400
year
Year 400 (CD) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. In the Roman Empire, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Stilicho and Aurelianus (or, less frequently, year 1153 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 400 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. It was the 400th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 400th year of the 1st millennium, the 100th and last year of the 4th century, and the 1st year of the 400s decade.
Events
By place
Roman Empire
January 9 – Emperor Arcadius gives his wife Aelia Eudoxia the official title of Augusta. She is able to wear the purple paludamentum and is depicted in Roman currency.
Anthemius, praetorian prefect of the East, is sent on an embassy to the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, to congratulate King Yazdegerd I on his accession the year before.
A riot breaks out in Constantinople; the Great Palace is burned to the ground. Gainas, a Gothic leader, attempts to evacuate his soldiers out of the city, but 7,000 armed Goths are trapped and killed by order of Arcadius. After the massacre, Gainas tries to escape across the Hellespont, but his rag-tag ad hoc fleet is destroyed by Fravitta, a Gothic chieftain in imperial service.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “400” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25621. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1153.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “400”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 400 primary sources, 400 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “400”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “400” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.