The Woman Who Ruled Rome The Life of Gallia Placidia in the Late Roman Empire

In a male dominated Roman Empire, Galla Placidia ruled as regent, shaping events from captivity to empire.
In the male dominated Roman Empire, only one woman held imperial power as a true ruler. This was Galla Placidia, regent for her son Valentinian III in the west from his accession in AD 425 into the later AD 430s. Here she wielded true power, yet her wider her story is even more fantastical given the turbulent age through which she lived her lengthy life.
Galla Placidia was born in AD 388, the daughter of Theodosius the Great, famed for banishing pagan worship across his vast empire and the late 4th century AD champion of Christianity. Her two elder brothers were the ineffectual Honorius and Arcadius, they destined to rule the western and eastern empires after their father's death, the former famed for being in post when Britain finally fell out of imperial control.
Throughout her life Galla Placidia was always at the centre of great events. Captured when the Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome in AD 410, she was taken as a captive to southern Gaul where she married his successor Athaulf, becoming queen consort of the Visigoths. After his death she later married the western emperor Constantius III with whom she had Valentinian. She was her son's personal tutor as he grew as a young child, then became regent when he acceded to throne at the age of six. She proved highly successful as ruler, holding together the crumbling empire in the west in a way her male predecessors had been unable to. However, she finally fell foul of the rise of the western magister millitum Flavius Aetius and his Hunnic allies, dying of natural causes around AD 450 in Rome.
Galla Placidia left multiple legacies both in her own time and today. A patron of architecture and the arts, many of the finest buildings of early antiquity were built under her guidance. The finest can perhaps be seen in Ravenna today, for example her mausoleum there which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though in keeping with her ever interesting story she was never buried there. Meanwhile, and in a way very relevant today, she has always been a role model for women in power in male dominated society.