page_title: Theodosius I
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Theodosius I / Career
caption_attribution_description: Español: Disco conmemorativo del emperador Teodosio I, elaborado en plata y encontrado en 1847 en Almendralejo (Badajoz, España). Esta foto es de una réplica expuesta en el Museo Nacional de Arte Romano de Mérida (España). El original está depositado en la Real Academia de la Historia y no es accesible.
context_page_description: Flavius Theodosius I, also known as Theodosius the Great, was a Roman emperor from 379 to 395. On accepting his elevation, he campaigned against Goths and other barbarians who had invaded the Empire. His resources were not sufficient to destroy them or drive them out, which had been Roman policy for centuries in dealing with invaders. By treaty, which followed his indecisive victory at the end of the Gothic War, they were established as foederati, autonomous allies of the Empire, south of the Danube, in Illyricum, within the Empire's borders. They were given lands and allowed to remain under their own leaders, not assimilated as had been normal Roman practice. Theodosius I was obliged to fight two destructive civil wars, successively defeating the usurpers Magnus Maximus in 387–388 and Eugenius in 394, at great cost to the power of the Empire.
  He issued decrees that effectively made Nicene Christianity the official state church of the Roman Empire. He neither prevented nor punished the destruction of prominent Hellenistic temples of classical antiquity, including the Temple of Apollo in Delphi and the Serapeum in Alexandria. He dissolved the Order of the Vestal Virgins in Rome.
context_section_description: Flavius Theodosius was born in Cauca, Carthaginensis, Hispania (according to Hydatius and Zosimus) or in Italica, Baetica, Hispania (according to Themistius, Claudius Claudianus, or Marcellinus Comes), to a senior military officer, Theodosius the Elder and his wife Thermantia. Theodosius learned his military lessons by campaigning on his father's staff in Britannia where he went to help quell the Great Conspiracy in 368.
  In about 373, Theodosius was given the title dux Moesiae Primae (military governor of Upper Moesia) replacing his father who was sent to put down a revolt in Africa. In 374, the Quadi and their allies the Sarmatians overran the province of Valeria in Illyricum. Theodosius drove the Sarmatians out of the Roman territory and then defeated the Quadi. He is reported to have defended his province with marked ability and success. 
  The death of emperor Valentinian I in 375 created political pandemonium. The sudden disgrace and execution of Theodosius' father, Theodosius the Elder, in 376 remains unexplained. At about the same time Theodosius abruptly retired to his family estates in the province of Gallaecia (present day Galicia, Spain and northern Portugal) where he adopted the life of a provincial aristocrat. The reason for his retirement, and the relationship (if any) between it and his father's death is uncertain, though probable.
  From 364 to 375, the Roman Empire had been governed by two co-emperors, the brothers Valentinian I and Valens; when Valentinian died in 375, his sons, Valentinian II and Gratian, succeeded him as rulers of the Western Roman Empire. In 378, after the disastrous Battle of Adrianople where Valens was killed, Gratian invited Theodosius to take command of the Illyrian army. As Valens had no successor, Gratian's appointment of Theodosius amounted to a de facto invitation for Theodosius to become co-Augustus of the eastern half of the Empire. Despite severe ill-health - he was bedridden for months in 379 - he did so. After Gratian was killed in a rebellion in 383, Theodosius appointed his own elder son, Arcadius, to be his co-ruler in the East. 
  His management of the Empire was marked by heavy tax exactions, by the compulsory establishment of Christianity, by a court in which "everything was for sale", and by victories in two disastrous civil wars. After the death in 392 of Valentinian II, whom Theodosius had supported against a variety of usurpations, Theodosius ruled as sole Emperor, appointing his younger son Honorius Augustus as his co-ruler of the West (in Milan, on 23 January 393) and by defeating the usurper Eugenius on 6 September 394, at the Battle of the Frigidus (Vipava river, modern Slovenia) he briefly restored the unity of the Empire. A few months later he died at the age of 48, leaving the Empire again divided, nominally in the hands of his two incapable sons.
caption: Missorium of Theodosius, found in 1847 in Almendralejo, Spain
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