Honorius’ half-sister, Galla Placidia, plays a key role in the development of Ravenna, leaving an indelible imperial mark upon it. She was quite an unusual figure, not only in her turbulent life but also in her ancestry. Both through her parents and her experience she embodied the shifting character of the Roman empire, in which imperial rule came to be shared by different emperors in East and West who were interrelated, who governed by agreement and constantly competed for seniority and greater power, while non-Roman military leaders, often Christian, challenged the ruling families. Galla Placidia was born in Constantinople, where her mother died in 394, and her father Theodosius then ordered Serena to bring her to the West, as we have seen. After his death in January 395, her half-brother Honorius became nominally emperor of the West, and Galla Placidia, her nurse, Elpidia, and some personal servants settled in Milan close to Serena and Stilicho and their three older children.
At the imperial court in Milan, she would have heard stories about her grandmother, the powerful Empress Justina, who had vigorously promoted the Arian form of Christianity in the city against the catholic definition supported by Bishop Ambrose. She would have learned about her uncle Valentinian II who had been forced to flee from Milan in 387 when Maximus, a usurper, captured the city. The entire imperial family, including her mother, Galla, Valentinian’s younger sister, sailed to the safety of Thessalonike. There, Empress Justina arranged her parents’ marriage, and Theodosius agreed to restore Valentinian II to his throne. From her earliest years as an orphaned princess she carried a keen awareness of her imperial inheritance and of her grandmother Justina’s dominant influence in political developments. In Milan young Galla Placidia also learned more about her parents than her nurses and servants might have been able to tell her in Constantinople.
During her lifetime Galla Placidia moved with ease across the Roman world, from Constantinople to Rome and further west into Gaul and Spain, although these regions were no longer under imperial control. They were, however, part of the new Christendom, a world united in Christian devotion that recognized the rule of Roman and non-Roman alike. Within this once Roman and now greatly expanded universe of faith, Galla Placidia was at home everywhere, although she was to spend the most important part of her adult life in Ravenna.
In 402, when the entire court left Milan for Ravenna, Galla Placidia’s small entourage was also moved out of danger. Now aged about ten years old, she may have been accommodated in a palace in the newly designated imperial capital, close to Honorius, or with Serena and Stilicho, who also had a house in Rome. It is clear that she knew both cities and witnessed the exciting transformation of Ravenna as new buildings were constructed to house the court, the offices of government and troops, and as Bishop Ursus began work on the new cathedral. Serena probably arranged Placidia’s education in the manner appropriate for a princess of the ruling dynasty, reading classical literature in Latin and Greek and studying imperial history. If Claudian’s speech celebrating the marriage of Honorius to Maria, the eldest daughter of Stilicho and Serena, may be taken as an example of such an imperial upbringing, Serena read works of literature with her, taught her to sew and embroider and trained her in the appropriate behaviour for an empress.1
Three years after the court’s move to Ravenna, on 31 December 405, Germanic forces broke through the Rhine frontier in a spectacular attack across the river. In Britain, Roman troops promoted their general Constantine to lead them in a rebellion, which spread across the Channel into northern Gaul. There he claimed imperial status as Constantine III. Despite a strong military response by the general, Sarus, sent from Ravenna to check the revolt, by late 407 Constantine had succeeded in establishing his authority at Arles, and issued coinage in his own name, while Sueves, Vandals and Alans continued their devastation of Gaul and advanced towards the Pyrenees. Stilicho took a major role in defeating these invaders, but the combination of an internal revolt with the incursion of such large numbers of barbarian forces greatly reduced imperial control of western territory. In the resulting turmoil and confusion, imperial officials failed to maintain military administration, leaving cities and rural landowners to defend themselves as best they could. In April 406 Honorius had issued a law promising freedom to all slaves who volunteered to fight alongside their owners against the invaders, itself an index of the growing desperation.2
In addition to the violent disturbances north of the Alps, Visigothic forces persisted in their efforts to invade Italy, as Stilicho had predicted. He then decided to use the Goths against the usurper, Constantine III, and made an alliance with their king, Alaric. As a result, Honorius was obliged to appoint Alaric as count of Illyricum, a military command under Stilicho’s overall authority. But when the implementation of one specific military plan was delayed and Roman forces failed to participate as agreed, the Gothic leader demanded to be paid for his services, stating that 4,000 lbs of gold was due. Since the imperial court had insufficient funds, early in 408 Stilicho and Honorius went to Rome to try and persuade the Senate to provide the necessary money. The general’s policy of conciliating Alaric was put to the test: after Stilicho’s first speech the Senate decided against it and in favour of fighting the Goths; after his second, however, they reviewed that position and accepted the demand for 4,000 lbs of gold. Although the sum was large, it had the desired effect of sending Alaric off.
On 1 May 408 Emperor Arcadius died in Constantinople, leaving a seven-year-old son, Theodosius II, as his heir, and generating a major crisis. Honorius now became the senior emperor with authority over his junior colleague in the East, who would not be able to rule alone for a decade. While Honorius and Stilicho argued about how best to secure this authority, other advisers insinuated that Stilicho was trying to assume imperial power for himself or to set up his own son, Eucherius, as ruler. Taking advantage of these rumours Alaric invaded Italy again, prompting one section of the Roman army at Pavia to mutiny. Under this combination of political and military threats Stilicho found himself without sufficient troops or allies and sought asylum in a church in Ravenna. Honorius then ordered his death and Stilicho was beheaded on 22 August 408. The emperor not only had his own father-in-law killed, he also issued orders for the arrest of Eucherius and sent his wife, Empress Thermantia, back to her mother Serena in Rome. All Stilicho’s supporters were pursued; Eucherius was eventually executed and, in October 408, Serena was put to death in Rome, allegedly for sending support to the Goths (some rumoured that Galla Placidia had consented to her death). The conflict among the Romans opened the way for Alaric to advance on Rome.3
In the winter of 408 Alaric began the first of three sieges of the city, which caused extreme hardship because the Goths secured control over all access and grain supplies. Despite a negotiated peace that briefly lifted the first siege, Honorius in Ravenna refused to honour the terms and, in April 409, the Goths returned. Embassies went back and forth between the Senate in Rome and the court in Ravenna, while Alaric repeated his desire for a treaty with the imperial government and his appointment as supreme military commander of Roman forces in the West, a demand regularly denied by the emperor. With the death of her guardians, Stilicho and Serena, Galla Placidia, now aged about eighteen, was in Rome and in extreme danger. She may have tried to leave the city, perhaps to flee to Ravenna, but in a moment of high drama she was taken hostage by the Goths who kept her in their camp.4
Late in 409 Alaric forced the Senate to elect a rival emperor within Rome, to replace Honorius, and insisted on his own appointment as supreme military commander. The chosen emperor, Priscus Attalus, immediately agreed that Alaric should lead a force to besiege Ravenna, where Honorius found himself threatened by the brilliant Visigothic commander. He prepared to flee from the city by boat, and was only dissuaded by the arrival of a military contingent of about 4,000 troops sent from the East and funds raised by the loyal administration in Africa, vindicating the choice of Ravenna as the capital.5 Thus reinforced, Honorius ordered an attack on the Goths during a truce when negotiations were underway. This so infuriated Alaric that he immediately went back to Rome to besiege it for a third time. Had negotiations continued, Galla Placidia might perhaps have been released and a new settlement with the Goths agreed.
Instead, Rome capitulated rapidly. On 24 August 410 Alaric’s Gothic followers entered the city and sacked it for three days. This was the symbol of unimaginable imperial decline that traumatized St Augustine in Hippo in North Africa, was mourned by St Jerome in Jerusalem, and was later attributed to the decline of pagan religious rituals by the historian Zosimus in Constantinople. There was no food in the city so Alaric had no choice but to leave the sacked capital.
Laden with booty, Alaric led the Gothic force south, taking with them the ex-emperor Attalus and a group of Roman aristocratic hostages including Galla Placidia.6 The victors set off with their distinguished prisoners in search of supplies and a more permanent settlement, hoping to find both in Sicily. But the plan to cross to the island was thwarted by a storm and they had to turn back. Alaric fell ill and died before the end of the year and his brother-in-law and successor, Athaulf, realized that the Goths were trapped in the boot of Italy without naval forces or seafaring skills. After devastating the southern provinces, he therefore marched the Goths back up the Italian peninsula, across the Alps and into southern Gaul. They had been on the move for nearly a decade, unable to convince the Roman authorities of their value as military allies who wanted to settle on land they could control, on the model of Theodosius I’s grant made to previous Gothic tribes who had moved into the eastern part of the Roman empire in the 380s. And they took with them their prize hostage, the princess Galla Placidia, whose half-brother, Emperor Honorius, remained safely behind the walls of Ravenna.
Galla Placidia could hardly have expected to spend over three years in the wagons of the Goths moving from place to place. She was presumably treated well, both as an imperial princess and as a valuable bargaining chip, but however honoured the Roman hostages were, their lives must have been uncomfortable and their future uncertain as the Goths switched sides in numerous battles with Roman forces. Nor could she have imagined that she would marry the Gothic king, yet on 1 January 414 Placidia, now aged about twenty-one, was married to Athaulf. The contemporary historian Olympiodoros, writing in Greek in the East with detailed information from eye-witnesses, reports: ‘Placidia, dressed in royal raiment, sat in a hall decorated in the Roman manner and by her side sat Ataulf wearing a Roman general’s cloak and other Roman clothing.’ Among his gifts to his wife were ‘fifty handsome young men dressed in silk clothes, each bearing aloft two very large dishes, one full of gold the other full of precious – or rather priceless – stones which had been carried off by the Goths at the sack of Rome’. First, the Roman senator and ex-emperor Attalus sang the appropriate wedding song, and then the other aristocratic hostages joined in to celebrate the marriage in traditional Roman style.7
This most unusual wedding reveals a highly symbolic development, one that had a critical influence in Galla Placidia’s life: the Goths who had captured her wished to display their commitment to Roman customs; the imperial princess who had been held prisoner recognized the strengths of the Goths and used the celebration to influence her new husband. The wedding followed entirely traditional Roman procedures, in which religion played no part though bride and groom were in fact both Christian, albeit of conflicting ‘orthodoxies’. It generated a symbol of a new civilization, based on the combination of Gothic military and Roman cultural traditions. Later in 414, or early 415, the couple celebrated the birth of their first child, a son, naming him Theodosius after his maternal grandfather in traditional Roman style. In this way Galla Placidia presented him to the Goths as heralding a new union of Roman and Goth. Athaulf announced his intention to restore the Roman empire in a Gothic form, in which their son would rule over both communities. This would recognize the Goths’ capacity to sustain the Roman empire, integrating them into its administration, enhancing their status and spreading the use of Latin and a broader Roman-style education among them. Athaulf incorporated several elements of Roman law into his own legal code, probably under Galla Placidia’s influence.8
Since very few non-Roman authors left any account of their peoples’ invasions of the Roman empire in the West, these have nearly always been understood as Roman and Christian writers experienced them: essentially violent, destructive and bloody. As a result, the fact that some groups of barbarians wanted above all to be accepted as federates of the Roman system of government, who would fight loyally for the emperor, has often been overlooked. Alaric’s search for a territory where his people could settle, obey imperial laws and live peacefully led to Athaulf’s marriage to Galla Placidia – a personal way of declaring the co-operation of different cultures.
The great ambition of the marriage was wrecked by the death of little Theodosius in 415, when the Goths had crossed the Pyrenees into Spain. He was buried in a silver coffin in a church somewhere near Barcelona. Shortly after, Athaulf was murdered by one of his grooms, presumably working for Sigeric, who succeeded to Athaulf’s regal position and humiliated his widow by forcing her to walk 20km out of the city in front of his chariot and back. Although he was quickly replaced, Galla Placidia remained a hostage.9
Galla Placidia’s early life has given historians of all times tremendous opportunity for imaginative reconstructions. Did she ‘throw in her lot with the Goths’ outside Rome because she believed they represented a more viable future than that offered by her half-brother Honorius? Did she imagine that she could survive as a Roman princess living among them? If so, how could the daughter of an emperor, educated to be empress, have tolerated the ignominy of marrying a Goth? Or did she fall in love with the young chieftain Athaulf during the three long years of being moved in wooden wagons over cobbled and unpaved roads?10
Such speculations about Placidia’s agency are a modern misconception about the degree of individual choice open to imperial women. Because she had been raised by members of the ruling dynasty to fulfil the roles expected of an imperial princess, she had an innate knowledge of her status: she personified imperial traditions and duties, which would have empowered her to negotiate her position among non-Romans to a greater or lesser effect. But her personal views were shaped by a concept of the imperial feminine, which endowed women of the ruling dynasty with the potential power of leadership. Galla Placidia had been trained to perform that role to the highest standard. At the imperial court in Ravenna, and in Rome with Serena and Stilicho, her education had been a preparation for an imperial life, even if she found herself married to a Goth.
By 413 Honorius and his general Constantius were trying to negotiate her release, but Galla Placidia may not have been aware of their efforts. In 415 after the deaths of her son and her husband, however, her future as a hostage among the Goths cannot have seemed very promising.