VALENTINIAN I., emperor of the West from 364 to 375. He had been an officer of the guard under Julian and Jovian, and had risen high in the imperial service. With a fine robust frame, he possessed great courage and great military capacity. He was chosen emperor in his forty-third year by the officers of the army at Nicaea in Bithynia early in 364, and shortly afterwards named his brother Valens (q.υ.) colleague with him in the empire....

VALENTINIAN III., emperor of the West from 425 to 455, the son of Constantius and Placidia, daughter of the great Theodosius, was declared Caesar at Thessalonica under the auspices of Theodosius II., and again the following year at Rome, in the seventh year of his age. His reign of thirty years was a period of great and terrible events associated with the names of Attila, Genseric, and Aetius, the “last of the Romans.” This period is marked by the dismemberment of the Western empire, the conquest of the province of Africa by the Vandals in 439, the final abandonment of Britain in 446, the loss of great portions of Spain and Gaul, in which the barbarians had established themselves, and the ravaging of Sicily and of the western coasts of the Mediterranean by the fleets of Genseric. As a set-off against these calamities there was the great victory of Aetius over Attila in 451 in the neighbourhood of Châlons. (See Rome, vol. xx. p. 781.) The burden of taxation became more and more intolerable as the power of Rome decreased, although there were a partial remission of taxes in 450 and a cancelling of arrears in consequence of the general impoverishment of Rome’s subjects. Ravenna was Valentinian’s usual residence; but he fled to Rome in 452 on the approach of Attila, who, after ravaging the north of Italy, died in the following year. In 454 Aetius, between whose son and a daughter of the emperor a marriage had been arranged, was treacherously murdered by Valentinian. Next year, however, the crime was avenged by the assassination of the emperor as he was looking on at some games in the Campus Martius. He was a contemptible creature, cowardly, self-indulgent, without spirit, and without ability. With Valentinian III. the family of Theodosius became extinct....

VALENTINIAN IL, an infant of four years of age, with his half-brother Gratian, a lad of about seventeen, became the emperors of the West on the death of their father, Valentinian I., in 375. They made Milan their home; and the empire was nominally divided between them, Gratian taking the trans-Alpine provinces, whilst Italy, Illyricum in part, and Africa were to be under the rule of Valentinian II., or rather of his mother, Justina. Justina was an Arian, and the imperial court at Milan pitted itself against the Catholics, under the famous Ambrose, bishop of that city. But so great was his popularity that the court was decidedly worsted in the contest, and the emperor’s authority materially shaken. In 387 Maximus, who had commanded a Roman army in Britain, and had in 383 (the year of Gratian’s death) made himself master of the northern provinces, crossed the Alps into the valley of the Po and threatened Milan. The emperor and his mother fled to Thessalonica, to Theodosius, the emperor of the East and husband of Galla, Valentinian’s sister. At their entreaty he marched into Italy with an army, decisively defeated Maximus, and set Valentinian once more on the throne (388). He also converted the lad to orthodox Catholicism. Four years later Valentinian was dead. A barbarian warrior, a Frank named Arbogast, who had fought for Gratian and Theodosius, so presumed on his services that Valentinian was provoked into giving him a letter of dismissal. But Arbogast tore the letter up before the emperor’s face and openly defied him. Soon afterwards Valentinian was slain, no doubt by Arbogast’s order, at Vienne in Gaul, while taking part in some athletic sports. Eugenius, a humble dependent of the barbarian, succeeded to the empire of the West, a disgrace noted by the poet ...