Solidus - Valentinian III VOT X MVLT XX, Rome

The VOT X MVLT XX legend commemorates Valentinian III's decennial vows — the formal religious undertaking, renewed at ten-year intervals, that emperors had observed since the Tetrarchic period. By 435, the ceremony was largely hollow ritual: Valentinian was eleven years old when these vows were struck, the court was run by his mother Galla Placidia and the generalissimo Aetius, and the Western Empire had already ceded most of Spain and much of North Africa to the Vandals under the treaty signed that same year.