Introduction
In recent decades the topic of imperial women in late antiquity has been a popular one in modern scholarship.Footnote 1 Nevertheless, Constantia, the posthumous daughter of Constantius II and later wife of the emperor Gratian, receives scant attention in scholarship on this period, while those works which do mention her usually relegate her to a passing reference in a footnote.Footnote 2 Modern scholars can hardly be blamed for their reticence: ancient sources also rarely accord her more than the briefest notice. Yet Constantia, born to Constantius II’s third wife Faustina a few months after the emperor’s death, was both her father’s only child, and the only grandchild of Constantine I known to have lived beyond childhood. Born as the family itself declined, throughout her short life Constantia remained a coveted connection to the Constantinian era, as both the usurper Procopius and the Valentinian dynasty recognised. And although, even after her marriage to the young Augustus Gratian in 374, Constantia remains largely invisible in the ancient sources (much like other empresses of the house of Valentinian), as we shall see, the references made by the ruling dynasty to their new familial connection suggests that she played a much more important role in imperial propaganda than previously acknowledged. The information which does survive on her short life is significant for our understanding of the continued value of the Constantinian name in dynastic politics beyond the period of the family’s rule. At the time of her birth in late 361 or early 362, the reign of Constantia’s dynasty stretched back to the late third century, and the family’s legacy would continue to be felt in many forms over the following decades and even centuries, through legislation, coin images, statuary, religious policies, and even in the acclamation of later emperors as ‘new Constantines’.Footnote 3 This paper aims, therefore, to bring together for the first time all available evidence relating to Constantia’s life, and to show her importance in the context of late fourth century imperial and dynastic politics. Constantia deserves more than a footnote.
1. Constantius II and the Search for an Heir
It is a surprising fact that, although there were many children born to the Constantinian family in the first half of the fourth century, by the 350s very few potential heirs remained. The purge of the family after the death of Constantine I in 337 had left the late emperor’s three surviving sons (Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans), two daughters (Constantina and Helena), and three nephews (Gallus and Julian, the sons of Constantine’s half-brother Julius Constantius, and Nepotianus, the son of Constantine’s half-sister Eutropia).Footnote 4
Constantine I was remarkably short on grandchildren. A law preserved in the Theodosian Code and dated to 322 famously records the birth of a child to Crispus, the emperor’s eldest son, who was executed in mysterious circumstances in 326, and his otherwise unknown wife Helena.Footnote 5 The fate of the child is unknown, and the lack of any further mention of them in other sources suggests the child died in infancy. Constantine I’s second son, Constantine II, who survived his father to rule jointly with his younger brothers for only three years (337-340) is known to have been married, but not to have produced any children.Footnote 6 Constantine I’s youngest son, Constans, though betrothed in childhood to Olympias, daughter of the long-serving praetorian prefect Ablabius, never married, and the betrothal was in all likelihood dissolved when Ablabius fell from power c. 337 shortly after Constantine I’s death.Footnote 7 Constans died in the 350s, still only in his 20s, and without any known issue.Footnote 8
It is Constantius II, therefore, the longest-reigning son of Constantine I (Augustus from 337 until his death in 361), to whom we must turn in the search for a direct heir. That this was an issue which concerned the emperor himself is suggested both by his three marriages, and also by the rumours preserved in a number of ancient sources. Constantius was first married in the 330s, as Eusebius reports, to his cousin, a daughter of Julius Constantius, whose name has not survived in the sources.Footnote 9 The date of her death is also unknown, and the union bore no children, but by 354 Constantius had married a second wife, Eusebia, from a prominent senatorial family.Footnote 10 Although, as Julian asserted, having won back his empire, however, after the defeat of Magnentius in 353, Constantius sought to marry ‘. . . that he might beget sons to inherit his honour and power’, Eusebia proved unable to conceive.Footnote 11 When Constantius raised Julian to the rank of Caesar in 355, he also gave his sister Helena in marriage to the new Caesar,Footnote 12 and the empress Eusebia’s anxiety over her own lack of children, and fear that the Caesar Julian’s wife might succeed where she had failed, is apparent from a number of sources. According to Ammianus, Helena’s fertility led Eusebia to launch a nefarious plot in 357:
Constantius’ sister Helena, wife of Julian Caesar, had been brought to Rome under pretence of affection, but the reigning queen, Eusebia, was plotting against her; she herself had been childless all her life, and by her wiles she coaxed Helena to drink a rare potion, so that as often as she was with child she should have a miscarriage. For once before, in Gaul, when she had borne a baby boy, she lost it through this machination: a midwife had been bribed with a sum of money, and as soon as the child was born cut the umbilical cord more than was right, and so killed it; such great pains and so much thought were taken that this most valiant man might have no heir.Footnote 13
Not only is Eusebia blamed here for inducing Helena to drink the dangerous potion, but she is also implicated in the reference to the bribed midwife attending the birth of Helena and Julian’s earlier child.Footnote 14 And while Ammianus is only reporting rumours which may have had no basis in truth, their existence may testify to awareness of Eusebia’s anxiety to produce an heir for Constantius. The birth of such an heir would indeed have avoided Constantius’ need to name his cousins Gallus and later Julian as Caesars in the 350s, when Ammianus reports that the responsibility of governing the whole empire alone was weighing upon him.Footnote 15 In later years, when on the march against Constantius for control of the empire, Julian was to assert that the emperor blamed ‘his unhappy state of childlessness’ on his involvement in the murder of family members in 337.Footnote 16 A later source, Philostorgius, reports that in the late 350s Eusebia had been afflicted with a disease of the womb, whereupon Constantius had called upon a healer whom he had earlier exiled, one Theophilus the Indian, to come and cure his wife.Footnote 17 Yet no ministrations were able to assist the empress in her desperation to conceive, and she died in 360 or perhaps early 361.Footnote 18
Constantius married his third wife Faustina in 361,Footnote 19 who fell pregnant soon after – but Constantius was never to witness the birth of his longed-for child. Among the frightening omens of death Constantius experienced (at least according to Ammianus) was a dream in which the ghost of his father, Constantine I, held out to Constantius a fair child, but when he took the infant and set it on his own lap, the ball Constantius held in his right hand fell loose and was thrown a great distance. Constantius is said to have believed the dream foretold a change in the state.Footnote 20 Ammianus makes no reference to the unborn child Constantius’ wife carried at this point, yet the emperor’s concern about the fate of the empire under either this infant or his cousin Julian are difficult to overlook as relevant to the nightmare.
While on the march west against his rebellious Caesar, Julian, Constantius fell ill with a fever and died at Mopsucrenai in November 361 at the age of 44.Footnote 21 He reportedly left instructions naming Julian as his heir, and gave commissions and legacies to those dear to him, presumably entrusting Julian also with the safety of Faustina and her unborn child.Footnote 22 Ammianus adds only that Constantius, ‘. . . left his wife with child, and the posthumous daughter to whom she afterwards gave birth was called by his name, and when she grew up was united in marriage with Gratianus.’Footnote 23 This daughter, Constantia, as a rare surviving link to the ruling house of Constantine following this period of familial murders and childless marriages, would go on to play a key role as a symbol of her dynasty over the following decades.
2. The Usurpation of Procopius
The 360s were a turbulent period in Roman imperial politics. Following the death of Constantius II, Julian, the last emperor of the house of Constantine, was to reign for only just over 18 months before his death in battle against the armies of Persia in June 363. The reign of his successor, Jovian, was even shorter, lasting a mere eight months before his mysterious death, apparently an accident caused by charcoal poisoning, on 17th February, 364.Footnote 24 Thereafter the empire was to find some measure of stability under the Valentinian dynasty. Valentinian I was elected emperor on 25th February, 364 after Jovian’s death, and promptly raised his brother Valens as his co-Augustus, pre-empting any need for a further imperial election if Valentinian I died unexpectedly like his two predecessors.Footnote 25 Valentinian chose to concentrate his efforts on the western realm, dispatching his brother Valens to rule the east.
Constantia, the posthumous daughter of Constantius II, had outlived her dynasty’s rule before she was even five years old. No source provides information as to her early life or even whereabouts in her first years – the context, however, for her next appearance in the records suggests that she and her mother were resident in Constantinople. In September 365 a usurper named Procopius was proclaimed Augustus in the city.Footnote 26 This Procopius asserted kinship with the late emperor Julian and through him to the house of Constantine, though his link to the Constantinians seems to have been a tie of marriage rather than blood – the most likely connection being that Procopius was related to Julian’s mother Basilina, who was not herself a blood relative of the family of Constantine.Footnote 27 Nevertheless, Procopius asserted that he belonged to ‘the loftiest royal line’, in contrast with the ‘base Pannonian’ now occupying the eastern throne, and that in claiming the throne he aimed not ‘to seize what belongs to another, but to restore himself to the possession of his ancestral majesty.’Footnote 28
During Julian’s Persian campaign Procopius had been given command of a detachment of troops as a comes, and upon his cousin’s death he had accompanied Julian’s body to Tarsus for burial.Footnote 29 Under Jovian, Procopius had apparently retired to family estates in Cappadocia, but for unexplained reasons under Valens he had gone into hiding, emerging in Constantinople to be proclaimed Augustus at the baths of Anastasia – a Constantinian civic benefaction no doubt chosen with the intent of emphasising Procopius’ proclaimed dynastic claim to the throne.Footnote 30 Indeed, as scholars have observed it is likely Procopius’ elevation at Constantinople was also calculated to capitalise on local loyalties to the family.Footnote 31 Long-term imperial residence in Constantinople was unusual during the 360s, and Procopius’ usurpation there was doubtless intended to appeal to local elites, many of whom may have owed their status in Constantine’s new imperial city to the former ruling dynasty.Footnote 32 Procopius’ assertions of legitimacy, which he based in part also on the claim that his cousin Julian had presented him with a purple cloak at the outset of the Persian campaign with instructions to claim the throne in the event of his death,Footnote 33 were not helped by the disorganised nature of his acclamation as reported in the sources, though these accounts are all tainted by knowledge of Procopius’ ultimate failure.Footnote 34 According to Ammianus (and in spite of the rumour of Julian’s gift of such a garment), no purple robe could be found for Procopius, so the usurper donned a gold tunic and waived a piece of purple cloth in his hand.Footnote 35
Procopius was clearly in need of a means of bolstering his claim, and found it in the person of the five-year old princess Constantia and her mother Faustina. According to Ammianus, in Procopius’ attempt to gain the support of the imperial armies:
There was found, besides, a very favourable means of winning them over, namely, that Procopius took in his arms the little daughter of Constantius, whose memory they honoured, and carried her about, claiming kinship with Julian, the former emperor. And he gained another timely advantage in that Faustina, the girl’s mother, happened to be present when he had received some insignia forming a part of the imperial adornment.Footnote 36
The persuasiveness of the child Constantia’s presence in winning over supporters to Procopius’ cause is strong testament to military loyalty to the memory of the Constantinian dynasty, cleverly exploited by Procopius.Footnote 37 It was essential to Procopius’ cause to maintain control of Constantia and her mother, and to prevent them falling into the hands of the Valentinians and thereby depriving the usurper of his most persuasive source of legitimacy. And indeed, the usurper’s employment of the child Constantia in his cause did not stop at carrying her about: Procopius allegedly kept Faustina and her daughter constantly with him, even on the battlefield. According to Ammianus’ account, when the time came for the forces of Valens to attack those of Procopius, there was a noticeable reluctance on the part of Valens’ army:
. . . he was met with a general and obstinate resistance, for this reason in particular – that his enemy (as has been mentioned) both on the march and when they were almost in battle array, carried about with him in a litter the little daughter of Constantius and her mother Faustina; and thereby had inflamed the passions of the soldiers to fight more bravely in defence of the imperial stock, with which he claimed that he himself was connected.Footnote 38
As Lenski observes, Procopius paraded the young Constantia and her mother ‘as living emblems of his dynastic claim’, to persuade his followers that they were fighting on behalf of the rightful imperial house.Footnote 39 It is worth bearing in mind that these events occurred only five years after the death of Constantius, and many at Constantinople and in the army particularly would clearly remember the rule of the Constantinian dynasty.
Procopius’ flaunting of these ‘living emblems’ certainly did meet with some notable successes, both in the form of support from Roman generals and from troops who had previously served under Constantinian emperors. According to Ammianus, certain commanders who had served under Constantius II joined the usurpation, such as the magistri militum Gomoarius and Agilo.Footnote 40 Yet others, such as Arbitio, remained loyal to Valens.Footnote 41 The willingness of Gothic federate troops to involve themselves in the conflict on Procopius’ side is particularly noteworthy. Eunapius reports upon the capture of these troops (whom he calls ‘Scythians’) by Valens when they were en route to join Procopius.Footnote 42 Apparently the Gothic king, demanding the release of his men, protested that,
. . . he had sent his men to the emperor under the terms of the treaty, to which Valens replied that neither was Procopius emperor nor was there a treaty between him and the Scythians.Footnote 43
There may have been various reasons for the Goths to involve themselves in a Roman civil war, but their avowed motive is of great significance here – that they were persuaded of Procopius’ ties of kinship with the house of Constantine, with whom they had a treaty dating back to 332.Footnote 44 Procopius’ propaganda machine, the strongest aspect of which was his ability to display in his camp little Constantia, the last true Constantinian, was clearly doing its job well.Footnote 45
Although Procopius’ usurpation survived for only eight months before his support disintegrated and the would-be emperor was executed, it was a dangerous enough period for Eunapius to declare that Valens had been only a little way from losing his throne.Footnote 46 Procopius’ use of Faustina and Constantia throughout his rebellion, as Austin writes, as ‘virtual hostages’ was key to his success in winning supporters to his cause and convincing them of the veracity of his claims of kinship to the Constantinian line.Footnote 47 Constantia and her mother were presumably pardoned by Valens, seen as unwilling participants in his usurpation, but their involvement must have served as a serious warning to the new ruling dynasty of the dangers of letting Constantius II’s daughter fall into the wrong hands.Footnote 48
3. The Marriage of Constantia and Gratian
After the fall of Procopius, nothing is heard of Constantia for eight years, and by the time she re-emerges in the sources at the age of c. 13 years, her mother has vanished from the story, presumably due to her death. It is once again from Ammianus that we gain a glimpse of Constantia. When writing of Constantius II’s death, the historian noted that the posthumous daughter born to the late emperor would in time be married to the emperor Gratian.Footnote 49 In 374 that time had come. Gratian was the eldest son of the western emperor Valentinian I, in 367 at the age of 8 raised to the rank of Augustus to rule alongside his father and his uncle Valens, and by 374 the young emperor was 15 years old.Footnote 50
Valentinian I and his son maintained their principal residence at Trier at this time, and Constantia’s marriage presumably took place there. Ammianus reports on an alarming moment on the princess’ journey (presumably from Constantinople) to the western court:
. . . the daughter of Constantius, when being conducted to marry Gratianus, was very nearly captured while she was taking food in a public villa called Pristensis, but (by the favour of the propitious godhead) Messalla, the governor of the province, was at hand and placed her in a state carriage and took her in all haste back to Sirmium, twenty-six miles away.Footnote 51
The dedication of a bath complex in Calabria in June of 374 by both western emperors (Valentinian I and Gratian) and which interestingly also mentions their queens (reginae) confirms that the marriage had occurred by this point, but little else survives to mark the event.Footnote 52 As soon as she reached a suitable age, therefore, Constantia and Gratian were joined in marriage, a plan probably laid many years before. Although commentators such as Themistius had repeatedly emphasised the achievement of the new Valentinian dynasty in reaching the throne through merit alone and not blood, at the same time denigrating the blood-letting of the Constantinians,Footnote 53 the chance to forge a blood tie with the house of Constantine was irresistible, while Constantia’s marriage to any other high-ranking individual would have been far too great a risk to the new dynasty to be permitted. That the Valentinians were actively courting the Constantinian legacy through marriage is also strongly suggested by the fact that Gratian’s father, Valentinian I, had put aside his first wife (Gratian’s mother) soon after his accession in order to marry Justina, a woman also apparently possessed of Constantinian connections.Footnote 54
When Valentinian I departed from Trier to campaign on the Danube later the same year, he left Gratian and Constantia behind at Trier, perhaps to emphasise Gratian’s newfound adulthood and responsibility.Footnote 55 Constantia’s marriage unfortunately does not, however, make her much more visible in the extant sources. Themistius makes a reference to the marriage in his Oration 13, delivered in 376 at Rome, when he declares that, through mingling his blood with that of the Constantinians, Gratian has ensured the security of Constantinople (and presumably by extension, the empire) – yet even here Constantia is not referred to by name.Footnote 56 As Harries has observed of the imperial women of this period generally, as important as they were as ‘conduits of imperial dynastic continuity’, they tend only to be mentioned in our sources as daughters, wives or mothers of emperors.Footnote 57 The fact that but a few mentions of Constantia survive need not mean she was unimportant, merely that her significance as far as the sources were concerned was focused on her dynastic relationships.
Like her fellow Valentinian empresses, Constantia was never made an Augusta,Footnote 58 and the marriage is not known to have produced any children.Footnote 59 Yet Gratian’s marriage to Constantia brought with it to the Valentinians a family connection to the house of Constantine which was publicly highlighted, particularly in the gratiarum actio of Ausonius, western consul for 379. Ausonius had been Gratian’s childhood tutor. At the time of the oration’s composition and delivery at Trier, Gratian was in fact far from the city, attempting to cope with the immense crisis facing the Roman empire following the catastrophic defeat of the Roman armies at Hadrianople and the death of the emperor Valens.Footnote 60 Ausonius therefore addresses his emperor in absentia, describing the remarkable consular robe Gratian sent to him and the apparent care Gratian took over its design:
You are not content that the officials of your largess should perform their ordinary duties: you choose one robe out of many with your own hands, and having chosen it, follow up your gift with words of compliment. You say: I have sent you a palm-broidered robe in which is worked a figure of the sainted Constantius, my ancestor. Happy am I that such pains should be bestowed upon my vestments! . . . For the light which flashes from this single garment bespeaks two imperial personages: Constantius is embroidered in the actual fabric of the robe; but in the complimentary nature of the gift, I feel the presence of Gratian.Footnote 61
For Gratian, therefore, his late father-in-law has become parens noster, and the consular gown of Ausonius a means of advertising this illustrious connection.Footnote 62 Such a connection was only possible because of Gratian’s marriage to Constantia, and Ausonius’ senatorial audience at Trier would have been so well aware of the link to Constantius as to make any explanation of it unnecessary.
It is striking, however, that in the course of this fulsome oration, amidst all of its praise for the young emperor, Ausonius never once mentions Constantia, the means by which Gratian acquired this illustrious parent.Footnote 63 By 379 the couple had been married for more than four years. Constantia’s whereabouts during Gratian’s military campaigns are unknown, although it would be surprising if she was not present in Trier, still her husband’s main court, in January 379. Yet not a word of her do we hear, nor of any hopes expressed for an heir to Gratian’s empire.Footnote 64 Ausonius commits himself only to comments on the seemliness and moderation of Gratian’s private life,Footnote 65 asserting that: ‘The altar of Vesta is not more hallowed than the privacy of your bedchamber, the couch of a priest is not more pure, the bed of a prophet not more chaste,’Footnote 66 praise which does not even betray Gratian’s married state to the audience (who presumably were well aware of it, nonetheless). Ausonius’ description of an embroidered image on his consular gown of the imperial father Constantia had never known is the most extensive and important reference we have to the value of this alliance to the Valentinians, and to Constantia’s role as western Roman empress.Footnote 67
4. The Burial of Constantia in the Church of the Holy Apostles
Our next and final notice of Constantia in the sources comes in the context of her death and more particularly her burial, the circumstances of which once again demonstrated her dynastic importance and connection with the imperial past of Constantinople. Constantia must have died in early 383, since her husband Gratian, who was killed in August of the same year, had time to marry again after Constantia’s death,Footnote 68 while the Chronicon Paschale notes that in 383,
. . . the corpse of Constantia, the daughter of Constantine [sic] Augustus, arrived in Constantinople… and was laid to rest in the month Apellaeus, on Kalends of December [1 Dec].Footnote 69
Constantia was thus aged in her early 20s at the time of her death. By the time of her interment in late 383, a number of emperors and members of the imperial family had been buried in the Holy Apostles complex at Constantinople, beginning with Constantine I in 337.Footnote 70 Upon the death of Eusebia, Constantius II’s second wife, in 360, she was probably also buried in the imperial mausoleum, presumably only the second such imperial burial to take place there.Footnote 71 When Constantius II died shortly afterwards, Ammianus informs us that:
When the corpse of the deceased emperor had been washed and placed in a coffin, Jovianus, who was at that time still an officer in the bodyguard, was ordered to escort it with regal pomp to Constantinople, to be interred beside his kinsfolk.Footnote 72
Constantius’ successor Julian, already in Constantinople, went out to meet the funeral procession without his diadem, and led it to the Holy Apostles where the late emperor was buried alongside his father Constantine I.Footnote 73
Though Julian himself was originally buried at Tarsus following his death on his Persian campaign in 363,Footnote 74 in spite of his apostasy he was later reinterred also in the Apostoleion, probably during the reign of Theodosius I, who showed a particular interest in developing the Holy Apostles as the imperial mausoleum of the east.Footnote 75 Jovian too was laid to rest in the Holy Apostles after his death, perhaps in a stoa to the north of the church.Footnote 76 All of these imperial burials had involved emperors who had died within reasonable distance of Constantinople: the burial of Valentinian I in the Apostoleion however, is a more remarkable development. Valentinian had died in 375 following an apoplectic fit and fatal haemorrhage at Brigetio on the Danube frontier, far from Constantinople. Yet according to Ammianus:
After the last invocation of the emperor his body was prepared for burial, in order to be sent to Constantinople and interred among the remains of the deified rulers.Footnote 77
There seems to have been some delay over the final deposition of Valentinian I’s body in the Holy Apostles, since it is recorded that the emperor’s body arrived in the city in 376, yet his burial did not occur until 382.Footnote 78 This delay is perhaps best explained as a transfer of his sarcophagus from one part of the mausoleum complex to another, rather than a first burial in 382, seven years after his death.Footnote 79
By the time of the death of Constantia in 382 and the transport of her body for burial in Constantinople (presumably from Trier or Milan), therefore, a tradition was already developing of the Apostoleion as the extra-dynastic imperial mausoleum for the whole of the Roman empire. It was not the only possible choice of course – the sisters of Constantius II, Constantina (wife of the Caesar Gallus) and Helena (wife of the Caesar Julian), had both been buried at Rome, as had their grandmother, the Augusta Helena.Footnote 80 Other options were available therefore, yet the burial of this last member of the Constantinian family took place in the mausoleum created by her grandfather, where both he and her father had been laid to rest, and in the city moreover where she probably passed her childhood.Footnote 81 Constantia’s burial marks the last known transfer from west to east of the body of a member of the western imperial family for interment in the Holy Apostles.Footnote 82 The body of her husband Gratian, held for some years after his death in 383 in the possession of the usurper Magnus Maximus, was probably eventually laid to rest in Milan, as was the body of Gratian’s younger half-brother the emperor Valentinian II after his death in 392.Footnote 83 Thereafter the creation of a new imperial mausoleum attached to St Peter’s Basilica in Rome provided a new venue for western imperial burials.Footnote 84
The efforts of Theodosius I to create an emphasis on Constantinople as a great dynastic imperial city have been highlighted recently by scholars, noting that his exertions in this direction included the enhancement of the Apostoleion site. Indeed, Croke’s recent important study of Theodosius’ Constantinople observes that Theodosius went to considerable lengths to populate the Holy Apostles with imperial tombs, including Constantia among the imperial burials directed by Theodosius I.Footnote 85 Theodosius must certainly have been involved in the ceremonial surrounding Constantia’s interment, but as noted above, her burial in Constantinople is not otherwise unexpected, and while Theodosius may also have been responsible for whatever re-interment or movement of the body of Valentinian I took place in 382,Footnote 86 he was not responsible for the original decision to bury Valentinian in Constantinople, taken back in 375, years before Theodosius came to power – this decision was presumably made by Valens and Gratian.Footnote 87 With the burials of Constantine I, Eusebia, Constantius II, Jovian and Valentinian I already located in the Holy Apostles, the movement to turn this site into the primary imperial mausoleum was already well underway by the time Theodosius ascended the throne, and by 383 when Constantia was interred there; nevertheless her burial must have added to the focus Theodosius was developing of the Apostoleion as a dynastic burial site. Moreover the burials at Constantinople of Valentinian I and Constantia, and the transfer from west to east of their bodies specifically for this purpose suggests that the Valentinian and Theodosian dynasties were seeking to portray themselves as part of the wider Constantinian family network. The precise location of Constantia’s tomb is not recorded; Grierson suggests that her sarcophagus may have stood in the main body of the church.Footnote 88 Unfortunately, no mention is made of the ceremonial surrounding Constantia’s burial.Footnote 89
5. Constantia’s legacy
Imperial heirs – male or female - were rare between 337-364, due in part at least to the bloodshed which followed the death of Constantine I, while over the course of the late fourth and fifth centuries, the marriages of imperial women became unusual (and sometimes highly fraught) events in a way that had not previously been the case.Footnote 90 The concerns that such marriages might raise pretenders to the throne are most famously encapsulated in the vow of the teenage princess Pulcheria in 414 to embrace lifelong virginity, rather than risk creating through her marriage a rival to her younger brother, the emperor Theodosius II.Footnote 91 But such concerns may date even earlier, to within a few years of Constantia’s marriage to Gratian; indeed the changing attitude to the marriage of imperial women over the course of the late fourth and fifth centuries may well owe something to Constantia’s life-experience.
Gratian himself had a half-brother and three half-sisters: his co-Augustus (from 375) Valentinian II and the princesses Galla, Grata and Justa.Footnote 92 The eldest princess Galla, in 388 married the eastern emperor Theodosius I; but the two younger sisters seem never to have married, and are mentioned in the funeral oration which Ambrose of Milan gave for their brother Valentinian II, dating to 392. Here Ambrose refers to the sisters as sanctae necessitudines, indicating that they had taken vows of virginity.Footnote 93 We certainly have no information that either Grata or Justa ever married.
Indeed, the marriage of imperial daughters seems to have become an increasing concern in the late fourth/early fifth century in a way that it had not been before, even during the lifetime of Constantine I, who had happily married off his female relatives to senators and favourites.Footnote 94 Christianity offered these princesses (like other elite women of their day) an option that traditional pagan religion had not, of maintaining influence and status through choosing not to marry and becoming holy virgins.Footnote 95 The alternative option for a select few princesses was marriage to a likely imperial heir – as with Galla Placidia with the general Fl. Constantius (later Constantius III) in 417, and Ariadne with Zeno in ca. 467, or with an already acclaimed emperor – such as Galla with Theodosius I in 387, and Licinia Eudoxia with Valentinian III in 437.Footnote 96 Imperial women, particularly in the fifth century, became increasingly difficult to place in marriages which would not be perceived as a threat by the reigning emperor.
Constantia’s history may well have been connected with this new imperial concern. The danger of a princess with a dynastic claim (especially a Constantinian dynastic claim, given the reverence still attached to the family name) falling into the hands of a pretender to the throne had been well illustrated by the usurpation of Procopius and his exploitation of possession of the young princess and winning of loyalty to himself through her. Once his usurpation had failed, the imperative of incorporating Constantia into the new ruling family was clear, and fortunately the imperial heir Gratian was available as a suitable bridegroom. Could Constantia safely have been married to any other individual without being seen to pose a threat to the new ruling dynasty? It is a question which may have influenced the unmarried state of Valentinian II’s sisters Grata and Justa, who presumably lived for some time at least at the same court as Constantia in Trier and Milan. Similar concerns may also have led a few decades later to the vows of virginity taken by the sisters of Theodosius II in the east, and the still unmarried state of Valentinian III’s sister Honoria in the west in the 440s, when the latter was well into her 30s.Footnote 97
Even after her death, the ruling emperors of the fourth and fifth centuries continued to make the most of the connection they had forged with the Constantinian house through Constantia.Footnote 98 In the late 420s or 430s, when the empress Galla Placidia built a church at Ravenna dedicated to St John the Evangelist, in which was depicted a cycle of images of imperial forebears from whom she and her son the reigning western emperor Valentinian III could claim descent, she included Constantine I.Footnote 99 Later still in the 520s in Constantinople, the princess Anicia Iuliana, descended from both the Valentinian and Theodosian houses, lavishly rebuilt a church in which an inscription recorded her illustrious imperial heritage, and a mosaic depicted Constantine I’s baptism.Footnote 100 Though connections with the Constantinian emperors were doubtless links later rulers would have sought to claim anyway, it was the alliance with Constantia (even in spite of her failure to produce an heir who truly brought together the houses of Constantine and Valentinian) which had given them that opportunity to do so legitimately.Footnote 101
Conclusion
As Lenski has written, even long after the demise of the house of Constantine, theirs was a name which continued to command respect, having acquired the “indelible glow of empire.”Footnote 102 Dynasty was not always the sole deciding factor in imperial accessions in this period, but there is no doubt that dynastic loyalty was something every emperor wanted both to inspire and to exploit. And though she would never achieve the fame of her great-grandmother Helena, or the fifth-century empress Pulcheria, Constantia’s life experiences offer important insights into late fourth century regime-building under the new dynasties of Valentinian and Theodosius, as well as developing attitudes towards the marriages of imperial women. References to imperial women in our extant historical sources from this period often highlight only their roles as wives and mothers – at key moments when their dynastic importance mattered as far as the writers of our sources were concerned.Footnote 103 The glimpses we gain of Constantia’s short life are illustrative of this pattern. When Constantia is mentioned, it is always in relation to her dynastic legacy – as heir to Constantius II, as a pawn in the usurpation of Procopius, as the wife of Gratian (thereby conferring a Constantinian connection on the house of Valentinian), and as a member of the imperial family interred in the Apostoleion at Constantinople under the supervision of Theodosius I. The appearances of Constantia at these key dynastic moments serve as important reminders of the priorities of our sources with reference to imperial women generally in this period.
Constantia’s Constantinian heritage dominated the princess’ short life, from the moment of her birth as the longed-for heir of the then dead Constantius II, and throughout the usurper Procopius’ parading of the little girl to bolster his own claims to kinship with the Constantinian house. Despite assertions of their superiority to the Constantinian dynasty through their claiming the throne by merit rather than inheritance,Footnote 104 for the Valentinians she was a marital prize of immense value. Though her life as Gratian’s empress has left little mark, we do gain glimpses of the dynasty’s happily flaunting their alliance with her, as Ausonius’ description of the consular robe sent to him by Gratian illustrates. Even in death, Constantia’s burial alongside her father and grandfather in Constantinople offered yet another emperor, Theodosius I, the opportunity to build upon the aura of dynastic sanctity he was intent upon developing in the city, while decades and even centuries later, imperial descendants with tenuous links would claim her kinship, and through her, her forebears. Her early experiences in the camp of the usurper Procopius also acted as a warning to the new imperial dynasties of Valentinian and Theodosius of the dangers of imperial women falling into the wrong hands, potentially contributing to the restrictive attitudes of both dynasties to the marriage of princesses in the late fourth and fifth centuries. Constantia remains a shadowy figure, but one whose life’s traceable events reflect both the patterns of our source material in referring to imperial women, and the vital importance to imperial politics, and to successive emperors, of dynastic loyalty, and specifically loyalty to the Constantinian house, in the late fourth century.
