The Eastern Empire
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Beginning with the reign of Valentinian I in 364 AD, the Roman Empire entered a period of major political and military change. Valentinian ruled the Western Roman Empire while his brother, Valens, governed the Eastern Empire from Constantinople. This division helped manage the vast empire but also marked the beginning of two distinct Roman states. While the Western Empire struggled with barbarian invasions and internal instability, the Eastern Roman Empire gradually became stronger and more prosperous. The East benefited from wealthy cities, strong trade networks, and a more defensible geography. Constantinople, founded earlier by Constantine the Great, became the political and cultural center of the empire. Even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, the Eastern Empire survived and continued to preserve Roman law, government, and traditions. Under emperors such as Justinian I in the sixth century, the Eastern Roman Empire reached great heights. Justinian expanded imperial territory and commissioned the famous Hagia Sophia. Historians later called this state the Byzantine Empire, though its people always considered themselves Romans. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for nearly a thousand years after the fall of Rome in the West. |
Valens
| FLAVIVS VALENS was born at Cibulae in Pannonia Secunda in 328 to Gratianus the Elder. His older brother, Valentinian I, was hailed as Augustus on February 26, 364 after the death of Jovian. He named Valens as co-Augustus and gave him control of the eastern provinces. After some campaigns against the Goths from 367-369, he turned his attention to Armenia, where the Sassanians had been given a free hand by the treaty of 363. In 376 he allowed the Goths to settle in Thrace, but conflicts quickly arose, and Valens was killed in the great Gothic victory at the Battle of Hadrianopolis on August 9, 378. |
Procopius
| PROCOPIUS was born about 330 in Cilicia. He was related to Julian the Apostate, perhaps a maternal cousin. He was a tribune under Constantius II, and received a high military command under Julian, who was rumored to have chosen him as successor. When Julian was killed, the army selected Jovian, and when he died eight months later, the unpopular Valens became the Emperor of the east on March 28. Procopius rebelled at Constantinopolis on September 28, 365. The revolt spread quickly at first, but Procopius was defeated at Nacolea, captured soon after, and beheaded immediately on May 28, 366. |
Theodosius I
| FLAVIVS THEODOSIVS ('The Great') was born in 346 in Spain. He entered the military and by 374 was governor of Moesia, but he retired to Spain in 375 when his father was convicted of treason. In 378 Gratian recalled him to assume command in the Danube region, where Valens had just been killed by the Goths at Hadrianopolis. Gratian named him Augustus on January 19, 379. He settled with the Goths, deposed two western usurpers, Magnus Maximus and Eugenius (who tried to restore paganism), and in 395 became sole ruler of the Empire. He died on January 17, 395 of natural causes in Mediolanum. |
Aelia Flaccilla
| AELIA FLAVIA FLACCILLA was born in Spain in the mid-fourth century to a prominent family (her father, Antonius, was the Praefect of Gaul) and married the future Emperor Theodosius I in 376. She was the mother of two sons who both became Augusti - Arcadius, born in 377, and Honorius, born in 384. She became Empress in 379, but didn't receive the title of Augusta until 383 when Arcadius was named Augustus. She died in Thrace in 386 and is primarily remembered for her Christian piety and her benevolence to the poor. |
Arcadius
| FLAVIVS ARCADIVS was born in Spain to Theodosius I and Aelia Flaccilla in 377. He was created Augustus on January 19, 383 and assumed the throne of the Eastern Empire upon his father's death on January 17, 395. Unfortunately he inherited neither his father's energies nor abilities, and proved to be a disaster for the Empire, being dominated by those around him, most prominently by his wife, Aelia Eudoxia. His brother Honorius ruled the West, but relations between them were strained from the start. He died a natural death on May 1, 408, and left the throne to his seven-year-old son Theodosius II. |
Aelia Eudoxia
| AELIA EVDOXIA was the daughter of a Roman mother and the barbarian Bauto, Valentinian II's 'master of soldiers'. She was brought up in Constantinople, and introduced to Arcadius by his court chamberlin, Eutropius. Arcadius and Eudoxia were married on April 27, 395, and had five children, Theodosius II, Marina, Arcadia, Flaccilla, and Pulcheria, the future wife of Marcian. Eudoxia was made Augusta on January 9, 400, and became the virtual power behind the throne. She disputed with John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople, over petty issues until her death from a miscarriage on October 6, 404. |
