Theodosius I (Greek: Θεοδόσιος Theodósios; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two civil wars, and recognized the catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between two separate courts (one western, the other eastern).Born in Hispania, Theodosius was the son of a high-ranking general, Theodosius the Elder, 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 circumstances. Theodosius soon regained his position following a series of intrigues and executions at Emperor Gratian's court. In 379, after the eastern Roman emperor Valens perished at the Battle of Adrianople against the Goths, Gratian appointed Theodosius as a successor with orders to take charge of the current military emergency. The new emperor's resources, and depleted armies, were not sufficient to drive the invaders out; in 382 the Goths were allowed to settle south of the Danube as autonomous allies of the empire. In 386, Theodosius signed a treaty with the Sasanian Empire which partitioned the long-disputed Kingdom of Armenia and secured a durable peace between the two powers.
Theodosius was a strong adherent of the Christian doctrine of consubstantiality and an opponent of Arianism. He convened a council of bishops at Constantinople in 381, which confirmed the former as orthodoxy and the latter as a heresy. Although Theodosius interfered little in the functioning of traditional pagan cults and appointed non-Christians to high offices, he failed to prevent or punish the damaging of several Hellenistic temples of classical antiquity, such as the Serapeum of Alexandria, by Christian zealots. During his earlier reign, Theodosius ruled the eastern provinces, while the west was overseen by the emperors Gratian and Valentinian II, whose sister he married. Theodosius sponsored several measures to improve his capital and main residence, Constantinople, most notably his expansion of the Forum Tauri, which became the biggest public square known in antiquity. Theodosius marched west twice, in 388 and 394, after both Gratian and Valentinian had been killed, to defeat the two pretenders, Magnus Maximus and Eugenius, that rose to replace them. Theodosius's final victory in September 394 made him master of the entire empire; he died a few months later and was succeeded by his two sons, Arcadius in the eastern half of the empire and Honorius in the west.
Theodosius was said to have been a diligent administrator, austere in his habits, merciful, and a devout Christian. For centuries after his death, Theodosius was regarded as a champion of Christian orthodoxy who decisively stamped out paganism. Modern scholars tend to see this as an interpretation of history by Christian writers more than an accurate representation of actual history. He is fairly credited with presiding over a revival in classical art that some historians have termed a "Theodosian renaissance". Although his pacification of the Goths secured peace for the Empire during his lifetime, their status as an autonomous entity within Roman borders caused problems for succeeding emperors. Theodosius has also received criticism for defending his own dynastic interests at the cost of two civil wars.His two sons proved weak and incapable rulers, and they presided over a period of foreign invasions and court intrigues, which heavily weakened the empire. The descendants of Theodosius ruled the Roman world for the next six decades, and the east–west division endured until the fall of the Western Empire in the late 5th century.
Career
Theodosius was commander of the army in Moesia I in 374. His dismissal may have been connected to the accession of the emperor Valentinian II, which took place at Aquincum (Budapest) in nearby Pannonia Valeria, in 375.
Theodosius is first attested accompanying his father to Britain on his expedition in 368–369 to suppress the "Great Conspiracy", a concerted Celtic and Germanic invasion of the island provinces. After probably serving in his father's staff on further campaigns, Theodosius received his first independent command by 374 when he was appointed the dux (commanding officer) of the province of Moesia Prima in the Danube. In the autumn of 374, he successfully repulsed an incursion of Sarmatians on his sector of the frontier and forced them into submission. Not long afterwards, however, under mysterious circumstances, Theodosius's father suddenly fell from imperial favor and was executed, and the future emperor felt compelled to retire to his estates in Hispania.
Although these events are poorly documented, historians usually attribute this fall from grace to the machinations of a court faction led by Maximinus, a senior civilian official. According to another theory, the future emperor Theodosius lost his father, his military post, or both, in the purges of high officials that resulted from the accession of the 4-year-old emperor Valentinian II in November 375. Theodosius's period away from service in Hispania, during which he was said to have received threats from those responsible for his father's death, did not last long, however, as Maximinus, the probable culprit, was himself removed from power around April 376 and then executed. The emperor Gratian immediately began replacing Maximinus and his associates with relatives of Theodosius in key government positions, indicating the family's full rehabilitation, and by 377 Theodosius himself had regained his command against the Sarmatians.
Theodosius's renewed term of office seems to have gone uneventfully, until news arrived that the eastern Roman emperor, Valens, had been killed at the Battle of Adrianople in August 378 against invading Goths. The disastrous defeat left much of Rome's military leadership dead, discredited, or barbarian in origin, to the result that Theodosius, notwithstanding his own modest record, became the establishment's choice to replace Valens and assume control of the crisis. With the begrudging consent of the western emperor Gratian, Theodosius was formally invested with the purple by a council of officials at Sirmium on 19 January 379.
Reign
The administrative divisions of the Roman Empire in 395, under Theodosius I.
War against the Goths (379–382)
The immediate problem facing Theodosius upon his accession was how to check the bands of Goths that were laying waste to the Balkans, with an army that had been severely depleted of manpower following the debacle at Adrianople. The western emperor Gratian, who seems to have provided only little immediate assistance, surrendered to Theodosius control of the prefecture of Illyricum for the duration of the conflict, giving his new colleague full charge the war effort. Theodosius implemented stern and desperate recruiting measures, resorting to the conscription of farmers and miners. Punishments were instituted for harboring deserters and furnishing unfit recruits, and even self-mutilation did not exempt men from service. Theodosius also admitted large numbers of non-Roman auxiliaries into the army, even Gothic deserters from beyond the Danube. Some of these foreign recruits were exchanged with more reliable Roman garrison troops stationed in Egypt.
Throughout the second half of 379, Theodosius and his generals, based at Thessalonica, won some minor victories over individual bands of raiders, but suffered at least one serious defeat in 380, which was blamed on the treachery of the new barbarian recruits. During the autumn of 380, a life-threatening illness, from which Theodosius recovered, prompted him to request baptism. Some obscure victories were recorded in official sources around this time, however, and, in November 380, the military situation was found to be sufficiently stable for Theodosius to move his court to Constantinople. There, the emperor enjoyed a propaganda victory when, in January 381, he received the visit and submission of a minor Gothic leader, Athanaric. By this point, however, Theodosius seems to have no longer believed that the Goths could be completely ejected from Roman territory. After Athanaric died that very same month, the emperor gave him a funeral with full honors, impressing his entourage and signaling to the enemy that the Empire was disposed to negotiate terms. During the campaigning season of 381, reinforcements from Gratian drove the Goths out of Macedonia and Thessaly into Thrace, while, in the latter sector, Theodosius or one of his generals repulsed an incursion by a group of Sciri and Huns across the Danube.
Following negotiations which likely lasted at least several months, the Romans and Goths finally concluded a settlement on 3 October 382. In return for military service to Rome, the Goths were allowed to settle some tracts of Roman land south of the Danube. The terms were unusually favorable to the Goths, reflecting the fact that they were entrenched in Roman territory and had not been driven out. Namely, instead of fully submitting to Roman authority, they were allowed to remain autonomous under their own leaders, and thus remaining a strong, unified body. The Goths now settled within the Empire would largely fight for the Romans as a national contingent, as opposed to being fully integrated into the Roman forces.
Roman provinces along the Ister (Danube), showing the Roman dioceses of Thrace, Dacia, Pannonia and Italia Annonaria on the empire's northern frontier
383–384
According to the Chronicon Paschale, Theodosius celebrated his quinquennalia on 19 January 383 at Constantinople; on this occasion he raised his eldest son Arcadius to co-emperor (augustus). Sometime in 383, Gratian's wife Constantia died. Gratian remarried, wedding Laeta, whose father was a consularis of Roman Syria. Early 383 saw the acclamation of Magnus Maximus as emperor in Britain and the appointment of Themistius as praefectus urbi in Constantinople. On the 25 August 383, according to the Consularia Constantinopolitana, Gratian was killed at Lugdunum (Lyon) by Andragathius, the magister equitum of the rebel emperor during the rebellion of Magnus Maximus . Constantia's body arrived in Constantinople on 12 September that year and was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles on 1 December. Gratian was deified as Latin: Divus Gratianus, lit. 'the Divine Gratian'.
Theodosius, unable to do much about Maximus due to ongoing military inadequacy, opened negotiations with the Persian emperor Shapur III (r. 383–388) of the Sasanian Empire. According to the Consularia Constantinopolitana, Theodosius received in Constantinople an embassy from them in 384.
In an attempt to curb Maximus's ambitions, Theodosius appointed Flavius Neoterius as praetorian prefect of Italy. In the summer of 384, Theodosius met his co-emperor Valentinian II in northern Italy. Theodosius brokered a peace agreement between Valentinian and Magnus Maximus which endured for several years.
Theodosius I was based in Constantinople, and according to Peter Heather, wanted, "for his own dynastic reasons (for his two sons each eventually to inherit half of the empire), refused to appoint a recognized counterpart in the west. As a result he was faced with rumbling discontent there, as well as dangerous usurpers, who found plentiful support among the bureaucrats and military officers who felt they were not getting a fair share of the imperial cake."
Middle reign: 384–387
Theodosius's second son Honorius was born on 9 December 384 and titled nobilissimus puer (or nobilissimus iuvenis). The death of Aelia Flaccilla, Theodosius's first wife and the mother of Arcadius, Honorius, and Pulcheria, occurred by 386. She died at Scotumis in Thrace and was buried at Constantinople, her funeral oration delivered by Gregory of Nyssa.A statue of her was dedicated in the Byzantine Senate. In 384 or 385, Theodosius's niece Serena was married to the magister militum, Stilicho.
In the beginning of 386, Theodosius's daughter Pulcheria also died. That summer, more Goths were defeated, and many were settled in Phrygia. According to the Consularia Constantinopolitana, a Roman triumph over the Gothic Greuthungi was then celebrated at Constantinople. The same year, work began on the great triumphal column in the Forum of Theodosius in Constantinople, the Column of Theodosius. The Consularia Constantinopolitana records that on 19 January 387, Arcadius celebrated his quinquennalia in Constantinople. By the end of the month, there was an uprising or riot in Antioch (modern Antakya). The Roman–Persian Wars concluded with the signing of the Peace of Acilisene with Persia. By the terms of the agreement, the ancient Kingdom of Armenia was divided between the powers.
By the end of the 380s, Theodosius and the court were in Milan and northern Italy had settled down to a period of prosperity. Peter Brown says gold was being made in Milan by those who owned land as well as by those who came with the court for government service. Great landowners took advantage of the court's need for food, "turning agrarian produce into gold", while repressing and misusing the poor who grew it and brought it in. According to Brown, modern scholars link the decline of the Roman empire to the avarice of the rich of this era. He quotes Paulinus of Milan as describing these men as creating a court where "everything was up for sale". In the late 380s, Ambrose, the bishop of Milan took the lead in opposing this, presenting the need for the rich to care for the poor as "a necessary consequence of the unity of all Christians". This led to a major development in the political culture of the day called the “advocacy revolution of the later Roman empire". This revolution had been fostered by the imperial government, and it encouraged appeals and denunciations of bad government from below. However, Brown adds that, "in the crucial area of taxation and the treatment of fiscal debtors, the late Roman state [of the 380s and 390s] remained impervious to Christianity".
Civil war: 387–388
The peace with Magnus Maximus was broken in 387, and Valentinian escaped to the east with Justina, reaching Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) in summer or autumn 387 and appealing to Theodosius for aid; Valentinian II's sister Galla was then married to the eastern emperor at Thessalonica in late autumn.Theodosius may still have been in Thessalonica when he celebrated his decennalia on 19 January 388. Theodosius was consul for the second time in 388.Galla and Theodosius's first child, a son named Gratian, was born in 388 or 389. In summer 388, Theodosius recovered Italy from Magnus Maximus for Valentinian, and in June, the meeting of Christians deemed heretics was banned by Valentinian.
The armies of Theodosius and Maximus fought at the Battle of Poetovio in 388, which saw Maximus defeated. On 28 August 388 Maximus was executed. Now the de facto ruler of the Western empire as well, Theodosius celebrated his victory in Rome on June 13, 389 and stayed in Milan until 391, installing his own loyalists in senior positions including the new magister militum of the West, the Frankish general Arbogast.According to the Consularia Constantinopolitana, Arbogast killed Flavius Victor (r. 384–388), Magnus Maximus's young son and co-emperor, in Gaul in August/September that year. Damnatio memoriae was pronounced against them, and inscriptions naming them were erased.
Massacre and its aftermath: 388–391
Massacre in the Hippodrome of Thessaloniki in 390, 16th-century wood engraving
The Massacre of Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) in Greece was a massacre of local civilians by Roman troops. The best estimate of the date is April of 390. The massacre was most likely a response to an urban riot that led to the murder of a Roman official. What most scholars, such as philosopher Stanislav Doležal, see as the most reliable of the sources is the Historia ecclesiastica written by Sozomen about 442; in it Sozomen supplies the identity of the murdered Roman official as Butheric, the commanding general of the field army in Illyricum (magister militum per Illyricum). According to Sozomen, a popular charioteer tried to rape a cup-bearer, (or possibly Butheric himself), and in response, Butheric arrested and jailed the charioteer.The populace demanded the chariot racer's release, and when Butheric refused, a general revolt rose up costing Butheric his life. Doležal says the name "Butheric" indicates he might have been a Goth, and that the general's ethnicity "could have been" a factor in the riot, but none of the early sources actually say so.
Sources
There are no contemporaneous accounts. Church historians Sozomen, Theodoret the bishop of Cyrrhus, Socrates of Constantinople and Rufinus wrote the earliest accounts during the fifth century. These are moral accounts emphasizing imperial piety and ecclesial action rather than historical and political details.[72]: 215, 218 [75] Further difficulty is created by these events moving into legend in art and literature almost immediately.[76]: 251 Doležal explains that yet another problem is created by aspects of these accounts contradicting one another to the point of being mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, most classicists accept at least the basic account of the massacre, although they continue to dispute when it happened, who was responsible for it, what motivated it, and what impact it had on subsequent events.
Theodosius' role
Anthonis Van Dyke's 1619 painting of St. Ambrose blocking the cathedral door, refusing Theodosius' admittance, a "pious fiction" invented by Theodoret.
Theodosius was not in Thessalonica when the massacre occurred. The court was in Milan. Several scholars, such as historian G. W. Bowersock and authors Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell, think that Theodosius ordered the massacre in an excess of "volcanic anger".McLynn also puts all the blame on the Emperor as does the less dependable fifth century historian, Theodoret. Other scholars, such as historians Mark Hebblewhite and N. Q. King, do not agree. Peter Brown points to the empire's established process of decision making, which required the emperor "to listen to his ministers" before acting. There is some indication in the sources Theodosius did listen to his counselors but received bad or misleading advice.
J. F. Matthews argues that the Emperor first tried to punish the city by selective executions. Peter Brown concurs: "As it was, what was probably planned as a selective killing ... got out of hand". Doleźal says Sozomen is very specific in saying that in response to the riot, the soldiers made random arrests in the hippodrome to perform a few public executions as a demonstration of imperial disfavor, but the citizenry objected. Doleźal suggests, "The soldiers, realizing that they were surrounded by angry citizens, perhaps panicked ... and ...forcibly cleared the hippodrome at the cost of several thousands of lives of local inhabitants". McLynn says Theodosius was “unable to impose discipline upon the faraway troops" and covered that failure by taking responsibility for the massacre on himself, declaring he had given the order then countermanded it too late to stop it.[73]: 102–104
Ambrose, the bishop of Milan and one of Theodosius' many counselors, was away from court. After being informed of events concerning Thessalonica, he wrote Theodosius a letter offering what McLynn calls a different way for the emperor to "save face" and restore his public image.Ambrose urges a semi-public demonstration of penitence, telling the emperor he will not give Theodosius communion until this is done. Wolf Liebeschuetz says "Theodosius duly complied and came to church without his imperial robes, until Christmas, when Ambrose openly admitted him to communion".
Washburn says the image of the mitered prelate braced in the door of the cathedral in Milan blocking Theodosius from entering is a product of the imagination of Theodoret who wrote of the events of 390 "using his own ideology to fill the gaps in the historical record". Peter Brown also says there was no dramatic encounter at the church door. McLynn states that "the encounter at the church door has long been known as a pious fiction". Wolfe Liebeschuetz says Ambrose advocated a course of action which avoided the kind of public humiliation Theodoret describes, and that is the course Theodosius chose.
Aftermath
According to the early twentieth century historian Henry Smith Williams, history's assessment of Theodosius' character has been stained by the massacre of Thessalonica for centuries. Williams describes Theodosius as a virtuous-minded, courageous man, who was vigorous in pursuit of any important goal, but through contrasting the "inhuman massacre of the people of Thessalonica" with "the generous pardon of the citizens of Antioch" after civil war, Williams also concludes Theodosius was "hasty and choleric".It is only modern scholarship that has begun disputing Theodosius' responsibility for those events.
From the time Edward Gibbon wrote his Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Ambrose' action after the fact has been cited as an example of the church's dominance over the state in Antiquity. Alan Cameron says "the assumption is so widespread it would be superfluous to cite authorities. But there is not a shred of evidence for Ambrose exerting any such influence over Theodosius". Brown says Ambrose was just one among many advisors, and Cameron says there is no evidence Theodosius favored him above anyone else.
By the time of the Thessalonican affair, Ambrose, an aristocrat and former governor, had been a bishop for 16 years, and during his episcopate, had seen the death of three emperors before Theodosius. These produced significant political storms, yet Ambrose held his place using what McLynn calls his "considerable qualities [and] considerable luck" to survive. Theodosius was in his 40s, had been emperor for 11 years, had temporarily settled the Gothic wars, and won a civil war. As a Latin speaking Nicene western leader of the Greek largely Arian East, Boniface Ramsey says he had already left an indelible mark on history.
McLynn asserts that the relationship between Theodosius and Ambrose transformed into myth within a generation of their deaths. He also observes that the documents revealing the relationship between these two formidable men do not show the personal friendship the legends portray. Instead, those documents read more as negotiations between the institutions the men represent: the Roman state and the Italian Church.
Second civil war: 392–394
In 391, Theodosius left his trusted general Arbogast, who had served in the Balkans after Adrianople, to be magister militum for the Western emperor Valentinian II, while Theodosius attempted to rule the entire empire from Constantinople. On 15 May 392, Valentinian II died at Vienna in Gaul (Vienne), either by suicide or as part of a plot by Arbogast.Valentinian had quarrelled publicly with Arbogast, and was found hanged in his room.Arbogast announced that this had been a suicide.Stephen Williams asserts that Valentinian's death left Arbogast in "an untenable position".He had to carry on governing without the ability to issue edicts and rescripts from a legitimate acclaimed emperor. Arbogast was unable to assume the role of emperor himself because of his non-Roman background.Instead, on 22 August 392, Arbogast had Valentinian's master of correspondence, Eugenius, proclaimed emperor in the West at Lugdunum.
At least two embassies went to Theodosius to explain events, one of them Christian in make-up, but they received ambivalent replies, and were sent home without achieving their goals. Theodosius raised his second son Honorius to emperor on 23 January 393, implying the illegality of Eugenius' rule. Williams and Friell say that by the spring of 393, the split was complete, and "in April Arbogast and Eugenius at last moved into Italy without resistance". Flavianus, the praetorian prefect of Italy whom Theodosius had appointed, defected to their side. Through early 394, both sides prepared for war.
Theodosius gathered a large army, including the Goths whom he had settled in the eastern empire as foederati, and Caucasian and Saracen auxiliaries, and marched against Eugenius. The battle began on 5 September 394, with Theodosius' full frontal assault on Eugenius's forces.Thousands of Goths died, and in Theodosius's camp, the loss of the day decreased morale.] It is said by Theodoret that Theodosius was visited by two "heavenly riders all in white" who gave him courage.
The next day, the extremely bloody battle began again and Theodosius's forces were aided by a natural phenomenon known as the Bora, which can produce hurricane-strength winds. The Bora blew directly against the forces of Eugenius and disrupted the line. Eugenius's camp was stormed; Eugenius was captured and soon after executed. According to Socrates Scholasticus, Theodosius defeated Eugenius at the Battle of the Frigidus (the Vipava) on 6 September 394. On 8 September, Arbogast killed himself.According to Socrates, on 1 January 395, Honorius arrived in Mediolanum and a victory celebration was held there. Zosimus records that, at the end of April 394, Theodosius's wife Galla had died while he was away at war.
A number of Christian sources report that Eugenius cultivated the support of the pagan senators by promising to restore the altar of Victory and provide public funds for the maintenance of cults if they would support him and if he won the coming war against Theodosius.] Cameron notes that the ultimate source for this is Ambrose's biographer Paulinus the Deacon, whom he argues fabricated the entire narrative and deserves no credence. Historian Michele Renee Salzman explains that "two newly relevant texts – John Chrysostom's Homily 6, adversus Catharos (PG 63: 491–492) and the Consultationes Zacchei et Apollonii, re-dated to the 390s, reinforces the view that religion was not the key ideological element in the events at the time". According to Maijastina Kahlos, Finnish historian and Docent of Latin language and Roman literature at the University of Helsinki, the notion of pagan aristocrats united in a "heroic and cultured resistance" who rose up against the ruthless advance of Christianity in a final battle near Frigidus in 394 is a romantic myth.
Death
Theodosius suffered from a disease involving severe edema. He died in Mediolanum (Milan) on 17 January 395, and his body lay in state in the palace there for forty days.His funeral was held in the cathedral on 25 February. Bishop Ambrose delivered a panegyric titled De obitu Theodosii in the presence of Stilicho and Honorius in which Ambrose praised the suppression of paganism by Theodosius.
On 8 November 395, his body was transferred to Constantinople, where according to the Chronicon Paschale he was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles. He was deified as: Divus Theodosius, lit. 'the Divine Theodosius'. He was interred in a porphyry sarcophagus that was described in the 10th century by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in his work De Ceremoniis