Laeta

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Laeta was the second Empress consort of Gratian of the Western Roman Empire.

Contents

[edit] Family

The only relation of Laeta mentioned by Zosimus was her mother Pissamena. [1]

[edit] Empress

Gratian was first married to Flavia Maxima Constantia. The Chronicon Paschale dates the arrival of Constantia's remains in Constantinople to 31 August 383. She must have died earlier in the same year but the exact date and cause of her death are unknown. She was about twenty-one at the time of her death. Gratian was himself assassinated on 25 August 383. [2]

On his account of the first siege of Rome by Alaric I, King of the Visigoths (dated to 408), Zosimus mentions that the city faced a famine. Zosimus records that "Laeta the wife of the late emperor Gratian, and her mother Pissamena, supplied great numbers with food for some time. For since they were allowed from the treasury the provisions of an imperial table, through the generosity of Theodosius, who had conferred on then, that privilege, many received the bounty of these two ladies, and obtained from their house what preserved them from famine". [3] This is the only mention of Laeta in primary sources. She is assumed to have married Gratian in 383, in the short period between the death of Constantia and his own death. [4]

Royal titles
Preceded by
Flavia Maxima Constantia and Aelia Flaccilla		 Roman Empress consort
383
with Aelia Flaccilla (383)		 Succeeded by
Aelia Flaccilla


[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Zosimus, "Historia Nova, Book five, 1814 translation by Green and Chaplin
  2. ^ Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1
  3. ^ Zosimus, "Historia Nova, Book five, 1814 translation by Green and Chaplin
  4. ^ Walter E. Roberts, "Gratian (367-83 A.D.)