Part 118

"The first duty that Theodosius had to undertake was to restore the self-confidence and trust in victory of the Roman army, terribly shaken as these qualities had been by the disastrous rout of Hadrianople. This he accomplished by waging a successful guerilla war with the Gothic marauders. Valens had played into the hands of the barbarians by risking everything on one great pitched battle. Theodosius adopted the very opposite policy. He outmanoeuvred the isolated and straggling bands of the Goths, defeated them in one skirmish after another that did not deserve the name of a battle, and thus restored the courage and confidence of the Imperial troops. By the end of 379 he seems to have succeeded in clearing the territory south of the Balkan range of the harassing swarms of the barbarians. In February, 380, he fell sick at Thessalonica (which was his chief basis of operations throughout this period), and this sickness, from which he did not fully recover for some months, was productive of two important results, (1) his baptism as a Trinitarian Christian, (2) a renewal of the war against fresh swarms of barbarians. (1) Theodosius appears up to this point of his career not to have definitively ranged himself on either side of the great Arian controversy, though he had a hereditary inclination towards the Creed of Nicaea. Like his father, however, he had postponed baptism in accordance with the prevalent usage of his day: but now upon a bed of sickness which seemed likely to be one of death, he delayed no longer, but received the rite at the hands of Ascholius, the Catholic Bishop of Thessalonica. Before he was able to resume his post at the head of the legions, he published his celebrated Edict: 'To the people of Constantinople.—We desire that all the nations who are governed by the rule of our Clemency shall practise that religion which the Apostle Peter himself delivered to the Romans, and which it is manifest that the pontiff Damasus, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of Apostolic sanctity, do now follow: that according to the discipline of the Apostles and the teaching of the Evangelists they believe in the one Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in equal Majesty, and in the holy Trinity. We order all who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, decreeing that all others, being mad and foolish persons, shall bear the infamy of their heretical dogmas, and that their Conventicles shall not receive the name of Churches: to be punished first by Divine vengeance, and afterwards by that exertion of our power to chastise which we have received from the decree of heaven.' Thus then at length the Caesar of the East was ranged on the side of Trinitarian orthodoxy. Constantine in the latter part of his reign, Constantius, Valens, had all been Arians or semi-Arians, some of them bitter in their heterodoxy. Julian had been a worshipper of the gods of Olympus. Thus for nearly two generations the influence of the Court of Constantinople had been thrown into the scale against the teaching of Athanasius, which was generally accepted throughout the Western realm. Now by the accession of Theodosius to the Trinitarian side, religious unity was restored to the Empire: but at the same time a chasm, an impassable chasm, was opened between the Empire itself and its new Teutonic guests, nearly all of whom held fast to the Arian teaching of their great Apostle Ulfilas. (2) The other consequence of the sickness of Theodosius was, as I have said, a fresh incursion of barbarian hordes, swarming across the Danube and climbing all the high passes of the Balkans. {2726} The work of clearing the country of these marauders had to be all done over again. … At length, in the closing months of 380, the provinces south of the Balkans (Macedonia and Thrace) were once more cleared of their barbarian intruders. Peace, in which Gratian concurred, was concluded with the Goths who still doubtless abounded in Moesia. …

See GOTHS: A. D. 379-382.

The insurrection at Antioch [A. D. 387] displayed the character of Theodosius in a favourable light, as a strong but merciful and magnanimous ruler of men. Very different was the effect on his fame of the insurrection which broke out three years later (390) in the Macedonian city of Thessalonica. …

See THESSALONICA: A. D. 390.

In the year 383 a military revolt broke out in Britain against the young Emperor Gratian. … The army revolted and proclaimed Magnus Clemens Maximus, Emperor. He was, like Theodosius, a native of Spain, and though harsh and perhaps rapacious, a man of ability and experience, not unworthy of the purple if he had come to it by lawful means. Gratian on his side had evidently given some real cause for dissatisfaction to his subjects. … Hence it was that when Maximus with the army of Britain landed in Gaul, he shook down the fabric of his power without difficulty. Gratian, finding himself deserted by his troops, escaped from the battle-field, but was overtaken and killed at Lyons. For more than four years, Maximus, satisfied with ruling over the three great Western provinces which had fallen to the share of Gratian, maintained at any rate the appearance of harmony with his two colleagues. … At length, in the autumn of 387, Maximus deemed that the time had come for grasping the whole Empire of the West. Lulling to sleep the suspicions of Valentinian and his mother by embassies and protestations of friendship, he crossed the Alps with an army and marched towards Aquileia, where the young Emperor was then dwelling in order to be as near as possible to the dominions of his friendly colleague and protector. Valentinian did not await the approach of his rival, but going down to the port of Grado, took ship and sailed for Thessalonica, his mother and sisters accompanying him. The Emperor and the Senate of Constantinople met the Imperial fugitives at Thessalonica, and discussed the present position of affairs. … What the entreaties of the mother might have failed to effect, the tears of the daughter [Galla] accomplished. Theodosius, whose wife Flaccilla had died two years before (385), took Galla for his second wife, and vowed to avenge her wrongs and replace her brother on the throne. He was some time in preparing for the campaign, but, when it was opened, he conducted it with vigour and decision. His troops pressed up the Save valley, defeated those of Maximus in two engagements, entered Aemona (Laybach) in triumph, and soon stood before the walls of Aquileia [July, 388], behind which Maximus was sheltering himself. … A mutiny among the troops of Maximus did away with the necessity for a siege," and the usurper, betrayed and delivered to Theodosius, was speedily put to death. Theodosius "handed over to Valentinian II. the whole of the Western Empire, both his own especial share and that which had formerly been held by his brother Gratian. The young Emperor was now 17 years of age; his mother, Justina, had died apparently on the eve of Theodosius's victory, and he governed, or tried to govern alone." But one of his Frankish generals, named Arbogast, gathered all the power of the government into his hands, reduced Valentinian to helpless insignificance, and finally, in May, 392, caused him to be strangled. "The Frankish general, who durst not shock the prejudices of the Roman world by himself assuming the purple, hung that dishonoured robe upon the shoulders of a rhetorician, a confidant, and almost a dependent of his own, named Eugenius. This man, like most of the scholars and rhetoricians of the day, had not abjured the old faith of Hellas. As Arbogast also was a heathen, though worshipping Teutonic rather than Olympian gods, this last revolution looked like a recurrence to the days of Julian, and threatened the hardly-won supremacy of Christianity." Again Theodosius was summoned to the rescue of the West, and, after two years of careful preparation, marched against Eugenius by the same route that he had taken before. The two armies met at a place "half-way between Aemona and Aquileia, where the Julian Alps are crossed, and where a little stream called the Frigidus (now the Wipbach) burst suddenly from a limestone hill." The battle was won by Theodosius after a terrible struggle, lasting two days (September 5-6, A. D. 394). Eugenius was taken prisoner and put to death; Arbogast fell by his own hand. "Theodosius, who was still in the prime of life, had now indeed 'the rule of the world,' without a rival or a colleague except his own boyish sons. … Had his life been prolonged, as it well might have been for twenty or thirty years longer, many things might have gone differently in the history of the world. But, little more than four months after the victory of the Frigidus, Theodosius died [January 17, A. D. 395] of dropsy, at Milan."

_T. Hodgkin, The Dynasty of Theodosius, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, chapter 15: Ambrose and Theodosius (volume 2)._

_R. Thornton, St. Ambrose, chapters 6-14._

ROME: A. D. 388. Formal establishment of Christianity.

Until the year 384, "paganism was still the constitutional religion of the [Roman] senate. The hall or temple in which they assembled was adorned by the statue and altar of Victory. … The senators were sworn on the altar of the goddess to observe the laws of the emperor and of the empire; and a solemn offering of wine and incense was the ordinary prelude of their public deliberations. The removal of this ancient monument was the only injury which Constantius had offered to the superstition of the Romans. The altar of Victory was again restored by Julian, tolerated by Valentinian, and once more banished from the senate by the zeal of Gratian. But the emperor yet spared the statues of the gods which were exposed to the public veneration: four hundred and twenty-four temples or chapels still remained to satisfy the devotion of the people, and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of the Christians was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice. But the Christians formed the least numerous party in the senate of Rome." The senate addressed several petitions to Gratian, to the young Valentinian, and to Theodosius for the restoration of the altar of Victory. {2727} They were supported by the eloquence of the orator Symmachus, and opposed by the energy of Ambrose, the powerful Archbishop of Milan. The question is said to have been, in the end, submitted to the senate, itself, by the Emperor Theodosius (A. D. 388)—he being present in person—"Whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans? The liberty of suffrages, which he affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and fears that his presence inspired. … On a regular division of the senate, Jupiter was condemned and degraded by the sense of a very large majority."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 28._

ROME: A. D. 391-395. Suppression of Paganism.

"The religious liberty of the Pagans, though considerably abridged by Gratian, was yet greater than had been allowed by the laws of Constantine and his immediate successors. The priests and vestals were deprived of their immunities; the revenues of the temples were confiscated for the service of the State; but the heathen rites of their forefathers were still allowed to those who were conscientiously attached to them, provided they abstained from nocturnal sacrifices and magical incantations. But when Theodosius, in the early part of his reign, prohibited the immolation of victims, their superstition was attacked in its most vital part, and, in the course of a few years, the success of his measures against heresy, and his triumph over Maximus, emboldened him to proceed to steps of a still more decisive kind, and to attempt the entire subversion of the already tottering fabric of paganism. A commission was issued to the præfect of the East, directing him to close all heathen temples within his jurisdiction; and while the imperial officers were engaged in this task, assisted by the clergy, and especially by the monks, with a vigour not always strictly legal, Theodosius gradually increased the rigour of his legislative prohibitions. A law was passed in the year 391, declaring that to enter a heathen temple, with a religious purpose, was an offence liable to a fine of fifteen pounds of gold; and in the following year, not only all public, but even all private and domestic, exercise of heathen rites was interdicted under the severest penalties. In some few instances, the intemperate and tumultous proceedings of the monks in destroying the temples, excited the opposition of the fanatical heathen peasantry, and at Alexandria a serious commotion, fatal to many Christians, was occasioned by the injudicious measures of the patriarch Theophilus. But, generally speaking, the pagans showed little disposition to incur the rigorous penalties of the laws, still less to become martyrs for a religion so little calculated to inspire real faith or fortitude. Some show of zeal in the cause of paganism was made at Rome, where the votaries of the ancient superstition still had a strong party, both among the senate and populace. But the eloquent exertions of Symmachus, the champion of heathenism, were easily baffled by Ambrose, who encountered him with equal ability, better argument, and a confident reliance on the support of his sovereign; and not long after, a more important victory was gained, in an enactment by the senate, carried, through the influence of Theodosius, by an overwhelming majority, that Christianity should for the future be the sole religion of the Roman State. This decisive measure sealed the ruin of paganism in Rome and its dependencies. The senators and nobles hastened to conform, nominally at least, to the dominant religion; the inferior citizens followed their example, and St. Jerome was in a little while able to boast that every heathen altar in Rome was forsaken, and every temple had become a place of desolation."

_J. B. S. Carwithen and A. Lyall, History of the Christian Church, page 63-65._

ALSO IN: P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, period 3, chapter 1, section 7 (volume 2).

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 28._

ROME: A. D. 394-395. Final division of the Empire between the sons of Theodosius. Arcadius in the East, Honorius in the West. Ministries of Rufinus and Stilicho. Advent of Alaric the Visigoth.

"The division of the Empire between East and West on the accession of the sons of Theodosius [A. D. 395], though it was possibly meant to be less complete than some preceding partitions, proved to be the final one. It is worth while to indicate the line of division, which is sufficiently accurately traced for us in the Notitia. In Africa it was the well-known frontier marked by 'the Altars of the Philaeni,'. which separated Libya (or Cyrenaica) on the East from Africa Tripolitana on the West. Modern geographers draw exactly the same line (about 19° E. of Greenwich) as the boundary of Barca and Tripoli. On the Northern shore of the Mediterranean the matter is a little more complicated. Noricum, Pannonia, Savia, and Dalmatia belonged to the West, and Dacia—not the original but the later province of Dacia—to the East. This gives us for the frontier of the Western Empire the Danube as far as Belgrade, and on the Adriatic the modern town of Lissa. The inland frontier is traced by geographers some 60 miles up the Save from Belgrade, then southwards by the Drina to its source, and so across the mountains to Lissa. Thus Sclavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia in the Austrian Empire, and Croatia, most of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro in the state which was lately called Turkey in Europe, belonged to the Western Empire. The later province of Dacia, which fell to the Eastern share, included Servia (Old and New), the south-east corner of Bosnia, the north of Albania, and the west of Bulgaria. By this partition the Prefecture of Illyricum, as constituted by Diocletian, was divided into two nearly equal parts. … What makes the subject somewhat perplexing to the student is the tendency to confuse Illyricum the 'province' and Illyricum the 'prefecture,'" the latter of which embraced, in modern geographical terms, Servia, Western Bulgaria, Macedon, Epirus and Greece.

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 1, chapter 4, note C, and chapter 3 (volume 1)._

"This decree for a partition, published by Theodosius shortly before his death, appears to have been generally expected and approved. The incapacity of Arcadius and Honorius, of whom the former had only attained his 18th and the latter his 11th year, had not then been discovered. These princes showed more and more clearly, as time went on, that they inherited no share of their father's abilities, their weakness being such as to render their sovereignty little more than nominal. … It was never intended that the two jurisdictions should be independent of each other, but rather that the Emperors should be colleagues and coadjutors, the defenders of one commonwealth. … {2728} At the time of the decree, belief in the unity and immortality of the 'Sancta Respublica Romana' was universal. … Enactments were invariably made in the names of both Emperors; and, so often as a vacancy of either throne occurred, the title of the Caesar elect remained incomplete until his elevation had been approved and confirmed by the occupant of the other. … Theodosius left the Roman world in peace, and provided with a disciplined army sufficient, if rightly directed, for its defence; but his choice of the men to whom he confided the guidance of his sons was unfortunate. Rufinus, to whom the guardianship of Arcadius was entrusted, by birth a Gascon, owed his advancement to his eloquence as an advocate, and his plausible duplicity had so far imposed on the confiding nature of Theodosius as to obtain for him the prefecture of the East. Stilicho, the guardian of Honorius, was by descent a Vandal, and is styled by St. Jerome a semi-barbarian. … His military abilities, combined with a prepossessing exterior, induced Theodosius to confer upon him the chief command of the imperial forces, and the hand of his niece, Serena."

_R. H. Wrightson, The Sancta Respublica Romana, chapter 1._

"Stilicho … 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. … It was the cherished project of Rufinus to unite Arcadius with his only daughter. … But he imprudently made a journey to Antioch, in order to execute vengeance personally on the count of the East, who had offended him; and during his absence from Byzantium an adversary stole a march on him. This adversary was the eunuch Eutropius, the lord chamberlain. … Determining that the future Empress should be bound to himself and not to Rufinus, he chose Eudoxia, a girl of singular beauty, the daughter of a distinguished Frank, but herself of Roman education. … Eutropius showed a picture of the Frank maiden to the Emperor, and engaged his affections for her; the nuptials were arranged by the time Rufinus returned to Constantinople, and were speedily celebrated (27th April 395). This was a blow to Rufinus, but he was still the most powerful man in the East. The event which at length brought him into contact with Stilicho was the rising of the Visigoths, who had been settled by Theodosius in Moesia and Thrace. … Under the leadership of Alaric they raised the ensign of revolt, and spread desolation in the fields and homesteads of Macedonia, Moesia, and Thrace, even advancing close to the walls of Constantinople. …

See GOTHS: A. D. 395.

It was impossible to take the field against the Goths, because there were no forces available, as the eastern armies were still with Stilicho in the West. Arcadius therefore was obliged to summon Stilicho to send or bring them back immediately, to protect his throne. This summons gave that general the desired opportunity to interfere in the politics of Constantinople; and having, with energetic celerity, arranged matters on the Gallic frontier, he marched overland through Illyricum, and confronted Alaric in Thessaly, whither the Goth had traced his devastating path from the Propontis. … It seems that before Stilicho arrived, Alaric had experienced a defeat at the hands of garrison soldiers in Thessaly; at all events he shut himself up in a fortified camp and declined to engage with the Roman general. In the meantime Rufinus induced Arcadius to send a peremptory order to Stilicho to despatch the eastern troops to Constantinople and depart himself whence he had come; the Emperor resented, or pretended to resent, the presence of his cousin as an officious interference. Stilicho yielded so readily that his willingness seems almost suspicious. … He consigned the eastern soldiers to the command of a Gothic captain, Gainas, and himself departed to Salona, allowing Alaric to proceed on his wasting way into the lands of Hellas." When Gainas and his army arrived at the gates of Constantinople, the Emperor came out to meet them, with Rufinus by his side. The troops suddenly closed round the latter and murdered him. "We can hardly suppose that the lynching of Rufinus was the fatal inspiration of a moment, but whether it was proposed or approved of by Stilicho, or was a plan hatched among the soldiers on their way to Constantinople, is uncertain."

_J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1)._

ROME: A. D. 396-398. Commission of Alaric under the Eastern Empire. Suppression of the revolt of Gildo in Africa. Commanding position of Stilicho.