Eusebia (empress) - Empress

Empress

The Panegyric of Julian places her marriage to Constantius prior to the defeat of rival emperor Magnentius. Magnentius was dead by August 353. The marriage of Constantius and Eusebia may have occurred earlier in the year. "When he acquired the throne that had belonged to his ancestors, and had won it back from him who had usurped it by violence and desired to wed that he might beget sons to inherit his honour and power, deemed this lady worthy of his alliance, when he had already become of almost the whole world". In the original Medieval Greek text the word is "ecumene", a term originally used in the Greco-Roman world to refer to the inhabited Earth. Over time, the word came to mean the civilized world, and to be synonymous with the Roman Empire. The Prosopography interprets the text to mean that Constantius had yet to defeat Magnentius at the time.

The Panegyric mentions she asserted her influence early on. "Eusebia ... has come to be the partner of her husband's counsels, and though the Emperor is by nature merciful, good and wise, she encourages him to follow yet more becomingly his natural bent, and even turns justice to mercy. So that no one could even cite a case in which this Empress, whether with justice, as might happen, or unjustly, has ever been the cause of punishment or chastisement either great or small." ... "But not even when men richly deserve to suffer and be punished ought they to be utterly ruined. Now since the Empress recognises this, she has never bidden him inflict any injury of any kind, or any punishment or chastisement even on a single household of the citizens, much less on a whole kingdom or city. And I might add, with the utmost confidence that I am speaking the absolute truth, that in the case of no man or woman is possible to charge her with any misfortune that has happened, but all the benefits that she confers and has conferred, and on whom, I would gladly recount in as many cases as possible, and report them one by one, how for instance this man, thanks to her, enjoys his ancestral estate, and that man has been saved from punishment, though he was guilty in the eyes of the law, how a third escaped a malicious prosecution, though he came within an ace of the danger, how countless persons have received honour and office at her hands"

Julian goes on to present Eusebia's patronage of her own family, alluding to practice of nepotism by the Empress. "When she had in the beginning secured her husband's good will for her actions like a "frontage shining from afar," to use the words of the great poet Pindar, she forthwith showered honours on all her family and kinsfolk, appointing to more important functions those who had already been tested and were of mature age, and making them seem fortunate and enviable, and she won for them the Emperor's friendship and laid the foundations of their present prosperity. And if anyone thinks, what is in fact true, that on their own account they are worthy of honour, he will applaud her all the more. For it is evident that it was their merit, far more than the ties of kinship, that she rewarded; and one could hardly pay her a higher compliment than that. Such then was her treatment of these. And to all who, since they were still obscure on account of their youth, needed recognition of any sort, she awarded lesser honours. And not only on her kinsfolk has she conferred such benefits, but whenever she learned that ties of friendship used to exist with her ancestors, she has not allowed it to be unprofitable to those who owned such ties, but she honours them, I understand, no less than her own kinsfolk, and to all whom she regard's as her father's friends she dispensed wonderful rewards for their friendship."

Julian mentions Eusebia visiting Rome in 354. Her husband was in Germania at the time. "The visit which she lately made to Rome when the Emperor was on his campaign and had crossed the Rhine by bridges or forts near the frontiers of Galetia ... I could indeed very properly have given an account of this visit, and described how the people and the Senate welcomed her with rejoicings and went to meet her with enthusiasm, and received her as is their custom to receive an Empress, and told the amount of the expenditure, how generous and splendid it was, and the costliness of the preparations, and reckoned up the sums she distributed to the presidents of the tribes and the centurions of the people."