Galla Placidia
Galla Placidia was the daughter of Theodosius I, was carried off from Rome by the Visigoths in the sack of 410, married their king in Narbonne in a Roman wedding with fifty slaves bearing gifts, was widowed within a year and returned to the empire for six hundred thousand measures of grain, and was regent of the West for twelve years for the son she had by her second husband; the mausoleum at Ravenna with the starry ceiling that bears her name is the most complete building of the fifth century and she is probably not in it. She was born about 388, the half-sister of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, and was in Rome when Alaric's Goths starved and then entered it in August 410; they took her with them as they moved south and then north. In January 414 Athaulf, Alaric's successor, married her at Narbonne and had a son by her named Theodosius, who died an infant. Athaulf was murdered in Barcelona in 415 and his successor made her walk before his horse. Honorius got her back in 416 and in 417 married her, against her will, to his general Constantius, who was made co-emperor in 421 and died in seven months. She quarrelled with her brother, was accused of an improper closeness to him and then of treason, and fled to Constantinople in 423 with her children; when Honorius died that year the eastern court sent an army west, put down a usurper, and in 425 installed her six-year-old son Valentinian III as emperor with her as the power behind him. She governed from Ravenna through the generals who fought each other for her favour, Boniface and Felix and Aetius, until Aetius, who had brought the Huns to Italy against her once, was the only one left and she gave way to him about 437. She built churches. San Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna in thanks for surviving a storm, Santa Croce with the chapel now called her mausoleum, and the apse of St Paul's in Rome. Her daughter Honoria wrote to Attila for help against a marriage and gave him his pretext for 451. Placidia died in Rome in November 450, before that, and Valentinian's murder of Aetius in 454 and his own murder in 455 ended what she had held.
- Lived: 388 CE – 450 CE
- Nationality: Roman
- Roles: empress, regent
