#milocreative

[waluuanius]

I’m rather invested in learning about the Theodosian Dynasty because De Ortu Waluuanii includes some historical references to the Sack of Rome in 410 and the Roman-Sassanid war in the early 420s. The kidnapping of the contemporary Western Roman Emperor’s half-sister, Galla Placidia, has a narrative parallel in Sir Gawain’s Mediterranean adventure wherein he kicks pirate ass and rescues a princess.

The story identifies the princess as the niece of the Emperor and she’s been betrothed to the king of Illyricum, but pirates intercepted her vessel or something and kidnapped her. Luckily, Gawain and his military friends are diverted to the pirates’ island base while sailing to Jerusalem. They fall into some trouble for poaching game since hunting is restricted by the pirate king, Milocrates, but they end up killing most of the game wardens and spare a couple of scouts to report back to their king with misinformation. Gawain starts a friendship with one scout named Nabaor, who turns out to have been part of the princess’s retinue before being pressed into working as a spy for Milocrates. Gawain and a Greek-speaking buddy are appointed to spy at Milocrates’ court themselves and they meet Nabaor again, who leads them to the princess-turned-pirate’s-queen. She has a plan to outfit Gawain in Milocrates’ magical armor because Milocrates is cursed to be defeated if anyone else possesses it. At the end of this adventure, the pirates are routed before Milocrates’ pirate brother brings auxiliaries, the town gets handed over to the Roman fleet for pillaging, and then the Romans organize an escort to restore the princess to her intended husband. Wow, what a sea journey, and that’s only half of it! The other half deals with fighting pirates at sea.

One problem with the history: whoever composed the romance hadn’t taken account of the Roman Empire’s organization at the time. So like, it was divided into provinces and Illyricum wouldn’t have its own king; the top administrator would be the Praetorian Prefect. I did some investigation to find an appropriate relative of Honorius the Western Emperor to be the story’s princess and I ended up finding a few loose ends in the family trees who could potentially be bound together.

Going back to the family of Honorius’ mother, Aelia Flaccilla, it’s reported that she has nephew named Nebridius in Constantinople. Shortly after his death around 400, St Jerome wrote a letter to his widow, Salvina, to advise her to live chastely. At the time, Salvina has two small children, a boy and a girl, and there’s some texts (under the cut) about how the mother and daughter got on with life afterwards: despite some pressure to marry from Eastern Empress Aelia Eudoxia, Salvina and her daughter join the convent of St Olympias (who was the second wife of Nebridius’ father, Nebridius the urban prefect) and support John Chrysostom until he’s exiled from the city in 404 for denouncing Eudoxia's wealth. After Olympias follows John into exile, nothing else is known about Salvina and her daughter, who might have been named Olympia.

Eudoxia dies in 404 and eventually her one son, Theodosius II, needs a wife. An educated young woman named Athenais from Athens goes to the court at Constantinople in 421 to make a case for her rightful patrimony being withheld by her brothers. She ends up converting to Christianity and marrying Theodosius II as Aelia Eudocia. She’s a lot less mean than Eudoxia was since Eudocia gives her brothers offices in the empire: one of her brothers, Gessius becomes the Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum.

So there you go, Gawain in this story made a plausible marriage happen.

I got these sources from A to Z of Ancient Greek and Roman Women under the entry about Olympias.

John Chrysostom. Letters to Olympias.

Palladius. Dialogues X, XVI, XVII. The Lausiac History 56.

“The Life of Olympias.” In Clark, Elizabeth A. Jerome, Chrysostom and Friends: Essays and Translations. New York: The Edward Mellon Press, 1979, pp. 107-144.

Sozomen. Historia Ecclesiastica VIII. ix, xxiv, xxvii.

Meyer, Wendy, “Constantinopolitan Women in Chrysostom’s Circle.” Vigiliae Christianae 53, no. 3 (August 1999) pp. 265-288.

Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Vol. I. Edited by A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Reprinted 1992, pp. 642-643.

[lauraux]

Remembering a project I worked on at Milo Creative http://milocreative.com/