Extract

Justa Grata Honoria was the elder sister of the western Roman emperor Valentinian III (reigned 425–455 ce), and the first child of the Augusta Galla Placidia and her husband Flavius Constantius (later Constantius III), who died in 421 ce (Olympiodorus, fr. 33.1). Honoria was born in late 417 or 418 ce,¹ and in 425 her younger brother was acclaimed western emperor at the age of six years.² At perhaps the same time or very shortly thereafter, Justa Grata Honoria was elevated to the rank of Augusta.³ Honoria cannot have been more than eight years old at the time of her elevation, and the creation of a child Augusta was a rare and almost unprecedented event, the only similar case being the recent elevation of her cousin Pulcheria, the older sister of the eastern emperor Theodosius II, who in 414 had been raised to the rank of Augusta while a teenager.