Proculus (prefect of Constantinople)

In 388, shortly before leaving for a campaign in the West against the usurper Magnus Maximus, Emperor Theodosius I appointed him praefectus urbi of Constantinople.

Rufinus then coaxed Tatianus and Theodosius to pardon Proculus, who received a letter from his father asking him to return to court.

He was tried and sentenced, as Rufinus had decided, and sent to death in a suburb of Constantinople called Sykai (the Galata district of modern Istanbul); the Emperor sent a messenger to order the execution halted, but Rufinus ordered the messenger to move slowly, so that he arrived after the execution had been carried out.

His name was subject to damnatio memoriae and was erased from monuments, as, for example, the Obelisk of Theodosius in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.

Later, his nephew, who came to power under the Emperor Marcian (r. 450–457), had the good name of Proculus restored, re-carving it on the obelisk.