Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XVI: Constantine the Great

(9) VALERIUS VALENS & MARTINIAN –

TETRARCHY (WESTERN EMPIRE – IN NAME ONLY)

(316-317 AD & 324 AD: 2-3 MONTHS EACH)

Think of that trope of someone trying to stop or at least stall an implacable pursuer by desperately throwing things, ineffectual or otherwise, at them or in their path, only for that pursuer to effortlessly brush or shrug those things aside as barely an inconvenience.

When the Tetrarchy had boiled down to a civil war between the last two men standing – Licinus as eastern emperor and Constantine as western emperor – that someone was Licinus, his implacable pursuer was Constantine, and the things Licinus desperately threw at Constantine were these two guys.

I’m not sure whether one can count them as usurpers – nor as ‘western emperors’, as both didn’t actually rule anything despite Licinus appointing them as such, given that Licinus did not control the western empire and was only appointing them in opposition to Constantine, each only for two or three months.

Valens was a frontier general in Dacia who helped Licinus raise another army after the latter’s crushing defeat by Constantine at the Battle of Cibalae. Licinus rewarded him by proclaiming him western emperor or augustus – only to abandon him and have him executed pursuant to a peace treaty with Constantine after being defeated again.

That peace ultimately broke down into another bout of civil war between Constantine and Licinus, so Licinus tried the same trick again – proclaiming Martinian, an imperial bureaucrat, as ‘western emperor’. This time, Constantine decisively and conclusively defeated Licinus – deposing and banishing both Licinius and Martinian before changing his mind to execute them instead.

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

So inconsequential that Dovahhatty didn’t even depict them in full but only as icons on a map – wojak face for Valens and an alien for Martinian as a play on the similarity of the name to Martian (a trick Dovahhatty repeated for the eastern emperor Marcian). At least they got depictions, unlike some others in these dishonorable mentions.

RATING: 2 STARS**

X-TIER (WILD TIER)