Eutropia (daughter of Constantius I)

Eutropia (died 350) was a Roman woman of the Constantinian dynasty (a line of rulers who governed the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity). Eutropia was the daughter of the Roman emperor ConstantiusI, the half-sister of the emperor Constantine the Great, and the mother of Nepotianus. Eutropia's mother was Flavia Maximiana Theodora, the wife of Constantius I.
Eutropia was written about by the Roman historians Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, and Zosimus. The bishop Athanasius knew her and also wrote about her.
Birth and early life
Eutropia was born after her parents married in late 289. Eutropia's father was ConstantiusI, who was made an emperor in 293. Eutropia's mother was Theodora. Theodora was the daughter of the emperor Maximian and his wife, who also had the name Eutropia. Eutropia had an older half-brother, Constantine the Great, and five other full siblings, the other children of Constantius and Theodora.
Constantius's and Theodora's children were probably born after 295 and before 306. Theodora may have given birth to Eutropia after the year 300. Eutropia might have been her parents' youngest child.
Eutropia's full name may have been the , although it may have been . She probably had the title in . This was a title women of the emperor's family normally had. The emperor Constantius died in 306. Constantine then became an emperor.
There is no evidence that any of Constantius's daughters married before their father died. Eutropia's sister Constantia may have been the first to marry, and may have been the oldest of the siblings. She married in 313. Their sister Anastasia married in 316. Eutropia herself probably married by the early 320s, if she married the Roman consul of 336.
Marriage
Eutropia probably married Virius Nepotianus. He was Roman consul in the year 336. Eutropia's father was probably dead by the time she married, so her half-brother Constantine, now emperor, probably arranged her marriage. The choice of Eutropia's husband was probably for political reasons, just as Constantia's marriage to Constantine's co-emperor Licinius in 313 was for reasons of political strategy.
Virius Nepotianus may have died in 337, the year Constantine the Great died. (After the emperor died, many people in Constantine's family killed one another in summer 337.) Eutropia survived because the emperor ConstantiusII did not kill the women in the family. The fact that Eutropia continued to live means that Ammianus Marcellinus was wrong when he wrote that ConstantiusII had killed everyone in his own family. The only other members of the family to live through the killings of 337 were Eutropia's nephews Constantius Gallus and Julian.
At some time after her wedding, Eutropia was probably the owner of a ship. A sign made of bronze that has been in the library of the Department of Classics at Harvard University since 1961 might have come from the ship. It was probably a "No Trespassing" sign. Its purpose was to keep people off the ship and to show that the ship was Eutropia's property. The bronze sign came from Ostia, the port of Rome, and the ship was possibly used for the transport of grain supplies to the capital city. The ship may also have been a barge on the Tiber River (the river that connects Ostia with Rome) or a boat used for private leisure.
The sign says that the ship was the property of "Flavia Valeria Eutropia ". The means "most noble woman", and women from the emperors' families used this title. Because there are only two women named Eutropia in emperors' families, the ship very probably was the property of either Eutropia herself or her grandmother, Eutropia (wife of Maximian). The bronze sign is the only evidence for the name "Flavia Valeria Eutropia". It reads:
The bronze sign says that the ship was the property of Eutropia "and her sons" (or "and her children"). If the ship was the property of Eutropia the daughter of Constantius I, then the sign shows that she had more than one child. No-one knows when Eutropia's son Nepotianus was born. He is probably one of the children of Eutropia the bronze sign speaks of. Because no-one killed Eutropia's son Nepotianus in 337, it may be that Eutropia had not yet given birth to him at that time.
Widow
Eutropia lived in Rome for a long time, and both Athanasius and Zosimus wrote that she met Athanasius in Rome in the 340s. Eutropia may have given Athanasius political help when he came to Rome in late 339. He made a pun on her name, saying she was "the aptly named Eutropia" because the name "Eutropia" comes from the . Athanasius says that Eutropia was among those people who helped him in Rome, saying that she "received us nobly".
In the 5th century, Jerome wrote that Athanasius came to Rome to speak to powerful Roman women about the monks and monasteries in the desert of Roman Egypt. Jerome wrote that this was the start of monasteries in the west of the Roman Empire. This is probably not true, but Athanasius probably did lobbying with Eutropia and others to try to get back political power in the Christian Church. Eutropia was a woman in the emperor's family, so Athanasius will have tried to get help from her when he was in Rome between 339 and 342.
Athanasius's writing may mean that Eutropia was a representative of the Constantinian family in Rome. Women from the emperor's family often represented the emperor in Rome, because the emperor was not often in the city. Eutropia lived in Rome at the same time as Constantina, Constantine's daughter, who lived in Rome from 337 to 351.
Death
When Eutropia's half-nephew, the emperor ConstansI died, Eutropia's son Nepotianus made an attempt to be emperor himself. Nepotianus took the emperor's title "Augustus" () in 350. Magnentius, who had killed Constans, soon killed Nepotianus.
Women in the Roman dynasties usually depended on the lives of the men in their family. Magnentius probably killed Eutropia in Rome - she died soon after her son Nepotianus died. Athanasius wrote about her death. Athanasius was also friendly with Magnentius's representatives. This may mean he was not in fact friendly with Eutropia and Nepotianus.
When Magnentius was dead, Athanasius said to ConstantiusII in a speech that he had never written friendly letters to Magnentius. He says Eutropia was Constantius's "aunt of blessed memory". Athanasius said he had no reason to write to Magnentius, because Magnentius had killed many of Athanasius' friends. Athanasius asks rhetorical questions of Constantius, asking how Athanasius could have written to Magnentius after Magnentius had done so much against him and his friends:
Related pages
Anastasia (daughter of Constantius I)
References
4th-century deaths