Marcian (; ; ; 392 – 27 January 457) was Roman emperor of the East from 450 to 457. Very little of his life before becoming emperor is known, other than that he was a (personal assistant) who served under the commanders Ardabur and his son Aspar for fifteen years. After the death of Emperor Theodosius II on 28 July 450, Marcian was made a candidate for the throne by Aspar, who held much influence because of his military power. After a month of negotiations Pulcheria, Theodosius' sister, agreed to marry Marcian. Zeno, a military leader whose influence was similar to Aspar's, may have been involved in these negotiations, as he was given the high-ranking court title of patrician upon Marcian's accession. Marcian was elected and inaugurated on 25 August 450.
Marcian reversed many of the actions of TheodosiusII in the Eastern Roman Empire's relationship with the Huns under Attila and in religious matters. Marcian almost immediately revoked all treaties with Attila, ending all subsidy payments to him. In 452, while Attila was raiding Roman Italy, then a part of the Western Roman Empire, Marcian launched expeditions across the Danube into the Great Hungarian Plain, defeating the Huns in their own heartland. This action, accompanied by the famine and plague that broke out in northern Italy, allowed the Western Roman Empire to bribe Attila into retreating from the Italian peninsula.
After Attila's death in 453, Marcian took advantage of the resulting fragmentation of the Hunnic confederation by settling Germanic tribes within Roman lands as ("federates" providing military service in exchange for benefits). Marcian also convened the Council of Chalcedon, which declared that Jesus had two "natures": divine and human. This led to the alienation of the population of the eastern provinces of Syria and Egypt, as many of them were miaphysites, rejecting the new official Christology. Marcian died on 27 January 457, leaving the Eastern Roman Empire with a treasury surplus of seven million solidi coins, an impressive achievement considering the economic ruin inflicted upon the Eastern Roman Empire by the Huns and Theodosius' tribute payments. After his death, Aspar passed over Marcian's son-in-law, Anthemius, and had a military commander, Leo I, elected as emperor.
Early life
Marcian was born in 392, in either Thrace or Illyria. The ancient historian John Malalas describes him as being tall and having some sort of foot impediment. Little of Marcian's early life is known. His father had served in the military and at a young age Marcian enlisted at Philippopolis in Thrace. By the time of the Roman–Sassanian War of 421–422, Marcian had likely reached the military rank of tribune—the historian Theophanes the Confessor mentions him commanding a military unit. He did not see action in the war, having become ill in Lycia. There he was cared for by Tatianus, who would be made (prefect of Constantinople) by Marcian, and Tatianus' brother Iulius. Marcian eventually rose to become the (personal assistant) of Aspar, the (commander-in-chief) of the Eastern Roman Empire. Despite being half-Alanic and half-Gothic, Aspar held much influence in the empire. In the early 430s, Marcian served under Aspar in Roman Africa, where he was captured by Vandals. Evagrius Scholasticus, Procopius and later authors give a likely false account in which Marcian, while in captivity, met the Vandal king Gaiseric, who predicted he would later become emperor. After his capture, Marcian is not mentioned again until the death of the eastern emperor, Theodosius II.