Marcia Euphemia
435 – ? · Generation VIII · Empress · Valentinian · Theodosian
Marcia Euphemia, the one daughter of the Eastern emperor Marcian known to history, was married to Anthemius, emperor of the West. Her mother’s name is not recorded. Her stepmother was the empress Pulcheria, whom Marcian married to tie himself to the Theodosian dynasty, but Pulcheria had vowed to remain a virgin, so Euphemia had no half-brothers or sisters.
Around 453 she married Anthemius, the son of a former commander of the Eastern armies, and the match gave his distinguished family an imperial connection. Marcian promoted his son-in-law steadily, sending him to fortify the Danube frontier after the death of Attila, making him a general and patrician, and naming him consul with Valentinian III in 455, all apparently in preparation for a throne. When Marcian died in January 457, the family lost its imperial standing, and Anthemius served the new emperor, Leo I.
Ten years later Leo needed a Western emperor to face the Vandal king Gaiseric, and on 12 April 467 Anthemius was proclaimed in Rome. Euphemia appears as Augusta on coins from about 467 to 472, which spell out her name unusually fully as the link to the Theodosian house, and they are the only evidence of her as empress. Anthemius was killed in a civil war in 472, and whether she outlived him is unknown. They had five known children, among them Alypia, who married the general Ricimer, and Marcian, who married Leo I’s daughter Leontia.
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.
Parents
- Marcian (392 – 457)
Partners
- Married Anthemius (420 – 472) in 453 — one child together
Children
- Marcianus (455 – ?)
Life
- 435 — Born
- 453 — Married Anthemius
Sources
- Marcia Euphemia · Wikipedia
- Anthemius · Wikipedia