Valentinian III

Valentinian III was the son of Constantius III , co-ruler of Honorius , and Galla Placidia , the sister of the latter. He was born in 419.

In 425, after the death of his uncle and the defeat of the usurper John , he was proclaimed emperor of the Western Roman Empire by his cousin Theodosius II . For him, the empire was ruled by his mother Galla Placidia (until 437) and Flavius ​​Aetius . For more than twenty years, Flavius ​​Aetius successfully repelled the invasions of the barbarians in the northern and eastern parts of the empire. Because of the enmity that existed between Aetius and the governor of this province, Boniface , Africa since 429 was captured by vandals . Huge achievements of Aetius, the organizer of the rebuff to the invasion of the Huns of Attila in 451, the mediocre and weak-minded Valentinian “rewarded” by the fact that in a fit of jealousy in 454 he killed his brilliant commander. The very next year, March 16, Valentinian was stabbed to death by Petronius Maxim , whose ambition was not sufficiently satisfied with the emperor.

Valentinian was married since 437 to his cousin Eudoxia , daughter of Theodosius II and Eudokia . He had two daughters, Evdokia and Placidia, whom the vandals after the capture of Rome in 455 were held captive in Carthage for seven years.

After the death of Valentinian III, the fall of the Western Roman Empire became irreversible. In the year of his death, Rome was plundered by vandals, and Petronius Maxim briefly survived his predecessor. He, in turn, was succeeded by a string of "short-lived" emperors, who were mainly puppets in the hands of barbarians who formally controlled a disintegrated power. This twenty-year period ended with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476.

Valetinian III is shown in the historical film Attila the Conqueror (USA, 2001), where this role was played by Reg Rogers .

• Valentinian // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.