Constantius heros (ILCV 66) - An elegiac testimony on the decline of the Late Roman West

Abstract

This article offers a historical reassessment of the obscure commander Constantius and a new translation with textual analysis of his epitaph. Two Carolingian manuscripts preserve the text of a now lost inscription, which is our only source of information for this individual, and the only extant epitaph of a fifth century commander. A recent study attempted to identify Constantius as a junior officer serving the magister militum Felix in the late 420s. This article argues instead that the inscription points to a commander of the emperors Avitus and Majorian in the late 450s, who most likely ended his military career as comes domesticorum. The lost epitaph provides us with a distinct Italian perspective on the twilight years of the withering Western empire.