Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/353

raised to the throne, pressed forward amid general amazement to preside as of equal authority with him at a reception of ambassadors, the philosopher Seneca hastily impelled the young Emperor to arrest his mother with a respectful greeting, and thus, in the words of Tacitus, "under the semblance of filial devotion the impending disgrace was obviated."^[1] Yet, in several instances, as the guardian of an immature heir to the crown, or as the associate of an incapable husband or brother, a woman was able to retain for a considerable time all the attributes of monarchy. The Syrian Soaemias, the equal in profligacy of her son Elagabalus, assumed the reigns of government, and took her seat in the Senate, which then beheld for the first time a female assisting at its deliberations.^[2] Her career speedily terminated in disaster,^[3] but during the break-up of the Western Empire, two centuries later, no opposition was offered to the predominance of her sex by a dejected people. The Empress Placidia Galla, after enduring many misfortunes, exercised a regency scarcely distinguishable from absolutism for more than a decade, in the name of her son Valentinian III.^[4] In

1. Tacitus, Ann., xiii, 5.
2. Hist. Aug. Heliogabalus, 2, et seq. She "lived the life of a prostitute," and she also instituted a "petty senate" of females, which prescribed the fashions of the day to women. Manners, dress, jewellery, style of carriages, choice of draught-animals, horses, asses, or oxen, etc., were the subject of their jurisdiction.
3. Ibid., 17, et seq. Both were murdered, and their bodies dragged through the streets by the Praetorian guard, before their reign had lasted quite four years.
4. She was a daughter of the great Theodosius. The turning-point in the fall of the Western Empire was the sacking of Rome by Alaric in 410. From about 425 her authority was paramount at Ravenna, the provisional capital or rather refuge of the mouldering government. Most information about her is contained in Zosimus, vi, 12, and Procopius, De Bel. Vand., i, 3, et seq.