Honorius

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 precarious and chaotic. In 410, Rome was sacked for the first time since the Battle of the Allia almost 800 years prior.

Family

Honorius was born to Emperor Theodosius I and Empress Aelia Flaccilla on 9 September 384 in Constantinople. He was the brother of Arcadius and Pulcheria. In 386, his mother died, and in 387, Theodosius married Galla who had taken a temporary refuge in Thessaloniki with her family, including her brother Valentinian II and mother Justina, away from usurper Magnus Maximus. Theodosius and Galla had a daughter, Honorius's half-sister Galla Placidia. Honorius, Arcadius, and Galla Placidia were the only children of Theodosius to survive into adulthood.

Emperor

Early reign

After holding the consulate at the age of two in 386, Honorius was declared augustus by his father Theodosius I, and thus co-ruler, on 23 January 393, after the death of Valentinian II and the usurpation of Eugenius. When Theodosius died in January 395, Honorius and Arcadius divided the Empire. Honorius became Western Roman emperor at the age of ten.
During the early part of his reign, Honorius depended on the military leadership of the general Stilicho, who had been appointed by Theodosius and was of mixed Vandal and Roman ancestry. To strengthen his bonds with the young emperor and to make his grandchild an imperial heir, Stilicho married his daughter Maria to Honorius. The epithalamion written for the occasion by Stilicho's court poet Claudian survives. Honorius was also influenced by the Popes of Rome: Pope Innocent I and Western bishops may have successfully persuaded Honorius to write to his brother, arguing for convening a synod in Thessalonica.
At first Honorius based his capital in Milan, but when the Visigoths under King Alaric I entered Italy in 401 he moved his capital to the coastal city of Ravenna, which was protected by a ring of marshes and strong fortifications. While the new capital was easier to defend, it was poorly situated to allow Roman forces to protect Central Italy from the increasingly regular threat of barbarian incursions. It is significant that the Emperor's residence remained in Ravenna until the overthrow of Romulus Augustulus in 476. The greater ease with which Ravenna could be defended was probably the reason why Ravenna was chosen not only as the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy, but also for the seat of the Byzantine exarchs as well.

Stilicho and the defence of Italy

Honorius's reign experienced continued barbarian incursions into Gaul, Italy and Hispania. At the same time, a host of usurpers rose up. File:Diptych of Honorius.jpg|thumb|alt=Illustration of Honorius|Honorius on the consular diptych of Anicius Petronius Probus
First Gildo, the comes of Africa and magister utriusque militiae per Africam in Northern Africa, led a revolt which lasted for two years. Stilicho eventually subdued it through the local command of Mascezel, Gildo's brother.
The next crisis was the Visigothic invasion of Italy in 402 under the command of their king, Alaric I. Stilicho was absent in Raetia in the latter months of 401, when Alaric, who was also the Eastern Empire's magister militum in Illyricum, suddenly marched with a large army through the Julian Alps and entered Italy.
Stilicho hurried back to protect Honorius and the legions of Gaul and Britain were summoned to defend Italy. Honorius, at Milan, was besieged by Alaric, who marched into Liguria. Stilicho narrowly defeated Alaric at Pollentia, on the river Tanarus on Easter Day. Alaric then moved to Verona, with Stilicho in pursuit, and the two fought an inconclusive battle. The Visigoths were allowed to retreat back to Illyricum. In 405 Radagaisus led a vast army across the Danube and invaded Italy. The ensuing war brought devastation to the heart of the Empire, until Stilicho defeated the invaders in 406 and recruited most of them into his own army. Simultaneously, in 405 or 406, a number of tribes, according to some sources including Vandals, Alans, and Suebi, crossed the Rhine and invaded Gaul.
The situation in Britain was even more difficult. The British provinces were isolated, lacking support from the Empire, and the soldiers supported the revolts of Marcus, Gratian, and Constantine III. Leaving his son Constans to rule over Britain, Constantine invaded Gaul in 407 and occupied Arles. In 410 the emperor issued the Rescript of Honorius in reply to a British plea for assistance against local barbarian incursions. Preoccupied with the Visigoths, Honorius lacked any military capability to assist the distant province. According to the sixth century Byzantine scholar Zosimus, "Honorius wrote letters to the cities in Britain, bidding them to guard themselves." This sentence is located randomly in the middle of a discussion of southern Italy; no further mention of Britain is made, which has led some modern academics to suggest that the rescript does not apply to Britain, but to Bruttium in Italy.
The western empire was effectively overstretched due to the massive invasion of Alans, Suebi and Vandals who, although they had been repulsed from Italy in 406, moved into Gaul on 31 December 406, and arrived in Hispania in 409. In early 408, Stilicho attempted to strengthen his position at court by marrying his second daughter, Thermantia, to Honorius after the death of the Empress Maria in 407. Another invasion by Alaric was prevented in 408, when Stilicho forced the Roman Senate to pay 4,000 pounds of gold to persuade the Goths to leave Italy.
File:Honorius and Maria Cameo.png|thumb|Cameo of Honorius and his wife Maria, probably recarved from an old cameo of Claudius and Agrippina.
Meanwhile, Honorius was at Bononia, on his way from Ravenna to Ticinum, when the news reached him of his brother's death in May 408. He at first was planning to go to Constantinople to help set up the court during the transition from Arcadius to Theodosius II. Summoned from Ravenna for advice, Stilicho advised Honorius not to go, and proceeded to go himself. In Stilicho's absence, a minister named Olympius gained the confidence of Honorius. He convinced the emperor that his father-in-law was conspiring with the barbarians to overthrow him.
On his return to Ravenna, Honorius ordered the arrest and execution of Stilicho. With Stilicho's fall, Honorius moved against all of his former father-in-law's allies, killing and torturing key individuals and ordering the confiscation of the property of anyone who had borne any office while Stilicho was in command. Honorius's wife Thermantia was taken from the imperial throne and given over to her mother; Eucherius, the son of Stilicho, was put to death. The purge also massacred the families of Stilicho's foederati troops, and they defected en masse to Alaric.
In October 408, Alaric returned to Italy to claim more gold and land to settle in, as feudatory vassals of the Empire, which Stilicho had promised him. The city bought him off with 5,000 lbs of gold and 30,000 lbs of silver after a short siege with Rome on the verge of famine.
A palace revolution in Honorius's court led meanwhile to a change of ministers, and those hostile to the Goths were replaced by officers favourable to Alaric, who began peace negotiations. While the embassy was absent, a new change occurred at Ravenna, and Honorius disclaimed the peace which was on the verge of being concluded. The enraged Alaric returned to Rome in late 409 and forced the Senate to elect Priscus Attalus as emperor, who ratified Alaric's former treaty with Stilicho.

Sack of Rome

Rome had been under Visigothic siege since shortly after Stilicho's deposition and execution in the summer of 408. In 410, the Eastern Roman Empire sent six legions from Ravenna to aid Honorius, but Alaric ambushed the legions on the way, and only a handful of them reached Rome. Lacking a strong general to control the by-now mostly Germanic Roman army, Honorius could do little to attack Alaric's forces directly, and apparently adopted the only strategy he could in the situation: wait passively for the Visigoths to grow weary and spend the time marshalling what forces he could.
To counter Attalus, Honorius tried to negotiate with Alaric in addition to restricting grain shipments to Rome from North Africa. Attalus dispatched an army to conquer Africa and restore the grain supply to Rome, but the governor, Heraclian, who was loyal to Honorius, wiped out this force as soon as it landed on the coast. As Rome was dependent on North African grain for sustenance, the populace was faced with the prospect of famine, and they blamed Attalus for the impending calamity. Growing desperate, Attalus searched for means of pacifying the people, but found himself, in consequence of conciliatory expenditures, incapable of satisfying his debt to Alaric, and thus alienated both Romans and Goths. Confronted with the increasing unpopularity and truculence of Attalus, Alaric dethroned him in 410 and proposed to renew negotiations with Honorius. Honorius, overconfident at Attalus's fall and the victory of his general Heraclian over Attalus's African expeditionary force, refused negotiation, and declared Alaric the eternal enemy of the Republic.
Stricken by starvation, Rome's defences were opened to Alaric and the Visigoths poured in. The city had not been under the control of a foreign force since an invasion of Gauls some eight centuries before. The sack itself was relatively mild; for example, churches and religious statuary went unharmed. The psychological blow to the contemporary Roman world was considerably more painful. The shock of this event reverberated from Britain to Jerusalem, and inspired Augustine to write his magnum opus, The City of God.