Chapter 35
Chapter 35
After the crisis that occured in the first year of his reign, and the birth of his son Majorianus, Theodosius settled into the more logistical economic, and administrative side of ruling. With the civil war that took place in spain reducing its productivity and its taxes by a substantial margin after its reconquest, Theodosius plunged over 20,000,000 into the provinces there in an effort to kickstart its economy though the loss of thousands of people were something he could not immediately fix. However with this spending Theodosius's advisors began making noise, and his attention turned to the economy, leaving Hispanias recovery under the watchful eyes of Comes Hispania Flavius Agrippa, and Praetorian Prefect Marcus Aemilius Scaurus.
With his fathers reforms nearly two decades before the Western Empire should have roughly brought in nearly 190 million Folli, and with the military growth instead of 60 million Folli it should have been roughly 80 million folli of military expediture. Then there was Africa which should have been bringing in roughly 80 million folli itself, though over half of that was going directly back into the province to improve infrastructure for the people and the army. So in total the Empire should have been generating nearly 270 million folli, with 80 million in military expenditures, and another roughly 100 million being put back into the provinces infrastructure and goverment saleries and expenditures, leaving 90 million folli in surplus. The reality of the situation however was that corruption was still running throughout the empire, the loss of Hispania for a year, and the payments to the families of the dead and retiring soldiers was straining the empires coffers.
Of course the following year would bring back the Hispanias tax revenues, though it would take half of that if it all came as projected to pay for the money he had sent to be used there. The one awnser that Theodosius had was to crack down on corruption in any forms that could be found. This ment expelling several cohort commanders and a few Tribuni and a Dux from the military and stripping their wealth from them, when it was found their reports on man count were wrong, meaning extra supplies and money was being sent to their commands, with the supplies being sold for profit. There were several cases of municipal corruption, Town Councils sending false reports of damages to get extra money, with these men being heavily fined and expelled from their positions. However Theodosius did not hire any auditors, or make a new office of Quaestor, to verify the tax reports that were sent to him buy the Praetorian Prefects. He could have hired men to do this, but believing this would only be a waste of recourses and that it would only cause civil unrest he left the Praetorian Prefects to do their job unhindered, only making a few more processes to file in reports so that things like infrastructure building and repairs had to be verified more thoroughly before money was set aside for these projects.
Another thing Theodosius did going into his second year as emperor was to name his brother Constantinus as Comes Palatinus, Comes of the Palatini. Syragius had been performing his role as Comes Domesticorum well being the commander of the emperors gaurd which numbered some 5000 men, he had also been commander of the Emperors Palatini, which had been essentially used as the same thing for the last two decades. However Theodosius seeing his brother becoming bored and angry at doing nothing decided to split the two posts properly again, Constantinus was given command of 5,000 men, which were to essentially be a garrisoning force for Central italy, to be the Emperors personal army if a Civil war happened. He was also given the task of training them as Cavalry heavy infantry and as archers. Theodosius wanted a force that could be used as a shock force that could move swifly if needed and be used in various ways. Constantinus would use this time to practice the skills, strategies, and ideas for the future. He would also marry the daughter of the deceased Marcellinus in the year 477. Their first child a daughter was born in early in 478 though she would only live a few weeks before succumbing to an illness. Theodosius had a second son born in the same year however the boy would not live for but a few hours, these double tragedies were unfortunately followed by a third in the winter when Theodosius's 2 year old son Majorianus also passed due to illness.
Theodosius would enter a depression after this event, having lost two sons within a year, leaving Constantinus as his hier once again. To get his mind off of what had happened, with Constantinus, Gallus, Nepos and several other advisors, Theodosius began planning a campaign for his brother to lead, the target would be the Seuvi, and conquering the tribe that had caused so much trouble, this campaign would be lead by Constantinus in 480.
However finally in 479 both emperor and Caesar would have children. Constantinus would have a daughter Julia Constantina. Theodosius would have a third son, named Gaius Julius Valerius Placidius. Placidius was the son of the two Current Roman dynasties, and while he would be outshown because of his uncles, he was known into his teenage years to have been a bright athletic young man, who showed much promise being descended from two of the empires better emperors, unfortunately Placidius would not get a chance to prove if he could have been an effective emperor, which would be the opposite of what his fathers hier would be..