Theodosius I
Theodosius I, also known as Theodosius the Great, was 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, but did so on terms disadvantageous to the empire, with the Goths remaining politically autonomous within Roman territory, albeit as nominal allies.
Born in Hispania, Theodosius was the son of a high-ranking general of the same name, Theodosius the Elder, under whose guidance he rose through the ranks of the Roman army. Theodosius held independent command in Moesia in 374, where he had some success against the invading Sarmatians. Not long afterwards, he was forced into retirement, and his father was executed under obscure circumstances. Theodosius soon regained his position following a series of intrigues and executions at Emperor Gratian's court. In 379, after the eastern Roman emperor Valens was killed at the Battle of Adrianople against the Goths, Gratian appointed Theodosius as a successor with orders to take charge of the military emergency. The new emperor's resources and depleted armies were not sufficient to drive the invaders out; in 382 the Goths were allowed to settle south of the Danube as autonomous allies of the empire. In 386, Theodosius signed a treaty with the Sasanian Empire which partitioned the long-disputed Kingdom of Armenia and secured a durable peace between the two powers.
Theodosius was a strong adherent of the Christian doctrine of consubstantiality and an opponent of Arianism. He convened a council of bishops at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, which confirmed the former as orthodoxy and the latter as a heresy. Although Theodosius interfered little in the functioning of traditional pagan cults and appointed non-Christians to high offices, he failed to prevent or punish the damaging of several Hellenistic temples of classical antiquity, such as the Serapeum of Alexandria, by Christian zealots.
During the earlier part of his reign, Theodosius ruled the eastern provinces, while the west was overseen by the emperor Gratian. In 386 an arranged marriage with Valentinian's sister Galla served to consolidate Theodosius's political and military power. Theodosius sponsored several measures to improve Constantinople, his capital and main place of residence—notably his expansion of the Forum Tauri, which became the biggest public square known in antiquity. Theodosius invaded the western empire twice, in 388 against the usurper Magnus Maximus, who had killed Gratian, and in 394 against Eugenius, who had been named emperor after Valentinian died in suspicious circumstances. Theodosius's final military victory in September 394 made him ruler of the entire empire, but he died a few months later. His two young sons, previously made his co-emperors, jointly succeeded him: Arcadius in the eastern half of the empire and Honorius in the west.
Theodosius was said to have been a diligent administrator, austere in his habits, merciful, and a devout Christian. In the centuries after his death, Theodosius was regarded as a champion of Christian orthodoxy who decisively stamped out paganism; however, modern scholars tend to see this as an interpretation of history by Christian writers more than as an accurate representation of actual history. He is fairly credited with presiding over a revival in classical art that some historians have termed a "Theodosian renaissance". Although his pacification of the Goths secured peace for the Empire during his lifetime, their status as an autonomous entity within Roman borders caused problems for succeeding emperors. Theodosius has also received criticism for defending his own dynastic interests at the cost of two civil wars. His two sons proved weak and incapable rulers, and they presided over a period marked by foreign invasions and court intrigues, seriously weakening the empire. However, the descendants of Theodosius did rule the Roman world for the next six decades, and the east–west division endured—until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century.
Background
Theodosius was born in Hispania on 11 January, probably in the year 347. His father of the same name, Theodosius the Elder was a successful and high-ranking general under the western Roman emperor Valentinian I, and his mother was called Thermantia. The family appear to have been minor landed aristocrats in Hispania, although it is not clear if this social status went back several generations or if Theodosius the Elder was simply awarded land there for his military service. Their roots to Hispania were nevertheless probably long-standing, since various relatives of the future emperor Theodosius are likewise attested as being from there, and Theodosius himself was ubiquitously associated in the ancient literary sources and panegyrics with the image of fellow Spanish-born emperor Trajan. Theodosius, however, never again visited the Iberian peninsula after becoming emperor.Very little is recorded of the upbringing of Theodosius. The 5th-century author Theodoret claimed the future emperor grew up and was educated in his Iberian homeland, but his testimony is unreliable. One modern historian instead thinks Theodosius must have grown up among the army, participating in his father's campaigns throughout the provinces, as was customary at the time for families with a tradition of military service. One source says he received a decent education and developed a particular interest in history, which Theodosius then valued as a guide to his own conduct throughout life.
Career
Theodosius is first attested accompanying his father to Britain on his expedition in 368–369 to suppress the "Great Conspiracy", a concerted Celtic and Germanic invasion of the island provinces. After probably serving in his father's staff on further campaigns, Theodosius received his first independent command by 374 when he was appointed the dux of the province of Moesia Prima in the Danube. In the autumn of 374, he successfully repulsed an incursion of Sarmatians on his sector of the frontier and forced them into submission. Not long afterwards, however, under mysterious circumstances, Theodosius's father suddenly fell from imperial favor and was executed; it was at this time too that the future emperor felt compelled to retire to his estates in Hispania.Although these events are poorly documented, historians usually attribute this fall from grace to the machinations of a court faction led by Maximinus, a senior civilian official. According to another theory, the future emperor Theodosius lost his father, or his military post, or both, in the purges of high officials that resulted from the accession of the 4-year-old emperor Valentinian II in November 375. Theodosius's period away from service in Hispania, during which he was said to have received threats from those responsible for his father's death, did not last long, however, as Maximinus, the probable culprit, was himself removed from power around April 376 and then executed. The emperor Gratian immediately began replacing Maximinus and his associates with relatives of Theodosius in key government positions, indicating the family's full rehabilitation, and by 377 Theodosius himself had regained his command against the Sarmatians.
Theodosius's renewed term of office seems to have gone uneventfully, until news arrived that the eastern Roman emperor, Valens, had been killed at the Battle of Adrianople in August 378 against invading Goths. The disastrous defeat left much of Rome's military leadership dead, discredited, or barbarian in origin, with the result that Theodosius, notwithstanding his own modest record, became the establishment's choice to replace Valens and assume control of the crisis. With the begrudging consent of the western emperor Gratian, Theodosius was formally invested with the purple by a council of officials at Sirmium on 19 January 379.
Reign
Gothic War (376–382)
The immediate problem facing Theodosius upon his accession was how to check the bands of Goths that were laying waste to the Balkans, with an army that had been severely depleted of manpower following the debacle at Adrianople. The western emperor Gratian, who seems to have provided only little immediate assistance, surrendered to Theodosius control of the praetorian prefecture of Illyricum for the duration of the conflict, giving his new colleague full charge of the war effort. Theodosius implemented stern and desperate recruiting measures, resorting to the conscription of farmers and miners. Punishments were instituted for harboring deserters and furnishing unfit recruits, and even self-mutilation did not exempt men from service. Theodosius also admitted large numbers of non-Roman auxiliaries into the army, even Gothic deserters from beyond the Danube. Some of these foreign recruits were exchanged with more reliable Roman garrison troops stationed in Egypt.In the second half of 379, Theodosius and his generals, based at Thessalonica, won some minor victories over individual bands of raiders. However, they suffered at least one serious defeat in 380, which was blamed on the treachery of the new barbarian recruits. During the autumn of 380, a life-threatening illness, from which Theodosius recovered, prompted him to request baptism. Some obscure victories were recorded in official sources around this time, however, and, in November 380, the military situation was found to be sufficiently stable for Theodosius to move his court to Constantinople. There, the emperor enjoyed a propaganda victory when, in January 381, he received the visit and submission of a minor Gothic leader, Athanaric. By this point, however, Theodosius seems to have no longer believed that the Goths could be completely ejected from Roman territory. After Athanaric died that very same month, the emperor gave him a funeral with full honors, impressing his entourage and signaling to the enemy that the Empire was disposed to negotiate terms. During the campaigning season of 381, reinforcements from Gratian drove the Goths out of the Diocese of Macedonia and Thessaly into the Diocese of Thrace, while, in the latter sector, Theodosius or one of his generals repulsed an incursion by a group of Sciri and Huns across the Danube.
Following negotiations which likely lasted at least several months, the Romans and Goths finally concluded a settlement on 3 October 382. In return for military service to Rome, the Goths were allowed to settle some tracts of Roman land south of the Danube. The terms were unusually favorable to the Goths, reflecting the fact that they were entrenched in Roman territory and had not been driven out. Namely, instead of fully submitting to Roman authority, they were allowed to remain autonomous under their own leaders, and thus could remain a strong, unified community or force. The Goths now settled within the Empire would fight for the Romans, but largely as a national contingent, as opposed to being fully integrated into the Roman forces.
File:The Roman Empire ca 400 AD.png|left|thumb|Roman provinces along the Ister, showing the Roman dioceses of Thrace, Dacia, Pannonia and Italia Annonaria on the empire's northern frontier