Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a pivotal role in elevating the status of Christianity in Rome, decriminalizing Christian practice and ceasing Christian persecution. This was a turning point in the Christianization of the Roman Empire. He founded the city of Constantinople and made it the capital of the Empire, which it remained for over a millennium.
Honorius was Roman emperor from 393 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla. After the death of Theodosius in 395, Honorius, under the regency of Stilicho, ruled the western half of the empire while his brother Arcadius ruled the eastern half. His reign over the Western Roman Empire was notably precarious and chaotic. In 410, Rome was sacked for the first time since the Battle of the Allia almost 800 years prior.
Theodosius I, also known as Theodosius the Great, was a Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene Christianity. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. He ended the Gothic War (376–382) with terms disadvantageous to the empire, with the Goths remaining within Roman territory but as nominal allies with political autonomy.
Zosimus was a Greek historian who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I (491–518). According to Photius, he was a comes, and held the office of "advocate" of the imperial treasury. Zosimus was also known for condemning Constantine’s rejection of the traditional polytheistic religion.
The 4th century was the time period from 301 CE to 400 CE (CD) in accordance with the Julian calendar. In the West, the early part of the century was shaped by Constantine the Great, who became the first Roman emperor to adopt Christianity. Gaining sole reign of the empire, he is also noted for re-establishing a single imperial capital, choosing the site of ancient Byzantium in 330 to build the city soon called Nova Roma ; it was later renamed Constantinople in his honor.
Stilicho was a military commander in the Roman army who, for a time, became the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. He was partly of Vandal origins and married to Serena, the niece of emperor Theodosius I. He became guardian for the underage Honorius. After nine years of struggle against barbarian and Roman enemies, political and military disasters finally allowed his enemies in the court of Honorius to remove him from power. His fall culminated in his arrest and execution in 408.
PubliusVegetius Renatus, known as Vegetius, was a writer of the Later Roman Empire. Nothing is known of his life or station beyond what is contained in his two surviving works: Epitoma rei militaris, and the lesser-known Digesta Artis Mulomedicinae, a guide to veterinary medicine. He identifies himself in the opening of his work Epitoma rei militaris as a Christian.
In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly during the period from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into the Western provinces and the Eastern provinces with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were de facto independent; contemporary Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative expediency. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by AD 554, at the end of Justinian's Gothic War.
The end of Roman rule in Britain occurred as the military forces of Roman Britain withdrew to defend or seize the Western Roman Empire's continental core, leaving behind an autonomous post-Roman Britain. In 383, the usurper Magnus Maximus withdrew troops from northern and western Britain, probably leaving local warlords in charge. In 407, the usurper Constantine III took the remaining mobile Roman soldiers to Gaul in response to the crossing of the Rhine, and external attacks surged. The Romano-British deposed Roman officials around 410 and government largely reverted to the city level. That year Emperor Honorius refused an appeal from Britain for military assistance. The following decades saw the collapse of urban life and the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement.
Constans II was the son of Western Roman emperor Constantine III, and served as his co-emperor from 409 to 411. Constans was a monk prior to his father being acclaimed emperor by the army in Britain in early 407, an act of rebellion against the ruling emperor Honorius. He was summoned to Gaul, appointed to the position of caesar (heir) and swiftly married so that a dynasty could be founded. In Hispania, Honorius's relatives rose in 408 and expelled Constantine's administration. An army under the generals Constans and Gerontius was sent to deal with this and Constantine's authority was re-established. Honorius acknowledged Constantine as co-emperor in early 409 and Constantine immediately raised Constans to the position of augustus (emperor), theoretically equal in rank to Honorius as well as to Constantine. Later in 409 Gerontius rebelled, proclaimed his client Maximus emperor and incited barbarian groups in Gaul to rise up. Constans was sent to quash the revolt, but was defeated and withdrew to Arles. In 410, Constans was sent to Hispania again. Gerontius had strengthened his army with barbarians and defeated Constans; the latter withdrew north and was defeated again and killed at Vienne early in 411. Gerontius then besieged Constantine in Arles and killed him.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire, also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome, was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided among several successor polities. The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army, the health and numbers of the Roman population, the strength of the economy, the competence of the emperors, the internal struggles for power, the religious changes of the period, and the efficiency of the civil administration. Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes and both endemic and epidemic disease drove many of these immediate factors. The reasons for the collapse are major subjects of the historiography of the ancient world and they inform much modern discourse on state failure.
Justa Grata Honoria was the daughter of Constantius III and Galla Placidia, as well as the sister of Valentinian III. At a young age, she was granted the title of Augusta. She was said to have asked Attila the Hun to invade on her behalf, which is often interpreted as a proposal.
Olympiodorus of Thebes was a Roman historian, poet, philosopher and diplomat of the early fifth century. He produced a History in twenty-two volumes, written in Greek, dedicated to the Emperor Theodosius II, detailing events in the Western Roman Empire between 407 and 425. The history is lost, but much of it is known from its use by other writers.
The Dominate, also known as the late Roman Empire, is the despotic form of imperial government of the late Roman Empire. It followed the earlier period known as the Principate. Until the empire was reunited c. 324, this phase is more often called the Tetrarchy.
The six-volume work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by the English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) has been reprinted many times over the years in various editions.
Plumbatae or martiobarbuli were lead-weighted darts carried by infantrymen in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They were used to inflict damage on enemies at a distance before engaging in close combat. Roman soldiers in some legions carried plumbatae inside their shields, which allowed them to have ranged weapons similar to arrows, according to Vegetius in his 4th-century military treatise De re militari.
Julian is a 1964 novel by Gore Vidal, a work of historical fiction written primarily in the first person dealing with the life of the Roman emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus, who reigned briefly from 361 to 363 A.D.
Anonymus Valesianus is the conventional title of a compilation of two fragmentary vulgar Latin chronicles, named for its modern editor, Henricus Valesius, who published the texts for the first time in 1636, together with his first printed edition of the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus. The two fragments are not related, one being from the fourth century and the other from the sixth. The only connection between the two fragments is their presence in the same manuscript and their history of being edited together. When Henricus' brother Hadrian re-edited the Anonymus in an edition of Ammianus Marcellinus in 1681, it was the first time that the two excerpts were clearly separated.
Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire began during the reign of Constantine the Great in the military colony of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), when he destroyed a pagan temple for the purpose of constructing a Christian church. Rome had periodically confiscated church properties, and Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming them whenever these issues were brought to his attention. Christian historians alleged that Hadrian had constructed a temple to Venus on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha hill in order to suppress Christian veneration there. Constantine used that to justify the temple's destruction, saying he was simply reclaiming the property. Using the vocabulary of reclamation, Constantine acquired several more sites of Christian significance in the Holy Land.
The Syro-Roman law book is a compilation of secular legal texts from the eastern Roman Empire originally composed in Greek in the late 5th century, but surviving only in Syriac translation. As a work of Roman law, the original language of many of its legal texts would have been Latin.
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