Empress

Gratian was first married to Flavia Maxima Constantia

Flavia Maxima Constantia

Flavia Maxima Constantia was the first Empress consort of Gratian of the Western Roman Empire.-Family:According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Constantia was a posthumous child of Constantius II by his third wife Faustina. Her paternal grandparents were Constantine the Great and Fausta.Her paternal...

. The Chronicon Paschale

Chronicon Paschale

Chronicon Paschale is the conventional name of a 7th-century Greek Christian chronicle of the world...

 dates the arrival of Constantia's remains in Constantinople to 31 August 383. She must have died earlier in the same year but the exact date and cause of her death are unknown. She was about twenty-one at the time of her death. Gratian was himself assassinated on 25 August 383.

On his account of the first siege of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 by Alaric I

Alaric I

Alaric I was the King of the Visigoths from 395–410. Alaric is most famous for his sack of Rome in 410, which marked a decisive event in the decline of the Roman Empire....

, King of the Visigoths (dated to 408), Zosimus mentions that the city faced a famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

. Zosimus records that "Laeta the wife of the late emperor Gratian, and her mother Pissamena, supplied great numbers with food for some time. For since they were allowed from the treasury the provisions of an imperial table, through the generosity of Theodosius

Theodosius I

Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...

, who had conferred on then, that privilege, many received the bounty of these two ladies, and obtained from their house what preserved them from famine". This is the only mention of Laeta in primary sources. She is assumed to have married Gratian in 383, in the short period between the death of Constantia and his own death.

External links

• Translation of the 5th Book of Zosimus, our primary source for her existence