Galla
359 – 394 · Generation V · Empress
Galla was a Roman empress, the second wife of Theodosius I and the mother of the empress Galla Placidia. She was a daughter of the Western emperor Valentinian I and his second wife Justina, and a sister of the emperor Valentinian II.
In 387 the usurper Magnus Maximus crossed the Alps and threatened Milan, and Valentinian II and Justina fled with Galla to Thessalonica, where Theodosius, widowed the year before, was then living. He gave them refuge and, after some months of hesitation, agreed to fight Maximus, and he married Galla, while her family accepted his orthodox faith. In 388 their combined armies defeated Maximus, who was executed that August, but Justina died the same year.
As empress Galla became stepmother to Theodosius’s sons Arcadius and Honorius, and according to Marcellinus Comes, Arcadius, then about thirteen, expelled her from the palace in 390. Her brother Valentinian II was found hanged in May 392, officially a suicide, though the general Arbogast was suspected, and Zosimus records her grief. When Arbogast raised Eugenius as emperor, Theodosius marched west, but Galla died in childbirth in 394 before the decisive battle on the Frigidus, together with her newborn son, John.
Of her three children only Galla Placidia, born in 392 or 393, lived to adulthood. She married the Visigothic king Ataulf and then Constantius III, and became an empress in her own right.
Line of descent: Gratian → Valentinian I → Galla.
Parents
- Valentinian I (321 – 375)
- Justina (340 – 388)
Siblings
- Gratian (359 – 383) (half)
- Valentinian II (371 – 392)
Partners
- Married Theodosius I (347 – 395) in 387
Life
- 359 — Born
- 387 — Married Theodosius
- 394 — Died
Sources
- Galla (wife of Theodosius I) · Wikipedia
- Theodosius I · Wikipedia