Hard west evangelists tombs6/27/2023 Of the imperial family, only the princess had remained, offering her regal support to the Senate as it worked to stave off disaster. The Emperor Honorius, Placidia’s half-brother, had long since abandoned Rome to its fate. The enemy campfires were so numerous, he wrote, they blazed like the stars in the night sky. With her classical education, Placidia would have recalled Homer’s haunting description of the Trojan army in the Iliad. The enemy army besieged Rome for three months, blocking its 12 gates and all transport on the Tiber River.Ī gold coin from the fifth century depicts Galla Placidia Camped in the countryside around its titanic, marble-sheathed defensive walls was a vast army of some 100,000 warriors led by the king of the Visigoths (western Goths) named Alaric, who had marched from the Balkans under the banner of a black crow. In 410, Rome’s situation was teetering toward the unimaginable. But even in decay there was no rival to Roma Aeterna, the Eternal City, Caput Mundi, the Head of the World, invincible and invulnerable … or so its citizens had believed for some 800 years. Its cosmopolitan population had shrunk from one million to 600,000, and lawlessness reigned in many streets the gladiatorial spectacles in the Colosseum were shut down in 404, leaving the chariot races as the main public entertainment. However, the city had fallen on hard times since the golden age of great emperors, like Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, more than two centuries earlier. A census listed 46,602 multistory tenement buildings, 1,790 palatial villas, 856 bathhouses, 28 libraries and 1,352 fountains, not to mention ten aqueducts and a sewage system. This was Rome, a megalopolis where glittering avenues, monuments and arches littered the landscape. Antique statues of military heroes and illustrious Caesars jostled with artwork and trophies brought back by the conquering legions from far-flung corners of the Mediterranean. Silver fountains burbled in the courtyards. The floors and walls of the palace were a kaleidoscope of colored marble embedded with gold and precious gems. Her surroundings exuded all the ancient splendor and confidence of the Roman Empire, the greatest the Western world had ever seen. Although she left no record of her feelings on that fateful evening, we can recreate the scene as the 20-year-old noblewoman wandered the imperial palace complex on the Palatine Hill in the heart of the ancient city. On the night of August 24, 410, the Roman Princess Galla Placidia was waiting for the end of the world.
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