Marcian Flavius

392 – 457 · Generation XX · Eastern emperor (r. AD 450–457) · Valentinian · Theodosian

Marcian (AD 392 – AD 457). Eastern emperor (r. AD 450–457). Married Pulcheria around AD 450. A soldier raised to the purple by marriage to Pulcheria; stopped the tribute to Attila and convened Chalcedon. He had spent fifteen years as personal aide to the generals Ardabur and Aspar, and was once a Vandal prisoner in Africa, before Aspar’s influence carried this obscure officer to the throne. His boldness paid: while Attila ravaged Italy in 452, Marcian’s forces struck across the Danube into the Hunnic heartland itself — one of the pressures that turned the Huns homeward. After Attila’s death he played the fragmenting tribes against one another and accepted Ostrogoths and other Germanic peoples on Roman land as federates bound to military service. The council he summoned defined Christ as one person in two natures, a formula the Miaphysite provinces of Syria and Egypt rejected at lasting cost. He died leaving a surplus of seven million solidi in a treasury the Huns had bled.

One of 16 people of Valentinian · Theodosian (321–462) in this archive. The last house to rule both halves of the empire at once.

Partners

Married Pulcheria Aelia (399 – 453) in 450

Life

392 — Born
450 — Married Pulcheria
457 — Died