia, Justina and every other empress since the death of Helena over sixty years previously. The honour coincided with the promotion of her eldest son Arcadius to the rank of
Augustus
alongside his father and western imperial partners Gratian and Valentinian II. In the process, Aelia Flaccilla also became the first empress since Helena to have a coin minted in her name. It is worth noting that after her death, empresses of the eastern court in Constantinople continued to receive the title
Augusta
on their coins, whereas the mints of the western territories of empire lagged behind. Indeed, no western empress of this era received a coin in her own name before 425, starkly highlighting the different attitudes to the role of the empress between the western and eastern courts, differences which would indeed later provoke recriminations between the camps.
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Flaccilla’s coins introduced significant alterations to the typical empress format. Though retaining the braided hairstyle and jewelled headwear worn by Helena, the overall effect of Flaccilla’s appearance was much richer, with rosettes of precious stones swathing her temples in such profusion that her coiffure, secured with pearl-headed pins, is almost obscured. She aslo wears a diadem, accessorised by a large jewel adorning the forehead, and clacking strands of jewels hanging down the nape of her neck. Such grandeur reflected the unashamed autocratic aesthetic that now prevailed in the imperial court of the late Roman Empire, a far cry from the minimalist modesty of Livia’s day when the restoration of the republic was still a rallying cry. Flaccilla’s costume is also an eloquent reminder of the time and distance travelled since the days of the earliest Roman first ladies. Instead of the usual tunic and
palla
, the conventional dress of women of antiquity,
she is shown wearing a purple mantle known as the
paludamentum
. This is secured at her shoulder with a fibula brooch whose appearance is closely paralleled in archaeological finds that have been made around Europe of onyx and sardonyx brooches hung with delicate teardrop-shaped gems of emerald, glass and gold.
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The
paludamentum
, a military style of garment reminiscent of the
chlamys
which Agrippina Minor had once scandalously worn in public, had previously been reserved for the wardrobe of emperors. This hint of androgyny in Flaccilla’s portrait styling is repeated with the inclusion of Victory on the reverse, the first time this goddess had ever appeared on a coin minted for an empress.
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By being styled in the clothes and insignia of the emperor, a delicately reimagined role for the empress was being implied – a closing of ranks between
Augustus
and
Augusta
, a more open permission for her to be seen as a figurehead for the political decisions made by her husband’s regime. The message was not lost on the citizens of Antioch, who while rioting against imperial taxes in the spring of 387, directed their ire at Aelia Flaccilla’s statue as well as those of her husband and sons, tearing it down and destroying it.
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The presence of the Christian chi-rho symbol on Aelia Flaccilla’s coins was also critical to this newly envisioned role. For it proclaimed the religious faith of Theodosius’s wife, her status as the heiress of Helena’s legacy, and the guarantor of imperial victory through her piety, updating the paradigm that a good and faithful imperial wife served as a symbol of political, as well as domestic, harmony at the heart of imperial power. Now, it was not just Aelia Flaccilla’s marital fidelity but her Christian faith that promised to bring stability to the empire.

Aelia Flaccilla died in 387, eight years into her husband’s reign, and was buried in Constantinople. By this point, Theodosius’s opposite numbers in the western capitals of Trier and Milan were in a state of disarray. Gratian, co-emperor since 367, was assassinated in 383, leaving his twelve-year-old half-brother Valentinian II hanging onto the west by himself. A usurper named Magnus Maximus had had himself declared
Augustus
with the backing of forces under him in Britain and Gaul. Initially, Maximus made overtures of co-operation to young Valentinian II, and over in the east, Theodosius agreed to recognise the newcomer, probably out of reluctance to risk his own position against an opponent with so excellent a military reputation. But
the situation changed in 387 when Maximus’s invasion of Italy across the Alps forced Valentinian II into flight from his court in Milan.

According to the account of the fiercely anti-Christian Zosimus, who displayed the ancient historian’s typical knack for conflating the sexual with the political, Justina, mother of the ousted young western emperor, now spied an opportunity. Having sought sanctuary with her son and three daughters at Theodosius’s palace in Thessalonica, she begged him not to accept Maximus as co-ruler, but to restore her son Valentinian II to the throne, and, in return, accept her daughter Galla as a replacement bride for Aelia Flaccilla. Given that Maximus was a fellow Spaniard with impeccable Nicene credentials, in contrast to the Arianism of Justina and her son, there were those who urged Theodosius privately to reject Justina’s plea and brush the illegality of Maximus’s coup under the carpet. But Galla’s beauty, so said Zosimus, was too tempting a prospect for Theodosius, though the historian neglected to mention that the circuitous family ties she provided to Constantine would have proved equally alluring, and the marriage would give Theodosius a moral excuse to replace Maximus with a novice emperor he could manipulate to his own ends more easily. Theodosius duly made Galla his second wife, and honoured his obligations to his new in-laws by defeating Maximus and restoring Valentinian II to power in the west in 388, although Theodosius, the shorter-serving yet elder of the two
Augusti
, retained the more senior role.
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A year or two into his marriage to Galla, while Theodosius was still away on campaign, their daughter Galla Placidia was born.
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Though Galla Placidia was born in the eastern half of the empire, her future lay west. Four years after his restoration by Theodosius, Valentinian II was found dead in Gaul and his place was taken by yet another usurper, Eugenius. Senior emperor Theodosius now stubbornly refused to delegate control of the west to a more threatening partner, having already earmarked it for one of his sons, and he secured a famous battle victory over Eugenius at the River Frigidus in September 394. Months later, Theodosius died of illness in Milan on 17 January 395 at the age of forty-nine, after entrusting his close aide and
magister militum
Stilicho – another Roman officer of barbarian origins, who had been married to Theodosius’s niece Serena since 384 – with the guardianship of his children, eighteen-year-old Arcadius, ten-year old Honorius, and their half-sister Galla Placidia, aged around seven. That at least was the arrangement according to Stilicho, whose word was the only guarantee of Theodosius’s last wishes.
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Arcadius and Honorius now became joint-emperors, Arcadius ruling from Constantinople and the much younger Honorius from the western court in Milan, with Stilicho acting as de-facto regent for the latter. Galla Placidia herself was also based in Milan, where she had been summoned to visit her father on his deathbed.
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But when Milan no longer provided the required protection against the sabre-rattling of increasingly troublesome Goth invaders on the empire’s Rhine–Danube frontier, the city of Ravenna was chosen as a replacement capital, all in all a more secure stronghold protected by marsh on three sides and a sea coast on the other. In 402, when Galla Placidia was approximately thirteen years old, the entire court decamped to a palace in Ravenna’s south-eastern quarter. Where Constantinople had been a city of dreams, its vast imperial palace on the shore buffeted by warm sea breezes, heavily fortified Ravenna was a malodorous and utilitarian headquarters, more like a military base than a capital, and there was moreover little prospect for its new young imperial residents of leaving its perimeters.
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For the days when Roman soldier-emperors and their entourages had travelled from imperial capital to imperial capital, province to province, campaign post to campaign post, were gone. Galla Placidia’s half-brothers were to some extent passive bystanders in their own courts. Too young and inexperienced to lead their armies on campaign, kept firmly under the thumb of their senior advisers, Honorius, Arcadius and their respective families at Ravenna and Constantinople, lived sheltered lives compared to their predecessors, holed up in their palaces, venturing out only for occasional public appearances or summer holiday trips to cooler climes. Access to the emperor’s presence was carefully regulated by the eunuchs and civil servants who staffed his private quarters, and a thick, suffocating veneer of ceremonial procedure clogged up the channels of everyday palace life.
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As a result, the imperial women of this era were a far more sedentary and closeted bunch than their many itinerant predecessors unless, like Helena, they were given permission to embark on pilgrimages to Christian sites. Although Theodosius had promoted a greater separation between the emperor and his court, his wife Aelia Flaccilla’s purple and gold travelling wagon was at least sometimes seen abroad, and greeted on her return journey by a guard of honour and a dutifully cheering crowd.
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After 395 though, the emperor’s female dependants, like their youthful brothers, sons and husbands, were largely confined to the rarefied palace environment, probably seeing few other human
beings save a few close female attendants who waited on them in their own carefully segregated apartments. This was testified in a speech by John Chrysostom in praise of the conduct of Arcadius’s wife Eudoxia when she took part one night in a candlelit procession of some relics out of Constantinople. He commented that it was probably the first time even some of the eunuch chamberlains who haunted the palace corridors had actually seen the empress.
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