Flavius Honorius Augustus: The West Roman Emperor

Flavius Honorius Augustus was born in the 9th of September 384 to Theodosius I and Aelia Flaccilla.

His father Theodosius I named him Augustus at a young age after the death of his father Honorius and Arcadius divided the Roman Empire.

Honorius was the West Roman Emperor from 393 to 423.

Flavius Honorius held the consulate at the age of 2 and was made co ruler on the 23rd of January 393 after the death of the roman emperor Valentinian II.

Honorius died at the age of 38 in 15 August 423 in Ravenna, Italy.

The Roman Empire was divided into east and west. The West was ruled by Emperor Honorius and the east was ruled by his brother Emperor Arcadius.

For the first part of his reign he depended on the military leadership of General Stilicho.

One of the two emperors had always enjoyed seniority over the other. However, the accession of Arcadius and Honorius is widely seen as the division of the Roman Empire into two completely separate parts. Arcadius is therefore often known as the first 'Byzantine' ruler. At his accession Honorius was only twelve years old and Theodosius had appointed a guardian to watch over the empire for him and that guardian was Stilicho. Stilicho was half Vandal, half Roman, and married to the emperor's cousin Serena. his daughter Maria, was even married to the young Honorius in AD 395.Theodosius had chosen Stilicho, who was a man of considerable

Gildo revolted against the western empire, of which his territory was a part of and declared for Arcadius instead.
This though meant that the valuable African grain supply to Rome went to the hands of the east.
Stilicho of course suspected Eutropius was involved in this, though he did not follow the manyfold advice of starting an open war with the east. Instead he started a systematic diplomatic intrigue which eventually, in AD 399, thrown Eutropius from the office and banished into exile.
Meanwhile Stilicho stopped the rebellion of Gildo and returned Africa to the western empire.

In AD 403 Italy was faced by an invasion of the Visigoths, who were making their way into the very homeland of the empire. However, Stilicho gathered troops from the Rhine, Britain, and from wherever else he could and managed to stop their advance and force them back out of Italy.While this was happening Honorius decided to move from Mediolanum (Milan) to Ravenna in AD 404 for safety purposes.But Italy was far from