At the Gates of Rome by Don Hollway

Author:Don Hollway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

XIV

The World Turns

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There is kindred joy in heaven. The two Theodosians and your own protecting gods are glad. The Sun himself, decorating his chariot with spring flowers, readies a year worthy of you.

Claudian

Claudian’s ode to Stilicho on his consulship of 400 might have applied even more to 401. That spring was one of idyllic rapport in the Roman world. For a change neither empire, East nor West, was striving to exert its will over the other. No one held Stilicho responsible for Gainas’s uprising, as the Goth had clearly exceeded any orders he had received years earlier. Indeed, Gainas’s defeat was made a cause of common celebration throughout both empires. Though Arcadius had as little to do with it as Honorius had in the defeat of Gildo, it was the closest thing the elder emperor had to a military triumph, and he determined to make the most of it. Seventy years earlier, Emperor Constantine had raised a 160-foot column of solid porphyry to mark the foundation of the city. In 393 Theodosius had built a column almost as tall, but hollow, with a spiral staircase running up the inside. Now Arcadius would build a monument to himself to outdo both. The Column of Arcadius, as planned, would reach nearly 175 feet, with a similar stairway inside leading out onto a viewing deck at the foot of a thirty-foot bronze statue of its namesake. The marble outer shaft would be inscribed with a spiral frieze depicting a Roman triumphal parade, complete with barbarian prisoners, grateful senators, and winged Victories. Arcadius even had Honorius carved into the reliefs of his new column, though the younger brother had even less to do with the victory than the elder. They had not even seen each other in seven years.

It would require years to build, but it’s easy to imagine Arcadius, now in his early twenties, excitedly poring over the architects’ drawings of what was sure to be the first in a series of inspiring monuments to a long and momentous reign. He was free at last of his overbearing advisors. Or, at least, he could imagine himself so.

In the background, working on her own memorial, was the Augusta Aelia Eudoxia with her three little daughters, herself pregnant yet again, the fourth time in six years of marriage. With Eutropius and Gainas gone, at last no one stood between her and her husband. In April she gave birth to a son. They named him Flavius Theodosius II, in anticipation of one day naming him junior emperor to his father, the continuation of the dynasty. Rumor had it that her husband’s courtier, Ioannes, was the boy’s real father, but the birth was celebrated across both empires.

What this meant, however, was that the empire was now clearly and unequivocally divided. The sons of Theodosius I ruled separately, with no one person in overarching control. Whether that was as Theodosius had intended or not depends on whether Stilicho was telling the truth when he came away from the old emperor’s deathbed, and opinions on that are as widely opposed now as they were then.

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