Iunius Quartus Palladius

Flavius Iunius Quartus Palladius (floruit 408-421) was a politician of the Western Roman Empire, who held the Praetorian prefecture of Italy, Illyricum and Africa for six years and was also consul in 416.

Life

Palladius come from a noble family,^[1] that gave several high officers to the imperial administration. It is known that he had a brother, who set up a statue in his honour near his house on the Aventine Hill; the inscription on the base gives Palladius' career in detail.^[1] Early in his career he was quaestor and pretor candidatus, notarius et tribunus at the Imperial court, and comes sacrarum largitionum (probably in 408/409, if he is to be identified with the Palladius that was in Rome at the time of Alaric's first siege).

In 416 Palladius was appointed consul posterior, with the Eastern Emperor Theodosius II as colleague. That same year he started (January 7, 416) his office as Praetorian prefect of Italy, Illyricum and Africa, office he held for six years (at least until July 28, 421, but his first possible successor is attested only in 422). During this period (April 30, 418) he received a law by Honorius, according to which he was to expel the Pelagians from Rome; later he and the other prefects (Monaxius and Agricola) issued a praetorian law that against the Pelagians.

He is probably to be identified with the tribunus et notarius who was in Rome in 408, during the first siege of Alaric.^[2] In this occasion Palladius was to gather among the Roman aristocrats the jewels needed to pay for Alaric's tribute, but he could not obtain enough and was obliged to proceed to the spoliation of the residual decorations of the Pagan temples of the city.^[3]

On four occasions he was appointed envoy by the Roman Senate.

Notes

1. AE 1928, 80. This statue-base was found in 1926 on the Aventine Hill in Rome, near Sant'Anselmo monastery east of via Santa Sabina, close to the remains of a Roman house. The base is now at the Musei Capitolini (inv. 7056), in the Giardino Caffarelli of the Palazzo dei Conservatori (Arthur Ernest Gordon, Illustrated introduction to Latin epigraphy, University of California Press, 1983, ISBN 0-520-03898-3, p. 181-182).
2. F. Paschoud, Historie nouvelle, III, Paris, pp. 282-283; Santo Mazzarino, Il Basso Impero, Edizioni Dedalo 1980, p. 386.
3. Zosimus, Historia nea, V.41.

Sources

• Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, "Fl. Iunius Quartus Palladius 19", p. 822-824.