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He seems to have had not an easy task between the desire to please his haughty Roman bride and, at the same time, to repel the charge of his people that he was becoming effeminate and Romanized; and, finally, so jealous did they become of her influence that Ataulf was assassinated in the presence of his wife, all his children butchered, and the proud Placidia compelled to walk barefoot through the streets of Barcelona.
As early as the time of Galla Placidia, the bishop of Ravenna had obtained from the Augusta the title and rights of metropolitan of the fourteen cities of Aemilia and Flaminia.
Placidia envied, but she could not equal, the reputation and virtues of the wife and sister of Theodosius, the elegant genius of Eudocia, the wise and successful policy of Pulcheria.
This, of old, was richly adorned with carved marbles and perhaps with silver or mosaic; and we know that in the fourteenth century certainly it was possible to see within the figure of a woman richly dressed seated in a chair of cedar and this was believed to be the mummy of the Augusta Galla Placidia. However, we hear nothing of it before the fourteenth century, and Dr.
Providence tempers the wind to the parents who are shorn of their lamb. The tumult of waters left us scatheless, but poor Placidia early paid the penalty of her rashness. She "thought" she was a good sailor though she acknowledged that this was her first sea-trip and elected to remain on deck.
He seems, according to Zosimus, to have treated her with courtesy and even with an exaggerated reverence, as the sister of the emperor and the daughter of Theodosius, but she was compelled to follow in his train and to see the ruin of Lucania and Calabria. For, as a matter of fact and reality, Galla Placidia was the one hope of the Goths and this became obvious after the death of Alaric.
Doubtless she had been treated by Alaric and his successor with an extraordinary respect not displeasing to so royal a lady, and Ataulfus, though not so tall as Alaric, was both shapely and noble. There seems indeed to have been but one obstacle to this match. This was the ambition of Constantius, the new minister of Honorius, who wished to make his position secure by marrying Placidia himself.
He is said to have found a certain amount of paganism still remaining in his diocese, and to have completely extirpated it. He often preached before the Augusta Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian III., and he was perhaps the first archbishop of the see, Ravenna till his time having been suffragan to Milan. He seems to have died about 450 in Imola.
This revolution made Placidia once more a fugitive, and we see the daughter of Theodosius "confounded among a crowd of vulgar captives, compelled to march on foot above twelve miles before the horse of a barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom Placidia loved and lamented."
"What kind of saint? invalid? bedridden? blind?" "No, no, no! saints don't all have to be bedridden. Vesta is a you might call her Saint Placidia. Her life has been shadowed. She was once engaged to a very worthy young man thirty years ago. The day before the wedding he was drowned; sailboat capsized in a squall, just in the bay here.
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