Placidia - Life in Constantinople

Life in Constantinople

According to the accounts of Priscus, Procopius, John Malalas, Theodorus Lector, Evagrius Scholasticus, Theophanes the Confessor, Joannes Zonaras and Cedrinus, Placidia can be estimated to have stayed a prisoner in Carthage for six to seven years. In 461 or 462, Leo I, Eastern Roman Emperor paid a large ransom for Eudoxia and Placidia. Placidia seems to have spent the rest of her life in Constantinople.

In 478, Malchus reported that "ambassadors came to Byzantium from Carthage, under the leadership of Alexander, the guardian of Olybrius' wife . He formerly had been sent there by Zeno with the agreement of Placidia herself. The ambassadors said that Huneric had honestly set himself up as a friend of the emperor, and so loved all things Roman that he renounced everything that he had formerly claimed from the public revenues and also the other moneys that Leo had earlier seized from his wife ... He gave thanks that the emperor had honored the wife of Olybrius..." Placidia is last mentioned c. 484.

Her only known daughter was Anicia Juliana, born c. 462, who spent her life at the pre-Justinian court of Constantinople. Juliana was considered "both the most aristocratic and the wealthiest inhabitant". Oost comments that "through her the descendants of Galla Placidia among the nobility of the Eastern Empire."