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Gratian
Gratian (; ; 18 April 359 – 25 August 383) was emperor of the Western Roman Empire from 367 to 383. The eldest son of Valentinian I, Gratian was raised to the rank of ''Augustus'' as a child and inherited the West after his father's death in 375. He nominally shared the government with his infant half-brother Valentinian II, who was also acclaimed emperor in Pannonia on Valentinian's death. The East was ruled by his uncle Valens, who was later succeeded by Theodosius I. Gratian subsequently led a campaign across the Rhine, attacked the Lentienses, and forced the tribe to surrender. That same year, the eastern emperor Valens was killed fighting the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople, which led to Gratian elevating Theodosius to replace him in 379. Gratian favoured Nicene Christianity over traditional Roman religion, issuing the Edict of Thessalonica, refusing the office of '' pontifex maximus'', and removing the Altar of Victory from the Roman Senate's Curia Julia. The city ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentinianic Dynasty
The Valentinian dynasty, commonly known as the Valentinianic dynasty, was a ruling house of five generations of dynasts, including five Roman emperors during late antiquity, lasting nearly a hundred years from the mid fourth to the mid fifth century. They succeeded the Constantinian dynasty () and reigned over the Roman Empire from 364 to 392 and from 425 to 455, with an interregnum (392–425), during which the Theodosian dynasty ruled and eventually succeeded them. The Theodosians, who intermarried into the Valentinian house, ruled concurrently in the east after 379. The Valentinian dynasty's patriarch was Gratianus Funarius, whose sons Valentinian I and Valens were both made Roman emperors in 364. Valentinian I's two sons, Gratian and Valentinian II both became emperors. Valentinian I's daughter Galla (wife of Theodosius I), Galla married Theodosius the Great, the emperor of the eastern empire, who with his descendants formed the Theodosian dynasty (). In turn, their daugh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene Christianity. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. He ended the Gothic War (376–382) with terms disadvantageous to the empire, with the Goths remaining within Roman territory but as nominal allies with political autonomy. Born in Hispania, Theodosius was the son of a high-ranking general of the same name, Count Theodosius, under whose guidance he rose through the ranks of the Roman army. Theodosius held independent command in Moesia in 374, where he had some success against the invading Sarmatians. Not long afterwards, he was forced into retirement, and his father was executed under obscure circumstance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valens
Valens (; ; 328 – 9 August 378) was Roman emperor from 364 to 378. Following a largely unremarkable military career, he was named co-emperor by his elder brother Valentinian I, who gave him the Byzantine Empire, eastern half of the Roman Empire to rule. In 378, Valens was defeated and killed at the Battle of Adrianople against the invading Goths, which astonished contemporaries and marked the beginning of barbarian encroachment into Roman territory. As emperor, Valens continually faced threats both internal and external. He defeated, after some dithering, the usurper Procopius (usurper), Procopius in 366, and campaigned against the Goths across the Danube in 367 and 369. In the following years, Valens focused on the eastern frontier, where he faced the perennial threat of Sasanian Empire, Persia, particularly in Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity), Armenia, as well as additional conflicts with the Saracens and Isaurians. Domestically, he inaugurated the Aqueduct of Valens in Cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentinian II
Valentinian II (; 37115 May 392) was a Roman emperor in the western part of the Roman Empire between AD 375 and 392. He was at first junior co-ruler of his half-brother, then was sidelined by a usurper, and finally became sole ruler after 388, albeit with limited ''de facto'' powers. A son of emperor Valentinian I and empress Justina, he was raised to the imperial office at the age of four by military commanders upon his father's death. Until 383, Valentinian II remained a junior partner to his older half-brother Gratian in ruling the Western empire, while the East was governed by his uncle Valens until 378 and Theodosius I from 379. When the usurper emperor Magnus Maximus killed Gratian in 383, the court of Valentinian II in Milan became the locus of confrontations between adherents to Nicene and Arian Christianity. In 387, Maximus invaded Italy, spurring Valentinian II and his family to escape to Thessalonica where they successfully sought Theodosius's aid. Theodosius def ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentinian I
Valentinian I (; 32117 November 375), also known as Valentinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 364 to 375. He ruled the Western Roman Empire, Western half of the empire, while his brother Valens ruled the Byzantine Empire, East. During his reign, he fought successfully against the Alamanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians, strengthening the border fortifications and conducting campaigns across the Rhine and Danube. His general Count Theodosius, Theodosius defeated a revolt in Africa (Roman province), Africa and the Great Conspiracy, a coordinated assault on Roman Britain by Picts, Scoti, and Saxons. Valentinian founded the Valentinian dynasty, with his sons Gratian and Valentinian II succeeding him in the western half of the empire. Early life Valentinian was born in 321 at Cibalae (now Vinkovci, Croatia) in southern Pannonia into a family of Illyro-Roman origin. Valentinian and his younger brother Valens were the sons of Gratianus Funarius, Gratianus (nicknamed Funarius), a military ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Roman Empire
In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly during the period from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into the Western provinces and the Eastern provinces with a distinct Line of hereditary succession, imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire, Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were ''de facto'' independent; contemporary Ancient Rome, Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative expediency. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by AD 554, at the end of Ju ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laeta
Laeta was a Roman empress as the second wife of the emperor Gratian. Empress Gratian was first married to Constantia, who died at the age of 21. The ''Chronicon Paschale'' dates the arrival of Constantia's remains in Constantinople to 31 August 383. She presumably died earlier in the same year, but the exact date and cause of her death are unknown. As Gratian was himself assassinated on 25 August 383, Laeta must have married him in the short period between the death of Constantia and his death. Sozomen seemed to be aware of their marriage, as he recorded that Gratian had gotten recently married in his account of the emperor’s demise. Widow After Gratian’s death, his co-emperor Theodosius I granted a pension to both Laeta and her mother Pissamena. On his account of the first siege of Rome by Alaric I, King of the Visigoths (dated to 408), Zosimus mentioned that the city faced a famine. The historian recorded how the two women used the money given to them by Theodosius to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnus Maximus
Magnus Maximus (; died 28 August 388) was Roman emperor in the West from 383 to 388. He usurped the throne from emperor Gratian. Born in Gallaecia, he served as an officer in Britain under Theodosius the Elder during the Great Conspiracy. In 383, he was proclaimed emperor in Britannia, and in Gaul the next year, while Gratian's brother Valentinian II retained Italy, Pannonia, Hispania, and Africa. In 387, Maximus's ambitions led him to invade Italy, resulting in his defeat by Theodosius I at the Battle of Poetovio in 388. In the view of some historians, his death marked the end of direct imperial presence in Northern Gaul and Britannia. Life Birth, army career Maximus was born in Gallaecia, Hispania, on the estates of Count Theodosius (the Elder) of the Theodosian dynasty, to whom he claimed to be related. J. B. Bury ed. (1924)''The Cambridge Medieval History'' p. 238 In their youth, Maximus and Theodosius I served together in Theodosius the Elder's army in Britannia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Adrianople
The Battle of Adrianople also known as Battle of Hadrianopolis was fought between the Eastern Roman army led by the Roman emperor Valens and Gothic rebels (largely Thervings as well as Greutungs, non-Gothic Alans, and various local rebels) led by Fritigern. The battle took place on 9 August 378 in the vicinity of Adrianople, in the Roman province of Thracia (modern Edirne in European Turkey). It ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths and the death of Emperor Valens.Zosimus, ''Historia Nova'', book 4. As part of the Gothic War of 376–382, the battle is often considered the start of the events which led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. A detailed contemporary account of the lead-up to the battle from the Roman perspective was written by Ammianus Marcellinus and forms the culminating point at the end of his history. Background In 376, the Goths, led by Alavivus and Fritigern, asked to be allowed to settle in the Eastern Roman Empir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constantia (wife Of Gratian)
Constantia (362–383) was the first empress consort of Gratian of the Western Roman Empire. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, her mother was Faustina and her father was Constantius II, who died before Constantia was born. Early life Constantia's paternal uncles included Crispus, Constantine II and Constans. Her paternal aunts included Constantina, wife of first Hannibalianus and secondly Constantius Gallus, and Helena, wife of Julian the Apostate. Her paternal grandparents were Constantine the Great and Fausta. On 3 November 361, Constantius II died of a fever at Mopsucrene, near Tarsus, Cilicia. He was heading west to face a revolt by Julian, his first cousin and brother-in-law. In a reported deathbed decision, Constantius officially acknowledged Julian as his heir. When Constantia was born sometime after, Julian was already firmly established on the throne. On 26 June 363, Julian was fatally wounded in the Battle of Samarra against the forces of Shapur II of the Sassan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flavia Gens
The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Its members are first mentioned during the last three centuries of the Republic. The first of the Flavii to achieve prominence was Marcus Flavius, tribune of the plebs in 327 and 323 BC; however, no Flavius attained the consulship until Gaius Flavius Fimbria in 104 BC. The gens became illustrious during the first century AD, when the family of the Flavii Sabini claimed the imperial dignity.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vol. II, p. 169"Flavia Gens". Under the Empire, the number of persons bearing this nomen becomes very large, perhaps due to the great number of freedmen under the Flavian dynasty of emperors. It was a common practice for freedmen to assume the nomina of their patrons, and so countless persons who obtained the Roman franchise under the Flavian emperors adopted the name ''Flavius'', which was then handed down to their descendants. Freedmen under the Constantinian dynasty, whose me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marina Severa
Marina Severa (died before 382) was a Roman empress as the first wife of Valentinian I, and the mother of Gratian. The primary sources give two different names for her. John Malalas, the ''Chronicon Paschale'' and John of Nikiû name her "Marina" while all other sources call her "Severa". Life Marina Severa was married to Valentinian before he ascended to the throne. Their son Gratian was born in 359 at Sirmium in Pannonia. Valentinian was chosen as emperor in 364, and Gratian was elevated to the position of co-emperor in 367. He divorced his wife around 370 to marry Justina, widow of the usurper Magnentius. According to Socrates of Constantinople: This account was dismissed by later historians whose interpretation of it was an unlikely legalization of bigamy. However Timothy Barnes and others consider this decision to only allow various Romans to divorce and then remarry. The controversy being that Christianity had yet to accept the concept of a divorce. Barnes considers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
