The Historia

Seeking Veracity

baut0@greytrek.com

THE DEATH OF VALENTINIAN II - MAY 392

"A few days later (after Ambrose refused to restore the alter of victory)  it was known that Valentinian had been strangled.  Contemporaries could not determine whether he had met his death by violence or by his own hand (15 may 392).  Ambrose seems to have accepted the latter alternative, and the guilt of Arbogast was never proven; with the longed-for rite of baptism so near at hand suicide certainly appears improbable, but perhaps the strain and stress of those days of waiting broke down the Emperor's endurance, and the mockery of his position became too bitter for a son of Valentinian I." - 18,  p.  245

"On 15 May 392 Valentinian was found dead -- hanged in his quarters at Vienne.  Suicide was claimed by Arbogastes, and is likely to have been the true verdict.  . . . . Note that Zosimus, IV 54-3 (from Eunapius) states that Arbogastes murdered Valentinian outside Vienne, before the eyes of the soldiers -- an eastern propaganda viewpoint? . . .  The emperor, who was still only twenty years old, had had a miserably unsuccessful reign.  Deposed by a usurper, restored, but also snubbed by Theodosius, he had lately been humiliated and depressed by the seizure of initiative from him by Arbogastes; and the Frank had little reason to search for another protégé." - 8,  p.  238

"The news of Valentinian's death was probably brought to Theodosius by a messenger whom Ambrose sent to learn the Imperial pleasure as to the manner of disposing of the corpse of the young Emperor.  Less brutal than Maximus, Arbogast had permitted the body of his late sovereign to be transported to Milan, where it lay probably in some chapel awaiting burial, and was visited by the weeping sisters Justa and Grata." - 14,  p.  556

"The Silentiarius (Life-guardsman) who was charged with this message started at evening for Milan.  On the morning of the third day after his departure Valentinian, who was evidently in a state of feverish excitement, asked if he had yet returned, if Ambrose had already come.  Alas!  though the Bishop does not seem to have lingered unduly, he had but just surmounted the crests of the Alps when he learned that his labour was vain and that he must return to Milan.  The young Emperor had been found dead in the palace, 'self-slain' said the defendants of Arbogast, 'murdered by the Count's order' has been the general voice of history." - 14,  p.  554

"From this day there was open emnity between Valentinian and his Master of the Horse: and not long after, when the young Emperor was bathing in the Rhone, near Vienne, some of the servants of Arbogast, in the absence of his body-guard who had gone away to dinner, rushed upon him and strangled him.  They then tied a handkerchief round his neck and hung him to a tree, that it might appear that he han committed suicide.  It was generally understood, however, that the death of Valentinian was in truth the deed of Arbogast." - 19,  p.  129

"ON THE DEATH OF VALENTINIAN II - While agreeing with the general verdict of historians that the death of Valentininan II was probably a murder, I do not think that the hypothesis of suicide is altogether excluded by the evidence. - 14,  p.  590

   1.  Our best witness is Epiphanius (Bishop of Salamis, died 403), who in his treatise 'On Weights and Measures' says: 'Forty-six years are numbered from the death of Contantine to the consulship of Arcadius (for the second time) and Rufinus, under whom died Valentinian the younger, son of the great Valentinian, being found suddenly suffocated in the palace -- so it is said -- on the Ides [15th] of May, a day before Pentecost, on the Sabbath-day; and on the very day of Pentecost he was carried forth, seventeen days before the Kalends of June [16th May].'  This fixes the date accurately, and is an absolutely contemporary notice of the event, though not penned by one who was near to the scene of Valentinian's death.

   2.  Orosius, who wrote in Spain, in the year 418, says: 'Valentinian the younger, being restored to his kingdom, passed over into Gaul, where, while he was living in peace, the commonwealth being tranquil, he was (as they say) strangled by the craft of his Count, Arbogast, and hung by a rope that he might be thought to have contrived his own death.'

   3.  St. Augustine, in his De Civitate Dei (v. 26), written between 413 and 426, uses this very guarded phrase: 'Valentinian having soon after perished, whether by treachery or in some other way or chance' ('eoque sive per insidias, sive quo alio pacto vel casu proxime exstincto').

   4.  Prosper, who lived in the south of Gaul, and is therefore a better witness than some others, and who probably wrote this part of his chronicle about 433, says: 'Valentinian being driven to weariness of life by the too great severity of Arbogast, the master of the soldiery, perished by a rope at Vienne.' ('Val. as vitae fastidium nimia Arboagastis magistri militum austeritate perductus laqueo apud Viennam periit.')  As if to emphasize his belief in the innocence of Arbogast, Prosper continues: 'Arbogastes . . . mortuo Valentiniano, cujus exitu gravabatur, Eugenium in Galliis imperare facit.'  But one of the manuscripts reads 'exercitu,' which, if intelligible at all, puts a different meaning into the sentence.

These are our best contemporary witnesses, and they show that the death of the young Emperor was apparently wrought by his own hands, and that there were some who continued to believe that it had really been so wrought; but that, condidering the character and relations of the actors in the tragedy, murder instigated by Arbogast was the more generally accepted hypothesis.  Other historians have added some details which are inconsistent with the notice in Epiphanius, and which I think we may pronounce to be certainly false.

 Thus Philostorgius (writing probably about 430, but known to us only through the abstract of Photius) says that 'one day at Vienne after dinner, Arbogast, seeing Valentinian with some low buffoons lying down and dipping his lips into the river, sent upon him, and savagely strangled him in the absence of his servants, who had gone to take their dinner.  To avoid enquiry for the authors of the deed they tied his handkerchief like a noose round his neck and hung him up with it to a tree that he might seem to have voluntarily hung himself.'

Zosimus (writing perhaps about a generation later than Philostorgius) says that "Arbogast fell upon Valentinian while he was engaged in games outside the walls of Vienne with certain of the soldiers, and not suspecting any such design, and striking him a fatal blow, thus destroyed him.'

Neither of these accounts fits with the absolutely contemporary testimony of Epiphanius, 'he was suddenly suffocated in the palace.'

Of the two great ecclesiastical historians, Socrates (circa 440) says unhesitatingly that Arbogast and Eugenius 'agreed to murder the Emperor Valentinian, and having corrupted the eunuchs of the Imperial bed-chamber by the most tempting promises of promotion, induced them to strangle the emperor in his sleep.'  On the other hand, his contemporary and rival, Sozomen, says that some relate that he was put to death by the eunuchs at the solicitation of Arbogast and an opposition party of courtiers, and others that he wrought the fatal deed with his own hands because he was hindered by those about him from obeying the impetuous passions of youth and acting according to his own caprice.

Thus it is clear that the opinions of men were long divided as to the real nature of the tragedy at Vienne.  If we enquire as to the circumstantial evidence, we shall find that also to be in a wavering balance, though on the whole the scale of murder preponderates.  Arbogast had much to fear from the prolongation of his master's life, and something to hope from his death.  Valentinian appears to have feared danger to his life, and to have besought for this reason the intervention first of Theodosius and then of Ambrose.  He had also, with the religious notions of the age, great reason for desiring not to die unbaptized.

On the other hand, Arbogast does not appear to have had his plans in readiness for the decease of Valentinian, since an interval of three months elapses before the elevation of Eugenius to the throne.  The ungovernable rages of Valentinian, the father, seem to point to the existence of a strain of madness in his nature which may have been transmitted to his son; the feverish anxiety for the arrival of Ambrose, long before it was possible for the Silentiarius to have reached Milan, looks like a disordered intellect, and according to the story of Philostorgius, Valentinian did talk about suicide when he was prevented by his attendants from rushing upon Arbogast.  Also, as Arbogast's was eventually the unsuccessful cause, and Valentinian's niece ruled the empire for a generation, we are likely to hear that version of the story which is most unfavourable to the general and most favourable to the Emperor.