Charito - Family

Family

According to Ammianus and Zosimus, Charito was a daughter of Lucillianus. Lucillianus was a military commander situated in Sirmium during the late reign of Constantius II. He had served as a commander in a conflict with the Sassanid Empire in 350. He then served as comes domesticorum under Constantius Gallus.:

In 358 -359, Lucillianus and Procopius formed the second embassy sent by Constantius to Shapur II, negotiating terms of peace and returning without results. According to Ammianus:"On these very same days Prosper, Spectatus, and Eustathius, who had been sent as envoys to the Persians (as we have shown above), approached the king on his return to Ctesiphon, bearing letters and gifts from the emperor, and demanded peace with no change in the present status. Mindful of the emperor's instructions, they sacrificed no whit of the advantage and majesty of Rome, insisting that a treaty of friendship ought to be established with the condition that no move should be made to disturb the position of Armenia or Mesopotamia. Having therefore tarried there for a long time, since they saw that the king was most obstinately hardened against accepting peace, unless the dominion over those regions should be made over to him, they returned without fulfilling their mission. Afterwards Count Lucillianus was despatched, together with Procopius, at that time state secretary, to accomplish the self-same thing with like insistence on the conditions; the latter afterwards, bound as it were by a knot of stern necessity, rose in revolution.... "When our scouts had returned there, we found in the scabbard of a sword a parchment written in cipher, which had been brought to us by order of Procopius, who, as I said before, had previously been sent as an envoy to the Persians with Count Lucillianus. In this, with intentional obscurity, for fear that, if the bearers were taken and the meaning of the message known, most disastrous consequences would follow, he gave the following message:

"Now that the envoys of the Greeks have been sent far away and perhaps are to be killed, that aged king, not content with Hellespontus, will bridge the Granicus and the Rhyndacus and come to invade Asia with many nations. He is naturally passionate and very cruel, and he has as an instigator and abetter the successor of the former Roman emperor Hadrian;unless Greece takes heed, it is all over with her and her dirge chanted." "This writing meant that the king of the Persians had crossed the rivers Anzaba and Tigris, and, urged on by Antoninus, aspired to the rule of the entire Orient. When it had been read, with the greatest difficulty because of its excessive ambiguity, a sagacious plan was formed."

Lucillianus later attempted to counter the advance of Julian the Apostate and his forces against Constantius. He was defeated however and was dismissed from the Roman army when Julian rose to the throne. According to Ammianus:"Rumour, which with a thousand tongues, as men say, strangely exaggerates the truth, spread herself abroad with many reports throughout all Illyricum, saying that Julian, after overthrowing a great number of kings and nations in Gaul, was on the way with a numerous army and puffed up by sundry successes. Alarmed by this news, the pretorian prefect Taurus speedily retreated, as if avoiding a foreign enemy, and using the rapid changes of the public courier-service, he crossed the Julian Alps, at the same stroke taking away with him Florentius, who was also prefect. Nonetheless, Count Lucillianus, who then commanded the troops stationed in those regions, with headquarters at Sirmium, having some slight intelligence of Julian's move, gathered together such forces as regard for speedy action allowed to be summoned from the neighbouring stations and planned to resist him when he should arrive. But Julian, like a meteor or a blazing dart, hastened with winged speed to his goal; and when he had come to Bononea, distant nineteen miles from Sirmium, as the moon was waning and therefore making dark the greater part of the night, he unexpectedly landed, and at once sent Dagalaifus with a light-armed force to summon Lucillianus, and if he tried to resist, to bring him by force. The prefect was still asleep, and when he was awakened by the noise and confusion and saw himself surrounded by a ring of strangers, he understood the situation and, overcome with fear on hearing the emperor's name, obeyed his command, though most unwillingly. So the commander of the cavalry, just now so haughty and self-confident, following another's behest, was set upon the first horse that could be found and brought before the emperor like a base captive, scarcely keeping his wits through terror. But when at first sight of Julian he saw that the opportunity was given him of bowing down to the purple, taking heart at last and no longer in fear for his life, he said: "Incautiously and rashly, my Emperor, you have trusted yourself with a few followers to another's territory." To which Julian replied with a bitter smile: "Reserve these wise words for Constantius, for I have offered you the emblem of imperial majesty, not as to a counsellor, but that you might cease to fear." "

Ammianus and Zosimus give two slightly different accounts on the role of the imperial father-in-law in the brief reign of Jovian. According to Ammianus: "Procopius, a state-secretary, and the military tribune Memoridus were sent to the lands of Illyricum and Gaul, to announce the death of Julianus, and the elevation of Jovian (after Julianus's decease) to Augustan rank. To them the emperor had also given instructions to hand his father-in‑law Lucillianus, who after his dismissal from the army had retired to a life of leisure and was then living at Sirmium, the commission as commander of the cavalry and infantry which he had delivered to them, and urge him to hasten to Milan, in order to attend to any difficulties there, or if (as was now rather to be feared) any new dangers should arise, to resist them. To these instructions the emperor had added a secret letter, in which he also directed Lucillianus to take with him some men selected for their tried vigour and loyalty, with the view of making use of their support as the condition of affairs might suggest. And he took the prudent step of appointing Malarichus, who also was even then living in Italy in a private capacity, as successor to Jovinus, commander of the cavalry in Gaul, sending him the insignia of that rank. Thereby he aimed at a double advantage: first, in getting rid of a general of distinguished service and therefore an object of suspicion; and, second, the hope that a man of slight expectations, when raised to a high rank, might show great zeal in supporting the position of his benefactor, which was still uncertain. Also the men who were commissioned to carry out these plans were ordered to set the course of events in a favourable light, and wherever they went, to agree with each other in spreading the report that the Parthian campaign had been brought to a successful end. They were to hasten their journey by adding night to day, to put into the hands of the governors and the military commanders of the provinces the messages of the new emperor, to secretly sound the sentiments of all of them, and to return steadily with their replies, in order that as soon as it was learned how matters stood in the distant provinces, timely and careful plans might be made for safeguarding the imperial power."

The return of Lucillianus to action would result in his death sometime later. "After this the emperor left Tarsus, and making long marches arrived at Tyana, a town of Cappadocia, where on their return the secretary Procopius and the tribune Memoridus met him. They gave him an account of their missions, beginning (as order demanded) with the entry of Lucillianus with the tribunes Seniauchus and Valentinianus, whom he had taken with him, into Mediolanum; but on learning that Malarichus had refused to accept the position he had gone at full speed to Rheims. Then, as if that nation were in profound peace, he ran off the track (as the saying is), and quite out of season, since everything was not yet secure, devoted his attention to examining the accounts of a former actuary. This man, being conscious of deceit and wrongdoing, fled for refuge to the army and falsely asserted that Julianus was still alive and that a man of no distinction had raised a rebellion; in consequence of his falsehoods a veritable storm broke out among the soldiery, and Lucillianus and Seniauchus were killed. For Valentinianus, who was shortly afterwards emperor, in terror and not knowing where to turn, was safely gotten out of the way by Primitivus, his guest-friend. This sad news was followed by another message, this time a happy one, namely, that soldiers sent by Jovinus, heads of the divisions, as camp parlance termed them, were on the way, reporting that the Gallic army embraced with favour the rule of Jovian.

According to Zosimus: "Jovian now turning his attention to the affairs of government, made various arrangements, and sent Lucilianus his father-in-law, Procopius, and Valentinian, who was afterwards emperor, to the armies in Pannonia, to inform them of the death of Julian, and of his being chosen emperor. The Batavians who were at Sirmium, and were left there for its protection, as soon as they received the news, put to death Lucilianus who brought such unwelcome intelligence, without regard to his relationship to the emperor. Such was the respect they had to Jovian's relations, that Valentinian himself only escaped from the death they intended to inflict on him." The two accounts differ in the location of the death, Rheims or Sirmium, and on which units were responsible. Ammianus leaves it vague while Zosimus points at specific units.