Division of the Roman Empire
Theodosius I died in January 395 and the Roman Empire was divided between his two sons and never reunited. The division itself was not new. The empire had been governed by two or more emperors for most of the previous century, and Diocletian had formalised it with a system of eastern and western courts; the point of the arrangement was administrative, since a single man could not respond to crises on the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates at once. What made 395 different was that it turned out to be the last division. Arcadius, eighteen, took the east from Constantinople and Honorius, ten, took the west from Milan and later Ravenna, with both under the control of their ministers — Rufinus and then the eunuch Eutropius in the east, and the half-Vandal general Stilicho in the west, who claimed guardianship of both and was resented accordingly. The two courts then spent the following decades working against each other. The east encouraged Alaric's Goths westward, refused troops for the western frontier, and quietly wrote off Britain, Gaul and Spain as they went. The east had the advantages: a shorter and more defensible frontier, the wealth of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, a capital that could not be taken, and no Rhine. The west lost its provinces one at a time over eighty years, and the last emperor there was deposed in 476. The eastern half continued for a thousand years and called itself Roman throughout. The date is a convenience rather than an event. Nobody in 395 announced a permanent partition, and both halves went on issuing laws in the names of both emperors and regarding the empire as one thing with two administrations for another eighty years.
- Year: 395 CE
- Category: Political
