Gratian was forced to accommodate the generals who supported his half-brother into his realm, though he purportedly took a liking to educating his brother. According to Zosimus, Gratian governed the trans-alpine provinces (including Gaul, Hispania, and Britain), while Italy, part of Illyricum, and North Africa were under the rule of Valentinian. However, Gratian and his court was essentially in charge of the whole Western empire, including Illyricum, and Valentinian did not issue any laws and was marginalized in textual sources. In 378, their uncle, the Emperor Valens, was killed in battle with the Goths at Adrianople, and Gratian invited the general Theodosius to be emperor in the East. As a child, Valentinian II was under the pro-Arian influence of his mother, empress Justina, and the courtiers at Milan, an influence contested by the Nicene bishop of Milan, Ambrose. In 383, Magnus Maximus, commander of the armies in Britain, declared himself Emperor and established himself in Gaul and Hispania. Gratian was killed while fleeing him. As a lesser partner to Gratian in the West, Valentinian and his court in Milan had remained ineffectual and obscure until his brother's tragedy finally brought them to the forefront. For a time the court of Valentinian, through the mediation of Ambrose, came to an accommodation with the usurper, and Theodosius recognized Maximus as co-emperor of the West. Valentinian tried to restrain the despoiling of pagan temples in Rome. Buoyed by this instruction, the pagan senators, led by Aurelius Symmachus, the Prefect of Rome, petitioned in 384 for the restoration of the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, which had been removed by Gratian in 382. Valentinian refused the request and, in so doing, rejected the traditions and rituals of pagan Rome to which Symmachus had appealed. While Ambrose participated in the campaign against the reinstatement of Altar of Victory, he admitted he was not the cause of the decision to remove the altar in the first place. In 385 Ambrose refused an imperial request to hand over the Portian basilica for the celebration of Easter by the Imperial court, angering Justina, Valentinian, high-ranking officials, and other Arians at the court, including Goths. Ambrose argued in his letter that Justina used her influence over her young son to oppose the Nicean party which was championed by Ambrose, framing her motivation as selfish. However, not only Justina, but the wider imperial court also opposed Ambrose's claim,