Aelia Eudoxia

377 – 404 · Generation VI · Empress · Valentinian · Theodosian

Aelia Eudoxia (AD 377 – 404). Empress. Married Arcadius around AD 395. Wife of Arcadius. Her father was Flavius Bauto, a Romanised Frank who had commanded western armies in the 380s; apparently orphaned, she was brought up in Constantinople in the household of the general Promotus. The eunuch Eutropius engineered her wedding on 27 April 395, outflanking the regent Rufinus, who reportedly hoped to make his own daughter empress. She is thought to have had a hand in Eutropius’s fall in 399, though how large a hand is disputed, and in January 400 she was named augusta. A patron of the Nicene party, she clashed with Patriarch John Chrysostom, whose sermons against extravagance she took as aimed at herself; she joined the alliance that deposed him in 403 and saw him banished a second time. Of her five children, her only son became Theodosius II. She died in October 404 after a failed pregnancy and was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles.

One of 13 people of Valentinian · Theodosian (321–460) in this archive. The emperors who saw the western half fall away while the east held.

Partners

Married Arcadius (377 – 408) in 395 — 2 children together

Children

Theodosius II (401 – 450)
Pulcheria (399 – 453)

Life

377 — Born
395 — Married Arcadius
404 — Died