In the middle of the 5th century AD, Roman society, which had once been so proud of its high morality, finally “collapsed”. Criminal showdowns became the norm even in the imperial palace. The ruler of the Western Roman Empire, Valentinian III, went so far as to win the beautiful wife of the consul Flavius Petronius Maximus (the second most powerful person in the empire after the emperor himself) in a gambling game, informs Ukr.Media.
Of course, Valentinian could not officially formalize this as a divorce and a new marriage – he already had a wife, Eudoxia, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, and quarreling with Eastern relatives for diplomatic reasons was dangerous. Therefore, he decided to limit himself to the good old (or rather, terrible) crime – the rape of the wife of a subordinate “in the distant chambers of the palace”, as the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea delicately writes about it.
Scheme with a ring
Valentinian beat Petronius Maximus at something like dice. The amount of the debt was cosmic, Petronius had no cash, so he left his personal ring as collateral.
Valentinian, who had long coveted Petronius' beautiful wife (let's call her Lucina), immediately sent a messenger with a ring to the woman. The legend was as follows: a man urgently calls to the palace for a social conversation. Lucina, seeing her husband's ring, believed him. But instead of a conversation, she became a victim of the emperor's lust.
Returning home, she made a grand scandal with her husband, believing that he had sold her. Petronius barely managed to convince the unfortunate woman that he had simply lost the game and was unaware of the monarch's insidious plan. When the emotions subsided, the couple sat down to think about how to live on. Both wanted revenge.
Petronia the Multi-Walker
The problem was that the emperor was guarded by the famous general Aetius, the same one who had defeated the Huns and the fearsome Attila on the Catalaunian Fields. The only way to get to the emperor's sacred body was to eliminate his main defender. Ideally, by the hands of the emperor himself.
Petronius Maximus, as an experienced schemer, developed a plan. He bribed the emperor's closest friend, the eunuch Heraclius. Aetius wanted to become related to the imperial family and offered to marry Valentinian's daughter. Here Heraclius came into play, who began to whisper to the suspicious ruler: “He wants to become a relative, so that he can then sit on your throne! We must strike first!”.
On September 21, 454, Valentinian summoned Aetius to an audience. The general began to talk about boring things: tax pressure, a hole in the budget… Valentinian decided that this was criticism and a hint of a change of power. In a rage, he grabbed his sword and personally plunged it into the chest of the war hero. Heraclius and other servants joyfully finished off the wounded man. As the monk Paul the Deacon summarized three hundred years later: “Thus Aetius perished, and with him the Western Empire fell.”
Witness Clearance and the Emperor's Finale
Petronius Maximus did not stop. Heraclius brought the emperor a list compiled by the cunning Petronius. It included both Maximus's personal enemies and anyone who could prevent the coup, including the head of the guard Boethius. The people on the list were summoned to the palace one by one and eliminated. As a result, the Praetorian Guard was left without commanders.
Petronius hoped that the grateful emperor would give him the position of commander-in-chief (in place of the murdered Aetius), but Valentinian refused. “Well, then, it’s time to end this circus,” Petronius decided.
He found two Goths (according to other sources, Scythians), Optilus and Traustilus, who had once served the murdered Aetius and were now bored in the palace guard. Petronius painted for them how their beloved commander had been so vilely murdered, and called for revenge.
On March 16, 455, Valentinian and his guard (which included these two avengers) went to the Campus Martius to practice archery. While the emperor was aiming at the target, Optila and Traustila shot the emperor. They brought the golden crown and purple cloak as trophies to the customer, Petronius Maximus.
The Rome we lost
Valentinian had no direct heirs, and chaos ensued. Petronius Maximus quickly bribed the senators and became emperor. His first edict was to annul the engagement of Valentinian's daughter to Huneric, son of the Vandal king Geiseric.
Geiseric did not appreciate the humor. The enraged Vandal king gathered a fleet and set off for Italy. The Romans, having learned that the Vandals were sailing towards them, panicked. On May 31, 455, a crowd caught the new emperor Petronius Maximus, who was trying to escape the city, and killed him.
Three days after the death of the intriguer, Geiseric entered Rome, which no one even thought of defending. The sack of the city lasted for two weeks. Thus, one dirty story in the bedroom led to the fact that the Western Roman Empire finally went to the bottom of history.
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Who is the greater criminal: a tyrant-rapist or an avenger who destroyed the state for the sake of his own grievance?
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⚔️ Revenge is justified! 🚩 A traitor is worse than a tyrant! 💩 Both finished off Rome
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