Charito - Widow

Widow

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon reports that "the body of Jovian was sent to Constantinople, to be interred with his predecessors, and the sad procession was met on the road by his wife Charito, the daughter of Count Lucillian; who still wept the recent death of her father, and was hastening to dry her tears in the embraces of an Imperial husband. Her disappointment and grief were imbittered by the anxiety of maternal tenderness. Six weeks before the death of Jovian, his infant son had been placed in the curule chair, adorned with the title of Nobilissimus, and the vain ensigns of the consulship. Unconscious of his fortune, the royal youth, who, from his grandfather, assumed the name of Varronian, was reminded only by the jealousy of the government, that he was the son of an emperor. Sixteen years afterwards he was still alive, but he had already been deprived of an eye; and his afflicted mother expected every hour, that the innocent victim would be torn from her arms, to appease, with his blood, the suspicions of the reigning prince."

The reference to Varronianus being half-blind comes from the "Homilies on Philippians" by John Chrysostom. "Another again, his successor, was destroyed by noxious drugs, and his cup was to him no longer drink, but death. And his son had an eye put out, from fear of what was to follow, though he had done no wrong." Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont was the first to identify the poisoned emperor with Jovian and the son with Varronianus. Gibbon and others have followed this interpretation. Tillemont assumed that Varronianus was eventually executed but there is no ancient or medieval text supporting the notion.

The reference to the fate of Charito comes from the "Letter to a Young Widow" by John Chrysostom, written c. 380. "Now passing over ancient times, of those who have reigned in our own generation, nine in all, only two have ended their life by a natural death; and of the others one was slain by a usurper, one in battle, one by a conspiracy of his household guards, one by the very man who elected him, and invested him with the purple, and of their wives some, as it is reported, perished by poison, others died of mere sorrow; while of those who still survive one, who has an orphan son, is trembling with alarm lest any of those who are in power dreading what may happen in the future should destroy him, another has reluctantly yielded to much entreaty to return from the exile into which she had been driven by him who held the chief power."

The original passage is quite vague in not actually naming the emperors or empresses mentioned. The interpretation given by Gibbon and others identifies the two emperors who died of natural causes with Constantine I and Constantius II. The one slain by a usurper was Constans, assassinated by orders of rival emperor Magnentius. The one killed in battle is thought to be Constantine II. The one assassinated by his guards was Jovian, since Chrysostom expressed the same belief in another of his texts. The one killed by the man who elevated him to the purple was Constantius Gallus, created Caesar by Constantius II and later executed by orders of the same emperor. The empress trembling for the life of her son is thought to be Charito. The one returning from exile is tentatively identified with Marina Severa, first wife of Valentinian I and mother of Gratian. However the identification is very doubtful in this case as her life following her divorce is not recorded by other sources.

Bleterie considered Charito to have been a Christian and comments "no one had ever more need of the solid consolations which Christianity alone can give".