The Complete Chronicle of the Emperors of Rome (Vol. 2) by Roger M. Kean & Oliver Frey

Author:Roger M. Kean & Oliver Frey [Kean, Roger M. & Frey, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B009FMPBZS
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Theodosius II

Flavius Theodosius

[Co-Augustus, East 402; Augustus, East May 408 to July 28, 450]

Theodosius, son of Arcadius and Aelia Eudoxia, was born in April 401. He was the fourth child but the first boy, so his arrival was received with great joy, both by his family and by the populace of Constantinople. He was baptized and crowned Augustus in January of the following year. When his father died in 408, the seven-year-old was fortunate in his praetorian prefect, Anthemius. This able and high-principled man had dominated the last years of Arcadius’s reign, in stark and welcome contrast to the feckless emperor’s previous counselors. Now he became regent to young Theodosius, and was instrumental in the reconciliation between East and West (even to sharing a consulship with Stilicho in 405).

Despite this apparent accord, the death of Stilicho made it more readily possible for Anthemius to cement relations between Constantinople and Ravenna, which remained cordial until the elevation of Constantius III in February 421. Anthemius put to good use the continual influx of Germanic tribes by using them to counter the barely civilized Isaurian tribes that had been plaguing southern Anatolia since 403. And he was the real architect in 413 of the great new land walls to protect Constantinople, known as the Theodosian Walls, much of which still stand today. For unknown reasons, Anthemius did not last beyond 414, at which point Theodosius became dominated by his sister, Aelia Pulcheria, only two years his senior but already named Augusta, and the real power behind the throne.

Weak and easily led, Theodosius was developing in a manner that suggested he would not be much of an improvement on his father. However, he possessed the charm Arcadius had lacked, was an earnest student in Latin and Greek classics, mathematics, natural sciences, and in art. In fact he became such an adept at illuminating manuscripts that he was given the Greek nickname Kalligraphos. While as a boy he was surrounded by the paraphernalia of religion, it is doubtful that he became as involved as Pulcheria, who was exactingly devout and pious, and demanding in the same way with her two other sisters, Arcadia and Marina. In the days of their mother Eudoxia, the palace had resembled the bordello that John Chrysostom had railed against, now it rang to the chants of monks and felt more like a cloister. Quietly secluded amid this ecclesiastical threnody, Theodosius was content to pursue his studies and leave matters of state to Pulcheria. In 420 he decided to take a wife, and asked his sister to help him find one. She settled on a beautiful young Greek girl named Athenaïs; a pagan. This problem was overcome by having her baptized, with a change of name to Aelia Eudocia, and the couple were married on June 7, 421.

In the following year she gave Theodosius a daughter, who he named Licinia Eudoxia; to avoid confusion between the two similar names, it is easiest to refer to her mother by her Greek name, Athenaïs. In his delight at her birth, Theodosius awarded his wife Athenaïs the title of Augusta in 423.

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