Arvandus

Arvandus (Arabundus) was a Western Roman politician of Gallo-Roman origin in the 5th century.

Life

In 464 Arvandus was appointed Praetorian prefect for Gaul by Libius Severus and Ricimer . He had to deal with the powerful Germanic kingdoms of the Franks , Visigoths and Burgundies as well as with the Gallo-Roman special empire under Aegidius († 464/65) and his successor Syagrius, which fell from Ravenna in 461 .

In 468 a correspondence of Arvandus became known in which he recommended the Visigoth king Eurich to refuse recognition to the western emperor Anthemius appointed by Leo I and to attack the Bretons who were settling north of the Loire and who were allied with Syagrius . Arvandus was convicted of high treason in Rome at the beginning of 469 (whether he himself was striving for emperor with Eurich's backing, as Cassiodorus suggests, is uncertain), but thanks to the intervention of influential friends (including Sidonius Apollinaris , who handed down the process), he was pardoned to exile .

swell

• Cassiodor , Chronica 1287, see 469
• Sidonius Apollinaris , Epistulae 1 , 7, 1-13

literature

• Alexander Demandt : The late antiquity. Roman history from Diocletian to Justinian. 284 - 565 AD (= Handbook of Classical Studies . Section 3: Ancient Orient, Greek History, Roman History. Part 6). 2nd completely revised and expanded edition. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55993-8 , p. 209.
• Dirk Henning: Periclitans res publica. Empire and elites in the crisis of the Western Roman Empire 454 / 5–493 AD . Steiner, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07485-6 ( Historia individual writings , volume 133).
• John Robert Martindale: Arvandus. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , pp. 157-158.

Web links

• Ralph W. Mathisen: Short biography (English) at De Imperatoribus Romanis (with references).