Caesarius (consul 397)

Flavius Caesarius (floruit 386-403) was a politician of the Eastern Roman Empire, who served under Emperors Theodosius I and Arcadius. Caesarius was magister officiorum in 386-387,^[1] praetorian prefect of the East between 395 and 397, consul in 397, then again praetorian prefect of the East in between 400 and 403.

Biography

Caesarius was the son of the Consul of 361, Taurus, and the elder brother of Aurelianus, with whom he contended the power.^[2] He had a wife, to whom he was devoted.^[3]

In 386 he is attested as magister officiorum. In 387, while he still was magister officiorum, Emperor Theodosius I sent him to Antioch, where the population had revolted because of a taxation matter; here Caesarius held an inquiry, together with Ellobicus, then magister militum per Orientem. Caesarius conducted his investigation with a particular attention for the situation of the citizens of Antioch, pleading for Theodosius' clemency for them in his report to the Emperor, that the Antiochian orator Libanius thanked him in an oration of his.^[4]

Despite his merits, however, for a long time after his tenure as magister officiorum, Caesarius was not appointed to a higher office. This period, 388-395, corresponds to the years in which Rufinus was in power; it has been proposed that Caesarius, despite being and Orthodox, was not enough strict against the heretics. In that same period, it was Aurelian that made career, succeeding Rufinus as magister officiorum in 392 and then holding the office of praefectus urbi of Constantinople between 393 and 394.^[2]

However, in November 395, after Rufinus was killed, Caesarius had a huge obstacle to his career removed, and succeeded Rufinus in the office of praetorian prefect of the East. When he had been appointed prefect, Rufinus had issued a law to ban the Lycians, as his enemies, the powerful Eutolmius Tatianus and his son Proculus, were; Caesarius nullified this law of Rufinus', as well as another banning the Arian Eunomians from making wills, but not in opposition to Rufinus, as shown by the fact that he also issued a law that allowed the widow of proscribed men from losing their properties (the widow of Rufinus probably benefited by this law).^[5]

In April 400, Gainas returned to Constantinople with his army, and asked Emperor Arcadius to depose and hand him Aurelianus and Saturninus. Gainas chose Caesarius as successor to Aurelianus to the office of Praetorian prefect of the East, but after a short time, he left Constantinople and was defeated by the magister militum per Orientem Fravitta; however, Caesarius kept his office until 403;^[6] to this period is to be dated an inscription in Tralles, in which Caesarius is attested Patricius, a title that, combined with Praetorian prefecture of the East and the ex-consul status put Caesarius at the top of the dignities.^[7]

Caesarius bought a monastery from the followers of Macedonius: the property had been left as legacy to the monks by some Eusebia, a close friend of Caesarius' wife, who had asked them to bury the relics of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste she kept in her house. Caesarius demolished the monastery a buried his wife and her friend, then he built a shrine to saint Thyrsus, and a tomb for himself close by.^[8]

In literature

Caesarius has been identified by some scholars^[9][10] with the character of Typhon of the Aegyptus, sive De providentia by Synesius, where the story of the struggle between Egyptian god Osiris and Typhon is used to retell the story of the struggle between Aurelianus (Osiris) and Caesarius in the period of the revolt of Gainas. In the novel, Typhon-Caesarius plays the role of the villain, Osiris-Aurelius the main character.

Apart its literary merits, the De providentia has been useful to reconstruct the events of that period, even if historians need to recast the allegories to real people and historical events and to remove Synesius' bias in favour of Aurelianus.^[11]

Notes

1. Cameron, p. 178.
2. Cameron, p. 181.
3. Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica, 9.2.4, cited in Cameron, p. 177.
4. Libanius, Oration, 21.29, cited in Cameron, p. 178.
5. Cameron, p. 180.
6. Cameron, p. 8.
7. Cameron, p. 189.
8. Jonathan Bardill, Brickstamps of Constantinople, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-925522-9, p. 31.
9. Bury, J.B. History of the Later Roman Empire, Chapter 6.
10. Other think that Typhon is to be identified with the other Praetorian prefect and consul of the period, Flavius Eutychianus.
11. Cameron.

Bibliography

• Alan Cameron, Jacqueline Long, Lee Sherry, Barbarians and politics at the Court of Arcadius, University of California Press, 1993, ISBN 0-520-06550-6.