"Delicate and Fluid:" Gender and Civil War in Late Antiquity

On a hot, sweltering day in August 389 CE, the Senate House in Rome was packed. Clad in their shiny white toga, a carefully folded and rather uncomfortable woolen robe, often adorned with a broad purple stripe, the Roman senators had come to listen to an honored speaker praise the recent victory of their emperor over a terrifying foe. By senatorial invitation, the speaker had come to Rome from Bordeaux in Southern Gaul, and all concerned knew that he would face a difficult task. Latinius Pacatus Drepanius had been charged with representing the senators, but he also spoke on behalf of the emperor, who was present. Moreover, he spoke for his native of Gaul and, last but not least, for himself, mindful of the career boost a successful performance would bring (and, one presumes, of the pitfalls should he fail). Pacatus delivered a bravura performance. He presented the interests of the three parties by addressing all the themes traditionally required for such a speech of praise, or panegyric.[1] But then, in a true masterstroke, he included some radical, unheard-of innovations. 

That had been a risky move. Neither the Roman senators, proud of their ancestral mores, nor Roman emperors were, on the whole, fans of novelty. But Pacatus had rightly judged that this occasion called for new approaches. To wit: Pacatus had to praise a triumphant victory in a civil war in front of an audience that included many who had supported the loser. The victorious emperor was Theodosius I., later known as the Great, in part because with one edict he had made catholic Christianity the religion of the empire.[2] Theodosius was, in fact, the ruler of the Eastern empire, and should have been in Constantinople rather than in Rome. But two years earlier, in 387, Magnus Maximus, one of the two Western emperors, decided to move from Gaul, which he controlled, into Italy, which was instead under the control of the second Western emperor, Valentinian II. It was an act of aggression (which threatened Constantinople's Africa grain supply; hence the choice of a speaker from Gaul), that had forced Theodosius to react. He moved West against Magnus Maximus, whom he defeated in 388. Magnus was executed, and his severed head paraded through Italy.

Civil war is, of course, as old as Rome, whose founding narrative memorialized a fratricide. But celebrating the winner of a civil war with what amounted to an official triumph in the Eternal City was rare indeed, almost unheard of, and bound to be controversial.[3] After all, it praised the slaughter of Romans by their fellow Romans. Here enters Pacatus's innovation. For the first time ever, he devoted more than half of his panegyric to the defeated, whom he evoked by name (despite senatorially decreed memory sanctions): Magnus Maximus. The result was the direct contrast of two modes of imperial masculinity. Here was Theodosius, "the god we can see," the most sacred, divine emperor (sacratissimus divinus imperator), whom Pacatus presented as the perfect expression of (imperial) Roman elite manliness, further enhanced by his divinely granted victory. Theodosius's manliness was the hard, battle-proven, courageous kind, an emblem of self-restraint, at home in war and peace.

Even more important, Pacatus's Theodosius was a model of virtue because he was a man of sublime beauty, as befitting a present god. The Latin for virtue is virtus, derived from the Latin vir. Vir means man, but it denoted in fact a member of the Roman elite, who lived in accordance with the codes of elite male deportment. Such deportment required courage (virtus), in particular in battle, where the commander (imperator) had to prove his strength (vis), as well as the virtues of sangfroid, rational thinking, self-restraint, not least to earn his soldiers's loyalty or fides, faith. In civilian life, the virtuous leader had to embody justice, generosity, and benevolence, in addition to a host of other virtues. Pacatus's splendidly beautiful Theodosius was the true Roman vir par excellence. But if that was so, then his defeated opponent, consequently, could have possessed none of these virtues. Magnus Maximus's loss in that civil war was proof positive that he had been a monstrous non-vir – which meant that he was also not truly Roman, as Pacatus proceeded to demonstrate in vivid detail.

Gender, as my book, The Importance of Being Gorgeous, argues, is intrinsic to power and its representation.[4] Pacatus opposed – on behalf of the victorious Theodosius and hence very deliberately – two forms of imperial and hence elite Roman masculinity, or "vir-ness," because the language of gender, of what being a Roman elite man meant, was quintessentially a language of power. How power should be represented, what a real Roman imperator should look like, was an important way of debating, negotiating, and dealing with conflicts over power, of which civil wars are an expression par excellence.

Here, as my book argues, notions of beauty were crucial. As mentioned, the Theodosian emperors were divine – gods one could see – so that their beauty, their version of manliness (virtus) represented the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, enhanced by their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects, who authored texts such as Pacatus's praise of Theodosius, was as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Pacatus's panegyric proves this assertion through an emotionally suggestive language that evoked images galore. His Roman emperors – that is, the kind of emperor Theodosius wanted his elite subjects to see (through Pacatus's words) – were true, legitimate rulers because they possessed a manliness that was capacious, expansive, and comprehensive: both hard and smooth, mature yet also youthful, unforgiving yet also all-embracing and merciful. As such, this vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, such as, for instance, the aftermath of civil war.[5]

As mentioned, Pacatus opposed Theodosius's ideal Roman imperial vir-ness with the "less-than-vir-ness" of the defeated Magnus Maximus. He made Maximus – for nearly five years acknowledged as legitime Western emperor, who may have been related to Theodosius, and as such also a sacratissimus divinus imperator – into a negligent little house-born slave (neglegentissimus vernula), into a gladiator and brigand, in fact, into a properly monstrous tyrant, who lacked all self-restraint. Maximus became a person without virtus. His characteristics also shaped his army (as did Theodosius's): soft, dancing lightweights, clad in diaphanous robes, who advanced like "Egyptians" under the leadership of their queen Cleopatra/Maximus against the true Roman soldiers, weighted down by their heavy weapons, commanded by Augustus/Theodosius; the outcome was pre-ordained. But not only Maximus's "soldiers" had been soft, Egyptian, "oriental" non-viri; the same was also true of his other supporters (such as those seated in the Senate), who had likewise been "delicate and fluid" "slaves" to Eastern luxury. But now, the specter of that kind of softness in Rome had been banned: Theodosius had won. (Note: Pacatus also had to contend with the fact that, first, the victor was the Eastern, "oriental" ruler, who had trounced the Western one; history and the classic tropes of the civil war required, of course, that the hard Western Augustus would defeat the soft Eastern Cleopatra and Marc Antony, not the other way round. Second, both armies consisted of large numbers of Gothic, Vandal, Alan, Frankish, and Hunnic contingents; those who lost became Egyptians, the others Romans).

Winning a civil war (or any other war for that matter) was, however, only part of the story. To establish his legitimacy, the victor had to show clemency. One further advantage of Pacatus's contest of two forms of imperial vir-ness – one fully realized and the other fully negated –, was that Maximus's abject, tyrannical badness enhanced the magnitude of Theodosius's post-war clemency, and hence the extent of the reconciliation. That (post-war) Theodosius was also soft, but his softness had a different quality. Already, while the battle was still raging, he had begun to blush (like a female person), and had exhibited misericordia, mercy (also like a female person). Indeed, once the main culprits had been properly decapitated (but not crucified as slaves deserved), Theodosius proceeded to forgive all the others and embraced them in his maternal bosom.[6] Because of his immense, divine clemency and misericordia, "no one's liberty was forfeited, no one's previous rank diminished […] all were restored to their homes, all to their wives and children, all finally – which is sweeter – to innocence. See, Emperor, what the consequences of this clemency are for you: you have so managed things that no one feels that he has been conquered by you, the victor."[7] Such divine clemency, such love of (hu)mankind (philanthropia), merited indeed a triumph because Theodosius had granted victory even to the vanquished.

In Pacatus's hands, then, the emperor, here Theodosius, was the arbiter of vir-ness, and that means also of Roman-ness. It becomes evident that both were inherently instable. Loss in a civil war could turn perfect Roman viri (like Magnus Maximus and his senatorial supporters) instantly into delicate, fluid, soft, even tyrannical non-Roman non-viri. But divine imperial clemency, post-civil war, could then return those same persons, equally instantly, back into true, Roman elite viri (once a few of the losers had been exemplarily eliminated): the right imperial softness, combined with the appropriate hardness, beautifully restored the unity of the realm, in the image of the divinely beautiful Roman ruler.

References

[1] A Commentary on Panegyrici Latini II(12): An Oration Delivered by Pacatus Drepanius before the Emperor Theodosius I in the Senate at Rome, AD 389, edited by Roger Rees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

[2] For a critical reappraisal of that interpretation of that edict with further bibliographic references, see Susanna Elm, "Who Decides the Nature of God? Late Roman Edicts as Collective Decision-Making Processes in the Context of Empire (Cod. Theod. 16.1.2.1 Cunctos populos)," Studies in Late Antiquity (Special Issue: Divine Democracy), forthcoming.

[3] Johannes Wienand, "'O tandem felix civili, Roma, victoria!' Civil war triumphs from Honorius to Constantine and back," in Contested Monarchy. Integrating the Roman empire in the 4th century AD, edited by Johannes Wienand. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015, 169–97. 

[4] Susanna Elm, The Importance of Being Gorgeous: Gender and Christian Imperial Rule in Late Antiquity. Oakland: University of California Press, 2026.

[5] For another example of this strategy see Flavio Santini, "A Martyr of Civil Wars: Ambrose on the Death of Valentinian II.," in War and Community in Late Antiquity, edited by Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026, 353–79.

[6] See also Susanna Elm, "Bloodless Victory and virtus on the Christian Battlefield (Sulpicius Severus, Life of Martin; Pacatus, Praise of Theodosius I; Ambrose, Oration on the Death of Theodosius I)," in Christian Political Cultures, edited by Richard Flowers, Meaghan McEvoy, and Robin Whelan, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, forthcoming.

[7] Pan. lat. 2(12). 45.6.

Credits

Featured image: The Missorium of Theodosius I. Royal Academy of History, Madrid; Detail: Theodosius I.