Lost Roman Heroes - Episode 65: Aetius (Part 2)

Born of humble stock, elevated to the purple to be a puppet of Aspar, the barbarian power behind the Eastern Empire's throne, Leo had other thoughts in mind. He had watched as other barbarian strongmen had brought the Western Empire to the brink of extinction, and he was determined that the East would not suffer the same fate. But how could you counter the men who controlled the army and the purse strings to save the Roman state?

Aegidius and Syagrius, father and son warriors, born of an ancient Roman-Gaul senatorial lineage, would keep the dream of Rome alive in Gaul long after the Western Empire fell.  In the baddest of bad neighborhoods, for three decades they reminded the world what Rome stood for, with no help from an emperor in Ravenna or Constantinople.  It wasn't about fame for these two, it was about principle!  Prepare to be blown away....

Join Lost Roman Heroes for Part 2 of our Honorable Mentions series, and meet some of the most remarkable Romans you never heard of: Pope Leo I (stood up to Attila), Anthemius the Prefect (built the Theodosian Walls), Constantine III (Britannia's last hope), Flavius Constantius (one of the West's last magister militums), and our favorite, Marcellinus (THE LAST JEDI)!

Lost Roman Heroes get their own episode, true, but as Season 2 draws to close we admit that we made some mistakes.  We missed some guys, sad but true, and some genuinely heroic characters had the great misfortune  of not appearing in the historical record.  It's OK, these are our misfits, the extra-lost, Lost Roman Heroes, that we believe deserve an HONORABLE MENTION (PART 1).  Tune in and meet Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo (Nero's nemesis), Avidius Cassius (Marcus Aurelius almost-successor), Gratian (Valentinian's super capable son, boy-emperor), Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (the last gentleman-pagan), and Timasius (Timmy-tim-tim, Theodosius' general and friend).

A special episode in which we @lostromanheroes get to the heart of the question that has vexed proper, professional historians for centuries - 'why exactly did the Empire of the West fall'?  Search no further, here we reveal the truth!

Having inherited a bankrupt Western Empire, with no treasury, no army, no popular support, and no civitas, Majorian sets about achieving the impossible, knitting the West back together again.  Never before has a Western Emperor started in such dire straits, with such ambitious objectives, and with such exceptional talents.  We cannot help but wish him the very best (as we shed a tear for him, and Rome)...

Majorian was a young Italian commander who served with distinction under Aetius as the great general tried to piece the West back together again.  When Aetius is assassinated, Majorian survives the bloodbath, and the murder of three emperors in rapid succession, leaving him on the cusp of the worst job in the world.

Aetius maneuvers himself to the top of the power structure in the West, only to be brought low by Galla Placidia and loyal Bonfatius.  After suffering his first and only real defeat, there is no one left to oppose him, but rather than seeking the throne for himself, he dedicates himself to piecing Rome back together, taking on his greatest nemesis, Attila himself!

This is the man that even contemporaries referred to as THE LAST ROMAN.  Only son of General Gaudentius, born in Durostorum, a frontier fortress on the Danube, Aetius, he wound up in the West after his father fought under Emperor Theodosius at the Frigidus.  From there he found himself on a fast track that would send him as a hostage to Alaric and the Goths, and from there to Uldin and the Huns where he would grow up amongst Rome's most fearsome enemies.  When he was released by the Huns in his early 30's and returned to Ravenna, there was no man that had the knowledge of those enemies like Aetius, something that the Empress, Galla Placidia, knew all too well, as did his enemies at court...

Granddaughter of bear-loving Emperor Valentinian I, granddaughter of last-of-the-mohicans Count Theodosius, and daughter of Emperor Theodosius who salvaged the Empire after Adrianople, Galla Placidia had the bluest blue running through her veins.  One might be tempted to think, that after having been born in this most privileged of positions, she had an easy life?  Yet that could not be farther from the truth.  Orphaned at the age of 3, besieged in Rome at 16, and kidnapped by the Goths at 17, life threw every conceivable challenge at Galla Placidia and she survived them all, surfing the tumultuous waves of chaos that buffeted the Western Roman Empire in its final days.  Our first female heroine candidate earned every last little ounce of the legend surrounding her life.