Aelia Eudocia
401 – 460 · Generation XX · Valentinian · Theodosian
Aelia (AD 401 – AD 460). Married Theodosius II around AD 421. One of their children is recorded in this archive. Born Athenais, a pagan philosopher’s daughter; empress, poet, and at last a pilgrim settled in Jerusalem. Her father Leontius, who taught rhetoric at Athens, oversaw her education; a later, embroidered tale holds that he left her only a hundred coins and that she went to Constantinople to seek justice, where Pulcheria found her a fit bride for the young emperor. She converted to Christianity and took her new name before the wedding of June 421, and forgave the brothers who had cheated her, securing them high office. Proclaimed Augusta in 423, she saw her daughter Licinia Eudoxia married to the western emperor Valentinian III. On a pilgrimage in 438 she addressed the senate of Antioch in Homeric verse and was honoured with statues in gold and bronze. Around 443 she left court — over a rumoured affair with Paulinus or a deadly feud with the officer Saturninus — and spent her last years in Jerusalem, building churches and writing poetry, of which nearly 3,500 lines survive.
One of 18 people of Valentinian · Theodosian (321–493) in this archive. The last house to rule both halves of the empire at once.
Partners
- Married Theodosius II Flavius (401 – 450) in 421 — one child together
Children
- Licinia Eudoxia (422 – 493)
Life
- 401 — Born
- 421 — Married Theodosius II
- 460 — Died