Marcian

Marcian was Roman emperor of the East from 450 to 457. He reversed many of the actions of Theodosius II in the Eastern Roman Empire’s relationship with the Huns under Attila. After Attila’s death in 453, Marcian took advantage of the resulting fragmentation of the Hunnic confederation by settling Germanic tribes within Roman lands.

About Marcian in brief

Marcian was Roman emperor of the East from 450 to 457. He reversed many of the actions of Theodosius II in the Eastern Roman Empire’s relationship with the Huns under Attila. After Attila’s death in 453, Marcian took advantage of the resulting fragmentation of the Hunnic confederation by settling Germanic tribes within Roman lands as foederati. Marcian also convened the Council of Chalcedon, which declared that Jesus had two \”natures\”: divine and human. He died on 26 January 457, leaving the EasternRoman Empire with a treasury surplus of seven million solidi coins. Little of Marcian’s early life is known. He served under Ardabur and his son Aspar for fifteen years. He was captured by Vandals in the early 430s and held in captivity. While in captivity, he met the Vandal king Gaiseric, who predicted he would later become emperor. After his capture, he is not mentioned again until the death of the eastern emperor, Theodoius  II. He is the only Roman emperor known to have been born in c. 392, in either Thrace or Illyria. His father had served in the military and at a young age Marcian enlisted at Philippopolis in Thrace. By the time of the Roman–Sassanian War of 421–422, he had likely reached the military rank of tribune. He did not see action in the war, having become ill in Lycia, and was cared for by Tatianus, who would be made praefectus urbi by Marcian, and his brother Iulius.

He eventually rose to become the domesticus of Aspar, the magister militum of theEastern Roman Empire. Despite being half-Alanic and half-Gothic, Aspar held much influence in the empire. After Aspar passed over Marcian’s son-in-law, Anthemius, and had a military commander, Leo I, elected as emperor. In 431, the Vandals began to conquer Roman Africa, and Marcian organized an army to repel them. He agreed to their demand to pay 350 pounds of gold per year each year, which posed a threat to his weakly protected empire. In the summer of 434, the Roman armies were still campaigning in Africa, having faced initial defeats and the withdrawal of many soldiers of the Western Roman armies. To the north, the HunS, who were preoccupied, sent ambassadors to the empire, demanding tribute, which the Roman Empire agreed to. The Huns, who had customarily attacked the empire whenever its armies returned, withdrew as those forces returned, withdrawing as those returned, demanding their demand for 700 pounds per year. This action, accompanied by the famine and plague that broke out in northern Italy, allowed the WesternRoman Empire to bribe Attila into retreating from the Italian peninsula. In 452, while Attila was raiding Italy,Marcian launched expeditions across the Danube into the Great Hungarian Plain, defeating theHuns in their own heartland.

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Roman Empire Attila Hildmann Roman–Persian Wars Basiliscus