TEODOSIO II (Flavius Theodosius, iunior) EMPEROR OF THE EAST. — Born in 401, proclaimed Augustus on 10 January 402, he succeeded his father Arcadius on 1 May 408. Given the Emperor’s age, the regency was exercised by Anthemius, who carried out extensive and fruitful activity, seeking to repress the latifundists’ aspirations to fiscal independence (Cod. Theod., 9, 22, 4: a. 409), promoting the importation of grain from Egypt, peacefully settling relations with Persia, reorganizing the army and especially the Danube fleet and the defense of Illyricum, and also beginning (443) the construction of the walls of Constantinople to protect the landward side.
Moreover, after subduing the Libyans and Isaurians, as early as 409 he achieved a decisive victory over the Huns who had crossed the Danube. After Anthemius died (414), the patrician Aurelian succeeded him as praefectus praetorio, but the regency of the thirteen-year-old T. was assumed by his sister Pulcheria, elevated to the dignity of Augusta on 4 July 414. Under Pulcheria’s influence, the court of Constantinople became the center of a strict religious rigorism; measures against heretics were tightened, pagans were excluded from public offices (Cod. Theod., 16, 5, 57 ff.; 16, 10, 21), and the construction of new synagogues was prohibited (ibid., 16, 8, 22). But other problems were pressing, such as the situation of large landownership in Egypt, the state of unrest in Palestine, the frequent revolts of troops in the East, and the conflict with Persia. The latter led to a war (421–22), which ended in a Byzantine success and was followed by a peace treaty intended to last one hundred years.
In 421, at Pulcheria’s suggestion, T. married Athenais (the daughter of an Athenian professor of rhetoric), who was then baptized under the name Aelia Eudoxia. After the birth of Licinia Eudoxia, she was granted the dignity of Augusta and began to exercise strong influence over her husband, especially in religious matters: the reorganization of the school of Constantinople (27 February 425: Cod. Theod., 14, 9, 3; 15, 1, 53) was probably also due to her counsel. Meanwhile, in the West, after the death of Honorius and the accession of the child Valentinian, profound disorders were provoked above all by the usurper John, and the East found itself obliged to intervene: Galla Placidia was recognized as Augusta, and Valentinian, after his betrothal to Licinia Eudoxia, was made Caesar in 424 and, following the defeat of John, Augustus in 425.
In the East, the renewed invasions of the Huns had to be contained (441), with the cession of territories south of the Danube, while the religious controversies caused by the Nestorian (v. NESTORIO) and Monophysite (v.) heresies were raging. The Emperor’s ill-considered intervention in these matters disturbed the final years of his life; he died in 450. T.’s name is linked to a grand legislative work, namely his Code (v. CODEX THEODOSIANOS), which constitutes the first attempt at an official collection of imperial constitutions and served as the model for the Justinian Code. The Emperor (Cod. Theod., 1, 1, 5: a. 429) had initially conceived a broader plan: in addition to collecting the constitutiones generales (including those that had been repealed) from Constantine up to his own time, he had planned a compilation, combining constitutions (leges) with fragments of the writings of jurists (iura), intended for practical use. This second part of the program could not be carried out, and so in 435 (Cod. Theod., I, 1, 6) T. reduced it to the first collection, completed in 438 and subsequently sent also to the West, where it was promulgated on 25 December 438, after a solemn session of the Roman Senate, whose minutes have been preserved.
Pietro de Francisci