1. Artemide Aste
  2. Artemide LVII (30 Aprile - 1 Maggio 2022)
  3. The Roman Empire
Lotto 564:
Aelia Eudoxia, wife of Arcadius (Augusta 400-404 AD). AE Follis, Nicomedia mint. Struck under Arcadius, AD 400-401. Obv. AEL EVDOXIA AVG. Pearl-diademed and draped bust right, wearing necklace, being crowned from above by manus Dei. Rev. GLORIA ROMANORVM. Aelia Eudoxia enthroned facing, hands folded over breast, crowned from above by manus Dei; in right field, cross; in exergue, SMNA. RIC X 80. AE. 2.93 g. 17.50 mm. R. Good VF. Much like the later empress Theodora, Eudoxia has been the subject of a largely negative press. Zosimus (Historia nova), writing almost a century after her death, records that it was widely claimed that her fourth child, the only son and heir, Theodosius II, had been fathered by one of her husband's courtiers, John; and himself goes on to describe her as 'abnormally willful', stating that she ultimately served the insatiable desires of the palace eunuchs and the women who surrounded her, by whom, he alleges, she was controlled. In a continuation of the use of excessively emotive terms he describes her attitude towards the bishop of Constantinople at that time, John Chrysostom, as one of 'hatred'. Philostorgius, who lived in Constantinople throughout Arcadius' reign, is slightly more positive in that he states that 'the woman was not a dullard like her husband' and that 'she possessed no small degree of barbarian arrogance'. Ps-Martyrius, also a direct contemporary, in his funeral oration on John Chrysostom alludes to her as a second Jezebel, a captive of the devil 'clothed in the insatiable power of greed and considerable wickedness'. The overwhelming image of the empress as, at best, emotionally volatile is not helped by Socrates' allegation that, on hearing that Eudoxia was machinating to convoke a second synod against him, John Chrysostom preached a notorious sermon which began: 'Again Herodias rages…again she dances, again she seeks to have the head of John on a plate'. (Wendy Mayer, Australian Catholic University).
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