Licinia Eudoxia

Solidus to celebrate the wedding of Valentinian III. with Licinia Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius II. On the reverse, the three of them are shown in wedding clothes. Theodosius II standing in the middle, his hands resting on the shoulder of his son-in-law Valentinian III. (left) and the shoulder of his daughter Licinia Eudoxia (right), holding hands, standing in front of Theodosius II. On the front of the solidus is Valentinian III. seen in profile.

Solidus struck 439 in Ravenna. Obverse: Augusta Licinia Eudoxia with pearl necklaces and a crown of rays. Reverse: Enthroned Empress holds Globus Cruciger in her right hand and a cross scepter in her left hand.

The late antique Western Roman Empress Licinia Eudoxia (* 422 in Constantinople, † around 493 ) was the daughter of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II and Aelia Eudocia and the wife of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III.

Licinia Eudoxia was born in 424 at the age of two with the then five-year-old Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III. , a cousin of her father, engaged. The wedding took place in Constantinople on October 29, 437 . After a winter stay in Thessalonica , the young couple traveled to Ravenna in 438 , at that time the imperial residence of the western Roman half of the empire. Here Licinia Eudoxia was awarded the title of Augusta . The two daughters Eudocia and Placidia were born around this time. Later the empress stayed mainly in Rome . There she donated the Roman basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli .

After the assassination of Valentinian III. in March 455 - an act of revenge, because he had previously killed his overpowering military leader Aëtius himself - Licinia Eudoxia was married to his successor Petronius Maximus , who was involved in the assassination of Valentinian III. entangled, forced to give legitimacy to his rule. Maximus married his son and under-emperor Palladius to Eudoxia's daughter Eudocia . However, Eudocia was already engaged to Hunerich , the son of the Vandal King Geiserich , as a result of the Roman-Vandal peace treaty (foedus) of 442 .

Geiseric took the usurpation of Maximus and the open breach of the treaty of 442 as an opportunity to attack Rome with a vandal fleet and loot the city ​​for 14 days . Tradition reports that Licinia Eudoxia called in the Vandals to avenge the murder of her husband Valentinian and to defend herself against her forced marriage with Maximus. Whether this is the case is debatable in research. After the Vandals landed in Portus , Maximus, who obviously had no popular support, tried to flee Rome and was killed on May 31, 455.

The Vandals took Licinia Eudoxia and her two daughters as prisoners with them to their kingdom in Africa , where Eudocia married Geiserich's son Hunerich , to whom she had been engaged since 442. It was not until 462 that the repeated embassies of the Eastern Roman emperor succeeded in ransoming Licinia Eudoxia with a large amount of ransom. She left Africa and after 25 years returned to Constantinople with her daughter Placidia, while her daughter Eudocia stayed there and Hunerich gave birth to a son named Hilderich . This grandson of a Western Roman emperor ruled over the Vandals in Africa from 523 to 530 .

literature

• Henning Börm : Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-17-023276-1 .
• Anja Busch: The women of the Theodosian dynasty. Power and Representation of Imperial Women in the 5th Century. (= Historia - individual fonts. Volume 237). Steiner, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-515-11044-0 , pp. 59–85 ( specialist review by H-Soz-Kult ).
• Dirk Henning: Periclitans res Publica: Empire and Elites in the Crisis of the Western Roman Empire, 454 / 55–493. Stuttgart 1999 (here inter alia pp. 24-27) ( restricted access to GoogleBooks ) ( review by Andreas Goltz at H-Soz-Kult ).
• John Robert Martindale: Licinia Eudoxia 2. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , pp. 410-412.
• Otto Seeck : Eudoxia 2 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI, 1, Stuttgart 1907, Col. 925 f.

Web links

Commons : Licinia Eudoxia  - Collection of Images

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

Remarks

1. ↑ Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, A. Effenberger: The porphyry sarcophagi of the Eastern Roman Emperor (=  Late Antiquity - Early Christianity - Byzantium: Art in the first millennium B: Studies and perspectives. . Band 15 ). Reichert, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-89500-353-0 , p. 69 .
2. ↑ Priskos , Fragment 30.1 (Roger Blockley Edition). See Henning Börm: Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. Stuttgart 2018, pp. 99-104.
3. ↑ John Malalas 14:26.