Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius (review)

Two largely unsuccessful wars for the Roman empire bracket this study: the ill-fated attempt of the apostate emperor Julian to defeat the Sassanid Persians in 363, and the arrival of the Goths in Thrace (modern Bulgaria) and their subsequent destruction of a Roman army, later bringing them to the walls of Rome itself. R. Malcolm Errington, perhaps better known as a historian of ancient Greece and Macedonia, explores the nature of the Roman government's response to these events, examining the structures of the imperial administration and the growth of Christianity and its triumph over paganism. Readers will find a sober interpretation of these events and developments, though not extensive discussion of the Roman army at this time, or of affairs relating to frontier defenses and Rome's military response to crisis.

Julian's death in Mesopotamia eventually brought two Balkan brothers to the imperial throne (364), Valentinian, who quickly elevated his brother Valens to co-equal status. This would have a far-reaching impact on the Roman state as an equal division of authority and power would lead to a separation of administration. For a time this separation of the empire into two equal halves was restrained by the rise to power of Theodosius, raised to the imperial throne by the western emperor Gratian in 379 soon after the death of Gratian's uncle Valens, killed fighting the Goths in the famous battle of Adrianople (not related by Errington). By 382 Valentinian's short-lived dynasty had expired and Theodosius had managed to consolidate all of the empire into the hands of a single ruler again. By this time, however, the administrative dynamic set into motion by Valentinian and Valens, the challenges Theodosius overcame in rising to sole power, had created an empire effectively ruled from multiple sites and well on its way to two, in effect, separate states—the "Western" Roman Empire finally succumbing, traditionally, c. 476, and the Eastern or "Byzantine" Empire that would endure to 1453.

Among the points readers will find of interest are the importance of Illyricum in the imperial bureaucracy (though the reasons for this are not stated clearly enough), the regional nature of law in the empire as expressed in the Theodosian Code, the lingering importance of the city of Rome to emperors who seldom saw the place and the gradual development of Constantinople as not only the "New Rome" perhaps imagined by Constantine I, but as the successor city to "old" Rome and the dominant city of the eastern Mediterranean world for a millennium (much of this to be attributed to Theodosius). For those studying the military history of the late empire, Errington offers an interesting analysis of the religious traditions and inventions behind the battle of Frigidus (394) which secured for Theodosius his authority over the entire empire.

This is a traditional institutional history of the later Roman empire. While Errington's study might have considered more fully the bureaucracy and the identities of the men who served emperors as different as the "Arian" Valens and the "orthodox" Theodosius, it enhances our understanding of a turbulent time.