Asparagus

Flavius ​​Ardabur (ius) Aspar (* around 400; † 471 ) was an Eastern Roman army master ( magister militum ) and of Patricius Alan descent.

Plate depicting Aspar and his son Ardabur. The iconography follows that of late antique images of the emperor, which underlines the master's claim to power. The inscription reads "Fl (avius) Ardabur (ius) Aspar, vir inlustris , com (es) et mag (ister) mil (itum), consul ordinarius".

Life

In 424, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II appointed Aspar's father, the magister militum Ardaburius , commander-in-chief of an army that was to appoint his cousin Valentinian in Italy as emperor and overthrow the usurper John . Ardaburius took command of the fleet and sent his son Aspar ahead by land. This was able to take Aquileia in a coup of 425 .

John, who had waited in vain for Hunnic and Germanic auxiliaries under the command of Aëtius , was finally overthrown by treason: Ardaburius fell into his hands by chance, but was treated courteously, since John was still hoping for an agreement with Theodosius II . Ardaburius succeeded in inciting a number of Western Roman officers, whom the usurper had removed from their posts in 423, to a coup against the civilian Johannes, which also succeeded. After his capture, Johannes was beheaded in May 425 after his hand had been cut off. Three days after his death there was a bloody battle between Aspar and Aëtius, but it ended in a draw. Aëtius then came to an understanding with Ardaburius and Aspar and entered the service of the new Western Roman government as a comes. Valentinian III. was raised a little later to Augustus, installed as emperor in the west and recognized by Ostrom.

From 431 to 434 Aspar fought with Western Roman troops against the Vandals who had invaded the Roman province of Africa . He was appointed consul for this purpose and took up this office in January 434 in Carthage ; later he waged war against the Sassanids and Huns with Eastern Roman troops in the 440s .

As a magister militum and former consul, Aspar was now the strong man in Constantinople and supported the election of Markian , who had served under him, as the new emperor in 450 after the death of the eastern emperor Theodosius II . After Markian's death, Aspar, who adhered to Arianism , pushed through his candidate Leo I , who was of the Roman Catholic faith, against the second army master Anthemius in 457 . Aspar was well connected to the imperial elite through marriage connections - also with Eastern Roman senators. In addition to his military successes, his great influence was mainly due to his military following, which consisted mainly of Goths - whether ethnic affiliation played a role in the following conflicts, as was long assumed, is questionable on closer inspection (Croke 2005). It is noteworthy that Aspar was apparently offered the emperor himself at least once, but he turned it down - apparently he preferred to be the strong man behind the throne than to wear the purple himself (Börm 2010).

With the help of his armed followers, Aspar tried early on to succeed his son Patricius as emperor against Leo I , but failed because Leo had built up the Isaurian Zenon , who later became emperor, as a counterbalance with his own following in 466 . If Markian was by no means just a puppet of Aspars, Leo increasingly emancipated himself from his powerful patron and in 466/67 removed Aspar's son Ardabur on charges of treason. He also founded a new, powerful guard, the excubitores . But Aspar was not disempowered. 470 he was able to achieve the elevation of Patricius to Caesar . Aspar was now not only the father of the designated heir to the throne, but also as consular , patricius and princeps senatus had received all the honorary titles that could be awarded and seemed unassailable.

In 471, however, Aspar, at the behest of the emperor, who had refused to marry Patricius off to his daughter, was attacked and murdered in the palace together with Ardabur and Patricius by Leo's people; Candidus, however, indicates that Patricius survived seriously injured. Aspar's body was dismembered and secretly removed from the palace ( John Malalas 14:40). The attempts of his followers to take revenge were unsuccessful; their attack on the imperial palace was repulsed by the excubitores . So that the most promising attempt had failed an army master in Ostrom permanently establish a similar position, as some Germanic as well as Roman Masters of the Soldiers had succeeded in the West (see for example Flavius Aetius and Ricimer ). Since Emperor Anastasios I was able to get rid of the Isaurian influence around 500, the Eastern Roman rulers were able to regain considerable freedom of action.

literature

• John B. Bury : History of the Later Roman Empire. From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian. Volume 1. Dover, New York NY 1958, pp. 221 ff. (Reprint of 1923 edition).
• Henning Börm : rulers and elites in late antiquity. In: Henning Börm, Josef Wiesehöfer (eds.): Commutatio et contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and early Islamic Near East. In Memory of Zeev Rubin (= series history. Vol. 3). Wellem, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-941820-03-6 , pp. 159-198 .
• Brian Croke: Dynasty and Ethnicity. Emperor Leo I and the Eclipse of Aspar. In: Chiron . Vol. 35, 2005, pp. 147-203.
• John Robert Martindale: Aspar. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , pp. 164-169.
• Meaghan McEvoy: Becoming Roman? The Not-So-Curious Case of Aspar and the Ardaburii. In: Journal of Late Antiquity . Volume 9, 2016, pp. 483-511.
• Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 1: Aaron - Azarethes . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2007, ISBN 978-2-503-52303-3 , pp. 422-423.
• Otto Seeck : Ardabur 2 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 1, Stuttgart 1895, Col. 607-610.
• Michael E. Stewart: The First Byzantine Emperor? Leo I, Aspar and Challenges of Power and Romanitas in Fifth-Century Byzantium . In: Porphyra . Volume 22, 2014, pp. 4-17.
• Timo Stickler : Aspar and the western military masters. A comparison . In: Umberto Roberto, Laura Mecella (eds.): Governare e riformare l'impero al momento della sua divisione , Rome 2016, pp. 289-307.