The First Ladies of Rome

by Annelise Freisenbruch

  Aelia Flaccilla’s status as heiress to the legacy of Helena and role model to future empresses was cemented when, in around 383, she was awarded Livia’s old title of Augusta, an accolade withheld from Eusebia, Justina and every other empress since the death of Helena over sixty years previously. The honour coincided with the promotion of her eldest son Arcadius to the rank of Augustus alongside his father and western imperial partners Gratian and Valentinian II. In the process, Aelia Flaccilla also became the first empress since Helena to have a coin minted in her name. It is worth noting that after her death, empresses of the eastern court in Constantinople continued to receive the title Augusta on their coins, whereas the mints of the western territories of empire lagged behind. Indeed, no western empress of this era received a coin in her own name before 425, starkly highlighting the different attitudes to the role of the empress between the western and eastern courts, differences which would indeed later provoke recriminations between the camps.15

  Flaccilla’s coins introduced significant alterations to the typical empress format. Though retaining the braided hairstyle and jewelled headwear worn by Helena, the overall effect of Flaccilla’s appearance was much richer, with rosettes of precious stones swathing her temples in such profusion that her coiffure, secured with pearl-headed pins, is almost obscured. She aslo wears a diadem, accessorised by a large jewel adorning the forehead, and clacking strands of jewels hanging down the nape of her neck. Such grandeur reflected the unashamed autocratic aesthetic that now prevailed in the imperial court of the late Roman Empire, a far cry from the minimalist modesty of Livia’s day when the restoration of the republic was still a rallying cry. Flaccilla’s costume is also an eloquent reminder of the time and distance travelled since the days of the earliest Roman first ladies. Instead of the usual tunic and palla, the conventional dress of women of antiquity, she is shown wearing a purple mantle known as the paludamentum. This is secured at her shoulder with a fibula brooch whose appearance is closely paralleled in archaeological finds that have been made around Europe of onyx and sardonyx brooches hung with delicate teardrop-shaped gems of emerald, glass and gold.16

  The paludamentum, a military style of garment reminiscent of the chlamys which Agrippina Minor had once scandalously worn in public, had previously been reserved for the wardrobe of emperors. This hint of androgyny in Flaccilla’s portrait styling is repeated with the inclusion of Victory on the reverse, the first time this goddess had ever appeared on a coin minted for an empress.17 By being styled in the clothes and insignia of the emperor, a delicately reimagined role for the empress was being implied – a closing of ranks between Augustus and Augusta, a more open permission for her to be seen as a figurehead for the political decisions made by her husband’s regime. The message was not lost on the citizens of Antioch, who while rioting against imperial taxes in the spring of 387, directed their ire at Aelia Flaccilla’s statue as well as those of her husband and sons, tearing it down and destroying it.18

  The presence of the Christian chi-rho symbol on Aelia Flaccilla’s coins was also critical to this newly envisioned role. For it proclaimed the religious faith of Theodosius’s wife, her status as the heiress of Helena’s legacy, and the guarantor of imperial victory through her piety, updating the paradigm that a good and faithful imperial wife served as a symbol of political, as well as domestic, harmony at the heart of imperial power. Now, it was not just Aelia Flaccilla’s marital fidelity but her Christian faith that promised to bring stability to the empire.

  Aelia Flaccilla died in 387, eight years into her husband’s reign, and was buried in Constantinople. By this point, Theodosius’s opposite numbers in the western capitals of Trier and Milan were in a state of disarray. Gratian, co-emperor since 367, was assassinated in 383, leaving his twelve-year-old half-brother Valentinian II hanging onto the west by himself. A usurper named Magnus Maximus had had himself declared Augustus with the backing of forces under him in Britain and Gaul. Initially, Maximus made overtures of co-operation to young Valentinian II, and over in the east, Theodosius agreed to recognise the newcomer, probably out of reluctance to risk his own position against an opponent with so excellent a military reputation. But the situation changed in 387 when Maximus’s invasion of Italy across the Alps forced Valentinian II into flight from his court in Milan.

  According to the account of the fiercely anti-Christian Zosimus, who displayed the ancient historian’s typical knack for conflating the sexual with the political, Justina, mother of the ousted young western emperor, now spied an opportunity. Having sought sanctuary with her son and three daughters at Theodosius’s palace in Thessalonica, she begged him not to accept Maximus as co-ruler, but to restore her son Valentinian II to the throne, and, in return, accept her daughter Galla as a replacement bride for Aelia Flaccilla. Given that Maximus was a fellow Spaniard with impeccable Nicene credentials, in contrast to the Arianism of Justina and her son, there were those who urged Theodosius privately to reject Justina’s plea and brush the illegality of Maximus’s coup under the carpet. But Galla’s beauty, so said Zosimus, was too tempting a prospect for Theodosius, though the historian neglected to mention that the circuitous family ties she provided to Constantine would have proved equally alluring, and the marriage would give Theodosius a moral excuse to replace Maximus with a novice emperor he could manipulate to his own ends more easily. Theodosius duly made Galla his second wife, and honoured his obligations to his new in-laws by defeating Maximus and restoring Valentinian II to power in the west in 388, although Theodosius, the shorter-serving yet elder of the two Augusti, retained the more senior role.19 A year or two into his marriage to Galla, while Theodosius was still away on campaign, their daughter Galla Placidia was born.20

  Though Galla Placidia was born in the eastern half of the empire, her future lay west. Four years after his restoration by Theodosius, Valentinian II was found dead in Gaul and his place was taken by yet another usurper, Eugenius. Senior emperor Theodosius now stubbornly refused to delegate control of the west to a more threatening partner, having already earmarked it for one of his sons, and he secured a famous battle victory over Eugenius at the River Frigidus in September 394. Months later, Theodosius died of illness in Milan on 17 January 395 at the age of forty-nine, after entrusting his close aide and magister militum Stilicho – another Roman officer of barbarian origins, who had been married to Theodosius’s niece Serena since 384 – with the guardianship of his children, eighteen-year-old Arcadius, ten-year old Honorius, and their half-sister Galla Placidia, aged around seven. That at least was the arrangement according to Stilicho, whose word was the only guarantee of Theodosius’s last wishes.21

  Arcadius and Honorius now became joint-emperors, Arcadius ruling from Constantinople and the much younger Honorius from the western court in Milan, with Stilicho acting as de-facto regent for the latter. Galla Placidia herself was also based in Milan, where she had been summoned to visit her father on his deathbed.22 But when Milan no longer provided the required protection against the sabre-rattling of increasingly troublesome Goth invaders on the empire’s Rhine–Danube frontier, the city of Ravenna was chosen as a replacement capital, all in all a more secure stronghold protected by marsh on three sides and a sea coast on the other. In 402, when Galla Placidia was approximately thirteen years old, the entire court decamped to a palace in Ravenna’s south-eastern quarter. Where Constantinople had been a city of dreams, its vast imperial palace on the shore buffeted by warm sea breezes, heavily fortified Ravenna was a malodorous and utilitarian headquarters, more like a military base than a capital, and there was moreover little prospect for its new young imperial residents of leaving its perimeters.23

  For the days when Roman soldier-emperors and their entourages had travelled from imperial capital to imperial capital, province to province, campaign post to campaign post, were gone. Galla Placidia’s half-brothers were to some extent passive bystanders in their own courts. Too young and inexperienced to lead their armies on campaign, kept firmly unde
r the thumb of their senior advisers, Honorius, Arcadius and their respective families at Ravenna and Constantinople, lived sheltered lives compared to their predecessors, holed up in their palaces, venturing out only for occasional public appearances or summer holiday trips to cooler climes. Access to the emperor’s presence was carefully regulated by the eunuchs and civil servants who staffed his private quarters, and a thick, suffocating veneer of ceremonial procedure clogged up the channels of everyday palace life.24

  As a result, the imperial women of this era were a far more sedentary and closeted bunch than their many itinerant predecessors unless, like Helena, they were given permission to embark on pilgrimages to Christian sites. Although Theodosius had promoted a greater separation between the emperor and his court, his wife Aelia Flaccilla’s purple and gold travelling wagon was at least sometimes seen abroad, and greeted on her return journey by a guard of honour and a dutifully cheering crowd.25 After 395 though, the emperor’s female dependants, like their youthful brothers, sons and husbands, were largely confined to the rarefied palace environment, probably seeing few other human beings save a few close female attendants who waited on them in their own carefully segregated apartments. This was testified in a speech by John Chrysostom in praise of the conduct of Arcadius’s wife Eudoxia when she took part one night in a candlelit procession of some relics out of Constantinople. He commented that it was probably the first time even some of the eunuch chamberlains who haunted the palace corridors had actually seen the empress.26

  Though Galla Placidia was compelled to live a more cloistered life, the template for rearing a girl in her position had nonetheless changed little since the salad days of Julia, Livilla and the other girls of the Julio-Claudian household. A letter written in around 400 by the Christian ascetic scholar Jerome to his high-ranking female friend Laeta, advising her on the education of her daughter Paula, advocated much of the same pedagogical prescription as written down by educational theorist Quintilian in the first century. A child should learn to read and write in Latin and Greek, by being given alphabetical ‘blocks’, and being taught an ‘ABC’ song. Hints in the compositions of Claudian, a contemporary poet and observer of fourth-century court life, suggest that Serena’s and Stilicho’s daughters Maria and Thermantia were tutored in Latin and Greek. It is thus a safe assumption that Placidia received a similar education – even more likely given that the principal language of the eastern court at least was Greek.27 She also seems to have assisted at one stage in the embroidery of a girth for her big brother Honorius’s horse, chiming with Jerome’s recommendation to Laeta that Paula should cultivate enough skill with the spindle to make her own clothes, and proving that wool-working was as desirable an accomplishment for well-brought-up Roman girls as it had been in the day when Augustus broadcast the fact that his female relatives wove his tunics.28 Any ambitions on Paula’s part to dress herself in the latest silk fashions should be squashed, warned Jerome, and make-up, jewellery and pierced ears forbidden, recalling Augustus’s reproofs of Julia for her vanity, and praise of Livia for her lack of adornment. The only thing that was fundamentally different about the education being prescribed by Jerome for Paula to that of one of her upper-class Roman forebears was that it was aimed at training her up for a life committed to virginal asceticism, rather than a position as someone’s wife.29

  Jerome’s letter also advised that care should be taken over the choice of Paula’s companions and domestic attendants. One of the few surviving pieces of evidence about Placidia’s early life is that her nurse was called Elpidia, and was a trusted confidante who would remain a member of her household into adulthood. Farming out one’s babies for breast-feeding was frowned upon just as much by Christian writers as it had been by Tacitus, but Elpidia’s companionship suggests that Placidia’s mother Galla had, like most mothers of her class, ignored such recriminations.30

  Placidia’s closeness to her nurse Elpidia contrasts sharply with the picture of her relationship with her foster mother Serena. While a coterie of influential and ambitious courtiers pulled the strings of power for Placidia’s brother Arcadius in Constantinople, Serena and her Vandal-born husband Stilicho were unquestionably the new power couple of the western empire, a pose realised visually in a famous ivory diptych from the cathedral of Monza carved in around 400. Its left panel frames a standing portrait of Serena, her hair arranged in a thick roll around her head, her person adorned in the high-necked voluminous tunic layered over a tighter-fitting under-dress which had become the prevailing fashion for women of late antiquity. Although a looser and shorter ankle-exposing style of tunic called the dalmatic had begun to appear on portraits of some Christian women from the third century onwards, Serena’s robe is tightly wrapped under her bust with a jewelled belt, and pebble-sized precious stones decorate her ears and throat, an example of the increasing tendency towards lavish personal adornment, though still modest compared to the astonishingly ornate bejewelled and diademed representations of women from the later Byzantine era.31

  To the right of Serena, barely reaching her waist, hovers the neatly cropped head of her small son Eucherius, enveloped in a child-size version of the military paludamentum worn by his father in the diptych’s right-hand panel. Stilicho, whose short narrow tunic and breeches proclaim his barbarian origins, stands leaning on a shield while curling the fingers of his other hand around a long spear.32 It is a portrait of assured combined authority, Serena the traditional Roman matrona holding a plucked bloom in her hand as a symbol of her guardianship of the fertility of the state, Stilicho the hard-nosed military protector at the ready. Their ambition was obvious and understandable – by 398, they had succeeded in marrying their elder daughter Maria to thirteen-year-old Honorius, making them not just guardians but grandparents to a potential heir to the western empire. The symbolism of the marriage was underlined by the fact that Honorius gave his bride a wedding gift of some of the jewels once worn by Livia and subsequently by other imperial women. When the union failed to produce any children after six years and was ended by the bride’s death in 404, Thermantia was ushered into her sister’s shoes in a bid to see if the younger girl could do any better – though this marriage also remained childless.33

  In a poem written in honour of Stilicho’s consulship in 400, Claudian coyly alluded to the future prospect of another marriage in the family one day – between Stilicho’s and Serena’s little son Eucherius and Honorius’s sister Placidia: ‘the winged Loves throng the affianced bride, daughter and sister of an emperor … Eucherius now lifts the veil from the bashful maiden’s face …’ But the veil in question – still the crocus-yellow affair worn by brides in Livia’s day, though now encrusted by jewels as befitted the fifth-century imperial aesthetic – was never worn.34 While Honorius was being put to stud with first Maria and then Thermantia in a vain bid to produce children, Placidia remained resolutely unwed throughout her teenage years, a highly unusual state of affairs among girls of the elite and almost unheard-of in the close female relative of an emperor, the exception of Hadrian’s sister-in-law Matidia Minor notwithstanding. Vows of celibacy were of course newly in vogue among girls of Rome’s noble families, but no Christian writer claims Placidia as a devotee to the monastic movement, like Jerome’s protégée Paula. Was Placidia refusing, as has been claimed, to play her foster parents’ game? It is far more likely, given that girls in her position evidently had little say in the matter, that Stilicho was still hoping that Honorius would provide them with an heir through one of their daughters. For this half-Vandal officer to have blatantly set up his own son as a rival to Honorius by marrying him to Placidia when the young emperor’s wives were still having trouble conceiving, would have been unwise. In the meantime, Stilicho would have good reason for fearing that were Placidia to marry and produce children in the interim, they would one day have a strong claim to the throne and spoil his ambitions for a Roman dynasty in his own name. So Placidia was kept on the shelf for the time being, her marginalisation reflected in th
e fact that she was the only imperial member of the western court not to be named on an extraordinary gold locket found in the sixteenth century in the jewel-filled sarcophagus of her sister-in-law Maria.35

  Stilicho’s mettle had been severely tested from day 1 of his guardianship of the western Roman Empire. Since the reign of Valens in 376, when a mass of Goth refugees, under pressure from a surging Hun migration from the north, had attempted to seek asylum inside Roman borders, the Romans had been struggling to deal with the territorial aspirations of these marauding newcomers. Theodosius had adopted a relatively successful containment policy, giving them land in return for their military aid, but between 405 and 408, the Danube and Rhine frontiers of the western empire took a series of hits from yet more raiding parties, comprised both of Goths and of other barbarian groups. To add to Stilicho’s problems, a usurper presumptuously calling himself Constantine III was leading a mutiny of troops in Britain and Gaul and the Balkans were being treated as a looters’ playground by a separate 20,000-strong group of migrant Goths led by Alaric, who had been trying for some years to force either the western or eastern Roman Empire to give them a settlement of land. In 406, an olive branch was extended to Alaric by Stilicho himself who promised an agreement in return for the barbarians’ military assistance in asserting western control over territory in Illyricum, an offer that Alaric duly accepted. But Stilicho’s problems on the frontiers were soon surpassed by the dangers he faced closer to home, specifically at Honorius’s court, where he had made too many enemies. After the death of Honorius’s brother Arcadius at Constantinople in 408, a rumour spread that Stilicho was scheming to set his own son Eucherius on the eastern throne, a rumour which Honorius was apparently willing to believe. On 22 August 408, Stilicho was cornered in a church in Ravenna and murdered.