Chauvot, Alain <br/><br/>
The triumph of Honorius and the punishment of Attalus 

 -  2018.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> Honorius’s triumph over the usurper and former senator, Attalus, (supported in 409-410 by Alaric, and by Athaulf in 414-415), probably occurred in 417—as Prosper Tiro wrote in the Chronicon (and not in 416, as suggested by the communis opinio since Otto Seeck)—the year of the consulate of Constantius (who had just married Honorius’s stepsister and Athaulf’s widow, Galla Placidia). It is likely that Honorius’s triumph was witnessed by Constantius and Galla. Known to us particularly through Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica, XII, 5, Nikephoros Kallistos, Historia ecclesiastica, XIII, 35, and Prosper Tiro, Chronicon, 1263, while other sources are undoubtedly also worth mentioning—such as Orosius, VII, 42, 5 and Marcellinus Comes, a. 412—Honorius’s triumph probably took place in accordance with tradition (without Christianizing the route, and without the calcatio colli, i.e., without the emperor trampling on the vanquished enemy’s head), and was marked by a specific punishment inflicted upon the usurper: the amputation of two fingers on his right hand. Nevertheless, Attalus’s life was spared, as part of Honorius’s clemency and union policies, which Nikephoros Kallistos and the legislation especially bear witness to (CTh, XV, 14, 14). The triumph cannot be celebrated as a military victory against Attalus, who was captured while attempting to flee, but the exhibition of Attalus embodies the resurgence of the Empire and the City of Rome, as well as the restoration of the City and its population growth, which necessitated an increase in its goods supplies, as required by the City’s prefect. Such resurgence is not to be ascribed to the “triumphant” Honorius, who only dramatized it, but to Constantius in the Empire, and to the senatorial aristocracy in the City. The triumph enabled Honorius to acknowledge and support the role of the aristocracy in the resurgence, as shown by Philostorgius, even though a great number of aristocrats had supported Attalus, who had twice portrayed himself as championing the restoration of Roman magnificence. He also aimed at erasing the memory not only of Alaric’s 410 ransacking, but also of the wedding of Galla Placidia and Athaulf in Narbonne in 414, which Attalus had attended, and which had been considered by some Christians as an apocalyptic sign, in reference to the Book of Daniel, 11, 6. The usurper’s name could have been linked to these two events; and Galla Placidia’s union with a barbaric leader could have been the harbinger of a new destiny for the Empire, such as represented, for a short time, by their son, Theodosius—who died in infancy. On the contrary, Constantius, celebrated that same year by Rutilius Namatianus as “the only rescuer of the Latin name and fame” (De reditu suo, II, Fragment B, v. 9), stands out as the key figure at the time, as well as the incarnation of the salvation of the Empire—a counterpoint in its own right to both Stilicho, “the traitor” and to Athaulf, “the barbaric spouse.”