Читать книгу The Dark Ages Collection - David Hume, Эдвард Гиббон - Страница 8

§ 1. Stilicho and Rufinus (A.D. 395)

THE Emperor Theodosius the Great died at Milan on January 17, A.D. 395. His wishes were that his younger son, Honorius, then a boy of ten years, should reign in the west, where he had already installed him, and that his elder son, Arcadius, whom he had left as regent at Constantinople when he set out against the usurper Eugenius, should continue to reign in the east.1 But Theodosius was not willing to leave his youthful heirs without a protector, and the most natural protector was one bound to them by family ties. Accordingly on his deathbed he commended them to the care of Stilicho,2 an officer of Vandal birth, whom he had raised for his military and other talents to the rank of Master of Both Services in Italy,3 and, deeming him worthy of an alliance with his own house, had united to his favourite niece, Serena. It was in this capacity, as the husband of his niece and a trusted friend, that Stilicho received the last wishes of the Emperor; it was as an elder member of the same family that he could claim to exert an influence over Arcadius. Of Honorius he was the natural protector, for he seems to have been appointed regent of the western realm during his minority.

Arcadius was in his seventeenth or eighteenth year at the time of his father’s death. He was of short stature, of dark complexion, thin and inactive, and the dulness of his wit was betrayed by his speech and by his sleepy, drooping eyes.4 His mental deficiency and the weakness of his character made it inevitable that he should be governed by the strong personalities of his court. Such a commanding personality was the Praetorian Prefect of the East, Flavius Rufinus, a native of Aquitaine, who presented a marked contrast to his sovran. He was tall and manly, and the restless movements of his keen eyes and the readiness of his speech, though his knowledge of Greek was imperfect, were no deceptive signs of his intellectual powers. He was ambitious and unprincipled, and, like most ministers of the age, avaricious, and he was a zealous Christian. He had made many enemies by acts which were perhaps more than commonly unscrupulous, but we cannot assume that all the prominent officials5 for whose fall he was responsible were innocent victims of his malice. But it is almost certain that he had formed the scheme of ascending the throne as the Imperial colleague of Arcadius.

This ambition of Rufinus placed him at once in an attitude of opposition to Stilicho,6 who was himself suspected of entertaining similar schemes, not however in his own interest, but for his son Eucherius. He certainly cherished the design of wedding his son to the Emperor’s stepsister, Galla Placidia.7 The position of the Vandal, who was connected by marriage with the Imperial family, gave him an advantage over Rufinus, which was strengthened by the generally known fact that Theodosius had given him his last instructions. Stilicho, moreover, was popular with the army, and for the present the great bulk of the forces of the Empire was at his disposal; for the regiments united to suppress Eugenius had not yet been sent back to their various stations. Thus a struggle was imminent between the ambitious minister who had the ear of Arcadius, and the strong general who held the command and enjoyed the favour of the army. Before the end of the year this struggle began and ended in a curious way; but we must first see how a certain scheme of Rufinus had been foiled by an obscurer but wilier rival nearer at hand.

It was the cherished project of Rufinus to unite Arcadius with his only daughter; once the Emperor’s father-in-law he might hope to become an Emperor himself. But he was thwarted by a subtle adversary, Eutropius, the lord chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi), a bald old eunuch, who with oriental craftiness had won his way up from the meanest services and employments. Determining that the future Empress should be bound to himself and not to Rufinus, he chose Eudoxia, a girl of singular beauty, who had been brought up in the house of the widow and sons of one of the victims of Rufinus.8 Her father was Bauto, a Frank soldier who had risen to be Master of Soldiers, and for a year or two the most powerful man in Italy, in the early years of Valentinian II.9 Her mother had doubtless been a Roman, and she received a Roman education, but she inherited, as a contemporary writer observes, barbaric traits from her German father.10 Eutropius showed a picture of the maiden to the Emperor, and so successfully enlarged upon her merits and her charms that Arcadius determined to marry her; the intrigue was carefully concealed from the Praetorian Prefect;11 and till the last moment the public supposed that the bride for whose Imperial wedding preparations were being made was the daughter of Rufinus. The nuptials were celebrated on April 27, A.D. 395. It was a blow to Rufinus, but he was still the most powerful man in the east.

The event which at length brought Rufinus into collision with Stilicho was the rising of the Visigoths. They had been settled by Theodosius in the province of Lower Moesia, between the Danube and the Balkan mountains, and were bound in return for their lands to do battle for the Empire when their services were needed. They had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against Eugenius, and had returned to their homes earlier than the rest of the army. In that campaign they had suffered severe losses, and it was thought that Theodosius deliberately placed them in the most dangerous post for the purpose of reducing their strength.12 This was perhaps the principal cause of the discontent which led to their revolt, but there can be no doubt that their ill humour was stimulated by one of their leaders, Alaric (of the family of the Balthas or Bolds), who aspired to a high post of command in the Roman army and had been passed over. The Visigoths had hitherto had no king. It is uncertain whether it was at this crisis13 or at a later stage in Alaric’s career that he was elected king by the assembly of his people. In any case he was chosen leader of the whole host of the Visigoths, and the movements which he led were in the fullest sense national.

Under the leadership of Alaric, the Goths revolted and spread desolation in the fields and homesteads of Thrace and Macedonia. They advanced close to the walls of Constantinople. They carefully spared certain estates outside the city belonging to Rufinus, but their motive was probably different from that which caused the Spartan king Archidamus to spare the lands of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war. Alaric may have wished, not to draw suspicions on the Prefect, but to conciliate his friendship and obtain more favourable terms. Rufinus went to the Gothic camp, dressed as a Goth.14 The result of the negotiations seems to have been that Alaric left the neighbourhood of the capital and marched westward.

At the same time the Asiatic provinces were suffering, as we shall see, from the invasions of other barbarians, and there were no troops to take the field against them, as the eastern regiments which had taken part in the war against Eugenius were still in the west. Stilicho, however, was already preparing to lead them back in person.15 He deemed his own presence in the east necessary, for, besides the urgent need of dealing with the barbarians, there was a political question which deeply concerned him, touching the territorial division of the Empire between the two sovrans.

Before A.D. 379 the Prefecture of Illyricum, which included Greece and the central Balkan lands, had been subject to the ruler of the west. In that year Gratian resigned it to his new colleague Theodosius, so that the division between east and west was a line running from Singidunum (Belgrade) westward along the river Save and then turning southward along the course of the Drina and reaching the Hadriatic coast at a point near the lake of Scutari. It was assumed at Constantinople that this arrangement would remain in force and that the Prefecture would continue to be controlled by the eastern government. But Stilicho declared that it was the will of Theodosius that his sons should revert to the older arrangement, and that the authority of Honorius should extend to the confines of Thrace, leaving to Arcadius only the Prefecture of the East.16 Whether this assertion was true or not, his policy meant that the realm in which he himself wielded the power would have a marked predominance, both in political importance and in military strength, over the other section of the Empire.

It would perhaps be a mistake to suppose that this political aim of Stilicho, of which he never lost sight, was dictated by mere territorial greed, or that his main object was to increase the revenues. The chief reason for the strife between the two Imperial governments may have lain rather in the fact that the Balkan peninsula was the best nursery in Empire for good fighting men.17 The stoutest and most useful native troops in the Roman army were, from the fourth to the sixth century, recruited from the highlands of Illyricum and Thrace. It might well seem, therefore, to those who were responsible for the defence of the western provinces that a partition which assigned almost the whole of this great recruiting ground to the east was unfair to the west; and as the legions which were at Stilicho’s disposal were entirely inadequate, as the event proved, to the task of protecting the frontiers against the Germans, it was not unnatural that he should have aimed at acquiring control over Illyricum.

It was a question on which the government of New Rome, under the guidance of Rufinus, was not likely to yield without a struggle, and Stilicho took with him western legions belonging to his own command as well as the eastern troops whom he was to restore to Arcadius. He marched overland, doubtless by the Dalmatian coast road to Epirus, and confronted the Visigoths in Thessaly, whither they had traced a devastating path from the Propontis.18

Rufinus was alarmed lest his rival should win the glory of crushing the enemy, and he induced Arcadius to send to Stilicho a peremptory order to dispatch the troops to Constantinople and depart himself whence he had come. The Emperor was led, legitimately enough, to resent the presence of his relative, accompanied by western legions, as an officious and hostile interference. The order arrived just as Stilicho was making preparations to attack the Gothic host in the valley of the Peneius. His forces were so superior to those of Alaric that victory was assured; but he obeyed the Imperial command, though his obedience meant the delivery of Greece to the sword of the barbarians. We shall never know his motives, and we are so ill-informed of the circumstances that it is difficult to divine them. A stronger man would have smitten the Goths, and then, having the eastern government at his mercy, would have insisted on the rectification of the Illyrian frontier which it was his cherished object to effect. Never again would he have such a favourable opportunity to realise it. Perhaps he did not yet feel quite confident in his own position; perhaps he did not feel sure of his army. But his hesitation may have been due to the fact that his wife Serena and his children were at Constantinople and could be held as hostages for his good behaviour.19 In any case he consigned the eastern troops to the command of a Gothic captain, Gaïnas, and departed with his own legions to Salona, allowing Alaric to proceed on his wasting way into the lands of Hellas. But he did not break up his camp in Thessaly without coming to an understanding with Gaïnas which was to prove fatal to Rufinus.

Gaïnas marched by the Via Egnatia to Constantinople,20 and it was arranged that, according to a usual custom,21 the Emperor and his court should come forth from the city to meet the army in the Campus Martius at Hebdomon. We cannot trust the statement of a hostile writer that Rufinus actually expected to be created Augustus on this occasion, and appeared at the Emperor’s side prouder and more sumptuously arrayed than ever; we only know that he accompanied Arcadius to meet the army. It is said that, when the Emperor had saluted the troops, Rufinus advanced and displayed a studied affability and solicitude to please even towards individual soldiers. They closed in round him as he smiled and talked, anxious to secure their goodwill for his elevation to the throne, but just as he felt himself very nigh to supreme success, the swords of the nearest were drawn, and his body, pierced with wounds, fell to the ground (November 27, A.D. 395).22 His head, carried through the streets, was mocked by the people, and his right hand, severed from the trunk, was presented at the doors of houses with the requirement, “Give to the insatiable!”

There can be no reasonable doubt that the assassination of Rufinus was instigated by Stilicho, as some of our authorities expressly tell us.23 The details may have been arranged between him and Gaïnas, and he appears not to have concerned himself to conceal his complicity. The scene of the murder is described by a gifted but rhetorical poet, Claudius Claudianus, who now began his career as a trumpeter of Stilicho’s praises by his poem Against Rufinus.24 He paints Stilicho and Rufinus as two opposing forces, powers of darkness and light: the radiant Apollo, deliverer of mankind, and the terrible Pytho, the scourge of the world. What we should call the crime of Stilicho is to him a glorious deed, the destruction of a monster, and though he does not say in so many words that his hero planned it, he does not disguise his responsibility. Claudian was a master of violent invective, and his portrait of Rufinus, bad man though he unquestionably was, is no more than a caricature. The poem concludes with a picture of the Prefect in hell before the tribunal of Rhadamanthys, who declares that all the iniquities of the tortured criminals are but a fraction of the sins of the latest comer, who is too foul even for Tartarus, and consigns him to an empty pit outside the confines of Pluto’s domain.

Tollite de mediis animarum dedecus umbris.

adspexisse sat est. oculis iam parcite nostris

et Ditis purgate domos. agitate flagellis

trans Styga, trans Erebum, vacuo mandate barathro

infra Titanum tenebras infraque recessus

Tartareos ipsumque Chaos, qua noctis opacae

fundamenta latent; praeceps ibi mersus anhelet,

dum rotat astra polus, feriunt dum litora venti.

It was not only the European parts of the dominion of Arcadius that were ravaged, in this year, by the fire and sword of barbarians. Hordes of trans-Caucasian Huns poured through the Caspian gates, and, rushing southwards through the Armenian highlands and the plains of Mesopotamia, carried desolation into Syria. St. Jerome was in Palestine at this time, and in two of his letters we have the account of an eye-witness. “As I was searching for an abode worthy of such a lady (Fabiola, his friend), behold, suddenly messengers rush hither and thither, and the whole East trembles with the news, that from the far Maeotis, from the land of the ice-bound Don and the savage Massagetae, where the strong works of Alexander on the Caucasian cliffs keep back the wild nations, swarms of Huns had burst forth, and, flying hither and thither, were scattering slaughter and terror everywhere. The Roman army was at that time absent in consequence of the civil wars in Italy… . May Jesus protect the Roman world in future from such beasts! They were everywhere, when they were least expected, and their speed outstripped the rumour of their approach; they spared neither religion nor dignity nor age; they showed no pity to the cry of infancy. Babes, who had not yet begun to live, were forced to die; and, ignorant of the evil that was upon them, as they were held in the hands and threatened by the swords of the enemy, there was a smile upon their lips. There was a consistent and universal report that Jerusalem was the goal of the foes, and that on account of their insatiable lust for gold they were hastening to this city. The walls, neglected by the carelessness of peace, were repaired. Antioch was enduring a blockade. Tyre, fain to break off from the dry land, sought its ancient island. Then we too were constrained to provide ships, to stay on the seashore, to take precautions against the arrival of the enemy, and, though the winds were wild, to fear a shipwreck less than the barbarians — making provision not for our own safety so much as for the chastity of our virgins.”25 In another letter, speaking of these “wolves of the north,” he says: “How many monasteries were captured? the waters of how many rivers were stained with human gore? Antioch was besieged and the other cities, past which the Halys, the Cydnus, the Orontes, the Euphrates flow. Herds of captives were dragged away; Arabia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt were led captive by fear.”26

§ 2. Stilicho and Eutropius (A.D. 396-397)

After the death of Rufinus, the weak Emperor Arcadius passed under the influence of the eunuch Eutropius, who in unscrupulous greed of money resembled Rufinus and many other officials before and after, and, like Rufinus, has been painted blacker than he really was. All the evil things that were said of Rufinus were said of Eutropius; but in reading of the enormities of the latter we must make great allowance for the general prejudice existing against a person with his physical disqualifications.

The ambitious eunuch naturally looked on the Praetorian Prefects of the East, the most powerful men in the administration next to the Emperor, with jealousy and suspicion. To his influence we are probably justified in ascribing an innovation which was made by Arcadius. The administration of the cursus publicus, or office of the postmaster-general, and the supervision of the factories of arms, were transferred from the Praetorian Prefect to the Master of Offices.27

It has been supposed that a more drastic arrangement was made for the purpose of curtailing the far-reaching authority of the Praetorian Prefect of the East. There is evidence which has been interpreted to mean that during the three and a half years which coincided with the régime of Eutropius there were two Prefects holding office at the same time and dividing the spheres of administration between them. If this was so, it would have been a unique experiment, never essayed before or since. But the evidence is not cogent, and it is very difficult to believe that some of the contemporary writers would not have left a definite record of such a revolutionary change.28

The Empire was now falling into a jeopardy, by which it had been threatened from the outset, and which it had ever been trying to avoid. There were indeed two dangers which had constantly impended from its inauguration by Augustus to its renovation by Diocletian. The one was a cabinet of imperial freedmen, the other was a military despotism. The former called forth, and was averted by, the creation of a civil service system, to which Hadrian perhaps made the most important contributions, and which was elaborated by Diocletian, who at the same time met the other danger by separating the military and civil administrations. But both dangers revived in a new form. The danger from the army became danger from the Germans, who preponderated in it; and the institution of court ceremonial tended to create a cabinet of chamberlains and imperial dependents. This oriental ceremonial, so notorious a feature of “Byzantinism,” meant difficulty of access to the Emperor, who, living in the retirement of his palace, was tempted to trust less to his eyes than his ears, and saw too little of public affairs. Diocletian himself appreciated this disadvantage, and remarked that the sovran, shut up in his palace, cannot know the truth, but must rely on what his attendants and officers tell him. Autocracy, by its very nature, tends in this direction; for it generally means a dynasty, and a dynasty implies that there must sooner or later come to the throne weak men, inexperienced in public affairs, reared up in an atmosphere of flattery and illusion, at the mercy of intriguing chamberlains and eunuchs. In such conditions aulic cabals and chamber cabinets are a natural growth.

The greatest blot on the ministry of Eutropius (for, as he was the most trusted adviser of the Emperor, we may use the word ministry), was the sale of offices, of which the poet Claudian gives a vivid and exaggerated account.29 This was a blot, however, that stained other powerful men in those days as well as Eutropius, and we must view it rather as a feature of the times than as a peculiar enormity. Of course, the eunuch’s spies were ubiquitous; of course, informers of all sorts were encouraged and rewarded. All the usual stratagems for grasping and plundering were put into practice. The strong measures that a determined minister was ready to take for the mere sake of vengeance, may be exemplified by the treatment which the whole Lycian province received at the hands of Rufinus. On account of a single individual, Tatian, who had offended that minister, all the provincials were excluded from the public offices.30 After the death of Rufinus, the Lycians were relieved from these disabilities; but the fact that the edict of repeal expressly enjoins “that no one henceforward venture to wound a Lycian citizen with a name of scorn” shows what a serious misfortune their degradation was.31

The eunuch won considerable odium in the first year of his power (A.D. 396) by bringing about the fall of two soldiers of distinction, whose wealth he coveted — Abundantius, to whose patronage he owed his rise in the world, and Timasius, who had been the commander-general in the East. The arts by which Timasius was ruined may illustrate the character of the intrigues that were spun at the Byzantine court.32

Timasius had brought with him from Sardis a Syrian sausage-seller, named Bargus, who, with native address, had insinuated himself into his good graces, and obtained a subordinate command in the army. The prying omniscience of Eutropius discovered that, years before, this same Bargus had been forbidden to enter Constantinople for some misdemeanour, and by means of this knowledge he gained an ascendancy over the Syrian, and compelled him to accuse his benefactor Timasius of a treasonable conspiracy and to support the charge by forgeries. The accused was tried,33 condemned, and banished to the Libyan oasis, a punishment equivalent to death; he was never heard of more. Eutropius, foreseeing that the continued existence of Bargus might at some time compromise himself, suborned his wife to lodge very serious charges against her husband, in consequence of which he was put to death.

It seems probable that a serious plot was formed in the year 397, aiming at the overthrow of Eutropius. Though this is not stated by any writer, it seems a legitimate inference from a law34 which was passed in the autumn of that year, assessing the penalty of death to any one who had conspired “with soldiers or private persons, including barbarians,” against the lives of illustres who belong to our consistory or assist at our counsels,” or other senators, such a conspiracy being considered equivalent to treason. Intent was to be regarded as equivalent to crime, and not only did the person concerned incur capital punishment, but his descendants were visited with disfranchisement. It is generally recognised that this law was an express protection for chamberlains; but we must suppose it to have been suggested by some actual conspiracy, of which Eutropius had discovered the threads. The mention of soldiers and barbarians points to a particular danger, and we may suspect that Gaïnas, who afterwards brought about the fall of Eutropius, had some connexion with it.

During this year, Stilicho was engaged in establishing his power in Italy and probably in courting a popularity which he had so far done little to deserve. He found time to pay a hurried visit35 to the Rhine provinces, to conciliate or pacify the federate Franks and other German peoples on the frontier, and perhaps to collect recruits for the army. We may conjecture that he also made arrangements for the return of his own family to Italy. He had not abandoned his designs on Eastern Illyricum, but he was anxious to have it understood that he aimed at fraternal concord between the courts of Milan and Byzantium and that the interests of Arcadius were no less dear to him than those of Honorius. The poet Claudian, who filled the rôle of an unofficial poet-laureate to Honorius, was really retained by Stilicho who patronised and paid him. His political poems are extravagant eulogies of the powerful general, and in some cases we may be sure that his arguments were directly inspired by his patron. In the panegyric for the Third Consulate of Honorius (A.D. 396) which, composed soon after the death of Rufinus, suggests a spirit of concord between East and West, the writer calls upon Stilicho to protect the two brethren:

geminos dextra tu protege fratres.

Such lines as this were written to put a certain significance on Stilicho’s policy.

For Stilicho was preparing to intervene again in the affairs of the East. We must return here to the movements of Alaric who, when the Imperial armies retreated from Thessaly without striking a blow, had Greece at his mercy. Gerontius, the commander of the garrison at Thermopylae, offered no resistance to his passage; Antiochus, the pro-consul of Achaia, was helpless, and the Goths entered Boeotia, where Thebes alone escaped their devastation.36 They occupied Piraeus but Athens itself was spared, and Alaric was entertained as a guest in the city of Athene.37 But the great temple of the mystic goddess, Demeter and Persephone, at Eleusis was plundered by the barbarians; Megara, the next place on their southward route, fell; then Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. It is possible that Alaric entertained the design of settling his people permanently in the Peloponnesus.38 However this may be, he remained there for more than a year, and the government of Arcadius took no steps to dislodge him or arrange a settlement.

Then in the spring of A.D. 397,39 Stilicho sailed across from Italy, and landing at Corinth marched to Elis to give the general’s poet a pretext for singing of the slaughter of skin-clad warriors (metitur pellita iuventus).40 But the outcome was that the Gothic enemy was spared in Elis much as he had been spared in Thessaly. The Eastern government seems to have again intervened with success.41 But what happened is unknown, except that Stilicho made some agreement with Alaric,42 and Alaric withdrew to Epirus, where he appears to have come to terms with Arcadius and perhaps to have received the title he coveted of Master of Soldiers in Illyricum.43

That Stilicho had set out with the purpose of settling the question of Illyricum cannot be seriously doubted. That he withdrew for the second time without accomplishing his purpose was probably due to the news of a dangerous revolt in Africa to which the government of Arcadius was accessory. We can easily understand the indignation felt at Constantinople when it was known that Stilicho had landed in Greece with an army. It was natural that the strongest protest should be made, and Eutropius persuaded the Emperor and the Senate to declare him a public enemy.44

Of this futile expedition, Claudian has given a highly misleading account in his panegyric in honour of the Fourth Consulate of Honorius (A.D. 398), which no allowance for conventional exaggeration can excuse. He overwhelms the boy of fourteen with the most extravagant adulations, pretending that he is greater — vicariously indeed, through the deeds of his general — than his father and grandfather. We can hardly feel able to accord the poet much credit when he declares that the western provinces are not oppressed by heavy taxes nor the treasury replenished by extortion.45

§ 3. The Rebellion of Gildo (A.D. 397-398)

Eighteen years before an attempt had been made by the Moor Firmus to create a kingdom for himself in the African provinces (A.D. 379), and had been quelled by the armies of Theodosius, who had received valuable aid from Gildo, the brother and enemy of Firmus. Gildo was duly rewarded. He was finally appointed Count of Africa with the exceptional title of Master of Soldiers, and his daughter Salvina was united in marriage to a nephew of the Empress Aelia Flaccilla.46 But the faith of the Moors was as the faith of the Carthaginians. Gildo refused to send troops to Theodosius in his expedition against Eugenius, and after the Emperor’s death he prepared to assume a more decided attitude of independence and engaged many African tribes to support him in a revolt. The strained relations between the two Imperial courts suggested to him that the rebellion might assume the form of a transference of Africa from the sovranty of Honorius to that of Arcadius; and he entered into communication with Constantinople, where his overtures were welcomed. A transference of the diocese of Africa to Arcadius seemed quite an appropriate answer to the proposal of transferring the Prefecture of Illyricum to Honorius. But the Eastern government rendered no active assistance to the rebel.47

For Rome and the Italians a revolt in Africa was more serious than rebellions elsewhere, since the African provinces were their granary. In the summer of A.D. 397 Gildo did not allow corn ships to sail to the Tiber; this was the declaration of war. The prompt and efficient action of Stilicho prevented a calamity; corn supplies were obtained from Gaul and Spain sufficient to feed Rome during the winter months. Preparations were made to suppress Gildo, and Stilicho sought to ingratiate himself with the Senate by reverting to the ancient usage of obtaining its formal authority.48 The Senate declared Gildo a public enemy, and during the winter a fleet of transports was collected at Pisa. In the early spring an army of perhaps 10,000 embarked.49 Stilicho remained in Italy, and the command was entrusted to Mascezel, a brother of Gildo who had come to the court of Honorius to betray Gildo as Gildo had betrayed Firmus. The war was decided, the rebel subdued, almost without bloodshed, in the Byzacene province on the little river Ardalio between Tebessa and Haïdra. The forces of Gildo are said to have been 70,000 strong, but they offered no resistance. We may suspect that some of his Moorish allies had been corrupted by Mascezel, but Gildo himself was probably an unpopular leader. He tried to escape by ship, but was driven ashore again at Thabraca and put to death.50

Returning to Italy, Mascezel was welcomed as a victor, and might reasonably hope for promotion to some high post. But his swift and complete success was not pleasing to Stilicho, who desired to appropriate the whole credit for the deliverance of Italy from a grave danger; perhaps he saw in Mascezel a possible rival. Whether by accident or design, the Moor was removed from his path. The only writer who distinctly records the event, states that while he was crossing a bridge he was thrown into a river by Stilicho’s bodyguards and that Stilicho gave the sign for the act.51 The evidence is not good enough to justify us in bringing in a verdict of murder against Stilicho; Mascezel may have been accidentally drowned and the story of foul play may have been circulated by Stilicho’s enemies. But if the ruler of Italy was innocent, he assuredly did not regret the capable executor of his plans. The order seems to have gone out that the commander of the expedition against Gildo was to have no share in the glory,52 and the incomplete poem of Claudian on the Gildonic War tells the same tale.

This poem, which will serve as an example of Claudian’s art, begins with an announcement of the victory and was probably composed when the first news of the success arrived in Italy. Redditus imperiis Auster, “the South has been restored to our Empire; the twin sphere, Europe and Libya, are reunited; and the concord of the brethren is again complete.” Iam domitus Gildo, the tyrant as already been vanquished, and we can hardly believe that this has been accomplished so quickly.

Having announced the glad tidings, Claudian goes back to the autumn and imagines Rome, the goddess of the city, in fear of famine and disaster, presenting herself in pitiable guise before the throne of Jupiter and supplicating him to save her from hunger. Are the labours and triumphs of her glorious history to be all in vain? Is the amplitude of her Empire to be her doom? Ipsa nocet moles. “I am excluded from my granaries, Libya and Egypt; I am abandoned in my old age.”

Nunc quid agam? Libyam Gildo tenet, altera53 Nilum

ast ego, quae terras umeris pontumque subegi,

deseror; emeritae iam praemia nulla senectae.

The supplications of Rome are reinforced by the sudden appearance of Africa, who burst into the divine assembly with torn raiment, and in wild words demands that Neptune should submerge her continent rather than it should have to submit to the pollution of Gildo’s rule.

Si mihi Gildonem nequeunt abducere fata,

me rape Gildoni.

Jupiter dismisses the suppliants, assuring them that “Honorius will lay low the common enemy,” and he sends Theodosius the Great and his father, who are both deities in Olympus, to appear to the two reigning Emperors in the night. Arcadius is reproached by his father for the estrangement from his brother, for his suspicions of Stilicho, for entertaining the proposals of Gildo; and he promises to do nothing to aid Gildo. Honorius is stimulated by his grandfather to rise without delay and smite the rebel. He summons Stilicho and proposes to lead an expedition himself. Stilicho persuades him that it would be unsuitable to his dignity to take the field against such a foe, and suggests that the enterprise should be committed to Mascezel. This is the only passage in which Mascezel is mentioned, and Claudian does not bestow any praise on him further than the admission that he does not resemble his brother in character (sed non et moribus isdem), but dwells on the wrongs he had suffered, and argues that to be crushed by his injured brother, the suppliant of the Emperor, will be the heaviest blow that could be inflicted on the rebel.

The military preparations are then described, and an inspiriting address to the troops, about to embark, is put into the mouth of Honorius, who tells them that the fate of Rome depends on their valour:

caput insuperabile rerum aut ruet in vestris aut stabit Roma lacertis.

The fleet sails and safely reaches the African ports, and the first canto of the poem ends.54

It is all we have: a second canto was never written. Claudian evidently intended to sing the whole story of the campaign as soon as the story was known. The overthrow of “the third tyrant,” whom he represents as the successor of Maximus and Eugenius, deserved an exhaustive song of triumph. But it would have surpassed even the skill of Claudian to have told the tale without giving a meed of praise to the commander who carried the enterprise through to its victorious end. We need have little hesitation in believing that the motive which hindered the poet from completing the Gildonic War was the knowledge that to celebrate the achievements of Mascezel would be no service to his patron.55

While the issue of the war was still uncertain, in the spring of A.D. 398,56 Stilicho’s position as master of the west was strengthened by the marriage of his daughter Maria with the youthful Emperor. Claudian wrote an epithalamium for the occasion, duly extolling anew the virtues of his incomparable patron. We may perhaps wonder that, secured by this new bond with the Imperial house, and his prestige enhanced by the suppression of Gildo,57 Stilicho did not now make some attempt to carry out his project of annexing the Prefecture of Illyricum. The truth is that he had not abandoned it, but he was waiting for a favourable opportunity of intervention in the affairs of the east. It seems safe to infer his attitude from the drift of Claudian’s poems, for Claudian, if he did not receive express instructions, had sufficient penetration to divine the note which Stilicho would have wished him to strike. In the Gildonic War he had announced the restoration of concord between east and west: concordia fratrum plena redit; it was the right thing to say at the moment, but the strain in the relations between the two courts had only relaxed a little. The discord broke out again, with more fury than ever, in the two poems in which he overwhelmed Eutropius with rhetoric no less savage than his fulminations against Rufinus four years before. The first was written at the beginning of A.D. 399, protesting against the disgrace of the Empire by the elevation of Eutropius to the consulate, the second in the summer, after the eunuch’s fall. The significant point is that in both poems the intervention of Stilicho in eastern affairs is proposed.58 Stilicho did not overtly intervene; but it seems probable that he had an understanding with Gaïnas, the German commander in the east, who had been his instrument in the assassination of Rufinus. It is a suggestive fact that in describing the drama which was enacted in the east Claudian brings the minor characters on the stage but does not even pronounce the name of Gaïnas, who was the principal actor, or betray that he was aware of his existence. We must now pass to the east and follow the events of that drama.

§ 4. Fall of Eutropius and the German Danger in the East (A.D. 398-400)

In these years, in which barbarians were actively harrying the provinces of the Illyrian peninsula and the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, concord and mutual assistance between east and west were urgently needed. Unfortunately, the reins of government were in the hands of men who for different reasons were unpopular and in all their political actions were influenced chiefly by the consideration of their own fortunes. The position of Eutropius was insecure, because he was a eunuch; that of Stilicho, because he was a German. So far as the relation between the two governments was concerned the situation had been eased for a time after the fall of Rufinus, and it was doubtless with the consent and perhaps at the invitation of Eutropius that Stilicho had sailed to Greece in A.D. 397. For the eastern armies were not strong enough to contend at the same time against Alaric and against the Huns who were devastating in Asia. The generals who were sent to expel the invaders from Cappadocia and the Pontic provinces seem to have been incompetent, and Eutropius decided to take over the supreme command himself. It was probably in A.D. 398 that he conducted a campaign which was attended with success. The barbarians were driven back to the Caucasus and the eunuch returned triumphant to Constantinople.59 His victory secured him some popularity for the moment, and he was designated consul for the following year.

The brief understanding between the courts of Milan and Byzantium had been broken as we saw by the attitude of the eastern government during the revolt of Gildo. There was an open breach. When the news came that Eutropius was nominated consul for A.D. 399, the Roman feelings of the Italians were deeply scandalised. A eunuch for a consul — it was an unheard-of, an intolerable violation of the tradition of the Roman Fasti.

Omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra

wrote Claudian in the poem in which, at the beginning of the year, he castigated the minister of Arcadius.60 The west refused to recognise this monstrous consulship.61 It was perhaps hardly less unpopular in the east.

The Grand Chamberlain, confidently secure through his possession of the Emperor’s ear, had overshot the mark. His position was now threatened from two quarters. Gaïnas, the German officer who under the direction of Stilicho had led the eastern army back to Constantinople, had risen to the office of a Master of Soldiers.62 It is probable that he maintained communications with Stilicho, and his first object was to compass the downfall of Eutropius.

Less dangerous but not less hostile was the Roman party, which was equally opposed to the bedchamber administration of Eutropius and to the growth of German power. It consisted of senators and ministers attached to Roman traditions, who were scandalised by the nomination of the eunuch to the consulship in A.D. 399 and alarmed by the fact that some of the highest military commands in the Empire were held by Germans. The leader of the party was Aurelian, son of Taurus (formerly a Praetorian Prefect of Italy), who had himself filled the office of Prefect of the City.

Gaïnas had some supporters among the Romans. The most powerful of his friends was an enigmatical figure, whose real name is unknown but who seems to have been a brother of Aurelian. Of this dark person, who played a leading part in the events of these years, we derive all we know from a historical sketch which its author Synesius of Cyrene cast into the form of an allegory and entitled Concerning Providence or the Egyptians. This distinguished man of letters, who was at this time a Platonist — some years later he was to embrace Christianity and accept a bishopric — was on terms of intimacy with Aurelian and was at Constantinople at this time.63 The argument is the contest for the kingship of Egypt between the sons of Taurus, Osiris and Typhos. Osiris embodies all that is best in human nature. Typhos is a monster, perverse, gross, and ignorant. Osiris is Aurelian; Typhos cannot be identified,64 and we must call him by his allegorical name; the kingship of Egypt means the Praetorian Prefecture of the east.

In the race for political power Typhos allied himself with the German party, who welcomed him as a Roman of good family and position. Synesius dwells much on his profligacy, and on the frivolous habits of his wife, an ambitious and fashionable lady. She was her own tirewoman, a reproach which seems to mean that she was inordinately attentive to the details of her toilet.65 She liked public admiration and constantly showed herself at the theatre and in the streets. Her love of notoriety did not permit her to be fastidious in her choice of society, she liked to have her salon filled, and her doors were not closed to professional courtesans. Synesius contrasts her with the modest wife of Aurelian, who never left her house, and asserts that the chief virtue of a woman is that neither her body nor her name should ever cross the threshold. This is a mere rhetorical flourish; the writer’s friend and teacher, Hypatia the philosopher, whom he venerated, certainly did not stay at home. He was probably thinking of the piece of advice to women which Thucydides placed in the mouth of Pericles.

The struggle against the German power in the east began in the spring of A.D. 399. It was brought on by a movement on the part of Ostrogoths in Phrygia, but we have no distinct evidence to show that it was instigated by Gaïnas.66 These Ostrogoths had been established as colons67 by Theodosius the Great in fertile regions of that province (in A.D. 386), and contributed a squadron of cavalry to the Roman army. The commander, Tribigild, bore Eutropius a personal grudge, and he excited his Ostrogoths to revolt. The rebellion broke out just as Arcadius and his court were preparing to start for Ancyra, whither he was fond of resorting in summer to enjoy its pleasant and salubrious climate.

The barbarians were recruited by runaway slaves and spread destruction throughout Galatia, Pisidia, and Bithynia. Two generals, Gaïnas and Leo, a friend of Eutropius — a good-humoured, corpulent man who was nicknamed Ajax — were sent to quell the rising.

It was at this time that Synesius, the philosopher of Cyrene, who had come to the capital to present a gold crown to Arcadius on behalf of his native city, fulfilled his mission and used the occasion to deliver a remarkable speech “On the office of King.”68 It may be regarded as the anti-German manifesto of the party of Aurelian69 with which Synesius had enthusiastically identified himself. The orator urged the policy of imposing disabilities on the Germans in order to eradicate the German element in the State. The argument depends on the Hellenic but by no means Christian principle that Roman and barbarian are different in kind and therefore their union is unnatural. The soldiers of a state should be its watchdogs, in Plato’s phrase, but our armies are full of wolves in the guise of dogs. Our homes are full of German servants. A state cannot wisely give arms to any who have not been born and reared under its laws; the shepherd cannot expect to tame the cubs of wolves. Our German troops are a stone of Tantalus suspended over our State, and the only salvation is to remove the alien element.70 The policy of Theodosius the Great was a mistake. Let the barbarians be sent back to their wilds beyond the Danube, or if they remain be set to till the fields as serfs. It was a speech which if it came to the ears of Gaïnas was not calculated to stimulate his zeal against the Germans he went forth to reduce.

The rebels, seeking to avoid an engagement with Leo’s army, turned their steps to Pisidia and thence to Pamphylia, where they met unexpected resistance.71 While Gaïnas was inactive and writing in his reports to Constantinople that Tribigild was extremely formidable, Valentine, a landowner of Selge, gathered an armed band of peasants and slaves and laid an ambush near a narrow winding pass in the mountains between Pisidia and Pamphylia. The advancing enemy were surprised by showers of stones from the heights above them, and it was difficult to escape as there was a treacherous marsh all around. The pass was held by a Roman officer, and Tribigild succeeded in bribing him to allow his forces to cross it. But they had no sooner escaped than, shut in between two rivers, the Melas and the Eurymedon, they were attacked by the warlike inhabitants of the district. Leo meanwhile was advancing, and the insurrection might have been crushed if Gaïnas had not secretly reinforced the rebels with detachments from his own army. Then the German troops under his own command attacked and overpowered their Roman fellow-soldiers, and Leo lost his life in attempting to escape.72 Gaïnas and Tribigild were masters of the situation, but they still pretended to be enemies.

Gaïnas, posing as a loyal general, foiled by the superior power of the Ostrogoths, despatched a message to the Emperor urging him to yield to Tribigild’s demand and depose Eutropius from power. Arcadius might not have yielded if a weightier influence had not been brought to bear upon him. The Empress Eudoxia, who had owed her fortune to the eunuch, had become jealous of the boundless power he had secured over have husband’s mind; there was unconcealed antagonism between them; and one day Eudoxia appeared in the Emperor’s presence, with her two little daughters,73 and made bitter complaint of the Chamberlain’s insulting behaviour.

Eutropius realised his extreme peril when he heard of the demand of Gaïnas and he fled for refuge to the sanctuary of St. Sophia.74 There he might not only trust in the protection of the holy place, but might expect that the Patriarch would stand by him in his extremity when he was deserted by his noonday friends. For it was through him that John Chrysostom, a Syrian priest of Antioch, had been appointed to the see of Constantinople in the preceding year. And the Patriarch’s personal interference was actually needed. Arcadius had determined to sacrifice him, and Chrysostom had to stand between the cowering eunuch and those who would have dragged him from the altar. This incident seems to have occurred on a Saturday, and on the morrow, Sunday, there must have been strange excitement in the congregation which assembled to hear the eloquence of the preacher. Hidden under the altar, overwhelmed with fear and shame, lay the old man whose will had been supreme a few days before, and in the pulpit the Patriarch delivered a sermon on the moral of his fall, beginning with the words, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”75 While he mercilessly exposed the levity and irreligion of Eutropius and his circle, he sought at the same time to excite the sympathy of his hearers.

The church was again entered by soldiers, and again Chrysostom interposed. Then Eutropius allowed himself to be removed on condition that his life was spared. He was deprived of his patrician rank, banished to Cyprus, and his property was confiscated. The imperial edict which pronounced this sentence is profuse of the language of obloquy.76 The consulship “befouled and defiled by a filthy monster” has been “delivered from the foul stain of his tenure and from the recollection of his name and the base filth thereof,” by erasing his name from the Fasti. All statues in bronze or marble, all coloured pictures set up in his honour in public or private places, are to be abolished “that they may not, as a brand of infamy on our age, pollute the gaze of beholders.”

The fall of Eutropius involved the fall of Eutychian, the Praetorian Prefect of the east, who was presumably one of his creatures. There was a contest between the two brothers, Aurelian and Typhos, for the vacant office, which Synesius in his allegory designated as the kingship of Egypt. But though Gaïnas had succeeded in overthrowing the eunuch, he failed to secure the appointment of Typhos. The post was given to Aurelian, and this was a triumph for the anti-German party.77 Aurelian was a man of considerable intellectual attainments; he was surrounded by men of letters such as Synesius, Troilus the poet, and Polyaemon the rhetor. His success was a severe blow to Typhos and his friends, and especially to his wife, who had been eagerly looking forward to the Prefecture for the sake of the social advantage of it. Synesius gives a curious description of the efforts of the profligate to console himself for his disappointment. He constructed a large pond in which he made artificial islands provided with warm baths, and in these retreats he and his friends, male and female, used to indulge in licentious pleasures.78

But if Aurelian’s elevation was a blow to Typhos it was no less a blow to Gaïnas, who now threw off the mask and, openly declaring his true colours, acted no longer as a mediator for Tribigild, but as an adversary bargaining for terms. Tribigild and he met at Thyatira and advanced to the shores of the Propontis, plundering as they went. Gaïnas demanded and obtained an interview with the Emperor himself at Chalcedon. An agreement was made that he should be confirmed in his post as Master of Soldiers in praesenti,79 that he and Tribigild might cross over into Europe, and that three hostages should be handed over to him, Aurelian, Saturninus, one of Aurelian’s chief supporters, and John, the friend (report said the lover) of the Empress. This meant the deposition of Aurelian from the Prefecture and the succession of Typhos. For the moment Gaïnas was master of the government of the east (end of A.D. 399).

The demand for the surrender of Aurelian had been pre-arranged with Typhos,80 and the intention seems to have been to put him to death. The Patriarch went over to Chalcedon to intercede for the lives of the three hostages, and Gaïnas contented himself with inflicting the humiliation of a sham execution and banishing them. He then entered Constantinople with his army.81 The rule of Gaïnas seems to have lasted for about six months (to July A.D. 400). But he was evidently a man of no ability. He had not even a definite plan of action, and of his short period of power nothing is recorded except that he tried to secure for the Arians a church of their own within the city, and failed through the intolerant opposition of the Patriarch; and that his plans to seize the Imperial Palace, and to sack the banks of the money-changers, were frustrated.

This episode of German tyranny came to an abrupt end early in July. The Goth suddenly decided to quit the capital. We know not why he found his position untenable, or what his intentions were. Making an excuse of illness he went to perform his devotions in a church about seven miles distant, and ordered his Goths to follow him in relays. Their preparations for departure frightened the inhabitants, ignorant of their plans, and the city was so excited that any trifle might lead to serious consequences. It happened that a beggar-woman was standing at one of the western gates early in the morning asking for alms. At the unusual sight of a long line of Goths issuing from the gate she thought it was the last day for Constantinople and prayed aloud. Her prayer offended a passing Goth, and as he was about to cut her down a Roman intervened and slew him. The incident led to a general tumult, and the citizens succeeded in closing the gates, so that the Goths who had not yet passed through were cut off from their comrades without. There were some thousands of them82 but not enough to cope with the infuriated people. They sought refuge in a church (near the Palace) which had been appropriated to the use of such Goths as had embraced the Catholic faith. There they suffered a fate like that which had befallen the oligarchs of Corcyra during the Peloponnesian war. The roof was removed and the barbarians were done to death under showers of stones and burning brands (July 12, A.D. 400).83

The immediate consequence of this deliverance was the fall of Typhos84 and the return of Aurelian, who at once replaced him in the Prefecture. The conduct of Typhos was judicially investigated, his treasonable collusion with the Germans was abundantly exposed, and he was condemned provisionally to imprisonment. He was afterwards rescued from the vengeance of the mob by his brother. His subsequent fate is as unknown to us as his name. Aurelian, who had been designated for the consulship of the year 400, but had been unable to enter upon it in January, seems now to have been invested with the insignia,85 and the name of whatever person had been chosen to fill it by Typhos and Gaïnas was struck from the Fasti.

Gaïnas, in the meantime, a declared enemy, like Alaric three years before, marched plundering through Thrace. But he won little booty, for the inhabitants had retreated into the strong places which he was unable to take. He marched to the Hellespont, intending to pass over into Asia. But when he reached the coast opposite Abydos he found the Asiatic shore occupied by troops, who were supported by warships. These forces were under the command of Fravitta, a loyal pagan Goth who in the last years of Theodosius had played a considerable part in the politics of his own nation as leader of the philo-Roman party. He had since served under Arcadius, had been promoted to be Master of Soldiers in the east, and had cleared the eastern Mediterranean of pirates from Cilicia to Syria and Palestine.86 The Goths encamped on the shore, but when their provisions were exhausted they resolved to attempt the crossing and constructed rude rafts which they committed to the current. Fravitta’s ships easily sank them, and Gaïnas, who had remained on shore when he saw his troops perishing, hastened northwards, beyond Mount Haemus, even beyond the Danube, expecting to be pursued. Fravitta did not follow him, but he fell into the hands of Uldin, king of the Huns, who cut off his head and sent it as a grateful offering to Arcadius (December 23, A.D. 400). History has no regrets for the fate of this brutal and incompetent barbarian.

It was significant of the situation in the Empire that a Gothic enemy should be discomfited by a Goth. Fravitta enjoyed the honour of a triumph, and was designated consul for A.D. 401. Arcadius granted him the only favour he requested, to be allowed to worship after the fashion of his fathers.

Thus the German danger hanging over the Empire was warded off from the eastern provinces. Stilicho could no longer hope to interfere in eastern affairs through the Goths of the eastern army. The episode was a critical one in Roman history, and its importance was recognised at the time. It was celebrated in two epic poems⁸⁷ as well as in the myth of Synesius. Scenes from the revolt were represented in sculpture on the pillar of Arcadius which was set up in A.D. 403 in the Forum named after him.88

The year 400, which witnessed the failure of the German bid for ascendancy at Constantinople, was the year of Stilicho’s first consulship. Claudian celebrated it in a poem which was worthy of a greater subject:

quem populi plausu, procerum quem voce petebas,

adspice, Roma, virum… .

. . . hic est felix bellator ubique defensor Libyae, Rheni pacator et Histri.

The hero’s services to the Empire in war and peace outshine the merits and glories of the most famous figures in old Roman history. The poet himself aspired to be to Stilicho what Ennius had been to Scipio Africanus. Noster Scipiades Stilicho — a strange conjunction of names; but we forgive the poet his hyperboles for his genuine sense of the greatness of Roman history. The consulship of the Vandal general inspired him with the finest verses he ever wrote, a passage which deserves a place among the great passages of Latin literature — the praise of Rome, beginning —

proxime dis consul, tantae qui prospicis urbi

qua nihil in terris complectitur altius aether.89

He has expressed with memorable eloquence the Imperial ideal of the Roman State:

haec est in gremium victos quae sola recepit

humanumque genus communi nomine fovit

lmatris, non dominae ritu, civesque vocavit

quos domuit nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.90

The approaching disruption of the Empire was indeed hidden from Claudian and all others at the end of the fourth century. The Empire still reached from the Euphrates to the Clyde. Theodosius, who ruled a larger realm than Augustus, had steered it safely through dangers apparently greater than any which now menaced, and Stilicho was the military successor of Theodosius. The sway of Rome, if the Roman only looked at the external situation, might seem the assured and permanent order of the world:

nec terminus umquam Romanae dicionis erit.

Yet there was a very uneasy feeling in these years that the end of Rome might really be at hand. It was due to superstition. The twelve vultures that appeared to Romulus had in ages past been interpreted to mean that the life of Rome would endure for twelve centuries, and for some reason it was thought that this period was now drawing to a close:

tunc reputant annos interceptoque volatu

vulturis incidunt properatis saecula metis.91

The ancient auspice seemed to be confirmed by exceptional natural phenomena — the appearance of a huge comet in the spring of A.D. 40092 and three successive eclipses of the moon. Before these signs appeared, Honorius and Stilicho had allowed the altar of Victory which had been removed from the Senate-house by Theodosius to be brought back, a momentary concession to the fears of the Roman pagans. And it is very probably due to superstitious fears that the work of restoring the walls of Rome was now taken in hand.93

When Stilicho went to Rome to enter upon his consulship,94 Claudian accompanied him, and his verses richly deserved the statue which was erected at the instance of the senate in the Forum of Trajan “to the most glorious of poets,” although (the inscription runs) “his written poems suffice to keep his memory eternal.”95

§ 5. John Chrysostom

It was during the interlude in which Gaïnas and Typhos were supreme that Eudoxia, who had borne Arcadius two daughters, was crowned Augusta (January 9, A.D. 400).96 Notwithstanding her German descent, she had no sympathies with the German party, though she had independently helped them to compass the fall of Eutropius. It is significant that of the hostages whom Gaïnas had demanded, John was notoriously her favourite and Saturninus was the husband of her intimate friend Castricia. The Empress was a woman of forceful character and impulsive temper,97 and after the eunuch’s fall she won unbounded influence over her weak and sluggish husband. Her historical importance centres in the conflict into which she was drawn with Chrysostom, a drama which was to settle the future relations between the Imperial and the Patriarchal authority. No critical collision had occurred before. With the exception of Valens no Emperor had resided constantly at Constantinople before Arcadius, who never left the capital except for a summer holiday at Ancyra. Moreover, the see had only recently attained to the first rank in the Eastern Empire (A.D. 381), and its primacy was hotly disputed by Alexandria. That the collision between Emperor and Patriarch occurred at this time was due principally to the aggressive and uncompromising character of Chrysostom.

John, the “golden-mouthed” preacher, was in his forty-sixth or forty-seventh year when he became bishop of Constantinople (February 26, A.D. 398).98 He was an independent and austere man, who in his own habits carried asceticism to excess, and his ways were rough and uncourtly. At Constantinople he found himself confronted by a superb court under the sway of Eudoxia. There is no reason to suppose that it was particularly vicious, but it was at least frivolous and embodied for him the pride of life and the pomps and vanities of the world.

Chrysostom stands alone among the great ecclesiastics of the later Empire in that his supreme interest lay not in controversial theology but in practical ethics. His aim was the moral reformation of the world, and as his work lay in two rich cities, Antioch and Constantinople, he conceived it to be one of his chief duties to strive against the flaunting luxury of the rich classes, and denounce the lavish expenditure of wealth on personal gratification, wealth which in his eyes should have been devoted to alleviating the lot of the poor. Thus we learn from his sermons, whether at Constantinople or at Antioch, many details as to the luxurious life of the higher classes. Many rich nobles possessed ten or twenty mansions and as many private baths; a thousand, if not wellnigh two thousand, slaves called them lord, and their halls were thronged with eunuchs, parasites, and retainers.99 In their gorgeous houses doors were of ivory, the ceilings lined with gold, the floors inlaid with mosaics or strewn with rich carpets; the walls of the halls and bedrooms were of marble, and wherever commoner stone was used the surface was beautified with gold plate. Nude statues, to the scandal of strict ecclesiastics, decorated the halls. Spacious verandahs and baths adjoined the houses, which were surrounded by gardens with fountains. The beds were made of ivory or solid silver, or, if on a less expensive scale, of wood plated with silver or gold. Chairs and stools were usually of ivory, and the most homely vessels were often of the most costly metal; the semicircular tables or sigmas, made of gold or silver, were so heavy that two youths could hardly lift one. Oriental cooks were employed; and at banquets the atmosphere was heavy with all the perfumes of the East, while flute girls, whose virtue was as easy as in the old days of Greece and Rome, entertained the feasters.

To Chrysostom the contrast between the life of the higher classes and the miseries of the toiling populace was such a painful spectacle, that he was almost a socialist. If he inveighs against the men for their banquets, he is no less severe on the women for their sumptuous mule-cars, their rich dresses, their jewellery, their coquettish toilettes.100 Their extravagance often involved their husbands in expenses which they could not afford. He denounces the use of silk and brocade. All “evils” which Chrysostom describes are characteristic — allowance being made for difference of environment — of all wealthy societies, pagan or christian. His passionate denunciations of the rich have the same import and value as the denunciations of modern European plutocrats by socialists.

The problem of marriage interested him, and he preached the unpopular doctrine that the two partners in marriage are equal, the woman having the same rights against an unfaithful husband as the man against an unfaithful wife. We should hardly require the express evidence with Chrysostom supplies, to know that marriages for money were frequent. He complains that children were excessively indulged, and that their fathers too often gave their sons the worst possible moral education.101 It is interesting to learn from his homilies that the treatment of slaves was still often marked by much of the old brutality. People passing in the street might often hear the furious outbreaks of an angry mistress beating her maid. Chrysostom describes vividly how a wife summoned her husband to aid her in punishing an offending servant.102 The girl is stripped, tied to the foot of the bed, whipped by the master, while the mistress exhausts her vocabulary of abuse. The offence was probably quite trivial, perhaps an awkwardness in assisting at the mistress’s toilette.103 The condition of domestic slaves had in some respects changed little more than human nature since the days of Juvenal. But harsh and brutal treatment was not more universal than in those days. There were many masters (as other passages of Chrysostom show) who took the deepest interest in the well-being of their slaves. And there was also another side to the question. The servants were often trying and maleficent, slandering and spying upon their owners. The troubles which were caused by the lying tongues of maidservants are actually urged by Chrysostom as an argument against marriage.

Christianity had not yet succeeded in abolishing all the old pagan customs from the celebrations of funerals and marriages. In the reign of Arcadius the usage was still maintained of hiring female mourners to sing dirges over the dead. Chrysostom considered it idolatry, and even threatened to excommunicate those who practised it. He also stigmatised the pagan practice of ablutions after the funeral ceremony, which were intended to purify from contact with the dead. The expense and ostentation which marked the funerals of the rich also earned his censure. More scandalous in the eyes of austere Christians were the survivals of pagan manners on the occasion of weddings. The Church had introduced an ecclesiastical ceremony in the presence of the bishop, but as soon as this was completed, the wedding was celebrated in the old way. The bride was conducted in procession at nightfall from the house of her father to that of the bridegroom. The procession was followed by troops of actors and actresses and dancing-girls, who were admitted to the house, where they danced indecently and sang indelicate songs. The epithalamia and the odes which Claudian composed on the occasions of the marriages of Honorius may give some idea of the licence which was still fashionable.

Chrysostom fought not only against the extravagance of the rich but also against the sensuality, gluttony, and avarice of the clergy and the monks, to whom his austerity was, in the words of his biographer, “as a lamp burning before sore eyes.” Women were introduced into the monasteries or shared the houses of priests as “spiritual sisters,” a practice which if often innocent was always a snare.104 Deaconesses, unable to adopt the meretricious apparel that had become the mode, arranged their coarse dresses with an immodest coquetry which made them more piquant than professional courtesans.

The Patriarch had his own devoted female admirers. The most distinguished was the deaconess Olympias, a rich lady, who in her early girlhood had been a favourite of Gregory Nazianzene. Her bounty to the poor won the heart of Chrysostom, to whom she proved a most unselfish and devoted friend. Another of his friends was Salvina, daughter of the Moor Gildo, whom Theodosius had given in marriage to Nebridius his wife’s nephew. In “A Letter to a Young Widow” Chrysostom contrasts the peaceful happiness of her life at Constantinople with the unrest of her father’s turbulent career. A deacon named Serapion was the Patriarch’s trusted and devoted counsellor, but his influence was not always wisely exerted. He had no judgment, and instead of trying to restrain the impetuous temper of Chrysostom, encouraged or incited him to rash acts.

With the common people the Patriarch enjoyed great popularity. He was no respecter of persons, and he interpreted Christianity in a socialistic sense which has not generally been countenanced or encouraged by the Church. Though it was not political but social inequality that he deprecated, and nothing was further from his thoughts than to upset the established order of things, the spirit of his teaching certainly tended to set the poor against the rich. On the occasion of an earthquake he said publicly that “the vices of the rich caused it, and the prayers of the poor averted the worst consequences.” It was easy for his enemies to fasten upon utterances like this and accuse him of “seducing the people.” His friendships with Olympias and other women whom he sometimes received alone supplied matter for another slander. Having ruined his digestive organs by excessive asceticism, he made a practice of not dining in company, and in consequence of this unsocial habit he was suspected of private gluttony.

For three years Chrysostom and Eudoxia were on the best of terms. Chrysostom owed his see, Eudoxia her throne, to Eutropius, and they both refused to be his creatures. But early in A.D. 401 she did something which evoked a stern rebuke from the Archbishop, and the consequence of his audacity was that he was not received at Court. We learn of this in connexion with an episode which reveals Eudoxia herself in an amiable light.

Porphyrius, the bishop of Gaza, with other clergy of that diocese, visited Constantinople in the spring of A.D. 401, to persuade the government to take strong measures for the suppression of pagan practices. For the citizens of Gaza still obstinately held to the worship of their old deities, Aphrodite, the Sun, Persephone, and above all Marnas, the Cretan Zeus. When the clergy reached the capital and secured lodgings, their first act was to visit Chrysostom. “He received us with great honour and courtesy, and asked us why we undertook the fatigue of the journey, and we told him. And he bade us not to despond but to have hope in the mercies of God, and said, ‘I cannot speak to the Emperor, for the Empress excited his indignation against me because I charged her with a thing which she coveted and robbed. And I am not concerned about his anger, for it is themselves they hurt and not me, and even if they hurt my body they do the more good to my soul… . To-morrow I will send for the eunuch Amantius, the castrensis (chamberlain) of the Empress, who has great influence with her and is really a servant of God, and I shall commit the matter to him.’ Having received these injunctions and a recommendation to God, we proceeded to our inn. And on the next day we went to the bishop and found in his house the chamberlain Amantius, for the bishop had attended to our affair and had sent for him and explained it to him. And when we came in, Amantius stood up and did obeisance to the most holy bishops, inclining his face to the ground, and they, when they were told who he was, embraced him and kissed him. And the archbishop John bade them explain orally their affair to the chamberlain. And Porphyrius explained to him all the concealment of the idolaters, how licentiously they perform the unlawful rites and oppress the Christians. And Amantius, when he heard this, wept and was filled with zeal for God, and said to them, ‘Be not despondent, fathers, for Christ can shield His religion. Do ye therefore pray, and I will speak to the Augusta.’

“The next day the chamberlain Amantius sent two deacons to bid us come to the Palace, and we arose and proceeded with all expedition. And we found him awaiting us, and he took the two bishops and introduced them to the Empress Eudoxia. And when she saw them she saluted them first and said, ‘Give me your blessing, fathers,’ and they did obeisance to her. Now she was sitting on a golden sofa. And she said to them, ‘Excuse me, priests of Christ, on account of my situation, for I was anxious to meet your sanctity in the antechamber. But pray God on my behalf that I may be delivered happily of the child which is in my womb.’ And the bishops, wondering at her condescension, said, ‘May He who blessed the wombs of Sarah and Rebecca and Elizabeth, bless and quicken the child in thine.’ After further edifying conversation, she said to them, ‘I know why ye came, as the castrensis Amantius explained it to me. But if you are fain to instruct me, fathers, I am at your service.’ Thus bidden, they told her all about the idolaters, and the impious rites which they fearlessly practised, and their oppression of the Christians, whom they did not allow to hold a public office nor to till their lands ‘from whose produce they pay the dues to your Imperial sovereignty.’ And the Empress said, ‘Do not despond; for I trust in the Lord Christ, the Son of God, that I shall persuade the Emperor to do those things that are due to your saintly faith and to dismiss you hence well treated. Depart, then, to your privacy, for you are fatigued, and pray God to co-operate with my request.’ She then commanded money to be brought, and gave three handfuls of money to the bishops, saying, ‘In the meantime take this for your expenses.’ And the bishops took the money and blessed her abundantly and departed. And when they went out they gave the greater part of the money to the deacons who were standing at the door, reserving little for themselves.

“And when the Emperor came into the apartment of the Empress, she told him all touching the bishops, and requested him that the heathen temples of Gaza should be pulled down. But the Emperor was put out when he heard it, and said, ‘I know that city is devoted to idols, but it is loyally disposed in the matter of taxation and pays a large sum to the revenue. If then we overwhelm them with terror of a sudden, they will betake themselves to flight and we shall lose so much of the revenue. But if it must be, let us afflict them partially, depriving idolaters of their dignities and other public offices, and bid their temples be shut up and be used no longer. For when they are afflicted and straitened on all sides they will recognise the truth; but an extreme measure coming suddenly is hard on subjects.’ The Empress was much vexed at this reply, for she was ardent in matters of faith, but she merely said, ‘The Lord can assist his servants the Christians, whether we consent or decline.’

“We learned these details from the chamberlain Amantius. On the morrow the Augusta sent for us, and having first saluted the bishops according to custom, she bade them sit down. And after a long spiritual talk, she said, ‘I spoke to the Emperor, and he was somewhat displeased. But do not despond, for, God willing, I cannot cease until ye be satisfied and depart, having succeeded in your pious purpose.’ And the bishops made obeisance. Then the sainted Porphyrius, moved by the spirit, and recollecting the word of the thrice blessed anchoret Procopius, said to the Empress: ‘Exert yourself for the sake of Christ, and in recompense for your exertions He can bestow on you a son whose life and reign you will see and enjoy for many years.’ At these words the Empress was filled with joy, and her face flushed, and new beauty beyond that which she already had passed into her face; for the outward appearance shows what passes within. And she said, ‘Pray, fathers, that according to your word, with the will of God, I may bear a male child, and if it so befall, I promise you to do all that ye ask. And another thing, for which ye ask not, I intend to do with the consent of Christ; I will found a church at Gaza in the centre of the city. Depart then in peace, and rest quiet, praying constantly for my happy delivery; for the time of the birth is near.’ The bishops commended her to God and left the Palace. And prayer was made that she should bear a male child; for we believed in the words of Saint Procopius the anchoret.

“And every day we used to visit John, the archbishop, and had the fruition of his pious discourse, sweeter than honey and the honey comb. And Amantius the chamberlain used to come to us, sometimes bearing messages from the Empress, at other times merely to pay a visit. And after a few days she brought forth a male child [April 10], and he was called Theodosius after his grandfather Theodosius, the Spaniard, who reigned along with Gratian. And the child Theodosius was born in the purple, wherefore he was proclaimed Emperor at his birth. And there was great joy in the city, and men were sent to the cities of the Empire, bearing the good news, with gifts and bounties.

“But the Empress, who had only just been delivered, sent Amantius to us with this message: ‘I thank Christ that God bestowed on me a son, on account of your holy prayers. Pray, then, fathers, for his life and for my lowly self, in order that I may fulfil those things which I promised you, Christ himself again consenting through your holy prayers.’ And when the seven days of her lying-in were fulfilled, she sent for us and met us at the door of the chamber, carrying in her arms the infant in the purple robe. And she inclined her head and said, ‘Draw nigh, fathers, unto me and the child which the Lord granted to me through your holy prayers.’ And she gave them the child that they might seal it (with God’s signet). And the bishops sealed both her and the child with the seal of the cross, and, offering a prayer, sat down. And when they had spoken many words full of edification, the lady says to them, ‘Do ye know, fathers, what I resolved to do in regard to your affair?’ [Here Porphyrius related a dream which he had dreamed the night before; then Eudoxia resumed:] ‘If Christ permit, the child will be privileged to receive baptism in a few days. Do ye then depart and compose a petition and insert in it all the requests ye wish to make. And when the child comes forth from the baptismal rite, give the petition to him who holds the child in his arms; and I shall instruct him what to do.’ Having received these directions we blessed her and the infant and went out. Then we composed the petition, inserting many things in the document, not only as to the overthrow of the idols but also that privileges and revenue should be granted to the holy Church and the Christians; for the Church was poor.

“The days ran by, and the day on which the young Emperor Theodosius was to be baptized arrived. And all the city was crowned with garlands and decked out in garments made of silk and gold jewels and all kind of ornaments, so that no one could describe the adornment of the city. One might behold the inhabitants, multitudinous as the waves, arrayed in all manner of garments. But it is beyond my power to describe the brilliance of that pomp; it is a task for those who are practised writers, and I shall pursue my true history. When the young Theodosius was baptized and came forth from the church to the Palace, you might behold the magnificence of the multitude of the magnates and their dazzling raiment, for all were dressed in white, and you would have thought they were covered with snow. The patricians headed the procession, with the illustres and all the other ranks, and the military contingents, all carrying wax candles, so that the stars seemed to shine on earth. And close to the infant, which was carried in arms, was the Emperor Arcadius himself, his face cheerful and more radiant than the purple robe he was wearing, and one of the magnates carried the infant in brilliant apparel. And we marvelled, beholding such glory… .

“And we stood at the portal of the church, with our petition, and when he came forth from the baptism we called aloud, saying, ‘We petition your Piety,’ and held out the paper. And he who carried the child seeing this, and knowing our business, for the Empress had instructed him, bade the paper be showed to him, and when he received it halted. And he commanded silence, and having unrolled a part he read it, and folding it up, placed his hand under the head of the child and cried out, ‘His majesty has ordered the requests contained in the petition to be ratified.’ And all having seen marvelled and did obeisance to the Emperor, congratulating him that he had the privilege of seeing his son an emperor in his lifetime; and he rejoiced thereat. And that which had happened for the sake of her son was announced to the Empress, and she rejoiced and thanked God on her knees. And when the child entered the Palace, she met it and received it and kissed it, and holding in her arms greeted the Emperor, saying, ‘You are blessed, my lord, for the things which your eyes have beheld in your lifetime.’ And the king rejoiced thereat. And the Empress, seeing him in good humour, said, ‘Please let us learn what the petition contains that its contents may be fulfilled.’ And the Emperor ordered the paper to be read, and when it was read, said, ‘The request is hard, but to refuse is harder, since it is the first mandate of our son.’ ”

The petition was granted, and Eudoxia arranged a meeting between the quaestor, the minister on whom it devolved to draft the Imperial rescripts, and the bishops, that all the wishes of the latter might be incorporated in the edict. The execution of it, which was invidious and required a strong hand and will, was entrusted to Cynegius, and the bishops returned to Palestine, having received considerable sums of money from the Empress and Emperor, as well as the funds which the Empress had promised for the erection of a church at Gaza.

This narrative gives us an idea of the kind of little dramas that probably lay behind many of the formal decrees and rescripts preserved in the Imperial Codes. The wonder of the provincial bishops at the splendid apparel of the great of the earth, their edifying spiritual conversations with the Empress, with the eunuch, and with the archbishop, the ruse of Eudoxia to compass the success of the petition, all such details help us to realise the life of the time; while the hesitation of the pious Arcadius to root out the heathen “abominations” because the heathen were respectable taxpayers shows that even he, when the ghostly and worldly policies of the Empire clashed, was more inclined to be Emperor than churchman.

To return to Chrysostom. When he performed the ceremony of baptizing the Emperor’s son and heir, there must have been a reconciliation with the court, but Eudoxia could not forget the incident, and henceforward she would be at least disposed to lend a patient ear to his enemies. And his enemies were many, both in clerical and in secular circles. Among the fashionable ladies who were particularly offended by his castigations of female manners were three who were intimate friends of the Empress — Marsa, wife of Promotus, in whose house Eudoxia had been brought up; Castricia, the wife of Saturninus, whom Chrysostom had helped to rescue from the vengeance of Gaïnas; and Eugraphia, whose house was a centre for all those who detested him.105 It is easy to imagine how easily they could continue to poison Eudoxia’s mind against a priest who was exceptionally tactless by twisting his invectives against the foibles of women into personal attacks upon herself.

But the agitation of irresponsible enemies might not have shaken his position, if he had not committed indiscretions in the domain of ecclesiastical policy. Antoninus, the bishop of Ephesus, had been accused of simony and other offences, and Chrysostom was appealed to. He determined to investigate the matter on the spot, and set out in the winter of A.D. 401.106 The inquiry disclosed abuses in many of the churches of western Asia Minor, and Chrysostom acted with more zeal than wariness. He deposed and replaced at least thirteen bishops, exceeding the rights of his jurisdiction, and, it was said, not giving a fair hearing to the cases. Naturally he stirred up many new enemies.

He was absent five months from Constantinople. He had deputed an eloquent Syrian, Severian, bishop of Gabala, to act for him during his absence. Severian seems to have joined the league of his enemies, and there was an open rupture between him and Serapion the deacon. When the Patriarch returned he found his own See disorganised, and a local council was held to hear the charges which Serapion brought against Severian. When Severian, who felt sure of support in high quarters, resisted the efforts of the bishops to induce him to be reconciled with the deacon, Chrysostom told him that it would be well for him to return to the see of Gabala which he had so long neglected. Severian, who seems to have entertained the ambition of replacing Chrysostom on the Patriarchal throne, now saw that he had gone too far, and he left the city. At Chalcedon he was recalled. The Empress had herself implored the Patriarch to reconcile himself with Severian. Throughout the quarrel popular opinion had been on Chrysostom’s side, but it may be questioned whether his conduct was altogether creditable.107 He yielded to Eudoxia’s prayers, but it was necessary to tranquillise popular feeling, for which purpose he preached a pacific sermon which ended with the words, “Receive our brother Severian the bishop.”108 Severian responded by a sermon of which the note was likewise peace. But the peace was hollow.

A new storm from another quarter was soon to burst over Chrysostom. Theophilus, the archbishop of Alexandria, bore no goodwill to the eloquent preacher who occupied the great see which had now precedence over his own. Theophilus, whose principal claim to be remembered is the destruction of the Serapeum, the famous stronghold of paganism at Alexandria, seems, so far as we can judge from his acts, to have been a domineering and unscrupulous prelate. He had probably been spoiled by the enjoyment of power. He is described as “naturally impulsive, bold and precipitous in action, extraordinarily quarrelsome, impatient and determined in grasping at any object he had set his mind on.”109 He had hoped to secure for a candidate of his own the archiepiscopal chair of Constantinople after the death of Nectarius, and had not forgiven Chrysostom his disappointment; which was rendered particularly humiliating by the fact that Eutropius had forced him to take part in Chrysostom’s consecration. Theophilus had held the heretical opinion of Origen, who rejected the anthropomorphic conception of the Deity which is suggested by many passages in the Hebrew Scripture. The same opinion was held in a monastic settlement in the desert of Nitria in Upper Egypt, over which four monks presided who were known, from their remarkable stature, as the Tall Brothers.110 Theophilus, however, changed his view on the theological point and (A.D. 401) issued a Paschal letter condemning Origen and his disciples. He then convoked a synod, which anathematised Origen and condemned the Nitrian monks. He had other reasons for desiring the destruction of the Tall Brothers, and he obtained troops from the augustal Prefect of Egypt to arrest them. The habitations of the monks were sacked and pillaged, and the Tall Brothers with their followers, clad in sheepskins, made their way to Palestine, where the bishops, admonished by letters from Theophilus, refused them shelter. Unable to find rest for the soles of their feet, they took ship for Constantinople to place themselves under the protection of Chrysostom. He received them kindly, but would not communicate with them until their cause had been examined, and he lodged them in the church of St. Anastasia,111 where their wants were ministered to by his deaconesses.

The piety and virtues of the Tall Brothers were well known by repute at Constantinople, and the Empress was eager to exert herself in their behalf. Meeting one of them as she was driving through the city, she stopped her carriage, asked him to pray for her, and promised to arrange that a synod should be convoked and Theophilus summoned to attend it. The monks then drew up a petition to the Emperor, setting forth their charges against their archbishop, and an Imperial messenger was sent to Alexandria to compel Theophilus to come to Constantinople and answer for his conduct at a synod to be held there.

Theophilus had already instigated Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, who was an authority on heresies, to convene a synod of the Cypriot bishops to condemn the opinion of Origen, and to circulate its decisions to the sees of the Church. This had been done, and Theophilus, finding himself in an awkward position by the peremptory summons to appear as a defendant in the capital, urged Epiphanius to go in person to Constantinople and obtain Chrysostom’s signature to the decree of the Cypriote council. Epiphanius, persuaded by the crafty flatteries of the Alexandrian prelate that a crisis in the Church depended on his intervention, sailed for Constantinople (early in A.D. 403). But he was not a strong ally; he was out of place and bewildered amid the intrigues of the capital. Finally he became acquainted with the Tall Brothers, and when they told him that they had read his books112 with admiration, and remonstrated with him for condemning their writings, which he was obliged to confess he only knew from hearsay, he came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake and allowed himself to be used as a tool by Theophilus. Disgusted and dejected he set sail for home, but the fatigue and excitement had overtaxed his failing strength and he died on the voyage (May 12).

About a month later (in June) Theophilus arrived with a large retinue of bishops who came to support him from Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. He had been summoned to appear as an accused man before an ecclesiastical tribunal over which Chrysostom would preside, but he was determined to invert the parts, and be himself the judge, with Chrysostom at the bar. That he succeeded in his plan was due entirely to Chrysostom’s indiscretions. The Empress had interested herself in the affair of the Tall Brothers, and it was due to her influence that Theophilus had been forced to come to answer for his conduct. If Chrysostom, who in that affair had shown admirable caution, had now exercised ordinary tact and self-restraint, he could have had Eudoxia entirely on his side and might have defied all the arts and intrigues of his Alexandrian rival. Eudoxia had shown her veneration for the saintly bishop Epiphanius, by asking him to pray for her infant son who was ill, and Chrysostom, offended by her graciousness towards a bishop who had been openly hostile to himself, preached a violent sermon against women, in which the word Jezebel was pronounced. The congregation interpreted it as allusive to the Empress, and the matter was soon brought to her ears.113 She was furious at the insult, and prepared to exert all her influence to support the party which was planning the ruin of the archbishop. Theophilus, rejecting the hospitality which Chrysostom offered him, established himself in the palace of Placidia, close to the Great Palace, and his bribes, banquets, and flatteries drew thither all the ecclesiastics and fashionable ladies whom Chrysostom had offended.

Chrysostom seems hardly to have realised the danger of his position. Instead of attempting to turn away the wrath of the Empress, he adopted a weak and conciliatory attitude towards the archbishop of Alexandria. The question of the Tall Brothers, though it was now a secondary consideration, had to be disposed of before Theophilus could take any open steps against Chrysostom, and Chrysostom was invited by the Emperor to preside over an investigation into the charges they had preferred against Theophilus. But he declined on the ground that such an inquiry into things which had occurred in another diocese would be illegal. This decision at once freed Theophilus from his position as an accused person, and the board was clear for him to organise his attack on Chrysostom. A list of charges was drawn up, sufficient to move the Emperor, under his wife’s influence, to summon a council to inquire into them. Witnesses were procured to substantiate the accusations.

Popular feeling ran so high in favour of Chrysostom that the authorities were afraid to hold the synod within the precincts of the city, and it met across the water in the palace of the Oak, which had been built by the Praetorian Prefect Rufinus in the suburbs of Chalcedon. Chrysostom refused to appear before a body which was packed with his enemies. The majority of the bishops present were Egyptians, prepared to do whatever their archbishop told them. The chief accuser of Chrysostom was John, his archdeacon. Among the numerous charges that were formulated for the synod to investigate were these: that he had sold the marble which Nectarius had set aside for decorating the church of St. Anastasia; that he had reviled the clergy as corrupt; that he had called Epiphanius a fool and a demon; that he had intrigued against Severian; that he received visits from women by themselves after he had sent every one else out of the room; that a bath was heated for him alone, and that after he had bathed Serapion emptied the bath so that no one else might use it; that he ate gluttonously alone, living like a Cyclops.114 The accusations which really demanded an inquiry concerned his conduct in deposing bishops in Asia and ordaining others without due investigation of their characters.

As Chrysostom, repeatedly summoned, refused to appear and plead, he was condemned, not as guilty of the crimes which were alleged against him, but because he refused to appear, and he was formally deposed from his see. A report of the result was communicated to the Emperor, with the suggestion that it was for him and not for the Council to deal with the charge that the archbishop had spoken treasonably of the Empress.115 Arcadius confirmed the decree in a rescript which pronounced the sentence of banishment. To the archbishop’s enemies the penalty may have seemed too lenient, but it roused the indignation of the people, who would not have their idol removed by the act of a small packed assembly like the Synod of the Oak. Loud clamours were raised for the assembling of a general Council of the Church. Flocking round St. Sophia and the archiepiscopal palace, the populace made it impossible for the Imperial officers to seize Chrysostom and expel him from the city for three days. He delivered two discourses in the church, in which he referred to the Empress as a Jezebel or a Herodias. “One day she called me the thirteenth apostle, and now her name for me is Judas.”116 But he had no intention of defying the Emperor or causing a sedition. He stole out from his palace at night, surrendered himself, was taken across to the Asiatic coast, and withdrew to Praenetus near Nicomedia.

When it was discovered that he had departed, the fury of the people burst out. The city was in an uproar. The populace clamoured for the recall of their pastor, and an earthquake which at this crisis shook the city and the Great Palace was interpreted to mean that the voice of the people was the voice of God.117 The Empress herself, who was very superstitious, was panic-stricken, and she sent one of her chamberlains with a letter to Chrysostom imploring him to return. In this conciliatory letter she disclaimed all responsibility for his exile. “Let not your Holiness suppose,” she wrote, “that I was privy to what has been done. I am innocent of thy blood. Wicked and corrupt men devised this plot; God to whom I sacrifice is witness of my tears. I remember that my children were baptized by thy hands. I touched the knees of the Emperor and besought him: ‘We have lost the priest, let us bring him back. Unless we restore him there is no hope for the Empire.’ ” Chrysostom accepted her overtures and returned. When he was back in his palace, Eudoxia sent him a verbal message. “My prayer has been fulfilled. My success is a crown more precious than my Imperial diadem. I have received the priest, restored the head to the body, the pilot to the ship, the shepherd to the flock, the bridegroom to the bridal chamber.” She was generous in her amends, and the archbishop, not to be outdone in generosity, paid an extravagant tribute to her in a triumphant sermon he preached the next day in St. Sophia118 (July). His eulogy of the Empress, who seems to have been very popular, was loudly applauded.

Chrysostom desired to regularise his position by a general Council which should inquire into his case and the proceedings of the Synod of the Oak. Theophilus began to spin new intrigues, and there were bloody frays between the populace and his partisans. Not having the countenance of the court, he did not dare to remain any longer in the city, and sailed with his followers back to Egypt.119 If Chrysostom had now been able to control his temper, his reconciliation with the court might have been permanent, and all might have gone smoothly. But a trivial incident occurred which betrayed him into gross impoliteness towards the Empress.

Some months after his return,120 a silver image of Eudoxia on a tall porphyry column was erected by Simplicius, Prefect of the City, in the middle of the Augusteum, and thus close to the vestibule of St. Sophia.121 The inaugural ceremonies were of a pagan character, and accompanied by dancing and music, and the loud noise of the merriment interrupted the service in St. Sophia. Chrysostom complained to the Prefect in no measured terms, and his denunciation of the heathenish rites was taken by the Empress as a personal affront. She was an impulsive woman, and she was now ready to side with his enemies, Severian of Gabala and the rest, who were lurking for an opportunity of vengeance. Chrysostom poured fuel on the flame by a sermon which began: “Again Herodias is furiously raging, again she is dancing, again demanding the head of John on a charger.”122

Chrysostom had demanded a general Council;123 the summonses had been sent out; but Eudoxia was now eager that the Council should be so packed with his opponents that its structure would be not to rescind but to confirm the decree of the Synod of the Oak. At Christmas she and the Emperor refused to communicate with the pastor whom she had so warmly welcomed on his return, until the approaching Council should have tried his case. Theophilus refused to attend; his experiences at Constantinople did not encourage a second visit. But many of his bishops went, and he instructed them to make use of the canon of the Council of Antioch of A.D. 341, which laid down that if a bishop who had been deposed by a synod should then appeal to the secular power his deposition should be final and irrevocable. The Council met early in A.D. 404, but many supporters of Chrysostom were present; and his enemies, who did not propose to investigate the charges against him but to condemn him by virtue of the canon of Antioch, found themselves in an awkward position. For the Council of Antioch was deeply tainted with Arianism, and the canon was aimed at Athanasius. When it was suggested to them in the Emperor’s presence that if the canon was to be accepted as authoritative they must subscribe to the acts of the Council in question, they were taken aback, but for very shame they promised to subscribe. It was a promise they could not possibly fulfil, for the Council was notoriously heretical. And so the matter hung fire, while Chrysostom continued to perform his ordinary duties. But Easter (April 17) was now approaching, and representations were made to the Emperor that it was impossible to allow the ceremonies of that high festival to be celebrated by a man who had been deposed and excommunicated by a synod. He was ordered to remain in his palace and not to enter the church, but he refused to comply unless he were compelled by force.

Easter Eve was the great day for the baptism of converts, and in this year there were three thousand candidates. Large multitudes assembled in St. Sophia, many having come in from the neighbouring towns. At night the church was crowded, when a body of soldiers entered and scattered the congregation. Women and children fled shrieking through the streets, but the clergy succeeded in reassembling the congregation in the Baths of Constantine, and preparations were made to celebrate the services there. But the flock was again dispersed by soldiers. On Easter Day the devoted followers of Chrysostom would not attend the services in St. Sophia, and celebrated Easter in an open field beyond the walls.

For two months longer Chrysostom was allowed to remain in his palace, but was prevented from leaving it. Arcadius felt some compunction about proceeding to extremities. But at length he yielded to the pressure of Severian and the other bishops, who were urging him to tranquillise the city by removing the cause of scandal and disturbance, on June 20 an Imperial mandate was delivered to Chrysostom, ordering him to leave the city. He submitted, and allowed himself to be conducted stealthily to one of the harbours and conveyed in a boat to the Bithynian coast.

On the same night a fire broke out in St. Sophia. It began at the chair of the archbishop and, flaming upwards, caught the roof and turned round the building like a serpent. There was a high wind, and the flames, blown southward, caught the senate-house. Both buildings were destroyed, but the destruction of the senate-house was the greater misfortune, because it was a museum of precious works of classical art. The statues of the nine Muses were burned, but the Zeus of Dodona and the Athene of Lindus escaped.124

The cause of the conflagration was made a matter of judicial inquiry. Some attributed it to Chrysostom himself, others to his friends. It was made a pretext for a bitter and cruel persecution of all his adherents.125 The deaconess Olympias was treated with great harshness; she fell ill and withdrew to Cyzicus. Many persons were punished for refusing to communicate with Arsacius,126 the new archbishop, who was installed a few day later (June 26). He was a brother of Chrysostom’s predecessor Nectarius, and was a gentle old man, whom Chrysostom’s admirers described as muter than a fish and more inert than a frog. Partaking of the communion with him was a sort of test for discovering Johannites, as the followers of Chrysostom were called.

Chrysostom lived in exile for three years, at first in Cucusus on the borders of Cappadocia and Armenia, then at Arabissus.127 From these places he conducted an active correspondence with his friends and admirers in all parts of Christendom, and his influence was so great that his enemies thought it prudent to procure his removal to a more remote spot, Pityus on the Euxine coast. On the way thither he died from exhaustion (September 14, A.D. 407).

The treatment of Chrysostom caused fresh trouble between the courts of Constantinople and Ravenna. Theophilus had first apprised Pope Innocent I of his deposition: letters from Chrysostom himself and his clergy, delivered a few days afterwards, probably convinced him that the proceedings had been extremely irregular, and this conviction was confirmed when he received from Theophilus a memorandum of the acts of the Synod of the Oak. He decided that the matter should be brought before a general Council, and meanwhile declined to desist from communion with the Patriarch, to whom he sent a letter of consolation. An Italian Synod was summoned, and declared the condemnation of Chrysostom illegal and demanded a general Council at Thessalonica.

Honorius had already written twice to Arcadius,128 deploring the tumults and conflagrations which had disgraced Constantinople, and criticising the inconvenient haste with which the sentence against the condemned had been carried out before the decision of the head of the Church had been ascertained. He wrote under the influence of Innocent, and definitely asserted the doctrine that “the interpretation of divine things concerns churchmen, the observation of religion concerns us (the Emperors).” After the meeting of the Italian Synod he wrote a third letter,129 to be carried by a deputation of bishops and priests, who were to inform his brother of the opinion of the Italian Church. The envoys had reason to repent of their expedition. Escorted by soldiers from Athens to Constantinople, they were not permitted to land in that city, but were thrown into a Thracian fortress, forcibly deprived of the letters they bore, and at last hardly allowed to return to Italy (A.D. 406). As they had been specially recommended by Honorius himself to Arcadius, the outrageous treatment they received was a grievous affront to the western court. The Eastern Emperor took no notice whatever of the proposal to summon a general Council, and the Imperial brothers seem never again to have held any communications. Honorius and Innocent could do no more; they had to abandon Chrysostom to his fate.130

The Empress Eudoxia did not live to see the later phase of the episode in which she had played a considerable part, though rather as the instrument of unscrupulous ecclesiastics than as the directress of a conspiracy against a man whose probity she certainly respected. She died on October 6, A.D. 404, of a miscarriage.131

Arcadius slumbered on his throne for three and a half years after her death, and died on May 1, A.D. 408. During this time the reins of power seem to have been in the hands of Anthemius, the Praetorian Prefect of the East, who was afterwards to prove himself an able minister.132 One of the principal concerns of the government during these years was the condition of the southern and eastern provinces of Asia Minor, exposed to the savagery of the Isaurian brigands. Their devastations continued from A.D. 404 to 407.133 We hear of the failure of a general to suppress them at the beginning of the movement, but we are not told how this civil war was brought to an end. Anthemius had also to keep a watchful eye on Alaric and Stilicho. To them we must now return.

§ 6. Alaric’s First Invasion of Italy (A.D. 401-403)

We saw how Alaric and his Visigoths had withdrawn from the Peloponnesus into the province of New Epirus in A.D. 397, and that Alaric had been appointed to some imperial post, probably that of Master of Soldiers in Illyricum. For four years we hear nothing of him except that he took advantage of his official position to equip his followers with modern arms from the Roman arsenals in the Dacian diocese.134 Then suddenly he determined to invade Italy. Perhaps it was the defeat of the attempt of Gaïnas to establish a German ascendancy at Constantinople that averted his covetous eyes from the Balkan lands and moved him to seek a habitation for his people in the realm of Honorius. It can hardly have been his hope to establish a permanent kingdom in Italy itself.135 We may take it that his intention was rather to frighten Honorius into granting lands and concessions in the Danube provinces. An opportune moment came when, towards the end of A.D. 401, a host of Vandals and other barbarians under a savage leader named Radagaisus had broken into Noricum and Raetia.136 Alaric passed the Italian Alps in November,137 and advanced to Aquileia, which he appears to have captured.138 The Italians were in consternation, and not least Honorius himself, who thought of fleeing to Gaul, and was with difficulty persuaded that he was safe behind the walls of Milan.139 During the next two months the cities of Venetia opened their gates to the Goths, and Alaric was ready to march on Milan, where he hoped to seize the Emperor’s sacred person.

At the moment Italy was defenceless, because Stilicho had led his mobile troops across the Alps to drive back Radagaisus and the invaders of Raetia. This winter campaign was successful. The barbarians were checked, and Stilicho induced them to furnish him with auxiliaries against the Goths.140 Reinforced by this accession and also by troops hastily summoned from the Rhine frontier and from Britain, he came down to relieve Milan and deliver Italy (about the end of February, A.D. 402).141 Alaric abandoned the siege and marched westward to Hasta (Asti), which he failed to take, and then went on to Pollentia (Pollenzo) on the river Tanarus, where he decided to make a stand against the forces of Stilicho who marched in pursuit. According to the poet who celebrated this campaign, a council was held in the Gothic camp, and one of the veterans who feared the issue of a trial of strength with Stilicho besought the king to withdraw from Italy while there was yet time. Alaric indignantly refuses; he was confident that he was destined to capture Rome; and he assured the assembled warriors that a clear voice had come to him from a grove, saying penetrabis ad urbem, “thou shalt penetrate to the City.”

The battle was fought on Easter-day (April 6). Neither side could claim a decisive victory,142 but the Romans occupied the Gothic camp, and Alaric’s family among other captives fell into their hands. The Goths descended to the Ligurian coast and marched along the coast road in the direction of Etruria.143 Stilicho did not attempt to overtake and crush them. He opened negotiations and Alaric agreed to leave Italy, but we do not know what conditions were made.144

When he retired from Italian soil in accordance with this treaty, he remained near the borders of the peninsula, dissatisfied with a bargain which perhaps the captivity of his wife and children had chiefly moved him to accept. At the end of a year, during which Stilicho strengthened the military forces in Italy, probably at the expense of the defences of Gaul, he crossed the Italian frontier again in the early summer (A.D. 403) and attacked Verona.145 Here defeated by Stilicho, and almost captured himself, he took the northward road to the Brenner pass, pursued by the Romans. The army of the Goths suffered from hunger and disease, and seems to have been entirely at the mercy of the Roman general. But Stilicho acted once more as he had acted in Thessaly, in the Peloponnesus, and in Liguria.146 He came to an understanding with Alaric and allowed him to take up his quarters in the border districts between Dalmatia and Pannonia, where he was to hold himself in readiness to help Stilicho to carry out the plan of annexing Eastern Illyricum.147 Here he seems to have remained for some time and then to have moved again into Epirus.

The story of these two critical years in Italy can hardly be said to be known. The slight chronicle which we can construct of Alaric’s invasions is drawn from rhetorical poets and the scrappy notices of chroniclers. They do not tell us the things that would enable us to judge the situation. They do not tell us the number of the Gothic warriors, or the number and composition of the Imperial forces which opposed them; they do not tell us anything of the actual course of the fighting or the tactic employed at Pollentia or at Verona; and they are silent as to the precise conditions on which Stilicho spared Alaric. We know enough, however, to see that if another than this German general had been at the head of affairs, if the defence of the provinces had been in the hands of a Roman commander possessing the ability and character of Theodosius or Valentinian I, the Visigoths and their king would have been utterly crushed, and many calamities would have been averted, which ensued from the indulgent policy of the Vandal to whom Theodosius had unwisely entrusted the destinies of Rome.

The Emperor Honorius celebrated the repulse of the invader by a triumphal entry into Rome.148 It was probably in the summer or autumn of A.D. 402 that, menaced by Alaric’s proximity, he had moved his home and court from Milan to Ravenna,149 and, as future events were to prove, he could not have chosen a safer retreat. But he could now venture to Rome, which he had never visited before, enjoy the celebration of a triumph,150 reside in the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill, and enter upon his sixth consulship (A.D. 404) in the presence of the Senate and the Roman people. For the Romans, the triumphal entry of the Emperor was an event. Rome, which had not witnessed a triumph for more than a hundred years, had in certain ways changed much since the days of Diocletian. In external appearance the transformation from ancient into medieval Rome had already begun. Most of the great churches that still exist, though rebuilt, enlarged, or restored, had been founded in the fourth century. St. John in the Lateran, the basilica of Liberius on the Esquiline which was soon to become Sta. Maria Maggiore, and outside the wall St. Peter beyond the Tiber, and St. Paul on the road to Ostia, were all probably visited by Honorius.151 The temples of the gods stood still unharmed, but derelict; more than twenty years before the altar of Victory had been removed from the Senate-house. Some distinguished senatorial families had been converted from their errors, like the Anicii and the Bassi,152 but the greater number of the senators were still devoted to paganism and would have welcomed a new Julian on the Imperial throne. Of these pagans the most distinguished was Symmachus, who had been their eloquent spokesman when they vainly pleaded with Theodosius and Valentinian II to permit the restoration of the altar of Victory. And now during the visit of Honorius to Rome the Christian poet Prudentius took occasion to compose a poem confuting the arguments of Symmachus and exulting over the discomfiture of his cause.153 He affected to believe that the senators had freely and joyfully proscribed the pagan idols, and that there were few pagans left — ingenia obtritos aegre retinentia cultus. “The Fathers,” he says, “the luminaries of the world, the venerable assembly of Catos, were impatient to strip themselves of their pontifical garment, to cast the skin of the old serpent, to assume the snowy robes of baptismal innocence, and to humble the pride of the consular forces before the tombs of the martyrs.”154

Prudentius concluded his work with an appeal to the Emperor to suppress gladiatorial shows:155

tu mortes miserorum hominum prohibeto litari,

nullus in urbe cadat cuius sit poena voluptas.

This appeal probably expressed a considerable volume of public opinion, and if it was not in this year that exhibitions of gladiators were finally forbidden, it must have been soon afterwards. Possibly it is not a mere legend that the immediate occasion of the abolition of these spectacles was the act of an aged monk named Telemachus, who rushed into the arena of the Colosseum to separate two combatants and was killed by the indignant populace with showers of stones.156

The occasion of the Imperial visit to Rome was celebrated by Claudian with his unflagging enthusiasm. He had already, in a poem on the Gothic War, sung the repulse of Alaric at Pollentia —

o celebranda mihi cunctis Pollentia saeclis!—

and united the name of Stilicho with that of Marius as the protectors of Italy, imagining the bones of Cimbrians and Goths laid under a common trophy with the inscription

‘hic Cimbros fortesque Getas, Stilichone peremptos

et Mario claris ducibus, tegit Itala tellus.

discite uesanae Romam non temnere gentes.’

The campaign of Verona was celebrated in the poem which he composed at the end of the year for the Sixth Consulship of Honorius, immediately after the triumph. This was his last work. Our records are silent as to his fate, but the most probable conjecture is that death cut short his career and that he did not live to see the second consulship of his patron (A.D. 405), a theme which he could not have neglected.157

Great allowances as the historian has to make for Claudian’s partiality and rhetoric, he owes him an appreciable debt and would give much to have his guidance for the last obscure and critical five years of Stilicho’s career. But apart from the information which he gives us, his poetry is one of the most interesting facts of the age. He was born at Alexandria,158 and his earliest literary work was in Greek, but we may take it that he had learned Latin as a child. He saturated himself in the poetical literature of Rome from Ennius to Juvenal, and his verses abound in echoes and reminiscences. His Roman feeling for Roman traditions is not compromised or embarrassed by any allegiance to the new religion; and the statement of his contemporary Augustine that he was a stranger to the name of Christ159 is borne out by his poems, from which, if they were the sole monument of the time, we should not suspect the existence of Christianity.160 In talent and technical skill he is incomparably superior to the Christian poets of the day, Prudentius and Paulinus, and through his genuine feeling for the dignity and majesty of the Empire he has succeeded in shedding a certain lustre over the age of Stilicho and Alaric.

§ 7. Last Years and Fall of Stilicho (A.D. 405-408)

The provinces of the Upper Danube, Raetia, Noricum, and Pannonia, were at this time still under the effective control of Roman governors, and the principal towns still flourishing centres of Roman civility. In Pannonia indeed considerable districts had been occupied by Ostrogoths, Huns, and Alans, whom Gratian and Theodosius had settled after their victories over the Gothic invaders of A.D. 380. Of these the Ostrogoths had perhaps been settled in the north-western of the four Pannonian provinces, Pannonia Prima,161 and it is probable that the north-eastern, Valeria, was occupied by the Huns.162

The line of division between Pannonia and Noricum ran from the neighbourhood of Tulln on the Danube to Pettau, while the course of the Aenus (Inn) formed the western boundary of Noricum, separating it from Raetia.163 The most northerly point in the course of the Danube, which was the northern border of Raetia, was marked by Batava Castra (Ratisbon), and the province extended westward to the source of that river.164 The most important highway from Italy to Raetia was the Via Claudia Augusta, which led through the Tirol by Meran and Vintschgau to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg); the Brenner road was less used. Aquileia was the great centre of roads leading from Italy into Noricum, Pannonia, and the Balkan lands. The traveller to Pannonia would proceed from Aquileia to Celeia (Cilly) and Poetovio (Pettau), whence the high road continued to Savaria (Stein-am-Anger) where several roads met, one leading northward to Carnuntum (Petronell), a second north-eastward, and a third south-eastward to Sopianae (Fünfkirchen). Three roads led from Aquileia over the Julian Alps: (1) to Aguntum (near Lienz); (2) to Virunum (Maria Saal near Klagenfurt), whence roads led to Juvavum (Salzburg) and to Lauriacum (Lorsch) and other places on the Danube, and (3) to Emona (Laibach), which belonged administratively to Venetia and was itself connected by a road over the mountains to Virunum. Here at Emona the two roads met of which one led into northern Pannonia, as we saw, by Celeia, and other through southern Pannonia along the valley to the Save, by Siscia (Siszek) to Sirmium (Mitrovica) and Singidunum (Belgrade), and thence to Constantinople. It should be observed that Pannonia was bounded on the south by the province of Dalmatia, for Dalmatia then included not only the coastlands of the Hadriatic as far south as Alessio, but also the lands which were afterwards to be known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a part of Istria, west of the river Arsia.

During the early years of Honorius, the defence of the Pannonian frontier was almost abandoned, and the Pannonian provinces suffered both from the barbarians who were within,165 and from those who were without. Of all this devastation we have no regular story; we have only the vague complaints and hints of contemporary writers.166 But the alarm, even in those much tried lands, must have been great when in the last months of A.D. 405 a vast host of Germans, principally Ostrogoths, descended upon Italy.167 They were led by the adventurer Radagaisus, who had been repulsed from Raetia by Stilicho a few years before. As the home of the Ostrogothic people was still in the neighbourhood of the river Dniester, they had a long march by whatever route they came, and it may be presumed that they crossed the Danube on the Pannonian frontier. We are told nothing of their doings in the Danubian provinces, or by what roads they reached Aquileia, and its seems probable that Radagaisus, wishing to surprise Italy, did not tarry on his way to plunder the cities of Pannonia and Noricum. But we are told that the inhabitants of the districts through which they passed fled before them, seeking the refuge of Italy.168 Italy was entered without resistance, and the barbarian host overran the northern provinces. After some time it is said that they divided into three companies,169 of which the chief under Radagaisus attacked Florence. Stilicho, who had collected his forces at Ticinum, numbering perhaps less than 20,000 comitatenses,170 reinforced by Alans and Huns from beyond the Danube,171 compelled him to withdraw to Fiesole. The Romans were able to cut off the supplies of the barbarians and then massacre them at their pleasure.172 Radagaisus was captured and executed (Aug. 23, A.D. 406), and the victory, which was fondly declared to have extinguished the Gothic nation for ever, was celebrated by a triumphal arch in Rome.173 But Italy must have suffered terribly, for the barbarians had been six months in the land.

It is clear from the meagre records of this invasion that when Radagaisus surprised Italy, the field army at the disposal of Stilicho was so small that he could not venture on a battle with the superior forces of the enemy until he had obtained help from the Huns. It is possible that some of the troops which had come from Gaul and Britain to oppose Alaric had been sent back, but, if so, the Gallic legionaries of the Rhine frontier must have again been summoned to fight against Radagaisus, and must have been retained. For the Rhine was virtually undefended at the end of A.D. 406, when hosts of Germans crossed the river and began a progress of destruction through Gaul. This event was decisive for the future history of Western Europe, though the government of Ravenna had little idea what its consequences would be. But Stilicho was at least bound to hasten to the rescue of the Gallic provincials. Instead of doing this, he busied himself (A.D. 407) with his designs on Illyricum which the invasion of Radagaisus had compelled him to postpone. The unfriendliness which had long existed between the eastern and western courts came to a crisis when the ecclesiastics whom Honorius had sent to remonstrate with his brother on the treatment of Chrysostom were flung into prison.174 It was a sufficient pretext for Stilicho to close the Italian ports to the ships of the subjects of Arcadius and break off all intercourse between the two realms.175 Alaric was warned to hold Epirus for Honorius; and Jovius was appointed, in anticipation, Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum.176 Stilicho was at Ravenna, making ready to cross the Hadriatic, when a report reached him that Alaric was dead. It was false, but it caused delay; and then came the alarming news that a certain Constantine, a soldier in Britain, had been proclaimed Emperor and had crossed over to Gaul. Once again the design of Stilicho was thwarted. He might look with indifference on the presence of barbarian foes in the provinces beyond the Alps, but he could not neglect the duty of devising measures against a rebel.177

Alaric cared not at all for the difficulties of his paymaster, and chafed under the intolerable delay. Early in A.D. 408, threatened perhaps by preparations which the eastern government was making to defend Illyricum,178 he marched northward, and followed the high road from Sirmium to Emona. He halted there and instead of marching across the Julian Alps to Aquileia and Italy, he turned northwards by the road which led across the Loibl Pass to Virunum.179 Here in the province of Noricum he encamped, and sent an embassy to Rome demanding compensation for all the trouble he had taken in the interest of Honorius. 4000 pounds of gold (£180,000) was named. The Senate assembled, and Stilicho’s influence induced it to agree to the monstrous demand; but many were dissatisfied with a policy which played into the hands of the barbarians, and one senator bolder than the rest exclaimed, “That is not a peace; it is a compact of thraldom.” Such, however, was the power of the Emperor’s father-in-law, and such the awe in which he was held, that the rash speaker after the dissolution of the assembly deemed it prudent to seek refuge in a church. The money was paid to Alaric, and he was retained in the service of Honorius. Perhaps he might be employed against the usurper in Gaul.

But Stilicho’s position was not so secure as it seemed. His daughter, the Empress Maria, was dead, but Honorius had been induced to wed her sister Aemilia Materna Thermantia,180 and Stilicho might think that his influence over the Emperor was impregnable and still hope for the union of his son with Placidia. But any popularity he had won by the victory over Gildo, by the expulsion of Alaric from Italy, by the defeat of Radagaisus was ebbing away. The misfortunes in Gaul, which had been occupied by a tyrant and was being plundered by barbarians, were attributed to his incapacity or treachery, and his ambiguous relations with Alaric had only resulted in a new danger for Italy. It was whispered that his design on Eastern Illyricum only covered the intention of a triple division of the Empire, in which his own son Eucherius should be the third Imperial colleague. Both he and his wife Serena were detested by the pagan families of Rome who still possessed predominant influence in the capital. Nor was his popularity with the army secure. While he and Honorius were at Rome in the spring of A.D. 408, a friend warned him that the spirit of the troops stationed at Ticinum was far from friendly to his government.

Honorius had reached Bononia, on his way back to Ravenna, when the news of his brother’s death arrived (May). He entertained the idea of proceeding to Constantinople to protect the interests of his child nephew Theodosius, and he summoned Stilicho for consultation. Stilicho dissuaded him from this plan, urging that it would be fatal for the legitimate Emperor to leave Italy while a usurper was in possession of Gaul; and he undertook to travel himself to the eastern capital; during his absence there would be no danger from Alaric, if he were given a commission to march against Constantine. The death of Arcadius had presented to Stilicho too good an opportunity for prosecuting his design on Illyricum to be lost. Honorius agreed, and official letters were drafted and signed, to Alaric instructing him to restore the Emperor’s authority in Gaul, and to Theodosius regarding Stilicho’s mission to Constantinople.

The Emperor then proceeded to Ticinum, and there a plot was woven for the destruction of the powerful and unsuspicious minister. Olympius, a palace official, who had opportunities of access to Honorius on the journey, let fall calumnious suggestions that Stilicho was planning to do away with Theodosius and place his own son on the eastern throne. At Ticinum he sowed the same suspicions among the troops, who were discontented and mutinous. His efforts brought about a military revolution, in which nearly all the highest officials who were in attendance on the Emperor, including the Praetorian Prefects of Italy and Gaul, were slain (August 13).181

The first thought of Stilicho, when the confused story of these alarming occurrences reached him at Bononia and it was doubtful whether the Emperor himself had not been killed, was to march at the head of the barbarian troops who were with him and punish the mutineers. But when he was reassured that the Emperor was safe, reflexion made him hesitate to use the barbarians against Romans. His German followers, conspicuous among them Sarus the Goth, were eager to act and indignant at the change of his resolve. He went himself to Ravenna, probably to assure himself of the loyalty of the garrison; but Honorius, at the instigation of Olympius, wrote to the commander instructions to arrest the great Master of Soldiers. Stilicho under cover of night took refuge in a church, but the next day allowed himself to be taken forth and imprisoned on the assurance that the Imperial order was not to put him to death, but to detain him under guard. Then a second letter arrived, ordering his execution. The foreign retainers of his household, who had accompanied him to Ravenna, attempted to rescue him, but he peremptorily forbade them to interfere and was beheaded (August 22, A.D. 408). His executioner, Heraclian, was rewarded by the post of Count of Africa. His son Eucherius was put to death soon afterwards at Rome, and the Emperor hastened to repudiate Thermantia, who was restored a virgin to her mother. The estates of the fallen minister were confiscated as a matter of course. There had been no pretence of a trial, his treason was taken for granted, but after his execution there was an inquisition to discover which of his friends and supporters were implicated in his criminal designs. Nothing was discovered; it was quite clear that if Stilicho meditated treason he had taken no one into his confidence.182

The fall of Stilicho caused little regret in Italy. For thirteen and a half years this half-Romanised German had been master of western Europe, and he had signally failed in the task of defending the inhabitants and the civilisation of the provinces against the greedy barbarians who infested its frontiers. He had succeeded in driving Alaric out of Italy, but he had not prevented him from invading it. He had annihilated the host of Radagaisus, but Radagaisus had first laid northern Italy waste. It was while the helm of state was in his hands that, as we have yet to see, Britain was nearly lost to the Empire, and Gaul devastated far and wide by barbarians who were presently to be lords in Spain and Africa. The difficulties of the situation were indeed enormous; but the minister who deliberately provoked and prosecuted a domestic dispute over the government of Eastern Illyricum, and allowed his policy to be influenced by jealousy of Constantinople, when all his energies and vigilance were needed for the defence of the frontiers, cannot be absolved from responsibility for the misfortunes which befell the Roman state in his own lifetime and for the dismemberment of the western realm which soon followed his death. Many evils would have been averted, and particularly the humiliation of Rome, if he had struck Alaric mercilessly — and Alaric deserved no mercy — as he might have done more than once, and as a patriotic Roman general would not have hesitated to do. The Roman provincials might well feel bitter183 over the acts and policy of this German, whom the unfortunate favour of Theodosius had raised to the supreme command. When an Imperial law designated him as a public brigand who had worked to enrich and excite the barbarian races, the harsh words probably expressed the general opinion.184

The death of the man who had been proclaimed a public enemy at Constantinople altered the relations between the two Imperial governments. Concord and friendly co-operation succeeded coldness and hostility. The edict which Stilicho had caused Honorius to issue, excluding eastern traders from western ports, was rescinded. The Empire was again really as well as nominally one.185 The Romans of the west, like the Romans of the east, had shown that they did not wish to be governed by men of German race, and the danger did not occur again for forty years.