CHAPTER I

THE REIGN OF ARCADIUS

[395-408 A.D.]

The Emperor Theodosius I died in Mediolanum on the 17th of January, 395, after a long illness. A few months before this he had defeated at Frigidus, in the pass of the Julian Alps, Eugenius, the second pretender to lay claim to the throne during his reign. The pious monarch met his death in a different manner from his young co-rulers, Gratian and Valentinian II, but as had many of his predecessors. No murderous steel of mercenary aspirants put an end to his life, but surrounded by faithful friends and followers, and attended by the venerable Bishop Ambrose, his great soul departed from a body long worn out with trouble and anxiety and the many struggles of an almost incessant war. He was not old when he died, for having been born in 346 he had not yet reached the age of fifty, and so, according to the prospect of longevity, it had been thought that he would have a much longer reign.

There had never been a more prosperous time for the Roman world than just then; for, after the defeat of Eugenius, the whole of the Roman Empire had once more passed under the undivided control of one man. Theodosius with his two-sided policy--openly to welcome the Germans pressing into his country, if they agreed to keep peace and friendship, or strongly to oppose their hostile advances--would have been well able to withstand the overcrowding of the west by the tribes persecuted by the Huns for many years longer; but the death of so powerful an enemy, who was greatly feared even by the barbarians, was the signal for an internal rising as well as for an external revolt.

In the midst of all this trouble and distress the ruler now died, leaving the kingdom to his two sons Arcadius and Honorius, the former but a youth, the latter a child of eleven years. With regard to the dividing of the empire, that was all settled, at least as far as Arcadius was concerned, for it was certainly not on his death-bed that the careful Theodosius had first considered the matter. The eastern half, formerly ruled by the father, was left to Arcadius as the elder son; whilst before the murder of Valentinian II a part of the Occident was probably intended to be divided between him (Valentinian) and Honorius.

A COMPARISON OF THE TWO EMPIRES

[Sidenote: [395 A.D.]]

The Western Empire consisted of Britain as far as the frontier wall of Hadrian, of Gaul, of Germany up to the _limes transrhenanus_, of Spain, of Italy, of the western part of the province of Illyricum which embraced Noricum, Pannonia, and Dalmatia, and of which the boundary stretched southeastwards from the mouth of the Scodra (Scutari) over the Bosnian Mountains, along the Drinus (Drina) to the Savus (Save), and of the entire north coast of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Barca plain. The eastern half bequeathed to Arcadius included the Balkan peninsula, bound on the north by the Danube, Asia Minor, the Tauric peninsula (Crimea), Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Lower Libya, and the Pentapolis.

A mere glance on the map shows that the area of the western half by far exceeded that of the east. Indeed, Honorius’ realm spread over about one and one half times the area of that of his brother Arcadius. The productiveness and fertility of the individual quarters of the Occident also exceeded that of the Orient; Britain, the farthest link of the Western Roman Empire, brought, according to Strabo’s report, tin from the Cornwall peninsula, corn and splendid cattle from the flat southeast; from the hills of the west and north, gold, silver, and ore. The Gauls were renowned pig and sheep breeders, Italy supplied cloth and pickled meats, whilst the flat north and east produced such quantities of grain that at the end of the fourth century the inhabitants of Rome could well have dispensed with the corn sent from Africa and had their wheat brought from Gaul. Spain, although not successful in the cultivation of grain, was amply compensated by the splendid wines which it produced; the rivers yielded gold dust, the mountains silver, copper, and iron, and the sea a wealth of fish.

Africa, owing to the fertility which for centuries filled the granaries of Rome, was so thickly populated that in the fourth century there were 123 bishops’ sees in Numidia, and 170 in the consular province of Africa, compared with which Tripolis on the borders of the Sahara was far behind. Italy was and is still to a far greater extent a land of agriculture than Greece.

The Eastern Empire on the other hand shows at first glance a remarkable lack of flat land and a great number of mountains. The Balkan peninsula, for instance, is almost entirely composed of chains of mountains which cross and recross in such a manner as to render exploration very difficult; even up to the present day little is known of the country. Owing to the mountainous character of the Balkan peninsula only a portion of the ground (of which to-day 30 per cent. is unproductive in Turkey, but in Greece quite 58.9 per cent.) could be cultivated. The expansive north was so favourable to the cultivation of corn, especially in the valleys near the rivers, that Thrace once enjoyed the distinction of producing the finest and heaviest wheat for exportation to Greece; whilst in Greece itself only Thessaly and Bœotia were noted for their agricultural soil, the remaining districts being best suited to pasture land for cattle.

Furthermore, in Asia Minor and on the east coast of the Mediterranean but a part of the land repays the trouble of cultivation, for it is only the western valleys of the rivers emptying themselves into the Ægean Sea and the northern border of the Black Sea which yield good harvests of wine, oil, and corn; for the Mediterranean coast, with the exception of the rich district of Adana, offers no specially productive ground.

The eastern portion of the Roman Empire, though certainly far behind the west not only in size but also in its products, enjoyed in other ways many advantages denied to the Occident. On account of the vastness of the Western Empire the various cities and places of importance were widely scattered and separated from the chief centre by great distances, which arrangement was undoubtedly advantageous to discontented legions and ambitious officers desirous of revolting against the lawful head of the state. The wide expanse to the northwest, however, occasioned a fatal lengthening of the eastern border line guarded by the easily crossed Rhine and Danube.

The Orient, on the contrary, had its sole coast-line bound by the Mediterranean, a much navigated and frequented sea. No city or town was separated from the others by long stretches of land, for the sea enabled the troops from one garrison to reach another in a few days. The Danube was a weak defence against the barbarians marching from the north, and the natural highway of Baku would not lead invaders into the valley of a river opening into Asia Minor, but straight into Armenia, which being full of chasms and ravines, was easy to defend. Even in the case of an invasion from the north the whole of the East, excepting Egypt, would offer but wild uninhabited country to the enemy.

It was not only the sameness of climate and the consequent similarity of products which bound the various divisions of the East closer together than were those of the West, but it was rather the one spiritual teaching and the equable advancement of education which placed the Orient before the Occident. This latter dominion had two great works of civilisation before it--to instil religious knowledge into the minds of the inhabitants of the northwestern provinces, and to introduce Catholic Christianity, as yet unknown to them. The East on the other hand consisted entirely of pure Greeks or of those who had long learned not only to speak but to think in Greek from their ancestors who, seven centuries before, had accompanied Alexander in his glorious triumphal march to the Hydaspes. The whole populace had long since been turned from the Arian belief, so that any differences in the interpretation of a dogma were now taken up and carefully thought over by all, rich and poor, from north to south alike.

In the Occident, however, there was a strong pagan party at court which had only been outwardly overthrown by the downfall of Eugenius, and needed but a favourable opportunity to reproclaim polytheism, even though it were at the cost of their patriotism.

Ambrose states that Theodosius, when on his death-bed, was far more concerned about the sanctity of the church than the welfare of the state, for he little thought that the two portions of his empire would be separated and become as two worlds with totally different histories. He died in the firm belief that his sons and descendants would never lose sight of the value and importance of unity, and that each would make his own the perils of the other.

By reason of this the two dominions remained united, at least to all outward appearances, for many centuries. All laws and regulations of both were without exception headed by the names of the two rulers, and they were all drawn up in Latin up to the time of Justinian; the year was then as now named after the two consuls, one of whom was appointed by each division.

In Europe north of the Danube the country was being constantly invaded, and consequently the neighbouring provinces, such as Scythia, Mœsia Secunda, Dacia Ripensis, and Mœsia Prima, had numerous troops which were under the command of _duces_. Thirty-one regiments of cavalry, thirty-nine auxiliaries, a portion of which consisted of well-trained scouts (_exploratores_), thirty-two legiones riparenses, three of them being exploratores, and three detachments of sailors (_nauclerii_) were quartered in the numerous fortresses situated either right on the banks of the Danube or as close as possible, especially in Noviodunum, Durostorum, Viminacium, Cebrum, and Margus. The whole of the active military forces consisted, as far as infantry is concerned, of seventy legions, which, all told, would present an army of 420,000 men and thus exceed the Turkish peace army of 151,129 (in war 758,000 men) which occupied that territory in 1885.

As the frontiers of the country were so well protected it may be supposed, though there is but scanty information on the subject, that there was also a strong navy. The fleet served to protect military transports and the grain ships, and helped in the transmission of troops and baggage.

The Eastern as well as the Western Empire had a fleet on the Rhine and on the Danube controlled by those governing the army in that quarter, but the positions of the stations cannot be given with certainty.

Arms for the entire forces by land and by sea were manufactured in enormous state factories, the post of a workman being an hereditary one, like that of a decurio. Everything was under the direct supervision of the magister officiorum. In the Orient Damascus forged shields and other weapons, and Antioch shields and mail for horse and man. In Odessa shields and necessaries for fitting out the ships were manufactured, and in Irenopolis (Cilicia) spears and lances. The diocese of Pontus in Cæsarea (Cappadocia) supplied mail and shields; in Asia there was only one manufactory for weapons and that was in Sardis, whilst in Thrace for the same purpose there were many buildings.

GREATNESS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

The capital of the Eastern dominions, now separated forever from the Western, was Constantinople, the city which had hitherto stood second to Rome. It would be impossible even to compare its history and existence with that of Rome, yet, owing to its excellent position, it was superior. It would have been the greatest possible mistake for Constantine the Great to have chosen either Sardica, Thessalonica, the territory of Ilium or Chalcedon, between which places he hesitated some time, to be the new Rome of the East, for however richly nature may have endowed them all, to elect any one would have seemed but the satisfying of a princely caprice; as Constantinople on the straits of the Bosporus was then and always will be the one natural city commanding the whole of the Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, and the numerous seas and rivers uniting at this spot.

Where is such another city on the main sea to be found on which nature’s favours have been so profusely showered? It is from here that the way leads by Thessalonica and Dyrrhachium to the Occident; by Philippopolis, Hadrianopolis, Sardica, and along the Morava into the heart of Europe; on the other side one goes across country over the plains of Asia Minor to the great metropolis of Antioch, to Babylon, and yet further on straight to the spices, pearls, and precious stones of rich India. By sea the way is open to the rich corn districts on the coast of Pontus, eastward to Trebizond, the Phasis, and still further in this direction is Tiflis with the Caspian Sea and central Asia; southward to the flourishing Grecian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor and past Rhodes to the valuable land of Egypt; and lastly southwards to the island world in the Ægean Sea, Athens, and away to the west of the Mediterranean. Constantinople was specially suited to the carrying on of such a gigantic shipping trade, since, in the deeply indented “Golden Horn,” it possessed one of the most beautiful and best sheltered harbours that may be found the world over.

For the maintenance of the inhabitants the sea was richly supplied with fish, and millions of tunny fish passed yearly through the sea of Marmora, which when caught were salted and smoked. Although in the course of years this wealth of fish began to diminish, a number of the people could and do still earn their livelihood by fishing; for besides this special species quantities of sword-fish, anchovies, etc., are caught. The land provided hares, swine, and pheasants, splendid quail and partridges, and the generally mild climate was favourable to the growth of nourishing figs.

Although the environs of Thrace had in earlier days supplied sufficient wheat to supply the wants of the people, the increase of population now demanded more food, and Pontian and Egyptian corn were introduced into the country.

Unfortunately this city, otherwise so perfect, was frequently disturbed by earthquakes, sometimes accompanied by great upheavals of the sea; but in spite of the unsafe foundations of the buildings, especially of the larger and more important ones, the emperors did not hesitate to enrich the city, rebuilt by Constantine the Great in 330, with imposing edifices. As Constantine himself, with a perennial passion for building, had endeavoured to cover the land for about fifteen furlongs around the city with edifices of every possible kind, the succeeding emperors were not to be thought lacking; and so, up to the time when the two empires were separated, the residences of the emperors on the seven hills in the fourteen departments were, according to models of Rome, of no mean pretensions.

In the first division, which took in the east points of the neck of land washed by the Golden Horn and the Bosporus, was the great imperial palace, which included, besides the private residence of the emperor, with the throne room and the apartment made entirely of porphyry in which the princes and princesses were born, the houses of all the chief people in office at court, extensive laundries, and a host of most beautiful halls, courts, and gardens. Other palaces were attached, as the one inhabited by Theodosius’ daughter Placidia, and there were also fifteen private baths supplied by the warm springs of Arcadia; and through the chalœ, with its surrounding piazza and gilded roofed entrance, the way led to the second division, in which stood the “great church” built by Constantine and rebuilt later by Justinian as St. Sophia, and the residences of the senators, all carried out in the best style with the costliest marble. The inartistic Constantine had had the statues of the Rhodian Zeus and the Athene of Lindos taken from their original standing places and put in front of these buildings. Lastly came the Baths of Zeuxippus in the Grove of Zeus, sufficiently immense to enable two thousand men to bathe there daily.[b]

THE EAST AND THE WEST

The number and importance of the Gothic forces in the Roman armies during the reign of Theodosius had enabled several of their commanders to attain the highest rank; and among these officers, Alaric was the most distinguished by his future greatness.

The death of Theodosius threw the administration of the Eastern Empire into the hands of Rufinus, the minister of Arcadius; and that of the Western, into those of Stilicho, the guardian of Honorius. The discordant elements which composed the Roman Empire began to reveal all their incongruities under these two ministers. Rufinus was a civilian from Gaul; and, from his Roman habits and feelings and western prejudices, disagreeable to the Greeks. Stilicho was of barbarian descent, and consequently equally unacceptable to the aristocracy of Rome; but he was an able and popular soldier, and had served with distinction both in the East and in the West. As Stilicho was the husband of Serena, the niece and adopted daughter of Theodosius the Great, his alliance with the imperial family gave him an unusual influence in the administration. The two ministers hated one another with all the violence of aspiring ambition; and, unrestrained by any feeling of patriotism, each was more intent on ruining his rival than on serving the state. The greater number of the officers in the Roman service, both civil and military, were equally inclined to sacrifice every public duty for the gratification of their avarice or ambition.

ALARIC’S REVOLT

At this time Alaric, partly from disgust at not receiving all the preferment which he expected, and partly in the hope of compelling the government of the Eastern Empire to agree to his terms, quitted the imperial service and retired towards the frontiers, where he assembled a force sufficiently large to enable him to act independently of all authority. Availing himself of the disputes between the ministers of the two emperors, and perhaps instigated by Rufinus or Stilicho to aid their intrigues, he established himself in the provinces to the south of the Danube. In the year 395 he advanced to the walls of Constantinople; but the movement was evidently a feint, as he must have known his inability to attack a large and populous city defended by a powerful garrison, and which even in ordinary times received the greater part of its supplies by sea. After this demonstration, Alaric marched into Thrace and Macedonia, and extended his ravages into Thessaly. Rufinus has been accused of assisting Alaric’s invasion, and his negotiations with him while in the vicinity of Constantinople authorise the suspicion. When the Goth found the northern provinces exhausted, he resolved to invade Greece and Peloponnesus, which had long enjoyed profound tranquillity. The cowardly behaviour of Antiochus the proconsul of Achaia, and of Gerontius the commander of the Roman troops, both friends of Rufinus, was considered a confirmation of his treachery. Thermopylæ was left unguarded, and Alaric entered Greece without encountering any resistance.

The ravages committed by Alaric’s army have been described in fearful terms; villages and towns were burned, the men were murdered, and the women and children carried away to be sold as slaves by the Goths. But even this invasion affords proofs that Greece had recovered from the desolate condition in which it had been seen by Pausanias. The walls of Thebes had been rebuilt, and it was in such a state of defence that Alaric could not venture to besiege it, but hurried forward to Athens. He concluded a treaty with the civil and military authorities, which enabled him to enter that city without opposition; his success was probably assisted by treacherous arrangements with Rufinus, and by the treaty with the municipal authorities, which secured the town from being plundered by the Gothic soldiers; for he appears to have really occupied Athens rather as a federate leader than as a foreign conqueror.

The tale recorded by Zosimus[e] of the Christian Alaric having been induced by the apparition of the goddess Minerva to spare Athens, is refuted by the direct testimony of other writers, who mention the capitulation of the city. The fact that the depredations of Alaric hardly exceeded the ordinary license of a rebellious general, is, at the same time, perfectly established. The public buildings and monuments of ancient splendour suffered no wanton destruction from his visit; but there can be no doubt that Alaric and his troops levied heavy contributions on the city and its inhabitants. Athens evidently owed its good treatment to the condition of its population, and perhaps to the strength of its walls, which imposed some respect on the Goths; for the rest of Attica did not escape the usual fate of the districts through which the barbarians marched. The town of Eleusis, and the great temple of Ceres, were plundered and then destroyed. Whether this work of devastation was caused by the Christian monks who attended the Gothic host, and excited their bigoted Arian votaries to avenge the cause of religion on the temples of the pagans at Eleusis, because they had been compelled to spare the shrines at Athens, or whether it was the accidental effect of the eager desire of plunder or of the wanton love of destruction among a disorderly body of troops, is not very material. Bigoted monks, avaricious officers, and disorderly soldiers were numerous in Alaric’s band.

Gerontius, who had abandoned the pass of Thermopylæ, took no measures to defend the Isthmus of Corinth, or the difficult passes of Mount Geranion, so that Alaric marched unopposed into the Peloponnesus, and, in a short time, captured every city in it without meeting with any resistance. Corinth, Argos, and Sparta, were all plundered by the Goths. The security in which Greece had long remained, and the policy of the government, which discouraged their independent institutions, had conspired to leave the province without protection, and the people without arms. The facility which Alaric met with in effecting his conquest, and his views, which were directed to obtain an establishment in the empire as an imperial officer or feudatory governor, rendered the conduct of his army not that of avowed enemies. Yet it often happened that they laid waste everything in the line of their march, burned villages, and massacred the inhabitants.

Alaric passed the winter in the Peloponnesus without encountering any opposition from the people; yet many of the Greek cities still kept a body of municipal police, which might surely have taken the field, had the imperial officers performed their duty and endeavoured to organise a regular resistance in the country districts. The moderation of the Goth, and the treason of the Roman governor, seem both attested by this circumstance. The government of the Eastern Empire had fallen into such disorder at the commencement of the reign of Arcadius, that even after Rufinus had been assassinated by the army the new ministers of the empire gave themselves very little concern about the fate of Greece.

Honorius had a more able, active, and ambitious minister in Stilicho, and he determined to punish the Goths for their audacity in daring to establish themselves in the empire without the imperial authority. Stilicho had attempted to save Thessaly in the preceding year, but had been compelled to return to Italy, after he had reached Thessalonica, by an express order of the emperor Arcadius, or rather of his minister Rufinus. In the spring of the year 396, he assembled a fleet at Ravenna, and transported his army directly to Corinth, which the Goths do not appear to have garrisoned, and where, probably, the Roman governor still resided. Stilicho’s army, aided by the inhabitants, soon cleared the open country of the Gothic bands, and Alaric drew together the remains of his diminished army in the elevated plain of Mount Pholoe, which has since served as a point of retreat for the northern invaders of Greece. Stilicho contented himself with occupying the passes with his army; but his carelessness, or the relaxed discipline of his troops, soon afforded the watchful Alaric an opportunity of escaping with his army, of carrying off all the plunder which they had collected, and, by forced marches, of gaining the Isthmus of Corinth.

[Sidenote: [395-396 A.D.]]

Alaric succeeded in conducting his army into Epirus, where he disposed his forces to govern and plunder that province, as he had expected to rule Peloponnesus. Stilicho was supposed to have winked at his proceedings, in order to render his own services indispensable by leaving a dangerous enemy in the heart of the Eastern Empire; but the truth appears to be that Alaric availed himself so ably of the jealousy with which the court of Constantinople viewed the proceedings of Stilicho, as to negotiate a treaty, by which he was received into the Roman service, and that he really entered Epirus as a general of Arcadius. Stilicho was again ordered to retire from the Eastern Empire, and he obeyed rather than commence a civil war by pursuing Alaric. The conduct of the Gothic troops in Epirus was, perhaps, quite as orderly as that of the Roman legionaries; so that Alaric was probably welcomed as a protector when he obtained the appointment of commander-in-chief of the imperial forces in eastern Illyricum, which he held for four years. During this time he prepared his troops to seek his fortune in the Western Empire. The military commanders, whether Roman or barbarian, were equally indifferent to the fate of the people whom they were employed to defend; and the Greeks appear to have suffered equal oppression from the armies of Stilicho and Alaric.

The condition of the European Greeks underwent a great change for the worse, in consequence of this unfortunate plundering expedition of the Goths. The destruction of their property and the loss of their slaves were so great, that the evil could only have been slowly repaired under the best government and perfect security of their possessions. In the miserable condition to which the Eastern Empire was reduced, this was hopeless; and a long period elapsed before the mass of the population of Greece again attained the prosperous condition in which Alaric had found it; nor were some of the cities which he destroyed ever rebuilt. The ruin of roads, aqueducts, cisterns, and public buildings, erected by the accumulation of capital in prosperous and enterprising ages, was a loss which could never be repaired by a diminished and impoverished population.

History generally preserves but few traces of the devastations which affect only the people; but the sudden misery inflicted on Greece was so great, when contrasted with her previous tranquillity, that testimonies of her sufferings are to be found in the laws of the empire. Her condition excited the compassion of the government during the reign of Theodosius II. There exists a law which exempts the cities of Illyricum from the charge of contributing towards the expenses of the public spectacles at Constantinople, in consequence of the sufferings which the ravages of the Goths and the oppressive administration of Alaric had inflicted on the inhabitants. There is another law which proves that many estates were without owners, in consequence of the depopulation caused by the Gothic invasions; and a third law relieves Greece from two-thirds of the ordinary contributions to government, in consequence of the poverty to which the inhabitants were reduced.

This unfortunate period is as remarkable for the devastations committed by the Huns in Asia as for those of the Goths in Europe, and marks the commencement of the rapid decrease of the Greek race and of the decline of Greek civilisation throughout the empire. While Alaric was laying waste the provinces of European Greece, an army of Huns from the banks of the Tanais penetrated through Armenia into Cappadocia, and extended their ravages over Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia. Antioch, at last, resisted their assaults and arrested their progress; but they took many Greek cities of importance, and inflicted an incalculable injury on the population of the provinces which they entered. In a few months they retreated to their seats on the Palus Mæotis, having contributed much to accelerate the ruin of the richest and most populous portion of the civilised world.[c]

EUTROPIUS THE EUNUCH

[Sidenote: [396-399 A.D.]]

The first events of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius are so intimately connected that the rebellion of the Goths and the fall of Rufinus have already claimed a place in the history of the West.

Eutropius, one of the principal eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, succeeded the haughty minister whose ruin he had accomplished, and whose vices he soon imitated. Every order of the state bowed to the new favourite; and their tame and obsequious submission encouraged him to insult the laws and, what is still more difficult and dangerous, the manners of his country. Under the weakest of the predecessors of Arcadius, the reign of the eunuchs had been secret and almost invisible. They insinuated themselves into the confidence of the prince; but their ostensible functions were confined to the menial service of the wardrobe and imperial bedchamber.

Now in the senate, the capital, and the provinces, the statues of Eutropius were erected in brass or marble, decorated with the symbols of his civil and military virtues, and inscribed with the pompous title of the third founder of Constantinople. He was promoted to the rank of patrician, which began to signify, in a popular and even legal acceptation, the father of the emperor; and the last year of the fourth century was polluted by the consulship of a eunuch and a slave.

The bold and vigorous mind of Rufinus seems to have been actuated by a more sanguinary and revengeful spirit; but the avarice of the eunuch was not less insatiate than that of the prefect. As long as he despoiled the oppressors, who had enriched themselves with the plunder of the people, Eutropius might gratify his covetous disposition without much envy or injustice; but the progress of his rapine soon invaded the wealth which had been acquired by lawful inheritance or laudable industry.

Among the generals and consuls of the East, Abundantius had reason to dread the first effects of the resentment of Eutropius. He had been guilty of the unpardonable crime of introducing that abject slave to the palace of Constantinople; and some degree of praise must be allowed to a powerful and ungrateful favourite who was satisfied with the disgrace of his benefactor. Abundantius was stripped of his ample fortunes by an imperial rescript, and banished to Pityus, on the Euxine, the last frontier of the Roman world, where he subsisted by the precarious mercy of the barbarians, till he could obtain, after the fall of Eutropius, a milder exile at Sidon in Phœnicia.

The destruction of Timasius required a more serious and regular mode of attack. That great officer, the master-general of the armies of Theodosius, had signalised his valour by a decisive victory which he obtained over the Goths of Thessaly; but he was too prone, after the example of his sovereign, to enjoy the luxury of peace and to abandon his confidence to wicked and designing flatterers. Timasius had despised the public clamour, by promoting an infamous dependent to the command of a cohort; and he deserved to feel the ingratitude of Bargus, who was secretly instigated by the favourite to accuse his patron of a treasonable conspiracy.

The general was arraigned before the tribunal of Arcadius himself; and the principal eunuch stood by the side of the throne to suggest the questions and answers of his sovereign. But as this form of trial might be deemed partial and arbitrary, the further inquiry into the crimes of Timasius was delegated to Saturninus and Procopius; the former of consular rank, the latter still respected as the father-in-law of the emperor Valens. The appearances of a fair and legal proceeding were maintained by the blunt honesty of Procopius; and he yielded with reluctance to the obsequious dexterity of his colleague, who pronounced a sentence of condemnation against the unfortunate Timasius. His immense riches were confiscated, in the name of the emperor and for the benefit of the favourite; and he was doomed to perpetual exile at Oasis, a solitary spot in the midst of the sandy deserts of Libya (399).

The public hatred and the despair of individuals, continually threatened, or seemed to threaten, the personal safety of Eutropius, as well as of the numerous adherents who were attached to his fortune and had been promoted by his venal favour. For their mutual defence, he contrived the safeguard of a law, which violated every principle of humanity and justice.

(1) It is enacted, in the name and by the authority of Arcadius, that all those who shall conspire, either with subjects or with strangers, against the lives of any of the persons whom the emperor considers as the members of his own body, shall be punished with death and confiscation.

(2) This extreme severity might, perhaps, be justified, had it been only directed to secure the representatives of the sovereign from any actual violence in the execution of their office. But the whole body of imperial dependents claimed a privilege, or rather impunity, which screened them, in the loosest moments of their lives, from the hasty, perhaps the justifiable, resentment of their fellow-citizens; and, by a strange perversion of the laws, the same degree of guilt and punishment was applied to a private quarrel and to a deliberate conspiracy against the emperor and the empire. The edict of Arcadius most positively and most absurdly declares that, in such cases of treason, thoughts and actions ought to be punished with equal severity; that the knowledge of a mischievous intention, unless it be instantly revealed, becomes equally criminal with the intention itself; and that those rash men who shall presume to solicit the pardon of traitors, shall themselves be branded with public and perpetual infamy.

(3) “With regard to the sons of the traitors,” continues the emperor, “although they ought to share the punishment, since they will probably imitate the guilt, of their parents, yet, by the special effect of our imperial lenity, we grant them their lives; but, at the same time, we declare them incapable of inheriting, either on the father’s or on the mother’s side, or of receiving any gift or legacy from the testament either of kinsmen or of strangers. Stigmatised with hereditary infamy, excluded from the hopes of honours or fortune, let them endure the pangs of poverty and contempt, till they shall consider life as a calamity, and death as a comfort and relief.” In such words, so well adapted to insult the feelings of mankind, did the emperor, or rather his favourite eunuch, applaud the moderation of a law which transferred the same unjust and inhuman penalties to the children of all those who had seconded or who had not disclosed these fictitious conspiracies. Some of the noblest regulations of Roman jurisprudence have been suffered to expire; but this edict, a convenient and forcible engine of ministerial tyranny, was carefully inserted in the codes of Theodosius and Justinian; and the same maxims have been revived in modern ages to protect the electors of Germany and the cardinals of the church of Rome.

TRIBIGILD THE OSTROGOTH; THE FALL OF EUTROPIUS

[Sidenote: [399-400 A.D.]]

Yet the sanguinary laws which spread terror among a disarmed and dispirited people were of too weak a texture to restrain the bold enterprise of Tribigild the Ostrogoth. The colony of that warlike nation, which had been planted by Theodosius in one of the most fertile districts of Phrygia, impatiently compared the slow returns of laborious husbandry with the successful rapine and liberal rewards of Alaric; and their leader resented, as a personal affront, his own ungracious reception in the palace of Constantinople.

A soft and wealthy province, in the heart of the empire, was astonished by the sound of war; and the faithful vassal who had been disregarded or oppressed was again respected as soon as he resumed the hostile character of a barbarian. The vineyards and fruitful fields, between the rapid Marsyas and the winding Mæander, were consumed with fire; the decayed walls of the city crumbled into dust at the first stroke of an enemy; the trembling inhabitants escaped from a bloody massacre to the shores of the Hellespont; and a considerable part of Asia Minor was desolated by the rebellion of Tribigild. His rapid progress was checked by the resistance of the peasants of Pamphylia; and the Ostrogoths, attacked in a narrow pass, between the city of Selgæ, a deep morass, and the craggy cliffs of Mount Taurus, were defeated with the loss of their bravest troops. But the spirit of their chief was not daunted by misfortune; and his army was continually recruited by swarms of barbarians and outlaws, who were desirous of exercising the profession of robbery under the more honourable names of war and conquest. The rumours of the success of Tribigild might for some time be suppressed by fear or disguised by flattery; yet they gradually alarmed both the court and the capital.

The approach of danger and the obstinacy of Tribigild, who refused all terms of accommodation, compelled Eutropius to summon a council of war. After claiming for himself the privilege of a veteran soldier, the eunuch intrusted the guard of Thrace and the Hellespont to Gainas the Goth, and the command of the Asiatic army to his favourite Leo; two generals who differently, but effectually, promoted the cause of the rebels. Leo, who from the bulk of his body and the dulness of his mind was surnamed the Ajax of the East, had deserted his original trade of a woolcomber to exercise, with much less skill and success, the military profession; and his uncertain operations were capriciously framed and executed, with an ignorance of real difficulties and a timorous neglect of every favourable opportunity. The rashness of the Ostrogoths had drawn them into a disadvantageous position between the rivers Melas and Eurymedon, where they were almost besieged by the peasants of Pamphylia; but the arrival of an imperial army, instead of completing their destruction, afforded the means of safety and victory. Tribigild surprised the unguarded camp of the Romans in the darkness of the night; seduced the faith of the greater part of the barbarian auxiliaries, and dissipated, without much effort, the troops which had been corrupted by the relaxation of discipline and the luxury of the capital.

The bold satirist, who has indulged his discontent by the partial and passionate censure of the Christian emperors, violates the dignity rather than the truth of history by comparing the son of Theodosius to one of those harmless and simple animals who scarcely feel that they are the property of their shepherd. Two passions, however, fear and conjugal affection, awakened the languid soul of Arcadius; he was terrified by the threats of a victorious barbarian; and he yielded to the tender eloquence of his wife, Eudoxia, who, with a flood of artificial tears, presenting her infant children to their father, implored his justice for some real or imaginary insult which she imputed to the audacious eunuch. The emperor’s hand was directed to sign the condemnation of Eutropius; the magic spell, which during four years had bound the prince and the people, was instantly dissolved; and the acclamations that so lately hailed the merit and fortune of the favourite, were converted into the clamours of the soldiers and people, who reproached his crimes and pressed his immediate execution.

In this hour of distress and despair his only refuge was in the sanctuary of the church, whose privileges he had wisely or profanely attempted to circumscribe; and the most eloquent of the saints, John Chrysostom, enjoyed the triumph of protecting a prostrate minister, whose choice had raised him to the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople. The archbishop, ascending the pulpit of the cathedral, that he might be distinctly seen and heard by an innumerable crowd of either sex and of every age, pronounced a seasonable and pathetic discourse on the forgiveness of injuries and the instability of human greatness. The agonies of the pale and affrighted wretch who lay grovelling under the table of the altar, exhibited a solemn and instructive spectacle; and the orator, who was afterwards accused of insulting the misfortunes of Eutropius, laboured to excite the contempt that he might assuage the fury of the people. The powers of humanity, of superstition, and of eloquence prevailed. The empress Eudoxia was restrained, by her own prejudices or by those of her subjects, from violating the sanctuary of the church; and Eutropius was tempted to capitulate, by the milder arts of persuasion and by an oath that his life should be spared.

Careless of the dignity of their sovereign, the new ministers of the palace immediately published an edict to declare that his late favourite had disgraced the names of consul and patrician, to abolish his statues, to confiscate his wealth, and to inflict a perpetual exile in the island of Cyprus. A despicable and decrepit eunuch could no longer alarm the fears of his enemies; nor was he capable of enjoying what yet remained--the comforts of peace, of solitude, and of a happy climate. But their implacable revenge still envied him the last moments of a miserable life, and Eutropius had no sooner touched the shores of Cyprus than he was hastily recalled. The vain hope of eluding by a change of place the obligation of an oath, engaged the empress to transfer the scene of his trial and execution from Constantinople to the adjacent suburb of Chalcedon. The consul Aurelian pronounced the sentence; and the motives of that sentence expose the jurisprudence of a despotic government. The crimes which Eutropius had committed against the people might have justified his death, but he was found guilty of harnessing to his chariot the sacred animals which, from their breed or colour, were reserved for the use of the emperor alone.

While this domestic revolution was transacted, Gainas openly revolted from his allegiance; united his forces, at Thyatira in Lydia, with those of Tribigild; and still maintained his superior ascendant over the rebellious leader of the Ostrogoths. The confederate armies advanced, without resistance, to the straits of the Hellespont and the Bosporus; and Arcadius was instructed to prevent the loss of his Asiatic dominions by resigning his authority and his person to the faith of the barbarians. The church of the holy martyr Euphemia, situate on a lofty eminence near Chalcedon, was chosen for the place of the interview. Gainas bowed with reverence at the feet of the emperor, whilst he required the sacrifice of Aurelian and Saturninus, two ministers of consular rank; and their naked necks were exposed by the haughty rebel to the edge of the sword, till he condescended to grant them a precarious and disgraceful respite. The Goths, according to the terms of the agreement, were immediately transported from Asia into Europe; and their victorious chief, who accepted the title of master-general of the Roman armies, soon filled Constantinople with his troops and distributed among his dependents the honours and rewards of the empire.

In his early youth, Gainas had passed the Danube as a suppliant and a fugitive; his elevation had been the work of valour and fortune, and his indiscreet or perfidious conduct was the cause of his rapid downfall. Notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of the archbishop, he importunately claimed for his Arian sectaries the possession of a peculiar church; and the pride of the Catholics was offended by the public toleration of heresy. [The Emperor, at Gainas’ demand, melted the plate of the church of the Apostles.]

[Sidenote: [400-401 A.D.]]

Every quarter of Constantinople was filled with tumult and disorder; and the barbarians gazed with such ardour on the rich shops of the jewellers and the tables of the bankers, which were covered with gold and silver, that it was judged prudent to remove those dangerous temptations from their sight. They resented the injurious precaution; and some alarming attempts were made, during the night, to attack and destroy with fire the imperial palace. In this state of mutual and suspicious hostility, the guards and the people of Constantinople shut the gates and rose in arms to prevent or to punish the conspiracy of the Goths. During the absence of Gainas, his troops were surprised and oppressed; seven thousand barbarians perished in this bloody massacre. In the fury of the pursuit the Catholics uncovered the roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they overwhelmed their adversaries, who had retreated to the church or conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the design or too confident of his success; he was astonished by the intelligence that the flower of his army had been ingloriously destroyed, that he himself was declared a public enemy, and that his countryman, Fravitta, a brave and loyal confederate, had assumed the management of the war by sea and land.

The enterprises of the rebel against the cities of Thrace were encountered by a firm and well-ordered defence; his hungry soldiers were soon reduced to the grass that grew on the margin of the fortifications; and Gainas, who vainly regretted the wealth and luxury of Asia, embraced a desperate resolution of forcing the passage of the Hellespont. He was destitute of vessels; but the woods of the Chersonesus afforded material for rafts, and his intrepid barbarians did not refuse to trust themselves to the waves. But Fravitta attentively watched the progress of their undertaking. As soon as they had gained the middle of the stream, the Roman galleys, impelled by the full force of oars, of the current, and of a favourable wind, rushed forwards in compact order and with irresistible weight; and the Hellespont was covered with the fragments of the Gothic shipwreck.

After the destruction of his hopes and the loss of many thousands of his bravest soldiers, Gainas, who could no longer aspire to govern or to subdue the Romans, determined to resume the independence of a savage life. A light and active body of barbarian horse, disengaged from their infantry and baggage, might perform in eight or ten days a march of three hundred miles from the Hellespont to the Danube. This design was secretly communicated to the national troops, who devoted themselves to the fortunes of their leader; and before the signal of departure was given, a great number of provincial auxiliaries whom he suspected of an attachment to their native country, were perfidiously massacred.

But a formidable ally appeared in arms to vindicate the majesty of the empire, and to guard the peace and liberty of Scythia. The superior forces of Uldin, king of the Huns, opposed the progress of Gainas; a hostile and ruined country prohibited his retreat; he disdained to capitulate, and after repeatedly attempting to cut his way through the ranks of the enemy, he was slain, with his desperate followers, in the field of battle. Eleven days after the naval victory of the Hellespont, the head of Gainas, the inestimable gift of the conqueror, was received at Constantinople with the most liberal expressions of gratitude; and the public deliverance was celebrated by festivals and illuminations. The triumphs of Arcadius became the subject of epic poems; and the monarch, no longer oppressed by any hostile terrors, resigned himself to the mild and absolute dominion of his wife, the fair and artful Eudoxia, who has sullied her fame by the persecution of St. John Chrysostom.

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

[Sidenote: [398-403 A.D.]]

Born of a noble and opulent family in the capital of Syria, Chrysostom had been educated by the care of a tender mother, under the tuition of the most skilful masters. His piety soon disposed him to renounce the lucrative and honourable profession of the law, and to bury himself in the adjacent desert, where he subdued the lusts of the flesh by an austere penance of six years. His infirmities compelled him to return to the society of mankind, but in the midst of his family and afterwards on the archiepiscopal throne Chrysostom still persevered in the practice of the monastic virtues. The ample revenues which his predecessors had consumed in pomp and luxury he diligently applied to the establishment of hospitals; and the multitudes who were supported by his charity preferred the eloquent and edifying discourses of their archbishop to the amusements of the theatre or the circus.

The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies--the aspiring clergy who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners who were offended by his reproofs. [Chrysostom’s sermons from the pulpit of St. Sophia on the degeneracy of the Christians had their severest application in court circles where there was a large share of guilt to be divided among a relatively small number of criminals.] The secret resentment of the court encouraged the discontent of the clergy and monks of Constantinople, who were too hastily reformed by the fervent zeal of their archbishop. He had condemned from the pulpit the domestic females of the clergy of Constantinople, who, under the name of servants or sisters, afforded a perpetual occasion either of sin or of scandal.

The silent and solitary ascetics who had secluded themselves from the world were entitled to the warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatised, as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd of degenerate monks who, from some unworthy motives of pleasure or profit, so frequently infested the streets of the capital. To the voice of persuasion the archbishop was obliged to add the terrors of authority; and his ardour in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was not always exempt from passion; nor was it always guided by prudence. Chrysostom was naturally of a choleric disposition. Although he struggled, according to the precepts of the gospel, to love his private enemies, he indulged himself in the privilege of hating the enemies of God and of the church; and his sentiments were sometimes delivered with too much energy of countenance and expression.

Conscious of the purity of his intentions, and perhaps of the superiority of his genius, the archbishop of Constantinople extended the jurisdiction of the imperial city, that he might enlarge the sphere of his pastoral labours; and the conduct which the profane imputed to an ambitious motive appeared to Chrysostom himself in the light of a sacred and indispensable duty. In his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia; and indiscreetly declared that a deep corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected the whole episcopal order. If those bishops were innocent, such a rash and unjust condemnation must excite a well-grounded discontent. If they were guilty, the numerous associates of their guilt would soon discover that their own safety depended on the ruin of the archbishop, whom they studied to represent as the tyrant of the Eastern church.

This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by Theophilus, archbishop of Alexandria, an active and ambitious prelate, who displayed the fruits of rapine in monuments of ostentation. His national dislike to the rising greatness of a city which degraded him from the second to the third rank in the Christian world, was exasperated by some personal disputes with Chrysostom himself. By the private invitation of the empress, Theophilus landed at Constantinople with a stout body of Egyptian mariners to encounter the populace, and a train of dependent bishops to secure, by their voices, the majority of a synod.

[Sidenote: [403-404 A.D.]]

The synod was convened in the suburb of Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak, where Rufinus had erected a stately church and monastery; and their proceedings were continued during fourteen days or sessions. A bishop and a deacon accused the archbishop of Constantinople; but the frivolous or improbable nature of the forty-seven articles which they presented against him may justly be considered as a fair and unexceptionable panegyric. Four successive summons were signified to Chrysostom; but he still refused to trust either his person or his reputation in the hands of his implacable enemies, who, prudently declining the examination of any particular charges, condemned his contumacious disobedience and hastily pronounced a sentence of deposition. The synod of the Oak immediately addressed the emperor to ratify and execute their judgment, and charitably insinuated that the penalties of treason might be inflicted on the audacious preacher, who had reviled, under the name of Jezebel, the empress Eudoxia herself. The archbishop was rudely arrested, and conducted through the city by one of the imperial messengers, who landed him, after a short navigation, near the entrance of the Euxine; but two days later he was gloriously recalled.

The first astonishment of his faithful people had been mute and passive; they suddenly rose with unanimous and irresistible fury. Theophilus escaped; but the promiscuous crowd of monks and Egyptian mariners was slaughtered without pity in the streets of Constantinople. A seasonable earthquake justified the interposition of heaven; the torrent of sedition rolled forwards to the gates of the palace; and the empress, agitated by fear or remorse, threw herself at the feet of Arcadius and confessed that the public safety could be purchased only by the restoration of Chrysostom.

The short interval of a perfidious truce was employed to concert more effectual measures for the disgrace and ruin of the archbishop. A numerous council of the Eastern prelates, who were guided from a distance by the advice of Theophilus, confirmed the validity, without examining the justice, of the former sentence; and a detachment of barbarian troops was introduced into the city, to suppress the emotions of the people. On the vigil of Easter, the solemn administration of baptism was rudely interrupted by the soldiers, who alarmed the modesty of the naked catechumens, and violated by their presence the awful mysteries of the Christian worship. Arsacius occupied the church of St. Sophia and the archiepiscopal throne. The Catholics retreated to the baths of Constantine, and afterwards to the fields; where they were still pursued and insulted by the guards, the bishops, and the magistrates. The fatal day of the second and final exile of Chrysostom was marked by the conflagration of the cathedral, of the senate house, and of the adjacent buildings; and this calamity was imputed, without proof but not without probability, to the despair of a persecuted faction.

Instead of listening to his humble prayer that he might be permitted to reside at Cyzicus or Nicomedia, the inflexible empress assigned for his exile the remote and desolate town of Cucusus, among the ridges of Mount Taurus in the Lesser Armenia. A secret hope was entertained that the archbishop might perish in a difficult and dangerous march of seventy days, in the heat of summer, through the provinces of Asia Minor, where he was continually threatened by the hostile attacks of the Isaurians and the more implacable fury of the monks. Yet Chrysostom arrived in safety at the place of his confinement; and the three years which he spent at Cucusus, and the neighbouring town of Arabissus, were the last and most glorious of his life. His character was consecrated by absence and persecution; the faults of his administration were no longer remembered, but every tongue repeated the praises of his genius and virtue; and the respectful attention of the Christian world was fixed on a desert spot among the mountains of Taurus.

[Sidenote: [404-408 A.D.]]

From that solitude the archbishop, his active mind invigorated by misfortunes, maintained a strict and frequent correspondence with the most distant provinces; exhorted the separate congregation of his faithful adherents to persevere in their allegiance; urged the destruction of the temples of Phœnicia, and the extirpation of heresy in the isle of Cyprus; extended his pastoral care to the missions of Persia and Scythia; negotiated, by his ambassadors, with the Roman pontiff and the emperor Honorius; and boldly appealed from a partial synod to the supreme tribunal of a free and general council. The mind of the illustrious exile was still independent; but his captive body was exposed to the revenge of the oppressors, who continued to abuse the name and authority of Arcadius. An order was despatched for the instant removal of Chrysostom to the extreme desert of Pityus; and his guards so faithfully obeyed their cruel instructions that, before he reached the sea-coast of the Euxine, he expired at Comana, in Pontus, in the sixtieth year of his age. The succeeding generation acknowledged his innocence and merit. The archbishops of the East, who might blush that their predecessors had been the enemies of Chrysostom, were gradually disposed, by the firmness of the Roman pontiff, to restore the honours of that venerable name. At the pious solicitation of the clergy and people of Constantinople, his relics, thirty years after his death, were transported from their obscure sepulchre to the royal city. The emperor Theodosius advanced to receive them as far as Chalcedon; and falling prostrate on the coffin implored, in the name of his guilty parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia, the forgiveness of the injured saint. Yet a reasonable doubt may be entertained whether any stain of hereditary guilt could be derived from Arcadius to his successor. Eudoxia was a young and beautiful woman, who indulged her passions and despised her husband; Count John enjoyed, at least, the confidence of the empress; and the public named him as the real father of Theodosius the Younger. The birth of a son was accepted, however, by the pious husband as an event the most fortunate and honourable to himself, to his family, and to the Eastern world. In less than four years afterwards, Eudoxia, in the bloom of youth, was destroyed by the consequence of a miscarriage (404), and in four more years (May, 408), after a reign (if we may abuse that word) of thirteen years, three months and fifteen days, Arcadius expired in the palace of Constantinople. It is impossible to delineate his character; since in a period very copiously furnished with historical materials, it has not been possible to remark one action that properly belongs to the son of the great Theodosius.[d]