Flavius ​​Eutolmius Tatianus

Flavius ​​Eutolmius Tatianus was a late ancient Roman politician and lawyer of the 4th century AD.

The Eutolmii family came from Lycia , a landscape in the southwest of Asia Minor (lat. Lycia). Tatianus was the son of Antonius Tatianus, governor ( praeses ) of Caria from 360 to approx. 364. Tatianus began his career in territorial administration around the time his father was governor. He was a lawyer around 357. Afterwards he was an assistant ( assessor ) to a governor, a vicar , a proconsul and two prefects . He was then governor of the Thebais (the year can no longer be dated). From 367 to 370 he held the position of prefectus Augustalis . Between 370 and 374 he administered the province of Syria together with the diocese of Oriens and then moved to the central administration. There he worked as comes sacrarum largitionum from 374 to 380 in the imperial financial administration. After about a year of service under Theodosius I , Tatianus left his office and withdrew into his private life. It is uncertain whether he had to give way to the pressure of imperial favorites imported by the new ruler from the West. For the next eight years Tatianus lived in seclusion in Lycia.

Shortly before the start of the campaign against the usurper Magnus Maximus , Theodosius I appointed Tatianus to the Praetorian prefect of the Orient (388–392) ( praefectus praetorio per Orientem ). In his capacity as judge, Tatianus initially ruled that only lawyers with a degree in law were allowed to work as lawyers at the court.

There are some indications in the legislation of these years that Tatianus used the absence of the ruler to pursue an independent religious policy with more anti-clerical features, but there can be no question of a political change in favor of the pagans. In 391 Tatianus was honored with the ordinary consulate , which he held together with Quintus Aurelius Symmachus .

The increasing intolerance of paganism in Theodosius' last years of reign , Rufinus' greed for the Praetorian prefecture and the fact that Tatianus showed some nakedness in the administration of finances and legislation led to Tatianus' dismissal and imprisonment. He and his son Proculus, the former prefect of the city of Constantinople , were sentenced to death. For Tatianus, the death penalty was converted into lifelong banishment . He died impoverished in his homeland, although he was rehabilitated under Arcadius while he was still alive. The great philosopher Proclus was probably his grandson.

literature

• Detlef Liebs : Court lawyers from the Roman emperors to Justinian (= Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Philosophical-historical class ). CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7696-1654-5 , section Tatian .
• Ralf Scharf: The family of the Fl. Eutolmius Tatianus . In: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik , Volume 85, 1991, pp. 223-231 ( PDF ).
• Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Tatianus 5. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , pp. 876-878.

Remarks

1. ↑ Codex Theodosianus 16,2,27.
2. ↑ However, many sharp-sounding laws were hardly implemented by the emperor in reality.

predecessor	Office	successor
Proclianus	Prefect of the Roman Province of Egypt 367–370	Olympius Palladius