THEODOSIUS I the Great RARE 383AD Ancient Roman Coin Victory Cult i39093

Item: i39093

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Theodosius I – Roman Emperor: 379-395 A.D. –

Bronze AE4 14mm (1.38 grams) Thessalonica mint: 383-388 A.D.
Reference:
RIC IX Thessalonica 63b.
DN THEODOSIVS PF AVG, pearl diademed, draped, cuirassed bust right
 VICTORIA AVG, Two Victories standing facing each other, each holding
wreath and palm branches.
Dot in centre. Mintmark TES delta.

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Authenticity.  

Flavius Theodosius ( 11 January 347 – 17 January 395),
also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great (Greek:
Θεοδόσιος Α΄ and Θεοδόσιος ο Μέγας), was
Roman Emperor
from 379 to 395. Reuniting the
eastern and western portions of the empire, Theodosius was the last emperor of
both the
Eastern
and
Western Roman Empire
. After his death, the two
parts split permanently. He is also known for making
Nicene
Christianity the official
state religion
of the Roman Empire.

 Career

Theodosius was born in
Cauca
, in
Hispania
(modern day
Coca
,
Spain
) or, more probably, in or near
Italica
(Seville),
to a senior military officer,
Theodosius the Elder
. He accompanied his father
to Britannia
to help quell the
Great Conspiracy
in 368. He was military
commander (dux)
of Moesia
, a Roman province on the lower
Danube
, in 374. However, shortly thereafter,
and at about the same time as the sudden disgrace and execution of his father,
Theodosius retired to Spain. The reason for his retirement, and the relationship
(if any) between it and his father’s death is unclear. It is possible that he
was dismissed from his command by the emperor
Valentinian I
after the loss of two of
Theodosius’ legions to the
Sarmatians
in late 374.

The death of Valentinian I in 375 created political
pandemonium. Fearing further persecution on account of his family ties,
Theodosius abruptly retired to his family estates where he adapted to the life
of a provincial aristocrat.

From 364 to 375, the Roman Empire was governed by two
co-emperors, the brothers
Valentinian I
and
Valens
; when Valentinian died in 375, his sons,
Valentinian II
and
Gratian
, succeeded him as rulers of the Western
Roman Empire. In 378, after
Valens
was killed in the
Battle of Adrianople
, Gratian appointed
Theodosius to replace the fallen emperor as co-augustus for the East.
Gratian was killed in a rebellion in 383, then Theodosius appointed his elder
son, Arcadius
, his co-ruler for the East. After the
death in 392 of Valentinian II, whom Theodosius had supported against a variety
of usurpations, Theodosius ruled as sole emperor, appointing his younger son
Honorius
Augustus as his co-ruler for the West
(Milan,
on 23 January 393) and defeating the usurper
Eugenius
on 6 September 394, at the
Battle of the Frigidus
(Vipava
river, modern Slovenia
) he restored peace.

 Family

By his first wife, the probably Spanish
Aelia Flaccilla
Augusta, he had two sons,
Arcadius
and
Honorius
and a daughter, Aelia
Pulcheria
; Arcadius was his heir in the East
and Honorius in the West. Both Aelia Flaccilla and Pulcheria died in 385.

His second wife (but never declared Augusta) was
Galla
, daughter of the emperor
Valentinian I
and his second wife
Justina
. Theodosius and Galla had a son
Gratian, born in 388 who died young and a daughter Aelia
Galla Placidia
(392–450). Placidia was the only
child who survived to adulthood and later became an Empress; a third child,
John, died with his mother in childbirth in 394.

 Diplomatic
policy with the Goths

The
Goths
and their allies (Vandali,
Taifalae
,
Bastarnae
and the native
Carpi
) entrenched in the
provinces
of
Dacia
and eastern
Pannonia Inferior
consumed Theodosious’
attention. The Gothic crisis was so dire that his co-Emperor Gratian
relinquished control of the
Illyrian
provinces and retired to
Trier
in

Gaul to let Theodosius operate without hindrance. A major weakness in
the Roman position after the defeat at
Adrianople
was the recruiting of
barbarians
to fight against other barbarians.
In order to reconstruct the Roman Army of the West, Theodosius needed to find
able bodied soldiers and so he turned to the most capable men readily to hand:
the barbarians recently settled in the Empire. This caused many difficulties in
the battle against barbarians since the newly recruited fighters had little or
no loyalty to Theodosius.

Theodosius was reduced to the costly expedient of shipping
his recruits to Egypt
and replacing them with more seasoned
Romans, but there were still switches of allegiance that resulted in military
setbacks. Gratian sent generals to clear the
dioceses
of Illyria (Pannonia
and
Dalmatia
) of Goths, and Theodosius was able
finally to enter
Constantinople
on 24 November 380, after two
seasons in the field. The final treaties with the remaining Gothic forces,
signed 3 October 382, permitted large contingents of primarily
Thervingian
Goths to settle along the southern
Danube
frontier in the
province
of
Thrace
and largely govern themselves.

The Goths now settled within the Empire had, as a result of
the treaties, military obligations to fight for the Romans as a national
contingent, as opposed to being fully integrated into the Roman forces. However,
many Goths would serve in Roman legions and others, as
foederati
, for a single campaign, while
bands of Goths switching loyalties became a destabilizing factor in the internal
struggles for control of the Empire.

In 390 the population of Thessalonica rioted in complaint
against the presence of the local Gothic garrison. The
garrison commander
was killed in the violence,
so
Theodosius ordered the Goths to kill all the spectators in
the circus as retaliation
;
Theodoret
, a contemporary witness to these
events, reports:

the anger of the Emperor rose to the highest pitch, and
he gratified his vindictive desire for vengeance by unsheathing the sword
most unjustly and tyrannically against all, slaying the innocent and guilty
alike. It is said seven thousand perished without any forms of law, and
without even having judicial sentence passed upon them; but that, like ears
of wheat in the time of harvest, they were alike cut down.

In the last years of Theodosius’ reign, one of the emerging
leaders of the Goths, named
Alaric
, participated in Theodosius’ campaign
against Eugenius
in 394, only to resume his rebellious
behavior against Theodosius’ son and eastern successor,
Arcadius
, shortly after Theodosius’ death.

 Civil
wars in the Empire

After the death of
Gratian
in 383, Theodosius’ interests turned to
the
Western Roman Empire
, for the usurper
Magnus Maximus
had taken all the provinces of
the West except for Italy. This self-proclaimed threat was hostile to
Theodosius’ interests, since the reigning emperor
Valentinian II
, Maximus’ enemy, was his ally.
Theodosius, however, was unable to do much about Maximus due to his still
inadequate military capability and he was forced to keep his attention on local
matters. However when Maximus began an invasion of Italy in 387, Theodosius was
forced to take action. The armies of Theodosius and Maximus met in 388 at
Poetovio and Maximus was defeated. On 28 August 388 Maximus was executed.

Trouble arose again, after Valentinian was found hanging in
his room. It was claimed to be a suicide by the
magister militum
,
Arbogast
. Arbogast, unable to assume the role
of emperor, elected
Eugenius
, a former teacher of rhetoric.
Eugenius started a program of restoration of the
Pagan
faith, and sought, in vain, Theodosius’
recognition. In January 393, Theodosius gave his son
Honorius
the full rank of Augustus in the West,
citing Eugenius’ illegitimacy.

Theodosius campaigned against Eugenius. The two armies faced
at the
Battle of Frigidus
in September 394. The battle
began on 5 September 394 with Theodosius’ full frontal assault on Eugenius’
forces. Theodosius was repulsed and Eugenius thought the battle to be all but
over. In Theodosius’ camp the loss of the day decreased morale. It is said that
Theodosius was visited by two “heavenly riders all in white” who gave him
courage. The next day, the battle began again and Theodosius’ forces were aided
by a natural phenomenon known as the
Bora
, which produces cyclonic winds. The Bora
blew directly against the forces of Eugenius and disrupted the line.

Eugenius’ camp was stormed and Eugenius was captured and soon
after executed. Thus Theodosius became the only emperor.

 Art
patronage

Theodosius oversaw the removal in 390 of an Egyptian
obelisk
from Alexandria to Constantinople. It
is now known as the
obelisk of Theodosius
and still stands in the
Hippodrome
, the long
racetrack
that was the center of
Constantinople’s public life and scene of political turmoil. Re-erecting the
monolith was a challenge for the technology that had been honed in the
construction of
siege engines
. The obelisk, still recognizably
a solar symbol
, had been moved from
Karnak
to
Alexandria
with what is now the
Lateran obelisk
by
Constantius II
). The Lateran obelisk was
shipped to Rome soon afterwards, but the other one then spent a generation lying
at the docks due to the difficulty involved in attempting to ship it to
Constantinople. Eventually, the obelisk was cracked in transit. The white
marble
base is entirely covered with
bas-reliefs
documenting the Imperial household
and the engineering feat of removing it to Constantinople. Theodosius and the
imperial family are separated from the nobles among the spectators in the
Imperial box
with a cover over them as a mark
of their status. The naturalism of traditional Roman art in such scenes gave way
in these reliefs to
conceptual art
: the idea of order,
decorum and respective ranking, expressed in serried ranks of faces. This is
seen as evidence of formal themes beginning to oust the transitory details of
mundane life, celebrated in Pagan
portraiture
. Christianity had only just been
adopted as the new state religion.

The Forum Tauri in Constantinople was renamed and redecorated
as the
Forum of Theodosius
, including a
column
and a
triumphal arch
in his honour.

 Nicene
Christianity becomes the state religion

Theodosius promoted Nicene Trinitarianism within Christianity
and Christianity within the Empire. On 27 February 380, he declared “Catholic
Christianity” the only legitimate imperial religion, ending state support for
the traditional Roman religion.

 Nicene
Creed

In the 4th century, the
Christian Church
was wracked with controversy
over the divinity of Jesus

Christ
, his relationship to
God
the Father, and the nature of the
Trinity
. In 325,
Constantine I
convened the
Council of Nicea
, which asserted that Jesus,
the Son, was equal to the Father, one with the Father, and of the same substance
(homoousios in Greek). The council condemned the teachings of the
theologian Arius
: that the Son was a created being and
inferior to God the Father, and that the Father and Son were of a similar
substance (homoiousios in Greek) but not identical (see
Nontrinitarian
). Despite the council’s ruling,
controversy continued. By the time of Theodosius’ accession, there were still
several different church factions that promoted alternative
Christology
.

 Arians

While no mainstream churchmen within the Empire explicitly
adhered to Arius
(a presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt) or
his teachings, there were those who still used the homoiousios formula,
as well as those who attempted to bypass the debate by merely saying that Jesus
was like (homoios in Greek) God the Father, without speaking of substance
(ousia). All these non-Nicenes were frequently labeled as
Arians
(i.e., followers of Arius) by their
opponents, though they would not have identified themselves as such.

The Emperor Valens had favored the group who used the
homoios formula; this
theology
was prominent in much of the East and
had under the sons of Constantine the Great gained a foothold in the West.
Theodosius, on the other hand, cleaved closely to the
Nicene Creed
which was the interpretation that
predominated in the West and was held by the important
Alexandrian church
.

 Establishment
of Nicene Orthodoxy

On 26 November 380, two days after he had arrived in
Constantinople, Theodosius expelled the non-Nicene bishop,
Demophilus of Constantinople
, and appointed
Meletius
patriarch of Antioch, and
Gregory of Nazianzus
, one of the
Cappadocian Fathers
from
Antioch
(today in Turkey), patriarch of
Constantinople. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop
Acholius of Thessalonica
, during a severe
illness, as was common in the early Christian world.

On 27 February 380 he,
Gratian
and
Valentinian II
published an edict in order that
all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and
Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith). The move was mainly a thrust at the various
beliefs that had arisen out of Arianism, but smaller dissident sects, such as
the
Macedonians
, were also prohibited. The exact
text of this decree, gathered in the Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2, was:

It is our desire that all the various nations which
are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that
religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as
it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by
the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic
holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the
Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the
followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as
for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree
that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall
not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will
suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in
the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will
of Heaven we shall decide to inflict. (Henry
Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, Oxford University
Press, 1967, 2nd. (1st. 1943), p. 22).

In May 381, Theodosius summoned a new ecumenical council at
Constantinople (see
First Council of Constantinople
) to repair the
schism between East and West on the basis of Nicean orthodoxy. “The council went
on to define orthodoxy, including the mysterious Third Person of the Trinity,
the Holy Ghost who, though equal to the Father, ‘proceeded’ from Him, whereas
the Son was ‘begotten’ of Him.” The council also “condemned the Apollonian and
Macedonian heresies, clarified church jurisdictions according to the civil
boundaries of dioceses and ruled that Constantinople was second in precedence to
Rome.”

With the
death of Valens
, the Arians’ protector, his
defeat probably damaged the standing of the Homoian faction.

 Conflicts
with Pagans during the reign of Theodosius I

 Death
of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II

On 15 May 392,
Valentinian II
was found hanged in his
residence in the town of
Vienne
in

Gaul. The Frankish soldier and Pagan
Arbogast
, Valentinian’s protector and
magister militum
, maintained that it was
suicide. Arbogast and Valentinian had frequently disputed rulership over the
Western Roman Empire, and Valentinian was also noted to have complained of
Arbogast’s control over him to Theodosius. Thus when word of his death reached
Constantinople Theodosius believed, or at least suspected, that Arbogast was
lying and that he had engineered Valentinian’s demise. These suspicions were
further fueled by Arbogast’s elevation of a
Eugenius
, pagan official to the position of
Western Emperor, and the veiled accusations which
Ambrose
, the Bishop of Milan, spoke during his
funeral oration for Valentinian.

Valentinian II’s death sparked a civil war between Eugenius
and Theodosius over the rulership of the west in the
Battle of the Frigidus
. The resultant eastern
victory there led to the final brief unification of the Roman Empire under
Theodosius, and the ultimate irreparable division of the empire after his death.

 Proscription
of Paganism

For the first part of his rule, Theodosius seems to have
ignored the semi-official standing of the Christian bishops; in fact he had
voiced his support for the preservation of temples or pagan statues as useful
public buildings. In his early reign, Theodosius was fairly tolerant of the
pagans, for he needed the support of the influential pagan ruling class. However
he would in time stamp out the last vestiges of paganism with great severity.
His first attempt to inhibit paganism was in 381 when he reiterated
Constantine’s ban on sacrifice. In 384 he prohibited
haruspicy

on pain of death
, and unlike earlier anti-pagan
prohibitions, he made non-enforcement of the law, by Magistrates, into a crime
itself.

In 388 he sent a prefect to Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor with
the aim of breaking up pagan associations and the destruction of their temples.
The
Serapeum
at Alexandria was destroyed during
this campaign. In a series of decrees called the “Theodosian decrees” he
progressively declared that those Pagan feasts that had not yet been rendered
Christian ones were now to be workdays (in 389). In 391, he reiterated the ban
of
blood sacrifice
and decreed “no one is to go to
the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created
by the labor of man”. The temples that were thus closed could be declared
“abandoned”, as Bishop
Theophilus of Alexandria
immediately noted in
applying for permission to demolish a site and cover it with a Christian church,
an act that must have received general sanction, for
mithraea
forming crypts of churches, and
temples forming the foundations of 5th century churches appear throughout the
former Roman Empire. Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against
major Pagan sites: the destruction of the gigantic
Serapeum
of Alexandria by soldiers and local
Christian citizens in 392, according to the Christian sources authorized by
Theodosius (extirpium malum), needs to be seen against a complicated
background of less spectacular violence in the city:
Eusebius
mentions street-fighting in Alexandria
between Christians and non-Christians as early as 249, and non-Christians had
participated in the struggles for and against
Athanasius
in 341 and 356. “In 363 they killed
Bishop George for repeated acts of pointed outrage, insult, and pillage of the
most sacred treasures of the city.”

By decree in 391, Theodosius ended the subsidies that had
still trickled to some remnants of Greco-Roman civic Paganism too. The
eternal fire
in the Temple of
Vesta
in the
Roman Forum
was extinguished, and the
Vestal Virgins
were disbanded. Taking the
auspices
and practicing
witchcraft
were to be punished. Pagan members
of the Senate
in Rome appealed to him to restore the
Altar of Victory
in the Senate House; he
refused. After the last
Olympic Games
in 393, it is believed that
Theodosius cancelled the games although there is no proof of that in the
official records of the Roman Empire, and the reckoning of dates by
Olympiads
soon came to an end. Now Theodosius
portrayed himself on his coins holding the
labarum
.

The apparent change of policy that resulted in the “Theodosian
decrees” has often been credited to the increased influence of
Ambrose
,
bishop of Milan
. It is worth noting that in 390
Ambrose had excommunicated Theodosius, who had recently given orders which
resulted in the
massacre
of 7,000 inhabitants of
Thessalonica
, in response to the assassination
of his military governor stationed in the city, and that Theodosius performed
several months of public penance. The specifics of the decrees were
superficially limited in scope, specific measures in response to various
petitions from Christians throughout his administration.

Some modern historians question the consequences of the laws
against pagans.

 Death

Theodosius died, after battling the vascular disease
oedema
, in
Milan
on 17 January 395. Ambrose organized and
managed Theodosius’s lying in state in Milan. Ambrose delivered a
panegyric
titled De Obitu Theodosii
before Stilicho
and
Honorius
in which Ambrose detailed the
suppression of heresy and paganism by Theodosius. Theodosius was finally laid to
rest in Constantinople on 8 November 395.