Gratian: an emperor in combat against Alemanni and Goths (4th Century)

Abstract

In a fourth century marked by constant threats to the power of empire, authors such as the senator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus and the bishop Ambrose, put their feathers at the service of identifying the barbarian enemies that plagued the empire of Gratian. According to these discourses, perfidy and falsehood dominated the Goths; the ferocity, the Alamanos. In Gratian were the virtues necessary to overcome these enemies. A coin coined under Gratian also carried this elaboration. In this article, I investigate the contrasts generated between vices and virtues to propagate dichotomies rooted in that society: barbaric savagery against Roman civility. I suggest that such comparisons emphasized the perilousness of foreign peoples and, on the other hand, emphasized imperial public utility.