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Justa Grata Honoria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

At a critical period of European history a princess of the Theodosian house played a brief but conspicuous and outrageous part. Her relations with Attila have secured a scandalous notoriety to the princess Honoria, who would otherwise have been as mere a name to us as her cousins Arcadia and Marina; for her action, if it did not alter the main course of events, determined the Hun king's policy during three critical years. But the true facts of an extraordinarily interesting episode have been obscured, as I hope to prove, by a curious error in one of our sources. Honoria cannot be dismissed as a perverse or romantic schoolgirl, nor, with Mommsen, as ‘eine lüderliche Prinzessin.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © J. B. Bury 1919. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 1 note 1 Socrates, H.E. iv, 31Google Scholar.

page 2 note 2 Olympiodorus, fr. 40.

page 2 note 3 Prosper, sub a. 422; compare Hydatius.

page 2 note 4 Prosper, sub a. 423. Placidia Augusta a fratre Honorio pulsa ad orientem cum [Honoria et Valenitinianol] filiis proficiscitur. This is repeated in the Chronicle of Cassiodorus, but with the addition oh suspicionem invitatorum hostium.

page 3 note 1 Olympiodorus, fr. 46; Philostorgius, H.E. xii, 13Google Scholar; Prosper sub a.

page 3 note 2 In Muratori, S.R.I, ii, 68Google Scholar; C.I.L. xi, 276. For Honoria Aug. see also Dessau, 817.

page 4 note 1 Cf. Cohen2, viii, p. 219. I must acknowledge the valuable help I received from my friend Mr. Mattingly, of the Coin Department of the British Museum, in examining the coins of this period. He agrees, generally, with the deductions of de Salis.

page 4 note 2 Numismatic Chronicle, N.S. vol. vii, 203, sqq. (1867).

page 4 note 3 Galla Placidia and Licinia Eudoxia are always designated by these names on their Italian coinage, but on complimentary coins minted at Constanotinople they are Ael. Placidia and Ael. Eudoxia (like Pulcheria, Eudocia, and the elder Eudoxia).

page 5 note 1 Gibbon's explanation is that ‘as her marriage might be productive of some danger to the state, she was raised by the title of Augusta above the hopes of the most presumptuous subject.’ But if such precaution were deemed necessary in her case, would it not have been deemed necessary also after the death of Arcadius in the case of his daughters?

page 5 note 2 They are all in profile, except in the case of Licinia Eudoxia, who has coins with a full face.

page 6 note 1 Hist. des Empereurs, vi, 144.

page 6 note 2 Perhaps he imagined it was justified by the imperfect tense concitabat. Of recent writers, Hodgkin also accepts 434 for the appeal to Attila.

page 6 note 3 Vol. iii (ed. Bury), p. 481.

page 6 note 4 Historische Schriften,i,p. 541. There are some mistakes in this article. Fl. Bassus Herculanus (see below) is named Fl. Cassius Herculanus, and the year of his consulate is given as 449. It was 452. I mention these only because such oversights are so rare in Mommsen's essays that they might mislead.

page 7 note 1 So the best authority, Priscus (fr. 10, de leg. Rom. ed. de Boor, p. 153), and Procopius, , Bell. Vand. i, 5Google Scholar. See Clinton, F.R. ii, p. 127Google Scholar. Evagrius, H.E. ii, 7Google Scholar, is in error and has misled Gibbon and others into placing the marriage of Placidia after her restoration to Constantinople.

page 7 note 2 Carm. i, ed. Vollmer (in M.G.H.). Carm. ii, a small fragment, seems to have been written for Placidia's baptism.

page 7 note 3 A play on the Emperor's name Placidus.

page 7 note 4 This allusion (see below) to a betrothal of Eudocia to Huneric suggests 442, the year of the treaty with the Vandals, as the date of the poem.

page 8 note 1 The very first line that is preserved indicates this:

—incumbit foribus pictae Concordia mensae.

page 8 note 2 Explaining : It is John, not our Emperor, who has to bewail the loss of wealth.

page 8 note 3 The turn of expression, si coniux aderit, implies the thought that Honoria and her future husband might some day be the subject of a painter's art.

page 8 note 4 Vollmer draws the inference that Honoria, after the escapade of 434, had been received again into favour and returned from Constantinople. He does not think of questioning the date.

page 9 note 1 Excerpta de leg. gentium (ed. de Boor), fr. 7, p. 582; fr. p. 583.

page 9 note 2 Excerpta de insidiis (ed. de Boor), fr. 84, p. 124. The article 'Ονωρία in Suidas is only an extract from John.

page 9 note 3 Getica, 223-4; Romana, 328. His immediate source was the Gothic History of Cassiodorus. See Preface of Mommsen's ed.

page 9 note 4 Procurator (Jord. and Marcell.) τὴν ἐπιμϵλϵίαν τῶν αὐτῆς ἔχοντι πραγμάτων (John Ant.).

page 9 note 5 ἥλω ἐς λαθραῖον έρχομένη λὲχος (John Ant.). Here there is no suggestion of pregnancy.

page 9 note 6 ὡς μήτϵ πρὸς βασιλϵίαν μήτϵ πρὸς νϵωτϵρισμὸν ὑποτοπϵῖσθαι on a statue found at Aeclanum near Beneventum, on the Via Appia there is part of the name of the consul Herculanus, C.I.L. ix, 1371. Mommsen says that Honoria was married to H., so that Valentinia's ministers could reply to Attila's demands by simply stating the fact But this is not in our sources.

page 9 note 7 On the principle that the subject territory was the private property of their father Constantius, and that the children, male or female, had a claim to equal portions. Was this sheer ignorance of Roman constitutional law? Attila had Latin secretaries.

page 10 note 1 ἐπιστέλλϵι τῷ Βαλ. τὴν 'Ον. ἐκπέμπϵιν τῷ 'Αττήλα.

page 10 note 2 So far John Ant. The embassies and threats of Attila in 450, 451, 452 come from the Priscus fragments and Jord. Get. That Priscus had told the whole story is proved by τἀ τῆς 'Ονωρίας πέρι γϵγϵνημένα in fr. 7. The intercession for her daughter was one of the last acts of Placidia. She died a few months later, on Nov. 27, 450.

page 10 note 3 The whole passage (Rom. 328) perverts both Priscus and Marcellinus, by making the intrigue with Eugenius subsequent to the invitation ta Attila; facinusque quod cum Attila non fecerat cum Eugenia procurators suo committit. Tillemont adopted this reversal of the order of events.

page 11 note 1 We have no data for explaining the error. It may, of course, be conjectured that on some earlier occasion Honoria was sent to the court of her cousins, for the purpose of taming her mutinous temper in their grave society; but such conjectures, where we have nothing to go upon, are futile.

page 11 note 2 τῶν βασιλικῶν καὶ αὐτὴ (as well as Attila, mentioned in the previous sentence) ἐχομένη σκήπτρων (John Ant.).

page 11 note 3 A few years later her sister-in-law Eudoxia would appeal to Gaiseric to rescue her from Petronius Maximus. The fact has been questioned, for perverse reasons.

page 13 note 1 His indictions are equated with consulships, an awkward method, as only eight months of the year, Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, are common to both.