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READING HALL

DOORS OF WISDOM 2022

 

 

 

A HISTORY OF THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE FROM ARCADIUS TO IRENE(395 TO 800 AD)

 

BOOK II

THE HOUSE OF THEODOSIUS

I

RUFINUS AND EUTROPIUS

 

One of the few men in history who have won the title of great, the Emperor Theodosius I, who had by his policy, at once friendly and firm, pacified the Goths, who had confirmed the triumph of Athanasian over Arian Christianity, who had stamped out the last flames of refractory paganism represented by the tyrant Eugenius, died on the 17th of January 395 AD. 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 eldest son Arcadius, whom he had left as regent at Constantinople when he set out against Eugenius, should continue to reign in the East. But he was not willing to leave his youthful heirs (Arcadius was only eighteen) without a protector, and the most natural protector was one bound to them by ties of relationship. Accordingly on his deathbed he commended them to the care of the Vandal Stilicho, whom he had raised for his military and other talents to the rank of commander-in-chief, and deeming him worthy of an alliance with his own family, had united to his favourite niece Serena. We can hardly doubt that it was in this capacity, as the husband of his niece and a trusted friend, not as a general, that Stilicho received Theodosius' dying wishes; it was as an elder member of the same family that the husband of their cousin could claim to exert an influence over Arcadius and Honorius, of whom, however, the latter, it would appear, was more especially committed to his care, not only as the younger, but because Stilicho, being magister militum of the armies of Italy, would come more directly into contact with him than with his brother.

Arcadius, with whom we are especially concerned, was about eighteen at the time of his father's death. He was of short stature, of dark complexion, thin and inactive, and the dullness of his wit was betrayed by his speech, and by his eyes, which always seemed as if they were about to close in sleep. His smallness of intellect and his weakness of character made it inevitable that he should come under the influence, good or bad, of commanding personalities, with which he might be brought in contact. Such a potent personality was the praetorian prefect Rufinus, a native of Aquitaine, who in almost every respect presented a contrast to his sovereign. He was tall and manly, and the restless movements of his keen eyes and the readiness of his speech signified his intellectual powers. He was a strong worldly man, ambitious of power, and sufficiently unprincipled; avaricious, too, like most ministers of the age. He had made many enemies by acts which were perhaps somewhat more than usually unscrupulous, but we cannot justly assume that in the overthrow of certain rivals he was entirely guilty, and they entirely innocent, as is sometimes represented. It is almost certain that he formed the scheme and cherished the hope of becoming joint Emperor with Arcadius.

This ambition of Rufinus placed him at once in an attitude of opposition to Stilicho, who was himself not above the suspicion of entertaining similar schemes, not however in the interest of his own person, but for his son Eucherius. 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 favor of the army. Before the end of the year this struggle began and concluded in an extremely curious way; but we must first relate how a certain scheme of Rufinus had been checkmated 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 speedily an Emperor himself. 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, a bald old man, 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, the daughter of a distinguished Frank, but herself of Roman education. Her father Bauto was dead, and she lived in the house of the widow and sons of one of the victims of Rufinus. 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, and were bound in return for their lands to serve in the army as foederati. They had accompanied the Emperor to Italy against Eugenius, and had returned to their habitations sooner than the rest of the army. The causes of discontent which led to their revolt are not quite clear; but it seems that Arcadius refused to give them certain grants of money which had been allowed them by his father, and, as has been suggested, they probably expected that favour would wane and influence decrease, now that the "friend of the Goths" was dead, and consequently determined to make themselves heard and felt. To this must be added that their most influential chieftain, Alaric, called Baltha ("the bold"), desired to be made a commander-in-chief, magister militum, and was offended that he had been passed over.

However this may be, the historical essence of the matter is, that an immense body of restless uncivilized Germans could not abide permanently in the centre of Roman provinces in a semi-dependent, ill-defined relation to the Roman government: the West Goths had not yet found their permanent home. 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. They carefully spared certain estates outside the city, belonging to the prefect Rufinus; but this policy does not seem to have been adopted with the same motive that caused Archidamus to spare the lands of Pericles. Alaric may have wished not to render Rufinus suspected but to conciliate his friendship and obtain thereby more favourable terms. Rufinus actually went to Alaric's camp, dressed as a Goth, but the interview led to nothing.

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 appears that Stilicho's behaviour is quite as open to the charges of ambition and artfulness as the behaviour of Rufinus, for I do not perceive how we can strictly justify his detention of the forces, which ought to have been sent back to defend the provinces of Arcadius at the very beginning of the year. Stilicho's march to Thessaly can scarcely have taken place before October, and it is hard to interpret this long delay in sending back the troops, over which he had no rightful authority, if it were not dictated by a wish to implicate the government of New Rome in difficulties and render his own intervention necessary. We are told, too, that he selected the best soldiers from the eastern regiments and enrolled them in the western corps. If we adopted the Cassian maxim, cui bono fuerit, we should be inclined to accuse Stilicho of having been privy to the revolt of Alaric; such a supposition would at least be far more plausible than the calumny which was circulated charging Rufinus with having stirred up the Visigoths. For such a supposition, too, we might find support in the circumstance that the estates of Rufinus were spared by the soldiers of Alaric; it would be intelligible that Stilicho suggested the plan in order to bring odium upon Rufinus. To such a conjecture, finally, certain other circumstances, soon to be related, point; but it remains nothing more than a suspicion.

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 dispatch 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; but we shall probably never know whether he was responsible for the events that followed. 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.

Gainas and his soldiers marched by the Via Egnatia to Constantinople, and it was arranged that, according to a usual custom, the Emperor and his court should come forth from the city to meet the army in the Campus Martins, which extended on the west side of the city near the Golden Gate. 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 towards even 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. 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 request "Give to the insatiable!"

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. One might even conjecture that the whole affair was the result of a prearrangement between Stilicho and the party in Byzantium, which was adverse to Rufinus, and led by the eunuch Eutropius; but there is no evidence.

Our knowledge of this scene unfortunately depends on a partial and untrustworthy writer, who, moreover, wrote in verse—the poet Claudian. He enjoyed the patronage of Stilicho, and his poems "Against Rufinus", "Against Eutropius", and "On the Gothic War" are a glorification of his patron's splendid virtues. Stilicho and Rufinus he paints as two opposite forces, the force of good and the force of evil, like the principles of the Manichaeans. Rufinus is the terrible Pytho, the scourge of the world; Stilicho is the radiant Apollo, the deliverer of mankind. Rufinus is a power of darkness, whose tartarean wickedness surpasses even the wickedness of the Furies of hell; Stilicho is an angel of light. In the works of a poet whose leading idea was so extravagant, we can hardly expect to find much fair historical truth; it is, as a rule, only accidental references and allusions that we can accept, unless other authorities confirm his statements. Yet even modern writers, who know well how cautiously Claudian must be used, have been unconsciously prejudiced in favor of Stilicho and against Rufinus.

We must return to the movements of Alaric, who had entered the regions of classical Greece, for which he showed scant respect. Gerontius, the commander of the garrison at Thermopylae, and Antiochus, the proconsul of Achaia, offered no resistance, and the West Goths entered Boeotia, where Thebes alone escaped their devastation. They occupied the Piraeus, but Athens itself was spared, and Alaric was entertained as a guest in the city of Athene. But the great temple of the mystic goddesses Demeter and Persephone, at Eleusis, was burnt down by the irreverent barbarians; Megara, the next place on their southward route, fell; then Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. But when they reached Elis they were confronted by an unexpected opponent. Stilicho had returned from Italy, by way of Salona, which he reached by sea, to stay the hand of the invader. He blockaded him in the plain of Pholoe, but for some reason, not easily comprehensible, he did not press his advantage, and set free the hordes of the Visigothic land-pirates to resume their career of devastation. He went back to Italy, and Alaric returned, plundering as he went, to Illyricum and Thrace, where he made terms with the government of New Rome, and received the desired title of magister militum per Illyricum.

No one will suppose that Stilicho went all the way from Italy to the Peloponnesus, and then, although he had Alaric practically at his mercy, retreated, leaving matters just as they were, without some excellent reason. If he had genuinely wished to deliver the distressed countries and assist the Emperor Arcadius, he would not have acted in this ineffectual manner. And it is difficult to see that his conduct is explained by assuming that he was not willing, by a complete extermination of the Goths, to enable Arcadius to dispense with his help in future. In that case, what did he gain by going to the Peloponnesus at all? Or we might ask, if he wished Arcadius to summon his assistance from year to year, is it likely that he would have adopted the method of rendering no assistance whatever? But, above all, the question occurs, what pleasure would it have been to the general to look forward to being called upon again and again to take the field against the Visigoths?

It seems evident that Stilicho and Alaric made at Pholoe some secret and definite arrangement, which conditioned Stilicho's departure, and that this arrangement was conducive to the interests of Stilicho, who was in the position of advantage, and at the same time not contrary to the interests of Alaric, for otherwise Stilicho could not have been sure that the agreement would be carried out. What this secret compact was can only be a matter of conjecture; but I would suggest that Stilicho had already formed the plan of creating his son Eucherius Emperor, and that he designed the Balkan peninsula to be the dominion over which Eucherius should hold sway. His conduct becomes perfectly explicable if we assume that by a secret agreement he secured Alaric's assistance for the execution of this scheme, which the preponderance of Gothic power in Illyricum and Thrace would facilitate. It is subsequent events, to be related in another chapter, that suggest this theory.

It was not only the European parts of Arcadius' dominions that were ravaged, in 395, by the fire and sword of barbarians. In the same year hordes of trans-Caucasian Huns poured through the Caspian gates (per Caspia claustra), and, rushing southwards through the provinces 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 eye­witness. "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".  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."

The Huns, however, were not the only depredators at whose hands the provinces of Asia Minor and Syria suffered. There were other enemies within, whose ravages were constant, while the expedition of the Huns from without occurred only once. These enemies were the freebooters who dwelled in the Isaurian mountains, wild and untamed in their secure fastnesses. Ammianus Marcellinus describes picturesquely the habits of these sturdy robbers. They used to descend from the difficult mountain slopes like a whirlwind to places on the seashore, where in hidden ways and glens they lurked till the fall of night, and in the light of the crescent moon, watched until the mariners riding at anchor slept; then they boarded the vessels, killed and plundered the crews. Thus the coast of Isauria was like a deadly shore of Sciron; it was avoided by sailors, who made a practice of putting in at the safer ports of Cyprus. The Isaurians did not always confine their land expeditions to the surrounding provinces of Cilicia and Pamphylia; they penetrated in 403 AD northwards to Cappadocia and Pontus, or southwards to Syria and Palestine; and the whole range of the Taurus as far as the confines of Syria seems to have been their spacious habitation. An officer named Arbacazius was entrusted by Arcadius with an office similar in object to that which, four and a half centuries ago, had been assigned to Pompeius; but, though he quelled the spirits of the freebooters for a moment, Arbacazius did not succeed in eradicating the lawless element, in the same way as Pompeius had succeeded in exterminating the piracy which in his day infested the same regions. In the years 404 and 405 Cappadocia was overrun by the robber bands.

Meanwhile 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 of the time, and, like Rufinus, has been painted far blacker than he really was. All the evil things that were said by his enemies of Rufinus were said of Eutropius by his enemies; but in reading of the enormities of the latter we must make great allowance for the general prejudice existing against a person with Eutropius' physical disqualifications.

Eutropius naturally looked on the praetorian prefects, the most powerful men in the administration next to the Emperor, with jealousy and suspicion, as dangerous rivals. It was his interest to reduce their power and to raise the dignity of his own office to an equality with theirs. To his influence, then, we are probably justified in ascribing two innovations which were made by Arcadius. The administration of the cursus publius, or office of postmaster general, was transferred from the praetorian prefects to the master of offices, and the same transference was made in regard to the manufactories of arms. On the other hand, the grand chamberlain, praepositus sacri cubiculi, was made an illustris, equal in rank to the praetorian prefects. Both these innovations were afterwards altered.

The general historical import of the position of Eutropius, is that the Empire was falling into a danger, by which it had been threatened from the outset, and which it had been ever trying to avoid. We may say that there were two dangers which constantly impended over the Roman Empire from its inauguration by Augustus to its redintegration by Diocletian—a Scylla and Charybdis, between which it had to steer. The one was a cabinet of imperial freedmen, the other was a military despotism. The former danger called forth, and was counteracted by, the creation of a civil service system, to which Hadrian perhaps made the most important contributions, and which was finally elaborated by Diocletian, who at the same time averted 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 dependants.

This oriental ceremonial, so marked a feature of late "Byzantinism", involved, as one of its principles, 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 appreciated this disadvantage himself, and remarked that the sovereign, shut up in his palace, cannot know the truth, but must rely on what his attendants and officers tell him. We may also remark that absolute monarchy, by its very nature, tends in this direction; for absolute monarchy naturally tends to 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, easily guided by intriguing chamberlains and eunuchs. Under such conditions, then, aulic cabals and chamber cabinets are sure to become dominant sometimes. Diocletian, whose political insight and ingenuity were remarkable, tried to avoid the dangers of a dynasty by his artificial system, but artifice could not contend with success against nature.

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 Claudian gives a vivid and exaggerated account. This was a blot, however, that stained other men of those days as well as Eutropius, and we must view it rather as a feature of the times than as a personal 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 public offices. After the death of Rufinus, the Lycians were relieved from these disabilities; but the fact that the edict of emancipation 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.

The eunuch won considerable odium in the first year of his power (396) by bringing about the fall of two men of distinction—Abundantius, to whose patronage he owed his rise in the world, and Timasius, who had been the commander-general in the East. An account of the manner in which the ruin of the latter was wrought will illustrate the sort of intrigues that were spun at the Byzantine court.

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 ascendency over the Syrian, and compelled him to accuse his benefactor Timasius of a treasonable conspiracy, supporting the charge by forgeries. The accused was tried, 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. Whether Eutropius then got rid of the wife we are not informed.

Among the adherents of Eutropius, who were equally numerous and insincere, two were of especial importance—Osius, who had risen from the post of a cook to be count of the sacred largesses, and finally master of the offices, and Leo, a soldier, corpulent and good-humoured, who was known by the sobriquet of Ajax, a man of great body and little mind, fond of boasting, fond of eating, fond of drinking, and fond of women.

On the other hand, Eutropius had many enemies, and enemies in two different quarters. Romans of the stamp of Timasius and Aurelian were naturally opposed to the supremacy of an emasculated chamberlain; while, as we shall see subsequently, the German element in the Empire, represented by Gainas, was also inimical. It seems certain that a serious confederacy was formed in the year 397, aiming at the overthrow of Eutropius. Though this is not stated by any writer, it seems an inevitable conclusion from the law which was passed in the autumn of that year, assessing the penalty of death to anyone 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 individual concerned incur capital punishment, but his descendants were visited with disfranchisement. It is generally recognized that this law was an express palladium for chamberlains; but surely it must have been suggested by some actually formed conspiracy, of which Eutropius discovered the threads, before it was carried out. The particular mention of soldiers and barbarians points to a particular danger, and we may suspect that Gainas, who afterwards brought about the fall of Eutropius, had some connection with it.

While the eunuch was sailing in the full current of suecess at Byzantium, the Vandal Stilicho was enjoying an uninterrupted course of prosperity in the somewhat less stifling air of Italy. The poet Claudian, who acted as a sort of poet-laureate to Honorius, was really an apologist for Stilicho, who patronized and paid him. Almost every public poem he produced is an extravagant panegyric on that general, and we cannot but suspect that many of his utterances were direct manifestoes suggested by his patron. In the panegyric in honour of the third consulate of Honorius (396), which, composed soon after the death of Rufinus, breathes a spirit of concord between East and "West, the writer calls upon Stilicho" to protect with his right hand the two brothers. In the panegyric in honor of the fourth consulate of Honorius (398), he gives an absolutely false and misleading account of Stilicho's expedition to Greece two years before, an account which no allowance for poetical exaggeration can defend. At the same time he extols Honorius with the most absurd eulogiums, and overwhelms him with the most extravagant adulations, making out the boy of fourteen to be greater than his father and grandfather. If Claudian were not a poet, we should say that he was a most outrageous liar. We are therefore unable to accord him the smallest credit when he boasts that the subjects in the western provinces are not oppressed by heavy taxes, and that the treasury is not replenished by extortion.

Stilicho and Eutropius had shaken hands over the death of Rufinus, but the good understanding was not destined to last longer than the song of triumph. We cannot justly blame Eutropius for this. No minister of Arcadius could regard with goodwill or indifference the desire of Stilicho to interfere in the affairs of New Rome; for this desire cannot be denied, even if one do not accept the theory that the scheme of detaching Illyricum from Arcadius' dominion was entertained by him at as early a date as 396. His position as master of soldiers in Italy gave him no power in other parts of the Empire; and the attitude which he assumed as an elderly relative, solicitously concerned for the welfare of his wife's young cousin, in obedience to the wishes of that cousin's father, was untenable, when it led him to exceed the acts of a strictly private friendship.

We can then well understand the indignation felt at New Rome, not only by Eutropius, but probably also by men of a quite different faction, when the news arrived that Stilicho purposed to visit Constantinople to set things in order and arrange matters for Arcadius. Such officiousness was intolerable, and it was plain that the strongest protest must be made against it. The senate accordingly passed a resolution declaring Stilicho a public enemy. This action of the senate is very remarkable, and its signification is not generally perceived. If the act had been altogether due to Eutropius, it would surely have taken the form of an imperial decree. Eutropius would not have resorted to the troublesome method of bribing or threatening the whole senate even if he had been able to do so. We must conclude, then, that the general feeling against Stilicho was strong, and we must confess naturally strong.

The situation was now complicated by a revolt in Africa, which eventually proved highly fortunate for the glory and influence of Stilicho.

Eighteen years before, the Moor Firmus had made an attempt to create a kingdom for himself in the African provinces (379 AD), and had been quelled by the arms of Theodosius, who received important assistance from Gildo, the brother and enemy of Firmus. Gildo was duly rewarded. He was finally appointed military commander, or count, of Africa, and his daughter Salvina was united in marriage to a nephew of the Empress Aelia Flaccilla. But the faith of the Moors was as the faith of Carthaginians. Gildo refused to send aid to Theodosius in his expedition against Eugenius. After Theodosius' death he prepared to take a more positive attitude, and he engaged numerous African nomad tribes to support him in his revolt. The strained relations between Old and New Rome, which did not escape his notice, suggested to him that his rebellion might assume the form of a transition from the sovereignty of Honorius to the sovereignty of Arcadius. He knew that if he were dependent only on New Rome, he would be practically independent. He entered accordingly into communication with the government of Arcadius, but the negotiations came to nothing. It appears that Gildo demanded that Libya should be consigned to his rule, and he certainly took possession of it. It also appears that embassies on the subject passed between Italy and Constantinople, and that Symmachus the orator was one of the ambassadors. But it is certain that Arcadius did not in any way assist Gildo, and the comparatively slight and moderate references which the hostile Claudian makes to the hesitating attitude of New Rome indicate that the government of Arcadius did not behave very badly after all.

We need not go into the details of the Gildonic war, through which Stilicho won well-deserved laurels, although he did not take the field himself. What made the revolt of the count of Africa of such great moment was the fact that the African provinces were the granary of Old Rome, as Egypt was the granary of New Rome. By stopping the supplies of corn, Gildo might hope to starve out Italy. The prompt action and efficient management of Stilicho, however, prevented any catastrophe; for ships from Gaul and from Spain, laden with corn, appeared in the Tiber, and Rome was supplied during the winter months. Early in 398 a fleet sailed against the tyrant, whose hideous cruelties and oppressions were worthy of his Moorish blood; and it is a curious fact that this fleet was under the command of Mascezel, Gildo's brother, who was now playing the same part towards Gildo that Gildo had played towards his brother Firmus. The undisciplined nomadic army of the rebel was scattered without labour at Ardalio, and Africa was delivered from the Moor's reign of ruin and terror, to which Roman rule, with all its fiscal sternness, was peace and prosperity.  This subjugation of the man whom the senate of Old Rome had pronounced a public enemy redounded far and wide to the glory of the man whom the senate of New Rome had proclaimed a public enemy. And in the meantime Stilicho's position had become still more splendid and secure by the marriage of his daughter Maria with the Emperor Honorius (Spring 398), for which an epithalamium was written by Claudian, who, as we might expect, celebrates the father-in-law as expressly as the bridal pair. The Gildonic war also supplied, we need hardly remark, a grateful material for his favourite theme; and the year 400, to which Stilicho gave his name as consul, inspired an enthusiastic effusion.

It may seem strange that now, almost at the zenith of his fame, the father-in-law of the Emperor and the hero of the Gildonic war did not make some attempt to carry out his favorite project of interference with the government of the eastern provinces. But there are two considerations which may help to explain this. In the first place, Stilicho himself was not the man of indomitable will who forms a project and carries it through; he was a man rather of that ambitious but hesitating character which Mommsen attributes to Pompey. He was half a Roman and half a barbarian; he was half-strong and half-weak; he was half-patriotic and half-selfish. His intentions were unscrupulous, but he was almost afraid of them. Besides this, his wife Serena probably endeavoured to check his policy of discord and maintain unity in the Theodosian house. In the second place, it is sufficiently probable that he was in constant communication with Gainas, the German general of the eastern armies and chief representative of the German interests in the realm of Arcadius, and that Gainas was awaiting his time for an outbreak, by which Stilicho hoped to profit and execute his designs. He had no excuse for interference, and he was willing to wait. His inactive policy of the next few years must not be taken to indicate that he cherished no ambitious projects.

The Germans looked up to Stilicho as the most important German in the Empire, their natural protector and friend, while there was a large Roman faction opposed to him as a foreigner. But as yet this faction was not strong enough to overpower him. It is remarkable that his fall was finally brought about by the influence of a palace official (408 AD) while the fall of his rival Eutropius, which occurred far sooner (399 AD), was brought about by the compulsion of a German general. These facts indicate that the two dangers to which I already called attention—the preponderating influence of German soldiers and the preponderating influence of chamberlains and eunuchs—were mutually checks on each other. I must reserve for the next chapter an account of the danger from the Germans which threatened New Rome, but was fortunately weathered—a danger whose aversion was of really critical importance for the maintenance of the Roman Empire in the East, and whose gravity has not always been sufficiently accentuated.

 

II

THE GERMANS IN THE EAST

 

There were at this time three political parties at Constantinople. There was the German party, of which the chief representative was Gainas, the commander of the Eastern army, and which counted not only barbarians but Romans among its members. It is probable that this party was in constant communication with Stilicho in the West, and it is possible that the Frankish Empress Eudoxia may have looked upon it with a certain amount of favour. But I think we must reject the assumption of any very close bond between her and the Goths, because she was an orthodox Catholic and they were Arians. It must never be forgotten that the difference in religion which marked off the German nations was an important element in the situation. Secondly, there was the party of Eutropius, consisting entirely of time-serving hangers-on, bound together by no principle or common purpose—an ephemeral clique, clustering round the eunuch to receive his favours as long as he was in favour himself. These two factions, the faction of Eutropius and the faction of Gainas, were opposed.

There was a third party, opposed to both of these, consisting of those senators and ministers who entertained a Roman abhorrence of the increase of German influence in the Empire, and a strong Roman detestation of the bedchamber administration of eunuchs; men who were equally scandalized by the fact that three commanders-in-chief in the Roman Empire were Germans (Stilicho in Italy, Alaric in Illyricum, and Gainas in the East), and by the appointment of Eutropius to the consulship in the year 399, an honour which was soon followed by his elevation to the rank of Patrician, which, after the imperial, was the highest title in the State. We may call this party the party of Aurelian, for Aurelian was its most important and respected member. He was the son of a distinguished praetorian prefect named Taurus, and he had himself filled the offices of quaestor and prefect of the city.

I have said that the Germans had friends among the Romans. The most distinguished of their Roman supporters was an enigmatical figure, whose real name we shall probably never know, the brother of Aurelian, but in character diametrically opposed to him. This shadowy person, who played a leading part at this period, is one of the riddles of history, like the Man of the Iron Mask. We derive all that we know about him from a historical sketch, written in the form of an allegory, by Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, entitled Concerning Providence, or the Egyptians. Its subject is the contest for the Egyptian kingdom between the two sons of Taurus, Osiris and Typhos. Osiris, by whom is meant Aurelian, is the type of everything that is good and laudable; while Typhos, a sort of nature's byblow, differing from Osiris as Edmund differed from Edgar in King Lear, is "left-handed" and perverse, gross and ignorant. It will be most convenient to call this unknown person by his allegorical name.

We are told that Typhos at one time held a financial post, but was soon obliged to abdicate it on account of malversation. He then obtained some other office, and performed its duties equally badly.

He allied himself closely with the German party, who saw in him, as a Roman of good family and position, an important supporter. In private life he is represented as a profligate, and Synesius tells stories to illustrate his indecent and frivolous habits. He mentions, as the climax of indecency, that Typhos used to snore on purpose when awake, and take delight in hearing others producing the same noise, as if it were marvellously fine music; and he used to praise and honour him who uttered most tunefully the licentious sound, and evolved the finest and roundest snort. We must remember that these are the allegations of an opponent, but at the same time it is just to observe that the prose allegory of Synesius has a truer ring than the poetical histories of Claudian.

The sketch which Synesius gives of the wife of Typhos, an ambitious and fashionable lady, is valuable and interesting, even if it be considerably overdrawn, as the picture of a type of contemporary society. She was, in the first place, her own tirewoman, a reproach which seems to imply that she was inordinately attentive to the details of her toilet. She liked to be seen, and constantly showed herself in the market­place and the theatre, thinking that the eyes of all were turned towards her. This desire of notoriety prevented her from being too nice in her choice of society; she liked to have her house and drawing-room filled, and her doors were not closed against professional courtesans. It may be supposed that select Byzantine society refused to know her. Synesius contrasts with her the wife of Aurelian, who never left the house, and asserts the great virtue of a woman to be that neither her body nor her name should ever cross the threshold. Such an extreme idea, however, was almost obsolete; and if Synesius really believed in it he cannot have approved of the behaviour of his friend and teacher Hypatia. But I believe this is a mere rhetorical flourish, in imitation of the celebrated dictum of Thucydides.

The great struggle between the alien and the native element in the East, which was to decide that the eastern provinces were not to be dismembered by the Teutonic nations, began at the end of the year 398. It took the form of a contest between the two brothers, Aurelian and Typhos, for the office of praetorian prefect. The former was successful in obtaining the nomination, which was a great triumph for the anti-German party. Synesius was at this time at Constantinople, and lived on very intimate terms with Aurelian and his friends, so that he had an excellent opportunity of observing all that went on. Penetrated with the spirit of old Hellenedom, especially Platonism, and feeling a Hellenic antagonism to barbarians, he sympathized fully with the aspirations and purposes of the Roman party at Byzantium. Aurelian seems to have been a man of culture and learning, and was surrounded with men of letters, such as Troilus the poet and Polyaemon the rhetor.

The success of Aurelian was a great blow to Typhos and his wife and his friends. His wife had been looking forward eagerly to the prefecture for the sake of the social advantages which it would confer. Synesius gives a curious account of the measures which Typhos took to console himself and his friends for their disappointment. He constructed a large pond, in which he made artificial islands, provided with warm baths; and in these islands he and his friends, in the company of women, used to indulge in licentious pleasures.

But this was only the prologue to the drama proper. It was a movement on the part of Ostrogoths, who had been settled in Phrygia by Theodosius, that brought on the main struggle; and this movement was hardly independent of the German faction in the capital, though we have no distinct evidence to show that it was instigated by Gainas or Typhos. The Count Tribigild, who commanded the troops in Phrygia, bore a personal grudge against Eutropius, and this drove him to excite to revolt the Teutonic colons, consisting of Ostrogoths and Gruthungi, whom Theodosius, the friend of the Goths, had established in the fertile regions of Phrygia in 386. The revolt broke out in spring, as Arcadius and his court were preparing to start for Ancyra in Galatia, whither the Emperor was fond of resorting in summer on account of its pleasant and salubrious climate. The barbarians, recruited by runaway slaves, spread destruction throughout many provinces, Galatia and Pisidia and Bithynia.

At this moment Synesius presented a crown to Arcadius on behalf of his native town, Cyrene, and delivered his celebrated speech, "Concerning the Office of King". This may be regarded, as has been well pointed out, the anti-German manifesto of the Roman party of Aurelian. It urged the policy of imposing disabilities on barbarians, and thereby eradicating the German element in the State. The argument depends on the by no means Christian assumption that the Roman and the barbarian are different in kind, and that therefore their union is unnatural. The soldiers of a state should be like watchdogs, as Plato says, but our armies are full of wolves in the guise of dogs; moreover, our homes are full of German servants. The lawgiver cannot wisely give arms to any who are not born and reared in his laws; the shepherd cannot expect to tame wolves' cubs. The German soldiers are a stone of Tantalus suspended over the State. The only salvation is to remove the alien element… This speech was not calculated to induce Gainas to take energetic measures against his fellow-Germans, whom he was sent to reduce.

For there seem to have been only two generals of any account at this time—Gainas, the Goth, and Leo, the Falstaff of that age. Both were sent with armies against Tribigild. The rebels, seeking to avoid an engagement with Leo, turned their steps to Pisidia and thence proceeded to Pamphylia, where they met with a brave and unexpected resistance. While Gainas was purposely inactive, and writing in his letters to Constantinople that Tribigild was very formidable, a land proprietor of the town of Selge, named Valentinus, formed a corps of peasants and slaves and laid an ambush hard by a winding narrow pass in the mountains leading from Pisidia to Pamphylia. The advancing enemy was surprised by showers of stones from the heights above them, and there was no means of escape, as they were hemmed in by a treacherous marsh. After a great loss of life, Tribigild bribed the commander, Florentius, who held the pass, and thus succeeded in effecting his escape. But he had no sooner escaped than he was shut in between two rivers, the Melas and the Eurymedon, by the warlike inhabitants of those regions, who were well used to warfare from their experience of Isaurian freebooters. Leo meanwhile was advancing, and the insurrection might have been utterly and easily crushed, but that Gainas secretly replenished the forces of Tribigild with detachments from his own army. Thus Leo had really two enemies in the field against him, one in the disguise of a friend. He found Tribigild at the head of a large army, with which he could not attempt to cope; but this was not all. The German regiments in his own army preponderated, and they suddenly attacked the minority of Roman soldiers, and easily overpowered them. Leo lost his life in attempting to escape, so that Gainas and Tribigild were left masters of the situation.

Gainas, who still posed as a loyal general foiled by the superior ability and power of Tribigild, despatched a message to the Emperor, misrepresenting the defeat of Leo, dwelling on the superiority of the rebel, and urging Arcadius to yield to his demands—the chief demand being that Eutropius should be surrendered. The Emperor hesitated, for he was probably attached to his chamberlain, but, in addition to the pressure of the Germans, another influence was brought to bear which secured the fall of the eunuch. The Empress Eudoxia, who had owed her position to the machinations of Eutropius, became jealous of his power with her husband; dissension and antagonism were born between them; and one day Eudoxia appeared in the presence of the Emperor, leading her two little daughters, Flaccilla and Pulcheria, by the hand, and complained bitterly of the eunuch's insulting behaviour.

When Eutropius heard of the demand of Gainas, he did not disguise from himself his extreme peril, but fled to the refuge of the sanctuary of St. Sophia. There he might not only trust in the protection of the holy place, but might expect that the Patriarch of Constantinople, Johannes Chrysostomus, would stand by him in his extremity, when he was abandoned by his noonday friends. For it was through his influence that Johannes, a Syrian presbyter of Antioch, had been nominated to the episcopal chair (398 AD). And the personal interference of Johannes was actually necessary; he had to stand between the cowering eunuch and those who would have dragged him from beneath the altar. This incident seems to have taken place on Saturday, and on the following day, Sunday, the service must have been curiously impressive, and the feelings of the congregation strange. Hidden under the altar, overwhelmed with fear and shame, lay the old chamberlain, whose will had been almost supreme a few days before, and in the pulpit the eloquent archbishop delivered a sermon "on the fallen eunuch", beginning with the words, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity".  In this discourse he dwelled without mercy on the frivolity and irreligion of the party of Eutropius; but at the same time he sought to excite the sympathy of the audience.

When the church had been again surrounded and entered by soldiers, and Johannes had again personally interposed, Eutropius allowed himself to be taken away, on condition that his life should be spared. He was banished to Cyprus. Gainas, however, was not content with anything less than his death; and availing himself of the quibble that security of life had been granted to him only in Constantinople, Arcadius caused him to be brought back and tried at Chalcedon, where he was condemned on trivial, probably false, charges, and executed (autumn 399 AD).

The edict concerning Eutropius which was issued by Arcadius is a curious document, and deserves to be quoted. It will serve also as a specimen of imperial edicts in general.

"The Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, Augusti, to Aurelian, Praetorian Prefect.

We have added to our treasury all the property of Eutropius, who was formerly the Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi, having stripped him of his splendour, and delivered the consulate from the foul stain of his tenure, and from the recollection of his name and the base filth thereof; so that, all his acts having been repealed, all time may be dumb concerning him; and that the blot of our age may not appear by the mention of him; and that those who by their velour and wounds extend the Roman borders or guard the same by equity in the maintenance of law, may not groan over the fact that the divine guerdon of consulship has been befouled and defiled by a filthy monster. Let him learn that he has been deprived of the rank of the patriciate and all lower dignities that he stained with the perversity of his character. That all the statues, all the images—whether of bronze or marble, or painted in colours, or of any other material used in art—we command to be abolished in all cities, towns, private and public places, that they may not, as a brand of infamy on our age, pollute the gaze of beholders. Accordingly under the conduct of faithful guards let him be taken to the island of Cyprus, whither let your sublimity know that he has been banished; so that therein guarded with most watchful diligence he may be unable to work confusion with his mad designs.

"Dated ... at Constantinople in the Consulship of Theodorasvir clarissimus"

The quaestor in drawing up this document did not spare vigorous language, and it seems strange that Arcadius should have allowed an edict to go forth which reflects so seriously on himself, by provoking immediately the question why the Emperor countenanced the "filth" so long. The weakness of the Emperor was proportional to the force of the language.

It was after the fall of Eutropius that Gainas seems to have declared his real colours openly, and acted no longer as a mediator for Tribigild, but as an adversary, bargaining for terms. He and Tribigild had met at Thyatira and proceeded to the Hellespont, plundering as they went. At Chalcedon, Gainas demanded and obtained an interview with Arcadius, and an agreement was made that Gainas should continue to hold the post of magister militum per orientem, and that he and Tribigild might cross over with impunity to Europe. As a security, three hostages were to be handed over to Gainas—namely, Aurelian, the praetorian prefect; Saturninus, one of the chief men of Aurelian's party; and Johannes, the friend (report said the lover) of Eudoxia.

The surrender of Aurelian as a hostage to the German general was a triumph for his brother Typhos, who appears to have succeeded him in the prefecture. Synesius attributes the combination against Aurelian to a drawing-room cabal—a plot brewed for his destruction by the wife of Typhos and the wife of Gainas. It is evident at least that both city and camp were full of intrigues at this time, and that during the first half of the year 400 AD Typhos was the most important minister in the Empire. He did not however prevail upon the cautious Gainas to sacrifice his brother Aurelian; the three hostages underwent a sham execution, the sword grazing their necks, and were banished for a short time. We may probably attribute this unexpected clemency partly to the intercession of the Patriarch Johannes, who crossed over to Chalcedon in order to plead for them.

This event took place towards the end of 399 AD, and soon afterwards Gainas crossed the Bosphorus with his Goths, and took up his quarters in the capital. Of Tribigild we hear no more; his historical importance is that he was a tool in the hands of Gainas. What events took place during the next six months, what were the designs of Gainas, what were the details of the administration of Typhos—all these, and many other questions, history leaves unanswered. Above all, we desire to know what circumstances checked and almost paralyzed the action of Gainas and his Goths in Constantinople. It certainly seems that there were somewhere in the vicinity Roman troops (over and above the bodyguard of the Emperor), of which our authorities have left no record; for (1) Fravitta had troops at his command to oppose Gainas when he left the city; and (2) what is the meaning of Gainas' bargain with the Emperor for a safe-conduct to Europe, if he had not some hostile force to fear? (3) All that we hear of the conduct of Gainas in the city demands such a supposition.

One great object of the combination of Typhos and Gainas was to relieve the Arians of their disabilities and establish the full freedom of Arian worship in the city. We might almost conjecture that it was their common religious belief that united originally the interests of Typhos and the Germans. This policy, however, was defeated by the firmness and courage of the Patriarch, who opposed Gainas face to face. The Emperor refused to yield to the demands of the Goths, and here we may suspect that the influence of Eudoxia was also operative.

About midsummer Gainas formed the resolve to leave the city, which he and Typhos together had kept in a ferment for six months. In two clandestine attempts—one to seize the imperial palace, the other to sack the bureaux of the money­changers—he had been frustrated; and combining this with his resolution to quit the capital with his large army, we must conclude that some material danger threatened or checked him. We know not what his wishes or designs were, but we can hardly see why he could not have carried them through, if Constantinople was as entirely unprotected by military forces as historians generally represent it to have been.

At length, feeling that his position in the city was not agreeable, Gainas resolved to leave it. Making an excuse of illness, he went to perform devotions in a church of St. John, about seven miles distant, and he ordered the Gothic forces to follow him in relays. The preparations made by the foreigners for departure frightened the citizens, who did not understand their intentions, and the city was in such a state of excitement that any accident might lead to serious consequences. It so happened that a beggar-woman standing at the gate of the city early in the morning to receive alms, and seeing the Goths depart, thought the end of the world was coming, and prayed aloud. Her prayer offended a Goth who had just approached, and as he was about to cut her down, a Roman intervened and slew him. This occurrence brought about a general tumult, in which the citizens proved superior, and gave full vent to their rancour against the barbarians. Many of the Goths fled from the city. Then the gates were closed, and more than seven thousand remained, unable to communicate with their friends without, at the mercy of the infuriated mob. They fled to their church, which was near the imperial palace, but the sanctity of the building was not respected. The Romans obtained permission from the Emperor to resort to extremities, and the Gothic soldiers suffered a fate similar to that which befell the oligarchs at Corcyra during the Peloponnesian war. The roof of the building was removed, and the detested barbarians were crushed under showers of stones and burning brands [12th July 400].

Soon afterwards the conduct of Typhos was subjected to an investigation, his treasonable collusion with Gainas was abundantly exposed, and he was condemned preliminarily to imprisonment. He was afterwards rescued from the vengeance of the mob by his brother Aurelian, who had returned from banishment: but what further befell him we do not hear. Gainas meanwhile, as a declared enemy, proceeded through Thrace, seeking what he and his Goths might plunder. But his expedition was disappointing, for the inhabitants had in good time retreated into the strong places, and he was unable to take them. No resource remained but to pass over into Asia, and he marched to the Hellespont. But when he arrived at the coast near Abydos, he found that the opposite shore was occupied by an army, ready to dispute his passage, under the loyal pagan Goth Fravitta, who had once rescued Theodosius I from his own countrymen, and was now, in advanced years, to perform a similar service for Arcadius. Gainas tarried on the shore until his provisions were exhausted, and then, constrained to essay the passage for which he was unprovided with ships, constructed rude rafts, which he committed to the current. Fravitta’s ships easily sank these unwieldy contrivances, and Gainas, who remained on shore and saw his troops exterminated before his eyes, hastened northward through Thrace, beyond Mount Haemus, even beyond the Ister, expecting to be pursued by the victor. Fravitta made no attempt to capture him, but he fell into the hands of Uldes, king of the Huns, who cut off his head and sent it as a grateful offering to Arcadius.

The Gothic discomfiture of the Goths enjoyed a triumph for his decisive success, and the Christian Emperor granted to the old pagan the only favour he requested—to be allowed to worship God after the fashion of his fathers.

Thus the great danger which was hanging over the Empire was warded off from the eastern provinces at the very beginning of the fifth century, and it was decided that it was not in the east that the Empire was to be dismembered by the Germans. Alaric, indeed, was still commander-in-chief in Illyricum, but his eyes were bent westward, and within a few years the Illyrian lands were to be delivered for ever from the Visigoths. It was indeed an important episode in Roman history, and although modern writers have often treated it more casually than it deserves, it attracted appropriate attention in the fifth century, and was celebrated in two epic poems as well as in the myth of Synesius of Cyrene.

It is worthy of observation that it was this German movement that brought about the fall of the eunuch Eutropius. Eight years later it was the machinations of the palace official Olympius that brought about the fall of the German Stilicho. Thus, as I remarked before, the chamberlains in the palace and the Germans in the camp—the representatives of the Orientalising and Germanizing tendencies that were eating into the Roman spirit—were each a check upon the other; and the antagonism between these forces of corrosion was a temporary safeguard for the Roman party. With the Roman party, moreover, the Church was thoroughly in sympathy, for a defeat of the Germans was equivalent to a defeat of Arianism.

 

III

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

 

The strange drama of Gainas, which decided the relation of the Empire to its German subjects in the East, was followed by another drama, equally strange, wherein the power of the Patriarch of Constantinople appeared in conflict with the imperial authority. A collision had not taken place before. With the exception of Valens, no Emperor had resided for any length of time in the capital until Arcadius, who never left it except to take a summer holiday at Ancyra. Hitherto the Emperors had been military commanders, who flew from frontier to frontier and city to city to direct campaigns or arrange administrative innovations. Moreover, the see of Constantinople had not attained to the first rank in the eastern half of the Empire until the council of 381. Hence in the reign of Arcadius it was inevitable that a mutual adjustment of the relations between the court and the patriarchal palace should take place. To this adjustment the characters of the persons concerned gave a peculiar complexion. If it had depended solely on Arcadius, who was pious and weak, the struggle perhaps would not have come to pass so soon, but would have been reserved for a stronger Emperor, of the temper of his father. But he had a worldly queen, who exerted great influence over him, and she drew him into collision with the bishop. On the other hand, if the mild old Nectarius had lived ten years longer, there would hardly have been room for discord, and in this case, too, the adjustment would have been reserved for the advent of a more decided and independent hierarch. But he died, and a man thoroughly independent and thoroughly in earnest, of rough and uncourtly ways, one who was not afraid to hear his own voice crying in a wilderness of worldliness, and who, if he did not desire to fight, was perfectly ready for the fray, was appointed to the episcopal throne.

And thus we have a spectacle of more than usual interest, the asceticism of the Church, represented by John Chrysostom, ranged against a superb court led by the Empress Eudoxia, who made herself, as it were, the champion and example of the pride of life and the pomps and vanities of the world. And on the other hand, the course of the conflict brings out the worldliness, the enmities, the unscrupulousness, the abuses that grew rank within the Church itself. Side issues disguised the real import of this war of four years; but though it appeared merely to concern Chrysostom personally, it really decided that in future the Patriarch of Constantinople was to be dependent on the Emperor.

We must first become acquainted with some of the actors in this drama, which began in social circles before it acquired a political significance.

The Empress Eudoxia herself, on whose worldliness and ambition we have dwelt, naturally gave the tone to the ladies of her court, and to the more frivolous portion of the gentlemen. Whether she was guilty of adultery or not, the mere fact of the rumour prevailing that Count John was the father of her son Theodosius is evidence as to the character she bore; and we can imagine what the society was like over which this ambitious and beautiful woman, not above the suspicion of criminal intrigues, presided. One curious trait of manners indicates clearly enough the tone of the court. It was the custom of Christian ladies to wear veils or bands on their foreheads, so as to conceal their hair. Women of meretricious life were distinguished by the way they wore their hair cut and combed over their brows, just like modern fringes. The ladies of Eudoxia's court were so immodest, and had such bad taste, as to adopt this fashion from the courtesans. The next step probably was that the example of the court influenced respectable Christian matrons to wear the obnoxious fringe. In this fast aristocratic society three ladies were prominent—Marsa, the widow of Promotus, a distant relation of the Empress; Castricia, the widow of Saturninus; and Eugraphia, who had also lost her husband. These widows were all rich, and if they were not young in years they made themselves young in appearance. Eugraphia used rouge and white lead to maintain her complexion—a habit which was a serious scandal to pious Christians, and which Chrysostom condemned especially on the ground that it was a waste of money which should be given to the poor.

Such a court was revolting to the austere and earnest spirit of Chrysostom, who was far too sincere to make any compromise with Mammon. He used, as a matter of duty, to pay pastoral visits to these great ladies, and we may be sure that he did not hesitate, through any scruples of politeness, to tell them unpleasant truths and urge them to amend their ways. His unbending austerity and uncompromising candour made him an unwelcome visitor. But his campaign against luxury and worldliness did not cease here. He not only preached publicly on the subject in St. Sophia, but made such open and unmistakable allusions, which he could make the more pointed by turning his eyes towards the Empress and her ladies, who sat in a prominent place in the gallery, that he gave great umbrage, and was hated as the mother of Herodias hated John the Baptist. The climax came when he preached a sermon in which Eudoxia was openly called Jezebel, and it was partly from this allusion that the unfounded tale got abroad that Eudoxia had actually robbed a widow of her vineyard, as Ahab robbed Naboth.

The aristocratic ladies, indignant at being insulted and outraged, as they considered it, before the mob, determined to work the ruin of Chrysostom, and formed a league against him, of which the centre was the house of Eugraphia. Although it was evident enough, and all probably knew in their hearts that Chrysostom was a single-hearted man, thoroughly in earnest and austerely moral, yet it was easy to find pretexts against him; and his ascetic mode of life and certain peculiar theories which he held made it all the easier. Moreover, he had a great many enemies within the Church—priests, monks, and nuns, who had revolted against the strict discipline of their Patriarch, and eagerly embraced the opportunity to place themselves at the service of the great persons who wished to undo him. For it was not only against the corruption of the court that the reformer had to contend, but against the corruption of the clergy and monks. Their sensuality, their gluttony, their avarice, were matters of public scandal; and John's austerity was to them, in the words of Palladius, “as a lamp burning before sore eyes”. Women were introduced into the monasteries, or shared the houses of priests as spiritual sisters; and this was always a "snare", even if it were often innocent. But still more scandalous was the conduct of the deaconesses, who, if they could not adopt the meretricious apparel that had become the mode, arranged their coarse dresses with an immodest coquetry which made them more piquant than an ordinary courtesan. Another class of religious persons hostile to Chrysostom were the begging tramps, drones whom he had endeavoured to suppress.

But the Patriarch was also the centre of a society of admirers. Of these, the most attached and most distinguished was Olympias, the daughter of a woman who had been betrothed in her youth to the Emperor Constans, had afterwards married a king of Armenia, and after his death married a Roman noble. Her bounty to the poor, her untiring devotion to Chrysostom in his misfortunes, her delicacy and unselfishness, have earned for her a high place among “the good”, as distinguished from “the great”, women who appear in history. Another friend of Chrysostom was the Moorish princess Salvina, daughter of Gildo, whom Theodosius had taken as a hostage and given in marriage to Nebridius, his wife's nephew. She led a calm life in Constantinople; and in a "letter to a young widow", Chrysostom contrasts this peaceful happiness with the turbulent and unrestful life of her father. The deacon Serapion must also be mentioned here as a person devoted to John, but one whose influence was exerted in the wrong way. He was a man without judgment or moderation, and instead of trying to calm the hot temper of the bishop, he used to incite him to rash acts, with thoroughly honest intentions. It is interesting to note that Cassian, who afterwards founded the monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles, was in Byzantium at this period and a warm friend of Chrysostom.

But the great strength of John's position lay in his popularity. It was not merely that he possessed the Christian virtues of charity and sympathy with the poor, or even that he was no respecter of persons; he actually held theories of socialism—a sort of Ebionistic socialism—which might have been very dangerous to the established order of things if he had carried them to any length. He rejected not political but social inequality, in fact he held a sort of social socialism. It might seem that such a theory, if it gained ground, would necessarily lead to a political revolution, an overthrow of the Empire; but there was no danger of such a catastrophe. The idea of the Empire was almost a necessity of thought to the Romans of that time; it would not have been possible for them to conceive the world without the Empire; the end of the Empire would have seemed to them the Deluge. But Chrysostom's spirit attracted the lower classes, and his tirades against the rich delighted the poor. On the occasion of an earthquake he said publicly that "the vices of the rich had caused it, and the prayers of the poor had averted the worst consequences."

It was easy for his enemies to fasten on such utterances as these, and accuse Chrysostom of "seducing the people". His intimate relations of friendship with Olympias and other women, whom he used to receive alone, perhaps unwisely, supplied matter for another charge. Having a weak digestion, and obliged to restrict himself to the most lenten fare, he made a practice of never dining out1; and this anchoretic habit, combined with the reception of women alone in his house, was converted into the charge that he used to celebrate Cyclopean orgies under the cover of unsocial habits.

The expedition which he made in the year 400 to regulate the affairs of the Ephesian and other churches  in Asia Minor, where abuses had crept in, not only made many new enemies, but furnished another ground of accusation. He seems to have acted here with more zeal than wariness; he deposed and appointed bishops like an autocrat, not only going beyond his proper jurisdiction, but neglecting to give a fair hearing to the cases. On some occasions, it is said, he had been himself accuser, witness, and judge.

In another way also this visit to Asia Minor was disadvantageous to him. His enemies had time and room to arrange their machinations against him, and the man whom he had left at Byzantium to fill his place, Severian of Gabala, wishing to oust and succeed Chrysostom, flattered the court and joined the league of his enemies. When Chrysostom returned and found his church disorganized by the unbecoming conduct of Severian, of which the deacon Serapion had no few complaints to make, he preached a sermon in which he made allusion to the time­serving relations of Severian to the Empress. Severian, feeling himself sure of support in high quarters, would not yield, and Chrysostom, with the people on his side, excommunicated the ambitious Syrian. He fled to Chalcedon, and the Emperor and Empress begged the Patriarch to allow him to return to the fold. Their intervention prevailed, but the enthusiasm of the populace for their beloved bishop was not satisfied, and in order to quiet them and remove peaceably the ban of excommunication, he had to exert all his powers of eloquence in a pacific sermon, which ended with the words, "Receive our brother Severian the bishop". The next day Severian preached a sermon, of which the note was likewise peace.

It was crying peace where there was no peace. After a short lull, the storm burst louder than ever over the Patriarch, but came from a new quarter. Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, was a worldly man, whose ambition and avidity have been painted in the blackest colours. He had hoped, on the death of Nectarius, to place a candidate of his own on the pontifical chair of Constantinople, and he owed Chrysostom a grudge for his disappointment, so that he willingly seized an opportunity to assist in compassing his ruin. His power in Egypt was very great, and he exercised considerable influence in Syria and Palestine. It was he who had excited the people to dismantle the great temple of Serapis in Alexandria, in the days of Theodosius.

Now at Nitria in Upper Egypt there was a monastic settlement over which the four so-called "Tall Brothers" presided. Theophilus desired to gain over the monks to his interests and make them bishops, but they refused positively, and the vengeance of the Patriarch pursued them. He brought against them the charge of Origenism, and obtained troops from the augustal prefect to arrest them. "Warned in time, they concealed themselves, but their monastery was sacked, and they made their way slowly and with great difficulty to Constantinople, to place themselves under the protection of John Chrysostom. In their journey through Syria they had no rest for the soles of their feet, as the authority of Theophilus induced the bishops of those parts to refuse them shelter.

Chrysostom was rightly weary in his dealings with the suppliants. He would not communicate with them, although he promised them his protection, and he lodged them in the cloisters of the church of Anastasia, where their wants were ministered to by religious women. The astuteness and unscrupulousness of Theophilus made him a dangerous foe, and he wrote to Arcadius in regard to the Tall Brothers, accusing them of practicing magic. The envoys whom he sent to Constantinople spread such calumnious reports about the Tall Brothers that they were unable to stir from their lodgings, and at length in despair they drew up, contrary to the wishes of Chrysostom, a manifesto, accusing Theophilus as well as the envoys, without any reserve, of the grossest iniquities, so that Chrysostom recoiled in horror. This document must have been extremely curious, for Palladius declines to give a full account of its contents, as they would appear quite incredible.

Chrysostom's disavowal was fortunate for the Tall Brothers and unfortunate for himself. A reaction set in in their favour; Eudoxia espoused their cause, and it became a matter for fashionable interest. Theophilus was cited to appear and answer for his conduct.

It was some time before the bishop of Alexandria arrived on the scene himself, but he sent one to prepare the way before him. In the selection of an ally he manifested his craft for intrigue. He wrote to Epiphanius, the aged bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and, representing to him that the Tall Brothers held the heretical opinions of Origen, and that Chrysostom also shared them, asked him to proceed to Constantinople as the champion of orthodoxy and the accuser of the Patriarch. Theophilus knew how much prestige the high character of the veteran churchman would lend to his cause, and he also knew how to touch his weak side. Epiphanius was an upright and single-hearted old man, but extremely vain of his theological learning. He fancied himself a sort of infallible oracle on questions of doctrine, and thought his own ipse dixit of paramount importance. We have examples of old men, in all ages and all departments, trading on a reputation acquired in the prime of their manhood. Theophilus judiciously anointed the old bishop with flattery, and made him harbour the agreeable fancy that a vital crisis in the Church depended on his interference. Epiphanius was like an old war-horse, eager for battle; he sailed to Constantinople, but he soon found himself out of place amid the intrigues, the enmities, the calumnies and violences which filled that city; and he discovered that the questions of doctrine were a mere pretext to cloak unworthy motives. He became acquainted with the Tall Brothers, and saw that there was no guile in them. Disgusted and dejected, he set sail for home, but the fatigue and excitement had overtaxed his failing strength and he died on the voyage. There is something melancholy in this visit of Epiphanius to Con­stantinople before his death, and the somewhat humorous conceit of the old man enhances the pathos.

At length Theophilus appeared, with the unconcealed object of deposing John Chrysostom. The affair of the Tall Brothers was now a secondary consideration to him. In the meantime the relations between Eudoxia and Chrysostom, who did not cease his ex cathedra attacks upon her, were as hostile as ever; so that on Theophilus' arrival there were two hostile camps—the camp of aristocrats in the house of Eugraphia, and the camp of the Alexandrian party in the palace of Placidia, where Theophilus had taken up his quarters, refusing to accept of Chrysostom's proffered hospitality. The city was a scene of uproar and excitement. It was divided into two parts, the adherents of Chrysostom and the Alexandrians. So high ran the popular feeling that the opposition party were afraid to hold the council, which was to decide on Chrysostom's conduct, within the precincts of Constantinople; it was held on the other side of the Bosphorus at Chalcedon, and was called the Synod of the Oak. Three different points were discussed at this council: (1) the affair of the Tall Brothers; (2) the complaints of Asiatic ecclesiastics against Chrysostom for his proceedings in 400; (3) various charges preferred against Chrysostom, among the rest that of fornication. The Patriarch refused to appear at this synod or to acknowledge it; he and his party held a counter-synod in the reception room (triclinium) of the patriarchal palace. He was condemned in his absence and formally deposed, but so far was he from being intimidated that in the few days which intervened between the condemnation and the execution of the sentence he preached a sermon, in which he played with pointed sarcasm on the name of the Empress, using the word adoxia. But the matter could not rest here; the people would not lightly submit to the removal of their idol. At this period of history, one notices, it was in church matters that the spirit of the people revealed itself, it was for church matters chiefly that they cared. Loud clamours were raised for a general council. The condemnation of a small packed assembly like that of the Oak would not be accepted. The city was in an uproar, distracted with scenes of riot and violence between the small but united body of the Alexandrians, who had come to support their bishop, and the followers of the man of the people. Theophilus fled to Egypt, and there was a revolt in Constantinople. In addition to all this, an earthquake took place, which frightened the Empress, who, if she had few scruples, was, like her husband, very superstitious. Chrysostom, who had gone to Bithynia, was allowed to return and resume the duties of his office. If he had at this time assumed a more conciliatory tone towards the court, or even adopted a policy of quietism and abstained from open attacks on the Empress, he might have continued to hold the episcopal chair till his death. But he was not the man to compromise or to turn back on his way; and if we consider him often obstinate and devoid of ordinary tact, we cannot but yield respect to the unswerving man who chose the difficult road and followed it to the end.

In September 403 a silver statue on a porphyry column was erected to Eudoxia in the Augusteum by Simplicius, the prefect of the city. The erection of public statues usually took place on Sunday, and was accompanied by certain old pagan customs which lingered on, like formulae which have lost their meaning; overlooked and even countenanced in the Christian world. The dances and merriment of the festivity, probably innocent enough, were so loud that they interrupted the services of St. Sophia. What course was taken by Chrysostom we cannot say, as we have no reliable testimony, but he must have manifested his disapproval and indignation in some way which outraged the pride of the Empress, for after this event the breach became so wide that the mild Emperor Arcadius refused to communicate with the Patriarch.

A new synod was summoned early in 404. Theophilus did not venture to be present, but Chrysostom was again condemned. Arcadius hesitated until Easter to enforce the sentence, which the Patriarch declined to obey; but at length, on the night of Easter Eve, he sent a corps of soldiers into the great church, in which at that moment male and female catechumens of riper years were receiving the rite of baptism. The congregation was scattered by the soldiers, who showed little reverence for the sanctity of the place. On the following day the people would not attend the services in St. Sophia, and, leaving the city, celebrated Easter under trees in the country; it was a sort of church secession, and the seceders were called Johannites. Meanwhile Johannes had not been arrested, and things continued as they were until Whitsuntide, owing to the timorous indecision of the Emperor, who perhaps felt some compunction. But on the 20th of June the final blow was struck, and Chrysostom, submitting to the inevitable, quietly allowed himself to be conducted stealthily to the shore and conveyed in a boat to the Asiatic coast.

On the same night a memorable event took place, the conflagration of St. Sophia. Late in the evening the people had crowded into the church, expecting Chrysostom. He did not come, and as they were leaving it the fire broke out. It began at the episcopal chair, and flaming upwards caught the roof and twined round the building "like a serpent". A short time previously a high wind had arisen, and the flames were blown southwards in the direction of the senate house, which was involved in the conflagration. The destruction of the senate house was a greater misfortune than that of the church, for the former was a museum of the most precious antique works of art. The statues of the nine Muses were burnt, and here the pagan historian Zosimus observes that the conflagration betokened "estrangement from the Muses"; it was some consolation to him, however, as a sign of the providence of the Olympians, that the Zeus of Dodona and the Athene of Lindus escaped.

The cause of this misfortune was made a matter of judicial investigation. Some actually attributed it to Chrysostom himself; others to his followers. The superstitious said it was miraculous; while the bigoted, who had infidelity on the brain, said it was the work of a pagan. A modern writer suggests that some fanatical admirer of Chrysostom wished to light a farewell bonfire in his honour. It was at all events made an excuse for persecuting the friends of John, and we hear of all sorts of cruelties perpetrated; for example, of tortures inflicted on a young lad named Eutropius, "pure as a virgin", who had been a lector of the Patriarch. Olympias was condemned to exile, as well as many others. Among those who anticipated the sentence by flight was an old maid named Nicarete, who deserves mention as a curious figure of the time. She was a philanthropist who devoted her means to works of charity, and always went about with a chest of drugs, which she used to dispense gratis, and which pious rumour said were always effectual. She reminds us of charitable ladies of modern times who distribute tracts, have a craze for homoeopathy, and hang on the lips of some favourite clergyman. Many were exiled for refusing to communicate with Arsacius, the new Patriarch. Partaking of the communion with him was made a sort of test for discovering who was a Johannite.

Meanwhile John was being transported to Cucusus, a place where the mountain chains of Cappadocia and Armenia meet, hardly consoling himself with the reflection that Barabbas was preferred to Christ. "We cannot follow out the details of his experiences in that cold climate, of all the hardships he underwent, of the various projects he still entered into with Jerome, of his correspondence with Olympias. Such details are for the biographer or the ecclesiastical historian. But we may note here a refined trait of the spiritual woman in Olympias; she did not mention in her letter to Chrysostom the persecution which she had undergone for his sake. But she was seized by a deep melancholy, that had a flavour of distrust in God, in spite of her own convictions; and all the arguments of Chrysostom to prevent her from feeling scandalized at the triumph of the unjust cause seem to have hardly consoled her. A legend was current in later times that her encoffined body had, by her own directions, been cast into the sea at Nicomedia, that it had been carried to Constantinople and thence to Brochthi, where it was placed in the church of St. Thomas. The sea voyages of sainted bodies were a favorite subject of Christian legend, and reappear in the legends of the Round Table.

About a year after John's exile earthquakes took place, which terrified the superstitious nature of the Emperor. He sent to consult a certain St. Nilus, who lived on Mount Sinai. Nilus had been once a brilliant figure in the world; a handsome and elegant man at the court of Theodosius, he had attained to the highest political office, the praetorian prefecture of the East; he had contracted a happy marriage with a woman whom he loved, and he had two sons. Quite suddenly he said goodbye to them all, except one of his sons, with whom he departed and took up his abode on Mount Sinai. A sudden desire had come upon him to save his soul, a sudden craving for the spiritual life. He enjoyed a great and wide­spread reputation for sanctity, and was consulted as a sort of oracle. In answer to Arcadius' queries he replied by blaming him for the exile of John, whom he called " the lamp of truth and the trumpet of God," saying that when he heard of what had happened he was "lightning struck with the fire of grief". But the oracle had no effect; the earthquake ceased, and then Arcadius, like Pharaoh, hardened his heart.

In 407 it was determined to change the place of Chrysostom's exile. At Cucusus he had kept up a large correspondence, and his life, if dreary, was tolerable. His enemies wished that he should be quite out of the world, and Pityus, a desolate place on the south-eastern coast of the Euxine, was fixed on as his future abode. But on the way thither he died from exhaustion (14th September).

Besides the fact that they decided the relation of the patriarchate to the imperial power in Constantinople, the events narrated in this chapter present other points worthy of remark. Never after Chrysostom have we the spectacle of a Byzantine Patriarch standing out against the corruption or frivolity of the court, and inveighing against those who are arrayed in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day. We meet many Patriarchs ready to defy the Emperor and endure persecution for a comparatively nugatory tittle of doctrine, but few who threw all their soul into the spirit of the religion, as distinct from the theology of Christianity, and none who would have had the boldness or ill-breeding to criticize the dress or censure the habits of the Empress and her ladies. The Patriarchs after Chrysostom were, if not mere theologians, either austere quietists like John the Faster under Maurice, or ambitious men of the world. It was the distinguishing mark of John Chrysostom, that he cared more for religion and less for theology. It is further interesting to reflect that, at the very beginning of the long period of the queenship of New Rome, where some of the leading traits of Byzantinism, especially the oriental style of the court, had already been fully developed, a great protest was raised against it—the voice of one crying in the midst of it, denouncing the luxury and the pomp. It was as if the spirit of early Christianity, which was now extinct—smothered by its contact with empire and the things of this world—were, through Chrysostom, raising its voice from the grave and protesting against the worldliness, the splendour, and the lusts of the new Christian Empire.

The treatment of John Chrysostom led to an estrangement between the courts of Constantinople and Ravenna, or rather to an exacerbation of an estrangement that already existed. Two important elements enter into these transactions—the reference of ecclesiastical affairs in the East to the bishop of Rome as to a court of appeal, and the influence exercised by the bishop of Rome on the Emperor Honorius.

Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, now triumphant, first apprised Innocent that John had been deposed from his office; letters from John himself and his Byzantine clergy, delivered three days afterwards by four "Johannite" bishops, probably convinced the pontiff that the condemnation of Chrysostom was unjust; and this conviction was confirmed, when he received a copy of the acts of the synod ad quercum, for which his signature was required. He determined that it was necessary to summon a general council, and in the meantime refused to desist from communion with the Patriarch, to whom he indited a letter of consolation. A preliminary synod, held in Italy, declared the condemnation of Chrysostom invalid, and demanded that a general council should be held at Thessalonica.

Meanwhile the Emperor Honorius, under the influence of Innocent, wrote a severe letter of admonition to his elder brother, deploring the tumults and conflagrations that had disgraced and disfigured Constantinople in the recent affair, and censuring 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.

The important and striking point in this letter of Honorius is that it contains the declaration by an Emperor of a principle which had before been asserted by a Bishop, that "the interpretation of divine things concerns churchmen, the observation of religion concerns us (the Emperors)"—a principle directly opposed to that tendency of the princes who ruled at New Rome, which was to result in the Caesaropapism of Justinian.

Arcadius vouchsafed not to notice his brother's communications, whose candid censure offended him, and took no steps towards summoning a general council. At length four bishops, including Aemilius of Beneventum, and two priests, were sent from Italy with imperial letters to Arcadius. They had reason to repent of their expedition. Their treatment was such that if it had been practiced by an oriental despot, it would have been considered outrageous and exceptional. Escorted by soldiers from Athens to Constantinople, they were not allowed to land in that city, but were thrown into a Thracian fortress, forcibly deprived of the letters which they bore, and then hardly permitted to return to Italy (406 AD)

The estrangement which ensued between the two halves of the Empire, in consequence of this imbecile barbarity on the part of the eastern government, continued until the death of Arcadius on 1st May 408, after which event friendly relations were renewed between "the twin worlds" which constituted the Empire.

 

IV

STILICHO AND ALARIC

 

The fourth century has a dull and murky atmosphere about it, an atmosphere which hangs over the pages of Ammianus; the storm was brewing that was to change the face of Europe. The usurpation of Magnentius, the battle of Hadrianople, the consulate of Merobaudes were foresigns of the storm that was to come, but it did not actually come until after the death of Theodosius the Great. We may perhaps say that it began with Alaric's invasion of Greece.

But we must not exaggerate the storm and conceive it as greater than it really was. The idea of the "wandering of the nations" and unproven speculations as to its connection with tremendous movements in the heart of Asia—an hypothesis which is as superfluous as it is indemonstrable—have led to unhistorical notions as to the nature of the break­up of the Empire. The facts do not warrant us in looking at the German movements in the fourth and fifth centuries as anything more than a continuation of the old war on the frontiers (limites).

We must understand clearly the form which the danger from the Germanic nations assumed. Three kinds of Germans must be distinguished—(1) the nations and tribes outside the Empire; (2) those settled within the Empire, such as the Visigoths settled by Theodosius I. in Illyricum and Thrace, and the Ostrogoths settled in Phrygia; (3) the Germans distributed throughout the Empire as soldiers or serfs, half or wholly Romanized, but with German sympathies, whom we already named semi-barbarians. All three classes of Germans contributed to the dislocation of the Empire and the Germanization of occidental Europe, and there is no greater mistake than to imagine that the Empire was suddenly overwhelmed by foreign hordes. In the third century it had been in imminent danger from the nations who bordered on the Rhine and the Danube, and it was again harassed in the fourth century, especially in the reign of Constantius. At the same time the dangers latent in the position of Germans in the Roman army became apparent in the revolt of Magnentius (350 AD.) It has been remarked that the battle of Mursa, in which Constantius quelled that revolt, is a sort of anticipation of the battles of the fifth century. The danger arising from the settlements of German foederati displayed itself in a manner still more unequivocal by the disaster of Hadrianople in 378. The policy of Theodosius I, who was called the friend of the Goths, maintained the integrity of the Empire during his own reign, but on his death, the dangers which were only averted by his personal ability, immediately appeared. Through these dangers, as we have seen, the eastern half of the Empire was safely steered; on the other hand, the provinces of the western dynasty were dismembered, and developed into German kingdoms. It is not my purpose to go into all the details of this process of dismemberment or of the history of the Emperors who reigned at Ravenna and Rome, but an outline of the chief facts is indispensable. Through all these facts a double process is observable. On the one hand, provinces are cut off from the Empire by Germans from without, who invade and take possession; on the other hand, the Empire is undermined within by the influence of half-Roman Germans or half-German Romans, like Stilicho, Aetius, and Ricimer.

The career of Stilicho and Alaric's invasions of Italy present themselves first to our view. Stilicho was absent in Rhaetia in the latter months of 401 AD, when Alaric, who occupied the double position—characteristic of this ambiguous epoch—of king of the West Goths and master of the soldiers in Illyricum, suddenly advanced with a large army to the Julian Alps and entered Italy. The causes which led him to take this step are sufficiently clear, though they are not categorically asserted. His relations to the government of New Rome, lately elated with having subdued a Germanic revolt, were not of an agreeable kind; to attempt to make himself an independent king of the Balkan peninsula would have been impracticable, for he could not have maintained such a position in the heart of the Roman Empire; and he became weary of a monotonous life, destitute of enterprise, in a land exhausted by plunder. With the Teutonic instinct to turn the face westwards, he determined to invade Italy. There was, however, I believe, another element in the situation—the relation of Alaric to Stilicho. If my conjectures were right respecting an understanding between the two generals at Pholoe in 396 AD, Alaric was continually expecting Stilicho to carry out the execution of his design, while Stilicho was prevented by the revolt of Gildo and other affairs which demanded his attention. This will explain what may seem surprising, that Alaric waited so long (five years) inactive in Illyricum. At length—willing to wait no longer, and indignant at the delays of Stilicho, who was not sufficiently imbued with the illness that should have attended his ambition, and was probably also influenced by his wife Serena, who did not approve of his projects—he marched into Italy, and thus placed himself in a position of hostility to his confederate. Stilicho hastened to protect the throne and kingdom of Honorius; the legions of Gaul and Britain were summoned to defend Italy. The Emperor, who was at Milan, proceeded, on Alaric's approach, to Asti, and Alaric followed him into Liguria. At Pollentia, on the river Tanarus, a battle was fought on Easter Day (6th April 402), and Alaric, although perhaps he did not experience an absolute defeat, thought it prudent to make a truce and retire. But as he returned he attempted to surprise Verona, and Stilicho was obliged to attack him again. The army of the Goths was decimated by a noxious disease, and was entirely at Stilicho's mercy, but he acted as he had acted before in the Peloponnesus, making a compact with Alaric and allowing him to withdraw to his Illyric provinces.

It was in the course of the year 402 that Honorius, influenced perhaps by the invasion of Alaric, established his home and court at Ravenna, and discarded the former imperial residences of Rome and Milan. This step was decisive for the history of Ravenna, which, but for the choice of Honorius, would probably never have been the capital of the Ostrogothic sovereigns or the seat of the Exarchs.

The years 403 and 404 passed peacefully enough away, but in 405 Stilicho was called upon to defend Italy against a vast invasion of German hordes, which had combined to plunder the land. The invaders, who were perhaps half a million in number—East Goths, Alans, Vandals, and Quadi—overran northern Italy. After some time they divided into three companies, of which one under Radagaisus besieged Florence. Stilicho seized the favourable moment and enclosed him in an inextricable position at Fiesole, where the Romans were able to massacre the barbarians at their pleasure. It is strange that we are not told what became of the other two companies.

In 407 Stilicho at length made up his mind to strike the blow and occupy Illyricum. The unfriendly feeling which had arisen between the eastern and western courts on the subject of the treatment of John Chrysostom offered a ready pretext for a hostile movement. An edict was issued, at the instance of Stilicho, closing the ports of Italy to the ships of Arcadius' subjects, and breaking off all intercourse between the two halves of the Empire. Stilicho and Alaric formed a plan to seize Illyricum and transfer it from the rule of Arcadius to that of Honorius; but it is hinted that the real purpose was to establish a separate dominion under Stilicho's son, Eucherius. Stilicho was at Ravenna making preparations to join Alaric on the other side of the Adriatic, when a letter arrived from Honorius that Constantine, the general of Britain, had crossed over to Gaul and raised the standard of rebellion. A report also spread that Alaric was dead, and Stilicho's design was thwarted when it seemed on the point of fulfilment. He was obliged to desist from the enterprise that had been so long deferred, and to repair to the presence of the Emperor at Rome to consult as to the measures to be taken against the tyrant Constantine.

Of the tyrant Constantine I shall have more to say in another chapter, but we must observe here that this rebellion of the Britannic army signified an opposition to the influence of the foreigner Stilicho, and was specially directed against him, just as the revolt of Maximus had been aimed against Merobaudes. During the year 406 two tyrants had been elevated in Britain, but both, proving incompetent, were slain; Constantine was their successor. What measures in the meantime, one naturally asks, was Stilicho taking against these movements in Britain, which must soon spread to Gaul? They must have been known to him, and their significance apprehended long before the passage of Constantine across the English Channel. The answer seems to be contained in a notice of Orosius and a notice of Prosper Tiro, which state that Stilicho solicited a mixed host of barbarians to cross the Rhine and enter Gaul at the end of the year 406. Both these writers affirm as his motive that he wished to force the Emperor to bestow imperial rank upon his son Eucherius; but that can hardly have been the direct, though it may have been the indirect, cause. It seems probable that Stilicho wished to have his hands free for operations in Illyricum, and that he called the barbarians into Gaul that they might oppose the progress of the Britannic legions. He thought that once the barbarians had accomplished what he wished them to accomplish, he would easily be able to crush them and drive them out, as he had crushed the army of Radagaisus.

But Alaric, who was not dead, was deeply disappointed, and disdained to wait meekly for the convenience of Stilicho. He advanced to the frontiers of Italy at the Julian Alps, and loudly demanded compensation for the time he had wasted by waiting in Epirus and for the expenses of his march. Stilicho's influence induced the Roman senate, which assembled to decide the matter (408 AD), to agree to Alaric's demand, and pay compensation money to the amount of £180,000; but many were dissatisfied with Stilicho's Germanizing policy, and one senator bolder than the rest exclaimed, “That is not a peace, it is a compact of thraldom”. Such, however, was the almost imperial 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.

Stilicho was not destined either to carry out his designs against the Balkan provinces of New Rome or to win the glory of suppressing the new Constantine, the Emperor whom Gaul had accepted. There was a strong though secret opposition to Stilicho in Italy; at any time a favourable moment might be seized to poison the ears or enlighten the eyes of Honorius respecting the designs of his father-in-law, on which an ugly interpretation might be placed. Even among the soldiers Stilicho's popularity was by no means so established as to be secure. From an obscure passage in one of our authorities we can gather this at least, that a forensic friend of Stilicho, even while he and Honorius were yet at Rome in the early months of 408, foresaw the danger that awaited the general, and connected it—rightly as the event proved—with the spirit of the soldiers stationed at Ticinum.

Honorius was at Bononia, on his way from Ravenna to Ticinum, when the news reached him of his brother's death (May 408). He entertained the idea of proceeding himself to Constantinople to set in order the affairs of the realm, which now devolved on a child of seven years; and he summoned Stilicho from Ravenna for consultation. Stilicho dissuaded him from this purpose, and undertook to proceed himself to New Rome, while he proposed to employ Alaric against the usurper Constantine, who ruled in Gaul. The death of Arcadius seemed to present to Stilicho an opportunity for accomplishing his purposes without Alaric's aid. But meanwhile a minister named Olympius was winning the ear of Honorius. The Romans who hated Germans and Arians were weaving a web of destruction for the Vandal father-in-law of the Emperor; they accused him of treason; and on 23d August Stilicho was put to death at Ravenna. Many ministers were executed at the same time, as members of his party and privy to his treasonable designs. His son Eucherius was slain soon afterwards, while his wife Serena was spared; but she was destined to be strangled a year later, by order of the Roman senate, for pagan impiety, while Alaric was besieging Rome. Thermantia, the wife of the Emperor, was put away because she was the daughter of Stilicho. It was stated definitely by Stilicho's opponents that he aimed at winning the imperial purple for his son Eucherius, and the poet Claudian had hinted at a possible marriage between the Emperor's half-sister Gala Placidia and the son of Stilicho. I have already stated my opinion that this charge was in the main true, nor does it seem confuted by the mere fact—which may have been actually intended to disarm suspicion—that Eucherius was entrusted with insignificant posts by his father.

The relations between the eastern half and the western half of the Empire had been strained and often positively hostile during the reign of Arcadius; or, I think, we should rather say during the lifetime of Stilicho. The death of the great general changed the relations of the courts; concord and friendly co-operation succeeded coldness and enmity; and the law which excluded eastern commerce from western ports, passed by the influence of the "public enemy" Stilicho, was rescinded. It is a mistake to attribute this to the death of Arcadius. If Arcadius had lived many years longer, the death of Stilicho would have been followed by the same result. This is evident if we reflect on the elements of the situation. In the realm of Arcadius the Roman spirit had triumphed and won the upper hand by the suppression of Gainas and Tribigild. In the realm of Honorius, on the contrary, the German interest predominated as long as Stilicho lived. Hence the two courts were discordant. But the fall of Stilicho was a triumph for the Roman party in Italy, and a cause of rejoicing for the court of Byzantium; he who was the obstacle to unity, he whose private ambition threatened an integral portion of the provinces ruled from New Borne, was removed, and the Empire was again for a time really as well as nominally one.

After Stilicho's death, the new government, led by Olympius, who was appointed master of offices, had two problems to face. How was Alaric, still threatening in Noricum, to be dealt with? and what measures were to be taken in regard to Constantine, the Emperor or tyrant of Gaul? Alaric promised to withdraw from Noricum to Pannonia if the balance of the sum of money promised by the senate, and as yet only partly paid, were delivered to him. With an unwise audacity the Emperor's new advisers refused the proposal, and at the same time took no measures for defense. It would have been best to pay the money, but if they were determined to defy the Goth they should have taken steps to resist him, and (as a historian of that century suggested) they might have enlisted a Goth named Sarus, an excellent warrior and a rival of Alaric, to oppose the entry of the latter into Italy.

The king of the West Goths invaded Italy for the second time and marched straight to Rome, without turning aside to besiege Ravenna, where Honorius resided sufficiently secure. It is related that a monk warned the invader not to turn his arms against the capital of the world, and that Alaric replied that he was irresistibly led thither, not by his own will but by a divine impulse; and the story is suitable to the solemnity of the moment. The German king laid siege to the eternal city. Reduced to extremities by famine, and even plague, the inhabitants of Rome, where there was still a strong pagan element, essayed the efficacy of heathen sacrifices; but they were at length compelled to make a hard peace with Alaric. Honorius and Olympius, however, still persisted in adopting the strange policy of defying the invader and not resisting him. But Olympius soon fell, through the hostility of a cabal of eunuchs, and the praetorian prefect and Patrician, Jovius, succeeded to his influence. Other changes in the civil service and the military commands were made about the same time; after the death of Stilicho ministers rose and fell in rapid succession. Jovius was anxious to bring about a peace with Alaric, and was ready to make reasonable concessions; and for this purpose he appointed an interview with the Gothic king at Ariminum. Alaric demanded that the provinces of Venetia, Noricum, and Dalmatia should be ceded to himself and his people as a permanent abode, and that a certain annual supply of corn and money should be granted by the Emperor. In his letter to Honorius Jovius suggested that Alaric might relax the severity of these demands, if the rank of magister utriusque militiae, which Stilicho had held, were conferred on him. But Honorius could not rise to the idea of granting to the barbarian Visigoth the post which had been held by the semi-barbarian Vandal; he decidedly refused either to confer the title or to grant the lands. It is interesting to note, however, that there was for a moment the possibility that a West Gothic kingdom might have been established to the north-east, instead of to the west of Italy.

Jovius opened the answer of Honorius in the presence of Alaric and read it aloud. The German looked upon the refusal of the military command as a contumely to himself, and “rising up in anger, ordered his barbarians to march to Rome to avenge the insult which was offered to himself and all his kin”.

Here we have the Roman exclusiveness, manifested by the son of Theodosius, and the ambition of the German to win a place and recognition in the Empire, as the main elements of the situation; and the remarkable circumstance is that Alaric did not desire war, and that Honorius had no adequate forces to support his resistance.

Once more Alaric attempted to induce the Emperor to accept his proposals, and even offered more moderate terms. The bishop of Rome, which the Goths once more threatened, was, with other bishops, sent as an envoy to Ravenna, if even yet the Emperor might pause ere he exposed the city which had ruled over the world for more than four hundred years to the ravages of barbarians, and allowed the magnificent edifices to be consumed by the fire of the foe. All that Alaric asked now was the province of Noricum on the Danube; he did not ask for Venetia nor yet for Dalmatia. Let Honorius assign the Goths Noricum, and grant them a certain sum of money and supplies of corn annually; Italy would then be delivered from the invader. It is hard to see why Honorius and his ministers declined to accept these terms, which, considering the situation, were moderate; but on this occasion Jovius, instead of advising peace, which he had desired before, advised a firm refusal. It appears that Honorius had taken him to task for his disposition to yield to Alaric at Ariminum, and that, fearing for his personal safety, he had rushed to the other extreme, and sworn, and made others swear, by the head of Honorius, to war to the death with Alaric.

Having met with this new refusal, and perceiving that it was a hopeless aim to extort anything from the obstinacy and prejudice of the son of him who “pacified the Goths”, Alaric marched to the walls of Rome, and called upon the citizens to side with him against the Emperor. When this invitation was refused, he seized the port and blockaded the eternal city for the second time. The corn stores of the city lay in the harbor, and Alaric threatened that if the Romans did not comply with his demand he would use them for his own army. The senate met, and, with the fear of famine before their eyes, yielded.

Alaric's purpose was to elect a new Emperor who should be more pliable than Honorius. He had selected the prefect of the city, Attalus, to play this somewhat undignified part; and Attalus was invested with the purple and crowned with the diadem. Alaric received the post of master of soldiers, which the legitimate Emperor had disdained to bestow on him; and Athaulf, his brother-in-law, was created count of the domestics.

Nor was it merely to the Goths that a new Emperor was acceptable; he was also welcome to the pagans and the Arians, who were numerous in the city on the Tiber and had suffered from the severe laws of the orthodox Honorius. One might say that the elevation of Attalus involved a twofold reaction against the established order of things; a reaction on the one hand against Catholicism, an opposition on the other hand of the Teutonic to the Roman spirit. In fact the coalition of Alaric and Attalus was a repetition in a new form of the coalition of Arbogast and Eugenius. What saved the throne of Honorius was that the two factors of the coalition fell asunder, because they too were divided by the opposition of Roman to Teuton.

It is worthy of remark that the situation in Gaul—which will be described in another chapter—was determined by the same three elements as the situation in Italy, but these elements were not adjusted in the same relations. In both countries the imperial authority was represented; in both countries there were tyrants or usurpers; and in both countries there were barbarians hostile to the imperial government. But in Gaul it was the tyrant against whom the legitimate Emperor prepared to contend; in Italy it was the Emperor against whom the tyrant prepared to contend. In Gaul the tyrant and the barbarians, Vandals, Suevians, and Alans, had originally been in opposition, and had come to terms, which left them independent of each other; in Italy the tyrant was the creation of the barbarian, and an opposition developed itself afterwards. The watchword of the new Augustus who came from Britain had been opposition to German in­fluence; the watchword of the new Augustus who arose at Rome was opposition to catholic intolerance. Constantine was the successor of Maximus; Attalus was the successor of Eugenius.

Atillius created Lampadius, probably the same senator who had once exclaimed bravely in the senate house against the “compact of servitude” with Alaric, praetorian prefect of Italy, and a certain Marcian prefect of the city; Tertullius was elected as consul for the year 410. We are told that the inhabitants of Rome were in high spirits, because the new officers were well versed in the art of administration; only the rich house of the Anicii was vexed at the new order of things.

The first problem which presented itself to Attalus and Alaric was how they were to act in regard to Africa, which was held by Count Heraclian, an officer loyal to Honorius. They were not safe as long as they did not possess the African provinces, on which Rome depended for her supplies of corn. Alaric advised that troops should be sent to seize the power in Africa by force; but Attalus would not consent, confident that he could win Carthage without fighting a battle. He appointed a certain Constans commander of the soldiers in Libya, and sent him thither with a small company of guards, while he prepared himself to march against Ravenna.

Honorius was overwhelmed with terror at the tidings that a usurper had arisen in Italy, and that Rome had given her adhesion. He made ready ships in Classis, which, if it came to the worst, might bear him to the shelter of New Rome, and sent messages to Attalus, proposing a division of the Empire. But Attalus had such high hopes that he would not consent to a compromise; he agreed to allow the legitimate Caesar to retire to an island and end his days as a private individual. So probable did it seem that the tottering throne of Honorius would fall, and so bright the prospects of his rival, that the praetorian prefect Jovius or Jovian, who had sworn eternal enmity to Alaric, went over to the camp or the palace of the usurper. The policy of Jovius was ever, when he adopted a new cause, to carry it to a further extreme than any one else. From wishing to make large concessions to Alaric, he had rebounded to the position of refusing to make even small concessions; and now, when he joined the side of Attalus, he went further than Attalus in hostility to Honorius, and recommended that the Emperor, when he was dethroned, should be deformed by bodily mutilation. But for this proposal Attalus is said to have chidden him; Attalus knew not then that it was to be his own fate hereafter.

Attalus and his master of soldiers advanced upon Ravenna, and it seemed probable that Honorius would flee. But at this juncture the eastern came to the assistance of the western government, and Anthemius, the praetorian prefect of the East, sent about four thousand soldiers to Ravenna. With these Honorius was able to secure the city of the marshes against the hostile army, and await the result of the operations of Constans, Attalus' emissary in Africa. If Heraclian maintained the province loyally against the usurper, the war might be prosecuted in Italy against Alaric and Attalus; if, on the other hand, Africa accepted a change of rule, Honorius determined to abandon the position.

The news soon arrived that Constans had been slain. At this point, the latent opposition between the ideas of Attalus and the ideas of Alaric began to assert itself. Alaric wished to send an army to Africa; and Jovius supported the policy in a speech to the Roman senate. But neither the senate nor Attalus were disposed to send an army of barbarians against a Roman province; such a course seemed indecent—unworthy of Rome. Jovius, the shifty Patrician, seems to have decided, on account of the failure in Africa, to desert his allegiance to Attalus, and return to his allegiance to Honorius; and he attempted to turn Alaric away from his league with the Emperor whom he had created. But Alaric would not yet throw off his allegiance. He had said that he was resolved to persist in the blockade of Ravenna until he had taken it, but the new strength which Honorius had obtained from Byzantium seems to have convinced him that it would be futile to continue the siege. He marched through the Aemilia, receiving or extorting from the cities acknowledgment of the Empire of Attalus, and failing to take Bononia, which held out for Honorius, passed on to Liguria, to force that province also to accept the tyrant.

Attalus meanwhile returned to Rome, which he found in a sad plight. Count Heraclian had stopped the transport of corn and oil from the granary of Italy, and Rome was reduced to such extremities of starvation, that someone cried in the circus, "Set a price on human flesh". The senate was now desirous to carry out the plan which it had rejected with Roman dignity before, and send an army of barbarians to Africa; but the Princeps again refused to consent to such a step, as he had formerly refused when it was proposed by Alaric.

Accordingly Alaric determined to pull down the tyrant whom he had set up; he had found that in Attalus, as well as in Honorius, the Roman temper was firm, and that he too was keenly conscious that the Visigoths were only barbarians. Near Ariminum Attalus was discrowned and divested of the purple robe with ceremonious solemnity; but Alaric provided for his safety, and retained him in his own camp.

It now seemed that Alaric might approach Honorius again with better chance of a satisfactory adjustment; and he marched in the direction of Ravenna. At this juncture the Goth Sarus, a brave warrior, appears upon the scene. With three hundred men he had stationed himself in the Picentine territory, and held aloof from the two contending parties. According to one writer, he now attacked the Goths of Alaric or Athaulf, because he wished to prevent the conclusion of peace; according to another writer, he was not the attacker, but the attacked. Whichever of the two accounts be true, his accession to the side of the Emperor seems to have induced Honorius to continue in his implacable hostility to Alaric.

It was in August 410 that Alaric marched upon Rome for the third time, but now he occupied it without resistance. It is not clear how far this occupation was due to an unfriendly attitude on the part of Honorius; events may have intervened between the battle with Sarus and the march on Rome of which we are ignorant. The eternal city was surrendered to the pillage of the soldiers; but it was confessed that respect was shown for churches, and that the “immunity” of the barbarians was softened by the veneration which Christian things inspired. Alaric then proceeded to southern Italy with the purpose of crossing to Africa, and relieving Italy from the pressure of famine. If Alaric had succeeded in this enterprise and returned to Italy, that peninsula might have been the seat of a West Gothic kingdom, almost a hundred years before it became the seat of an East Gothic kingdom. But Alaric died in Bruttii, before the year was over, at Consentia, and the Goths laid his body in the bed of the river Bucentus. His work had been accomplished; he had not himself entered in to possess, but he had prepared the way for a Visigothic kingdom, which was to arise, not in Illyricum, where he had sojourned so long, not in Italy, nor yet in Africa, but in a country where Alaric had never trodden. Alaric might be called the Moses of the Visigoths; he guided them on their wanderings until they came in sight of the promised land which he was not destined to enjoy himself.

 

V

THEODOSIUS  II   AND  MARCIAN

 

When Arcadius died in 408, his son Theodosius was only eight years old. Anthemius acted as protector of the Empire, and apparently also as guardian of the young prince until 414, and the measures which were passed during these six years exhibit an intelligent and sincere solicitude for the welfare of the people and the correction of abuses. At the same time a better understanding subsisted between the court of New Rome and the court of Ravenna, due partly to the death of Arcadius and partly to that of Stilicho, who was executed in the same year. As a result of the new mode of palatial life, the influence of women as well as the influence of eunuchs made itself felt. The keynote of this new departure was struck by Eudoxia, the first wife of a Roman Emperor who received the title Augusta, a novelty to which the court of Honorius objected; and throughout the whole space of the fifth and sixth centuries we meet remarkable ladies of the imperial house playing a prominent part. The daughters of Eudoxia formed a great contrast to their mother, and the court of Theodosius I was very different from that of Arcadius. The princesses Pulcheria, Arcadia, and Marina, and the young Emperor, inherited the religious temperament of their father, with which Pulcheria combined her grandfather's strength of character. The court, as a contemporary says, assumed the character of a cloister. The singing of hymns, pious practices, and charitable works were the order of the day, and the Patriarch Atticus acted as a spiritual adviser. But religion was accompanied with culture; Theodosius was a student of natural science, and from his skill in writing received the name of Kalligraphos.

In 414 Pulcheria was created Augusta, and assumed the regency in the name of her brother, who was two years younger than herself. She superintended and assisted in his education; she supported by her countenance the reforming spirit of the senate, and protected her brother from falling under the influence of intriguing court officials, to which his weak character would easily have rendered him a prey. This was the import of Pulcheria’s political position. She resolved to remain a virgin, and influenced her sisters to form the same determination, in which they were confirmed by their friend Atticus, who is said to have written a book for them on the subject of virginity.

In 421 a new element was introduced into the monastic court life by the marriage of the Emperor with Athenais. The story of the Athenian girl who became the Empress Eudocia is well known. She was the daughter of Leontius, a philosopher and a pagan, and was by him instructed in all pagan learning. After the death of her father she sought refuge in Constantinople (418) from her brothers, who were less than kind, and the beauty and learning of the girl, dedicated to Athene, won the patronage of Pulcheria, who chose her as a suitable bride for her brother. The marriage was followed by the birth of a daughter, Eudoxia (named after the late Empress), who afterwards became the wife of Valentinian III, and in 423 Eudocia was proclaimed Augusta. She had embraced Christianity before her marriage, and she wrote religious poetry; but she always retained some pagan leanings, and we may be sure that, when her influence began to assert itself, the strict monastic character of the court was considerably modified, and that breaches with Pulcheria were not infrequent, as both ladies had decided characters. The early undivided allegiance of Theodosius to his sister was gone; by degrees it was felt that there were two not necessarily united powers in the palace; and of this feeling intriguing courtiers or churchmen would not be slow to take advantage. The dissension showed itself clearly in the Nestorian controversy.

When we read the chronicles of the reign of Theodosius II, we at first receive the impression that it was a period of few important events, though set with curious stories. The invasions of Attila and the general council of Ephesus are the only facts which seem to stand out prominently in the chronicles, while they are full of stories and interesting traits which attract the imagination, such as the life of Athenais, the martyrdom of Hypatia, the monastic life of the imperial votaries Pulcheria and her sisters, the story of the waking of the seven sleepers—the young saints who in the reign of Decius had fallen asleep in a cave. But on further study we come to the conclusion that it was a period of capital importance,—a period in which the Empire was passing a vital crisis.

To an unprejudiced observer in the reign of Arcadius it might have seemed that the Empire in its eastern parts was doomed to a speedy decline. One possessed of the insight of Synesius might have thought it impossible that it could last for eight hundred years more when he considered the threatening masses of barbarians who environed it, the corruption and divisions of the imperial court, the oppression of the subjects, and all the evils which Synesius actually pointed out. For with the beginning of the fifth century a critical time approached for the whole Empire. At the end of the same century we find that while the western half had been found wanting in the day of its trial, the eastern half had passed the crisis and all the clangers successfully; we find strong and prudent Emperors ruling at New Rome, disposed to alleviate the burdens of the subjects, and in the court a different atmosphere from that of the days of Arcadius.

Now the significance of the reign of Theodosius II is that it was the transition from the court of Arcadius to the court of the steady reforming Emperors in the latter half of the century, and it partook of both characters. This double-sidedness is its peculiarity. Theodosius was weak, like his father, but he was not so weak, and he seems to have profited more by his education. The senate struggles with effect against irresponsible officialism, and although we hear that there was venality and corruption in the days of Pulcheria, a great improvement is in progress. In the chronicles we do not hear much about the senate, everything is attributed to Pulcheria or Theodosius; but the words of Socrates that the Emperor was much beloved "by the senate and people" are significant, and there is no doubt that the much-lauded wisdom of Pulcheria's regency consisted in the wisdom of the senate which she supported. And although towards the close of the reign eunuchs had power, the ground gained by the senate was not lost; the spirit of its administration and the lines of its policy were followed by the succeeding Emperors, and it guided the State safely through a most momentous period which proved fatal to the integrity of the western provinces.

As has been already stated, the guidance of the State through this critical period following the death of Arcadius devolved upon the praetorian prefect Anthemius, and was successfully performed by him. A new treaty was made which secured peace on the Persian frontier; it was agreed that Roman merchants were not to travel farther east than Artaxata and Nisibis, nor Persian merchants farther west than Callinicum. An invasion of Lower Moesia by Uldes, the king of the Huns who had executed Gainas, seemed at first serious and menacing, but was successfully tided over. In words worthy of his successor Attila, Uldes boasted that he could subdue the whole earth or even the sun. He captured Castra Martis, but as he advanced against Thrace he was deserted by a large multitude of his followers, who joined the Romans in driving their king beyond the Danube. An immense horde of Scyri were in Uldes’ host, and so many were taken prisoners that the government had some trouble in disposing of them. They were given to large landowners to be employed as serfs (coloni) in Asia, not in Thrace or Illyricum. In order to prevent future invasions of Huns or other barbarians, Anthemius provided for the improvement of the fleet stationed on the Danube; a large number of new ships were built to protect the borders of Moesia and Scythia, and the old crafts were repaired.

Of the other acts of “the great Anthemius” we may mention that he strengthened the capital, which tended to stretch beyond the wall of Constantine, by a new wall (413), and that he made provision for the more efficient transportation of the corn supplies from Alexandria to Constantinople. He also took measures to revive the prostrate condition of the Illyrian provinces, which through the protracted presence of Alaric and his Visigoths had been reduced to a state of defencelessness and misery.

One of the men who held a distinguished position in this reign, and was highly characteristic of the epoch in many ways, was Cyrus of Panopolis. A poet, like his fellow-townsman Nonnus, a student of art and architecture, a "Greek" in faith, he was penetrated with thoroughly Hellenic instincts; and when it is remarked that the Empire was beginning to assume in the East a Greek complexion in the reign of Theodosius II, "the first Greek Emperor," it is often forgotten that Cyrus had a great deal to do with this, and was in fact the chief leader of the movement. He was prefect of the city for many years, and he used to issue decrees in Greek, an innovation for which a writer of the following century expressly blames him. His prefecture was very popular and long remembered at Constantinople, for he built or restored many buildings and improved the illumination of the town, so that the people enthusiastically cried on one occasion in the circus, "Constantine built the city but Cyrus renewed it." This popularity made the prefect an object of suspicion, and his fall soon followed, his paganism furnishing a convenient ground for accusation. By a sort of irony he was compelled to take orders and made bishop of Cotyaeum  in  Phrygia.  His first sermon, which  his  malicious congregation forced him to preach against his will on Christmas Day, is delectable, and shows the readiness of the man:

“Brethren, let the birth of God, our Saviour, Jesus Christ be honoured by silence, because he was conceived in the holy virgin through hearing only.  To the Word itself be glory for ever and ever, Amen”.

The two most important acts of Theodosius were the foundation of a university at Constantinople and the compilation of the code called after his name. The inauguration of the university was an important measure for Byzantine life, and indicates the enlightenment of Theodosius’ reign. It was intended to supersede the university of Athens, the head­quarters of paganism—with which, however, the government preferred not to interfere directly—and thereby to further the cause of Christianity. This negative effect was expected, and did to a certain extent follow. The Latin language was repre­sented by ten grammarians or philologists and three rhetors, the Greek likewise by ten grammarians, but by five rhetors or sophists; one chair of philosophy was endowed and two chairs of jurisprudence. Thus the Greek language had two more chairs than the Latin, and this fact may be cited as marking a stage in the Graecisation of the eastern half of the Roman Empire.

In the year 429 Theodosius determined to form a collection of all the constitutions issued by the “renowned Constantine, the divine Emperors who succeeded him, and ourselves”. The new code was to be drawn up on the model of the Gregorian and Hermogenian codes, and the execution of the work was entrusted to a commission of nine persons, among whom was Apelles, professor of law at the new university. In 438 the work was completed and published, but during the intervening years the members of the commission had changed; of the eight who are mentioned in the edict which accompanied the final publication only two, Antiochus and Theodoras, were among the original workers, and a constitution of 435, which conferred full powers on the committee for the consummation of the work, mentions sixteen compilers, contextores.

The new codex was issued conjointly by Theodosius and Valentinian, and it impressed a sort of seal on the unity of the Empire (15th February 438). The visit of the younger Emperor to Constantinople on the occasion of his marriage with Eudoxia facilitated this co-operation. On 23d December of the same year, at a meeting of the senate of Old Rome, the code which had been drawn up by the lawyers of New Rome was publicly recognised, and an official account of the proceedings on that occasion—gesta in senatu Urbis Romae de recipiendo Codice Theodosiano—may still be read. The praetorian prefect and consul of the year, Anicius Acilius Glabrio Faustus, spoke as follows:

“The felicity of the eternal Emperors proceeds so far as to adorn with the ornaments of peace those whom it defends by warfare. Last year when we loyally attended the celebration of the most fortunate of all ceremonies, and when the marriage had been happily concluded, the most sacred Prince, our Lord Theodosius, was fain to add this dignity also to his world, and ordered the precepts of the laws to be collected and drawn up in a compendious form of sixteen books, which he wished to be consecrated by his most sacred name. Which thing the eternal Prince, our Lord Valentinian, approved with the loyalty of a colleague and the affection of a son”.

And all the senators cried out in the usual form, “well spoken!”. But instead of following the course of the gesta in the Roman senate house, it will be more instructive to read the imperial constitution which introduced the great code to the Roman world.

"The Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, Augusti, to Florentius, Praetorian Prefect of the East.

"Our clemency has often been at a loss to understand the cause of the fact, that, when so many rewards are held out for the maintenance of arts and (liberal) studies, so few are found who are endowed with a full knowledge of the Civil Law, and even they so seldom; we are astonished that amid so many whose faces have grown pale from late elucubrations hardly one or two have attained to sound and complete learning.

“When we consider the enormous multitude of books, the diverse modes of process and the difficulty of legal cases, and further the huge mass of imperial constitutions, which hidden as it were under a veil of gross mist and darkness precludes men's intellects from gaining a knowledge of them, we feel that we have met a real need of our age, and dis­pelling the darkness have given light to the laws by a short compendium. We selected noble men of approved faith, lawyers of well-known learning; and clearing the interpretation of all difficulties, we have published the constitutions of our predecessors, so that men may no longer have to await formidable Responses from expert lawyers as from an inner shrine, when it is really quite plain what action is to be adopted in suing for an inheritance, or what is to be the weight of a donation. These details, unveiled by the assiduity of the learned, have been brought into open day under the radiant splendour of our name.

“Nor let those to whom we have consigned the divine secrets of our heart imagine that they have obtained a poor reward. For if our mind's eye rightly foresees the future, their names will descend to posterity linked with ours.

“Thus having wiped away the cloud of volumes, on which many wasted their lives and explained nothing in the end, we establish a compendious knowledge of the Imperial constitutions since the time of the divine Constantine, and allow no one after the first day of next January to use any authority in the practice of law except these books which bear our name and are kept in the sacred bureaux. None of the older Emperors however has been deprived of his eternity, the name of no issuer of a constitution has fallen to the ground; nay rather they enjoy a borrowed light in that their august decrees are associated with us. The glory of the originators, duly refined (filed), remains and will remain for ever; nor has any brilliance passed thereby to our name except the light of brevity.

“And though the undertaking of the whole work was due to our auspicious initiation, we nevertheless deemed it more worthy of the imperial majesty and more illustrious, to put envy to flight and allow the memory of the authors to survive perennially. It is enough and more than enough to satisfy our consciences, that we have unveiled the laws and redeemed the works of our ancestors from the injury of obscurity.

“To this we add that henceforward no constitution can be passed in the West or in any other place, by the unconquerable Emperor, the son of our clemency, the everlasting Augustus, Valentinian, or possess any validity, except the same by a divine pragmatica be communicated to us.

“The same precaution is to be observed in the acts which are promul­gated by us in the East; and those are to be condemned as spurious which are not recorded in the Theodosian Code, excepting special documents in the official bureaux.

“It would be a long tale to relate all that has been contributed to the completion of this work by the labours of Antiochus, the all-sublime ex-prefect and consul; by the illustrious Maximin, ex-quaestor of our palace, eminent in all departments of literature; by the illustrious Martyrius, count and quaestor, the faithful interpreter of our clemency; by SperantiusApollodorus, and Theodore, all respectable men and counts of our sacred consistory; by the respectable Epigenes, count and magister memoriae; by the respectable Procopius, count, formerly magister libellorum. These men may be compared to any of the ancients.

“It remains, O Florentius, most dear and affectionate relation, for your illustrious and magnificent authority, whose delight and constant practice is to please Emperors, to cause the decrees of our August Majesty to come to the knowledge of all peoples and all provinces.

Date 15 February at Constantinople” (A.D. 438).

We have already referred to the fact that a marriage was arranged between the young princess Eudoxia and the youthful Emperor, Valentinian III, her second cousin. It was celebrated in 437 at Constantinople, whither the bridegroom came for the occasion. After the departure of her daughter the Empress probably felt lonely, and she undertook, in accordance with her husband's wishes, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to return thanks to the Deity for the marriage of their daughter. In this decision they seem to have been confirmed by a saintly lady of high reputation, Melana by name, a Roman of noble family, who had been forced into a marriage repugnant to her, and had afterwards, along with her husband, whom she converted to Christianity, taken up her abode at first in the land of Egypt, where she founded monastic houses, and then at Jerusalem. She had visited Constantinople to see her uncle Volusian, whom she converted before his death, and, moving in the most exalted society of the capital, she exercised considerable influence even over the Emperor and his household. The journey of Eudocia to Jeru­salem (in spring 438) was marked by her visit to Antioch, where she created a great effect by the elegant Greek oration which she delivered, posing rather as one trained in Greek rhetoric and animated with Hellenic traditions and proud of her Athenian descent, than as a pilgrim to the great Christian shrine. Although there was a large element of theological bigotry both in Antioch and in Alexandria, yet in both these cities there was probably more appreciation of Hellenic style and polish than in Constantinople. The last words of Eudocia's oration brought down the house—a quotation from Homer,

                           “I boast that I am of your race and blood”.  

The city that hated and mocked the Emperor Julian and his pagan Hellenism loved and feted the Empress Eudocia with her Christian Hel­lenism; a golden statue was erected to her in the curia and one of bronze in the museum. Her interest in Antioch took a practical form, for she induced Theodosius to erect a new basilica, restore the thermae (hot baths), extend the walls, and bestow other marks of favour on the city.

Eudocia's visit to Aelia Capitolina, as Jerusalem was called, brings to the recollection the visit of Constantine's mother Helena, one hundred years before, and, although Christianity had lost some of its freshness in the intervening period, it must have been a strange and impressive experience for one whose youth was spent amid the heathen memories and philosophers' gardens of Athens, and who in New Rome, with its museums of ancient art and its men of many creeds, had not been entirely weaned from the ways and affections of her youth, to visit, with all the solemnity of an exalted Christian pilgrim, a city whose memories were typically and diametrically opposed to Hellenism, a city whose monuments were the bones and relics of saints. It was probably only this ideal side that came under Eudocia's notice; for Jerusalem at this period was a strange mixture of idealism with gross realism—it was double in character as it was double in name. The Christian reminiscences which affected Eudocia were the rich hangings in a more than homely house; epicurism and lust made it "more like a tavern or a brothel than a graced palace". We are told by an ecclesiastical writer of the age that it was more depraved than Gomorrah; and the fact that it was a garrison town had something to do with this depravity.

The fall of Eudocia took place soon after her return, but although a circumstantial story is told about it, historians are all inclined to treat it as a legend, and the matter seems shrouded in impenetrable obscurity. It is best to relate the story in the words of the earliest chronicler who records it.

“It so happened that as the Emperor Theodosius was proceeding to the church in sanctis theophaniis, the master of offices, Paulinus, being indisposed on account of an ailment in his foot, remained at home and made an excuse. But a certain poor man brought to Theodosius a Phrygiatic apple, of enormously large size, and the Emperor was surprised at it, and all his court (senate). And straightway the Emperor gave 150 nomismata to the man who brought the apple, and sent it to Eudocia Augusta; and the Augusta sent it to Paulinus, the master of offices, as being a friend of the Emperor. But Paulinus, not being aware that the Emperor had sent it to the Empress, took it and sent it to the Emperor Theodosius, even as he entered the Palace. And when the Emperor received it he recognised it and concealed it. And having called Augusta, he questioned her, saying, ‘Where is the apple that I sent you?’. And she said, ‘I ate it’. Then he caused her to swear the truth by his salvation, whether she ate it or sent it to someone; and she swore, ‘I sent it unto no man but I ate it’. And the Emperor commanded the apple to be brought and showed it to her. And he was indignant against her, suspecting that she was enamoured of Paulinus and sent him the apple, and denied it. And on this account Theodosius put Paulinus to death. And the Empress Eudocia was grieved, and thought herself insulted, for it was known everywhere that Paulinus was slain on account of her, for he was a very handsome young man. And she asked the Emperor that she might go to the holy places to pray; and he allowed her. And she went clown from Constantinople to Jerusalem to pray”.

Gregorovius remarks that Eudocia's apple of Phrygia eludes criticism as completely as Eve's apple of Eden, but perhaps both may be explicable as having arisen from the language of oriental metaphor.  We know on good evidence that the magister officiorum Paulinus was put to death by Theodosius' command in 440; and history seems entitled to draw the conclusion that it was probably a charge, whether true or false, of a criminal attachment to the beautiful Paulinus that led to the disgrace of the Empress and the execution of the minister. It would be unwarrantable to ascribe this affair to machinations of the eunuch Chrysaphius, whose influence began about this time, and who is said to have been in league with Eudocia to bring about the decline of Pulcheria's influence. Pulcheria retired from court to Hebdomon at this period. These court intrigues, scarcely more than hinted at by our authorities, are very slippery ground, and we must beware of that tendency among modern as well as ancient historians to attribute on all occasions unprincipled acts to eunuchs.

For two or three years after the death of Paulinus, the Empress remained at Constantinople; in what relation she stood to the Emperor, whether she was partially reconciled or quite estranged, we know not. It is possible that the affair of Paulinus may have been forgotten, and that her retirement to Jerusalem in 443 was either voluntary or the result of some web of intrigue spun perhaps by the eunuch Chrysaphius. However this may have been, a messenger of Theodosius' displeasure or jealousy, the count of the bodyguard, Saturninus, followed her to Jerusalem, and “slew the priest Severus and the deacon Johannes who served the Empress Eudocia in the town of Aelia”. Eudocia avenged this act by permitting the death of Saturninus; the words of the best authority would lead us to suppose that she caused him to be assassinated, but it has been suggested that officious servants or an indignant mob may have too hastily anticipated her supposed wishes. Then, by her husband's command, she was compelled to disquantify her train, and she remained at Aelia, where she was destined to die.

When Theodosius died, of a spinal injury caused by a fall from his horse, in 450 (28th July), leaving only one daughter, Eudoxia, the wife of Valentinian III, the difficulty of the succession to the throne was solved by the Empress Pulcheria, who became the nominal wife of Marcian, an able senator and soldier. We read that on his deathbed Theodosius said to Marcian, in the presence of Aspar, the general, and all the senators, "It has been revealed to me that you will reign after me." Thus a capable successor was secured and the Theodosian dynasty formally preserved. The first act of the new reign was the execution of Chrysaphius, the obnoxious eunuch, whose influence with Theodosius had been on the decline for some time before his death. It is significant that Chrysaphius had favoured the green faction of the circus, and that Marcian patronised the Blues, while at the same time the new reign was attended with a religious reaction against the monophysitic heresy, which Theodosius had been inclined to favour.

Marcian belonged to the senatorial party of reform, which at the beginning of Theodosius' reign was led by Anthemius; and we are told that his reign and that of his successor Leo were a period of profound calm, a sort of golden interval, all the more striking when contrasted with the storms which preceded the dismemberment of the Empire in the West. The good policy of these sovereigns consisted in paying regard to the condition of their subjects and alleviating the pressure of taxes as far as Roman fiscal principles would permit, in assisting them from the imperial treasury when unwonted calamities befell, in keeping the expenses of the court within reasonable limits. Marcian in particular did away with the follis, which pressed heavily on the higher classes; he confined the burdensome office of the praetura to residents in the capital, and made its burden lighter by compelling the consuls to share the expenses of building with the praetors. Leo, Zeno, and Anastasius pursued more or less the same policy; for the financial difficulties in which the Empire was involved during the last thirty years of the century were greatly due to the mismanagement of the expensive naval expedition of Leo against the Vandals, as will be explained in due course. At this period of the world heaven was often wroth; earthquakes were frequent and cities were constantly laid in ruins by these divine visitations (theomenia). The Emperors always exhibited a laudable solicitude to repair these losses.

One of Marcian's first acts at once reduced the expenses of the treasury, and redounded to the dignity of the Roman name. Attila sent an embassy demanding the tribute which he had been wont to receive, and Marcian refused to pay it. This refusal would have involved a war, if it had been made some years before, but Attila was already preparing to overwhelm the West, and was interfering in the politics of the Franks. Marcian was doubtless well informed of the state of Attila's affairs, and knew he could refuse with impunity.

The only event of striking importance in the East during this reign was the council of Chalcedon (451), which finally decided the orthodox Christian doctrine as to the natures of Christ; of this something will be said in another place. Pulcheria died in 453, having earned by her pious and charitable works the eulogies of the Church; Marcian died in the first month of 457, and with him the Theodosian house, of which he may be considered a representative, as being the husband of Pulcheria, ceased to reign at New Rome.

 

VI

BEGINNINGS  OF THE  DISMEMBERMENT  OF  THE  EMPIRE

 

Alaric's brother-in-law Athaulf (Adolphus) succeeded him (410), and the Visigoths remained in Italy for two years longer, spoiling the land. In 412 they came to an understanding with Honorius, and Athaulf engaged to suppress the tyrants who had risen up in Gaul. This leads us to record the events which had agitated the Gallic provinces during the preceding six years.

The noteworthy circumstance about the events of these years, which were decisive for the future of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was that two series of phenomena were going on at the same time, to some extent side by side and without clashing, but mutually conditioning and limiting one another. These two series of events are the rise of usurpers and the invasion of barbarians; and it seems that the same conditions which favoured the dismemberment of the western provinces by the Teutons favoured also the enterprise of illegitimate aspirants to the purple.

Up to the year 406 the Rhine was maintained as the frontier of the Roman Empire against the numerous barbarian races and tribes that swarmed uneasily in central Europe. From the Flavian Emperors until the time of Probus (282), the great military line from Coblenz to Kehlheim on the Danube had been really defended, though often overstepped and always a strain on the Romans, and thus a tract of territory (including Baden and Wurtemberg) on the east shore of the Upper Rhine, the titheland as it was called, belonged to the Empire. But in the fourth century it was as much as could be done to keep off the Alemanni and Franks who were threatening the provinces of Gaul. The victories of Julian and Valentinian produced only temporary effects. On the last day of December 406 a vast company of Vandals, Suevians, and Alans crossed the Rhine. The frontier was not really defended; a handful of Franks who professed to guard it for the Romans were easily swept aside, and the invaders desolated Gaul at pleasure for the three following years. Such is the bare fact which the chroniclers tell us, but this migration seems to have been preceded by considerable movements on a large scale along the whole Rhine frontier, and these movements may have agitated the inhabitants of Britain, and excited apprehensions there of approaching danger. Three tyrants had been recently elected by the legions in rapid succession; the first two, Marcus and Gratian, were slain, but the third Augustus, who bore the auspicious name of Constantine, was destined to play a considerable part for a year or two on the stage of the western world.

It seems almost certain that these two movements, the passage of the Germans across the Rhine and the rise of the tyrants in Britain, were not without causal connection; and it also seems certain that both events were connected with the general Stilicho. The tyrants were elevated in the course of the year 406, and it was at the end of the same year that the Vandals crossed the Rhine. Now the revolt of the legions in Britain was evidently aimed against Stilicho, as the revolt of Maximus had been aimed against Merobaudes; there was a Roman spirit alive in the northern island, which was jealous of the growth of German influence. There is direct contemporary evidence, to which I have referred in a preceding chapter, that it was by Stilicho's invitation that the barbarians invaded Gaul; he thought that when they had done the work for which he designed them he would find no difficulty in crushing them or otherwise disposing of them. We can hardly avoid supposing that the work which he wished them to perform was to oppose the tyrant of Britain—Constantine, or Gratian, or Marcus, whoever was tyrant then; for it was quite certain that, like Maximus, he would pass into Gaul, where numerous Gallo-Roman adherents would flock to his standards. Stilicho died before Constantine was crushed, and the barbarians whom he had so lightly summoned were still in the land, harrying Gaul, destined soon to harry and occupy Spain and seize Africa. From a Roman point of view Stilicho had much to answer for in the dismemberment of the Empire; from a Teutonic point of view, he contributed largely to preparing the way for the foundation of the German kingdoms.

The first act of the tyrant Constantine was to cross with all his military forces into Gaul, which sorely needed a defender to expel the barbarians who were harrying it, or, failing that, to protect the Rhine frontier against new invaders. He inflicted a severe defeat on the intruders, though he did not expel them; and, according to Zosimus, he guarded the Rhine more securely than it had been guarded since the reign of Julian. The representatives of the rule of Honorius, the praetorian prefect Limenius and the general Chariobaudes, fled into Italy probably soon after the arrival of the usurper from Britain, and Constantine passed into the south-eastern provinces which had escaped the devastations of the barbarians. "For two years," writes Mr. Freeman, "they and he both carry on operations in Gaul, each, it would seem, without any interruption from the other. And when the scene of action is moved from Gaul to Spain, each party carries on its operations there also with as little of mutual let or hindrance. It was most likely only by winking at the presence of the invaders and at their doings that Constantine obtained possession, so far as Roman troops and Roman administration were concerned, of all Gaul from the Channel to the Alps. Certain it is that at no very long time after his landing, before the end of the year 407, he was possessed of it. But at that moment no Roman prince could be possessed of much authority in central or western Gaul, where Vandals, Suevians, and Alans were ravaging at pleasure. The dominion of Constantine must have consisted of a long and narrow strip of eastern Gaul, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, which could not have differed very widely from the earliest and most extended of the many uses of the word Lotharingia. He held the imperial city on the Mosel, the home of Valentinian and the earlier Constantine."

When Constantine obtained possession of Arelate, then the most prosperous city of Gaul, it was time for Honorius and his general to rouse themselves. Stilicho formed the design of assigning to Alaric the task of subduing the adventurer from Britain, who had conferred upon his two sons, Constans, a monk, and Julian, the titles of caesar and nobilissimus respectively. But this design was not carried out. A Goth indeed, and a brave Goth, but not Alaric, crossed the Alps to recover the usurped provinces; and Sarus defeated the army which was sent by Constantine to oppose him. But he failed to take Valentia, and was obliged to return to Italy without having accomplished his purpose (408).

The next movement of Constantine was to occupy Spain. It is not necessary for us to follow Mr. Freeman in his account of the difficult and obscure operations which were carried on between the kinsmen of Theodosius and the troops which the Caesar Constans and his lieutenant Gerontius led across the Pyrenees. It is sufficient to notice the main point, which Mr. Freeman has made out, that we are not justified in accepting the version of the story which states that the representatives of the Theodosian house were engaged in defending the northern frontier of the peninsula against the Vandals and their fellow-plunderers before Con­stantine attempted to occupy it. The defenders of Spain were overcome, and Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza) became the seat of the Roman Caesar.    Thus in the realm of Constantine almost all the lands composing the Gallic prefecture were included; he might claim to be the lord of Britain, which he had left masterless; the province of Tingitana, beyond the Straits of Gades, was the only province that had obeyed Limenius and did not in theory obey Constantine.

Constans, however, was soon recalled to Gaul by his father, and elevated to the rank of Augustus. But Constantine himself meanwhile, possessing the power of an Emperor, was not wholly content; he desired also to be acknowledged as a colleague by the son of Theodosius, and become, as it were, legitimised. He sent an embassy for this purpose to Ravenna, and Honorius, hampered at the time by the presence of Alaric, was too weak to refuse the pacific proposals. Thus Constantine was recognised as an Augustus and an imperial brother by the legitimate Emperor; but the fact that the re­cognition was extorted and soon repudiated, combined with the fact that he was never acknowledged by the other Augustus at New Rome, justifies history in refusing to recognise as the third Constantine the invader from Britain who ruled at Arelate. Some time afterwards another embassy, of whose purpose we are not informed, arrived at Ravenna, and Constantine promised to assist his colleague Honorius against Alaric, who was threatening Rome. Perhaps what Honorius was to do in return for the proffered assistance was to permit the sovereign of Gaul to assume the consulship. In any case it was suspected that Constantine aspired to add Italy to his realm as he had added Spain, and that the subjugation of Alaric was only a pretext for his entering Italy, as it might have been said that the subjugation of the Vandals and their fellow-invaders had been only a pretext for his entering Gaul. A high official, Allobich, master of the horse, was also suspected of favouring the designs of the usurper, and the suspicion, whether true or false, cost him his life; Honorius caused him to be assassinated. When this took place Constantine was already in Italy, and the fact that when the news reached him he immediately recrossed the mountains, strongly suggests that the suspicion was true, and that he depended on the treason of the master of horse for the success of his Italian designs.

Constans had left the general Gerontius in charge of Spain, and the error was committed—it is not clear whether through a want of judgment on the part of Gerontius or of Constans—of substituting barbarian mercenaries for the Spanish legions to defend the Pyrenees. This unwise act produced an insurrection of the legions; the barbarian soldiers indulged in unlawful plunder; and Constans was sent back to Spain to restore order. Blame seems to have been thrown on Gerontius, and the Augusti resolved to supersede him by the appointment of a certain Justus; but Gerontius was not of a spirit to submit tamely. He rose against the usurper whom he had supported, and, though he did not assume the purple himself, raised up a new Emperor—a tyrant against a tyrant—in the person of Maximus, who was perhaps his own son. For a while there were six Emperors, legitimate or illegitimate, ruling over parts of the Roman Empire, even as there had been one hundred years before. Besides Theodosius ruling at New Rome and Honorius at Ravenna, there were Constantine and his son Constans at Arelate; there was Attalus at Old Rome, who had been set up by Alaric; and Maximus at Tarragona, who had been set up by Gerontius.

This act of Gerontius, although both he and the Emperor he made soon vanished from the scene, led to important consequences. In order to hold out against the old usurper, the new usurper adopted the momentous course of inviting the Vandals, Suevians, and Alans, who for three years had been ravaging Gaul, to pass into Spain. This act led to the loss of Spain; it led also to the loss of Africa. And thus we may say that it was the loss or abandonment of Britain in 407 that led to the further loss of Spain and Africa. Africa would not have been conquered by the Vandals if they had not passed into Spain; Spain would not have become the possession of Vandals and Suevians, to be afterwards the realm of the Visigoths, if Gerontius had not revolted and invited them to enter; the revolt of Gerontius and his presence in Spain were a direct consequence of the "tyranny" of Constantine; and the tyranny of Constantine in Gaul and Spain depended upon his abandoning Britain. It is really worthy of notice how the loss of the furthest outlying of the Roman conquests in the West was followed by this curious series of effects; and how when the Roman armies retired from the Britannic borders, the retreat did not cease even at the Pillars of Hercules.

It may be noticed here that Britain was not yet forgotten. We learn that Honorius, when Alaric retired from besieging Ravenna, wrote letters to the cities of Britain, bidding them defend themselves, perhaps against Saxon enemies.

Constans soon fled before Gerontius and his new allies; and while Maximus reigned in state at Tarraco, his maker, if not his father, marched into Gaul against the father and son, who had been once his masters. Constans was speedily captured at Vienna and put to death; and the victor, marching down the Rhone, laid siege to Arelate.

Meanwhile Honorius had sent an army under the command of Constantius and Ulfilas to do what Sarus had failed to do before and win back "the Gauls." Thus Constantine was menaced on the one hand by the general of a usurper and on the other hand by the general of the lawful Emperor. Before the representatives of legitimacy the blockading army fled, and Gerontius returned to Spain, to meet death there at the hands of his own troops. The house in which he took refuge was set on fire; he and his Alan squire fought long and bravely against the besiegers; and at length in despair he slew his squire and his wife Nunechia, at their own request, and then stabbed himself.

Thus besiegers in the interest of Honorius replaced the besiegers in the interest of Maximus at Arelate, where Constantine and his second son Julian held out. For more than three months the siege wore on, and the hopes of the usurper depended upon the arrival of Edobich, his Frankish master of soldiers (it is to be presumed he held this title), who had been sent to engage barbarian  reinforcements beyond  the Rhine.

Edobich at length returned with a formidable army, and a battle was fought near the city, which resulted in a victory for the besiegers. Edobich was slain by the treachery of a friend in whose house he sought shelter, and Constantine, seeing that his crown was irrecoverably lost, thought only of saving his life. "He fled to a sanctuary, where he was ordained priest, and the victors gave a sworn guarantee for his personal safety. Then the gates of the city were thrown open to the besiegers, and Constantine was sent with his son to Honorius. But that Emperor, cherishing resentment towards them for his cousins, whom Constantine had slain, violated the oaths and ordered them to be put to death, thirty miles from Ravenna." (September 411)

But Constantine and Constans were not the only adventurers who called themselves Emperors in Gaul in the year 411. While the army of Constantine was still blockading Arelate, Jovinus, a Gallo-Roman, was proclaimed at Moguntiacum (Mainz). Like Attalus, he was set up by barbarians, but by barbarians farther from the pale of civilisation than Alaric. Gundicar, the king of the Burgundians—prototype of the Gunther of the Nibelungen—and Goar, a chief of the Alans, were the makers of this Emperor, and his elevation was intimately connected with the occupation of the Middle Rhine by the Burgundians. We know not how it was that Constantius and Ulfilas, the victors of Arles, returned to Italy without striking a blow against the other tyrant who had arisen on the Rhine, ere he had yet gathered strength. But the subjugation of Jovinus was reserved, not for the Roman general, but for his rival in war and love, the Visigothic king.

At the beginning of 412 Athaulf and his Goths abandon Italy and pass into Gaul, just as four years before Alaric had abandoned Illyricum and passed into Italy; the Visigoths were inevitably drawn to the shores of the Atlantic. It is sometimes represented that Athaulf crossed the Alps as the bearer of a commission from Honorius to suppress the tyrant Jovinus, but this was not so. Athaulf had come to no understanding with the court of Ravenna; he carried the captive Placidia with him, against her own will and the will of her brother, and he was far more disposed to side with Jovinus against Honorius than with Honorius against Jovinus. An accident decided that he was to be the champion of the legitimate Emperor

Attalus, the ex-Emperor, who was to become a sham Emperor once more, was in the train of the Visigoths, and his persuasions induced Athaulf to march to Mainz, that he might co-operate with the tyrant. But it appears that the arrival of this unexpected help was not so welcome to the Augustus who reigned on the Rhine as the Visigoths might have hoped, and Jovinus blamed Attalus in dark sayings as the cause of the presence of an ungrateful supporter. Why the prince who had been elevated by one Teutonic king disliked the support of another is not clear; but perhaps he had already entered into friendly negotiations with Sarus, that Visigoth whom he saw acting with partial success against Constantine, and who was the mortal enemy of Athaulf as he had been the mortal enemy of Alaric. Sarus certainly arrived on the scene at this juncture with about a score of followers to attach himself to the fortunes of Jovinus; the feeble and prejudiced Honorius, who was unable to retain his best officers, had refused to grant him justice for the murder of a faithful domestic. The feuds of the West Goths proved favourable to the cause of legitimacy; Athaulf was incensed when he heard of the approach of Sarus, and advanced with ten thousand to crush twenty soldiers. Hardly was Sarus, after having performed deeds of marvellous heroism, taken alive; his relentless conqueror put him to death.

A quarrel soon ensued between Athaulf and Jovinus and the latter defied the desires and injunctions of the former by proclaiming his brother Sebastian Augustus. Then Athaulf decided to war against him whom he had come to assist, and defend the rights of the Emperor whom he had intended to oppose. He sent envoys to Honorius, promising to send him the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian, and he seems to have been so prompt that when the ambassadors returned Sebastian was already crushed.

It is not clear how far the Roman prefect Dardanus, who had resolutely opposed the tyranny of the man who was set up by the Burgundians, influenced Athaulf’s change of attitude, but it is clear that once Athaulf had turned against the tyrant he co-operated with Dardanus. Jovinus fled from Mainz on the Rhine to Valence on the Rhone, but soon surrendered to the Visigoths who blockaded him, and was executed by Dardanus at Narbonne (autumn 413). His head, and that of his brother, were exposed at New Carthage in Spain, to assert in that troubled country the might of the Empire and the Theodosian house.

Before following further the actions of Athaulf in Gaul, we must turn for a moment to Africa and notice the revolt of Count Heraclian, whose rebellion, by the express testimony of a contemporary, was influenced by the examples of usurpation which he had observed in Gaul. The man who, three years before, had resisted so staunchly the proposals of Attalus and the threats of Alaric, and stood by the throne of Honorius, was now seized by the infectious disease of tyranny and threatened his sovereign without provocation. With an immense fleet, whose numbers even at the time were grossly exaggerated, he sailed to Italy, but was almost immediately defeated, and fled back to Africa to find its provinces prepared to reject him. He was slain at Carthage about the same time that Jovinus was slain at Narbo.

This revolt in Africa was partly influenced by recent events in Gaul, and it also exercised in turn an influence on affairs there. The great aim of Honorius, whose mental horizon was bounded by his family and his poultry-yard, was to recover his sister Placidia from the hands of the Visigoth, and this desire was ardently shared by his influential general Constantius, who aspired to the hand of the princess. Accordingly negotiations were carried on with Athaulf, who demanded that he and his people should be supplied with corn, and, as a consequence thereof, be recognised as dependants of the Roman Empire. To this Honorius and Constantius agreed; but Africa was the corn chamber of Italy, and when Heraclian revolted and inhibited the transport of supplies, it became impossible to fulfil the engagement with Athaulf. He therefore refused to fulfil his part of the treaty, and seized the three most im­portant towns of south-western Gaul, Narbo Martius, Tolosa, and Burdigala (Bordeaux) the city of the poet Ausonius. He also made an attempt to take Massilia, which he hoped might fall by treachery; but it was defended by "the most noble Boniface," who was afterwards to play a more ambiguous and more conspicuous part in Africa, and Athaulf himself was wounded wellnigh to death by a stroke which the Roman dealt him.

The assault on Massilia seems to have taken place in one of the latest months of 413, and almost immediately after it Athaulf determined to give himself a new status by marrying his captive, the Roman princess. Whether he had meditated this design before we are not told; but doubtless its execution at this juncture partly depended on the lady herself. It was celebrated in January 414 at Narbonne, in the house of one Ingenius, a lead­ing citizen; and the pride of Constantius in his first consulship was spoiled for him by the news that the lady whom he loved was the bride of a barbarian. We are told how, arrayed in the dress of a Roman and a royal bride, Placidia sat in the hall of the citizen of Narbo, and how Athaulf sat beside her, he too dressed as a Roman. With other nuptial gifts the Visigoth gave his queen fifty comely youths, apparelled in silk, each bearing two large chargers in his hands, filled one with gold, the other with priceless gems—the spoils of Rome. They had an ex-Emperor to pronounce an epithalamium, and Attalus was assisted by other Romans. The marriage festivities were celebrated with common hilarity by barbarians and Romans alike.

A contemporary writer has recorded words spoken by Athaulf, which throw light on his attitude to the Empire. "At first," he said, "I ardently desired that the Roman name should be obliterated, and that all Roman soil should be converted into an empire of the Goths; I longed that Romania should become Gothia and Athaulf be what Caesar Augustus was. But I have been taught by much experience that the unbridled licence of the Goths will never admit of their obeying laws, and without laws a republic is not a republic. I have therefore chosen the safer course of aspiring to the glory of restoring and increasing the Roman name by Gothic vigour; and I hope to be handed down to posterity as the initiator of a Roman restoration, as it is impossible for me to change the form of the Empire."

The birth of a son, Theodosius, who died in infancy, rendered the sentiments of Athaulf still more Roman; but Honorius and Constantius were disposed to reject his friendly advances. Moved by resentment or policy, Athaulf, who had put down the tyrant Jovinus, set up the tyrant Attalus, the same who had been created Augustus by Alaric in 409, and was always ready to be made or unmade as it suited his Gothic friends. In the following year we find Constantius at Arelate, determined to drive his enemy from Gaul into Spain, and preventing all ships from reaching the coast of Septimania. Athaulf, taking his Emperor Attalus, complied with the wishes of the general and moved southward along the coast to Barcelona, where it was destined that the death of Sarus should be avenged. Unsuspectingly and unwisely he had received into his service a certain Dubius, one of the followers of Sarus, who avenged his first master by slaying his second master. The king had gone to the stable, as was his custom, to look after his own horses, and the servant, who had long waited for a favourable opportunity, stabbed him (September 415). Perhaps the assassin had been encouraged to commit this deed by Singeric, the brother of Sarus, who immediately seized the royalty, and put to death the children of the dead king, tearing them from the arms of the bishop Sigesar, to whose protection they had fled for refuge. Placidia herself, whose husband had killed and whose brother had offended Sarus, was compelled by the brother of Sarus to walk on foot in the company of captives. But Singeric's reign endured only for seven days; he was slain and succeeded by Wallia.

The new king was not disposed to adopt the policy of Athaulf and assume a pacific attitude towards Rome. The historian, who wrote two years later, informs us that "he was elected by the Goths just for the purpose of breaking the peace, while God ordained him for the purpose of confirming it." His first act, apparently at the beginning of 416, was to organise an expedition against Africa; but it was not destined that the Visigoths should set foot there. Alaric had essayed the sea just before his death and could not reach Sicily; even so the ships of Wallia were shattered in the Straits of Gades. The object of Wallia was probably the same as the object of Alaric—he was pressed by want of supplies of corn. This ill-success had the fortunate effect of changing his policy. “Alarmed at the loss of a large body of Goths, who had perished last year by the storm in the straits, attempting to cross into Africa, he concluded a treaty with Honorius and honourably restored Placidia, engaging to undertake for the Romans the war against the barbarians in Spain.  So far we are told that the Alani, the Vandals, and the Suevi are destroying one another, and it is said that Wallia is very anxious to bring about a peace”.

The conditions of this peace of 416 were that the Romans on their part should supply Wallia with corn; that Wallia on his part should restore Placidia, should give up the tyrant Attalus, and should fight in Spain against the barbarians who had occupied it. During the lifetime of Athaulf such a treaty could not have been concluded, the narrow-minded Honorius, who held fast by the Roman pride of family, would never have recognised a king of the Visigoths as his brother-in-law, and rivalry in love placed a barrier between the husband and the suitor of Placidia. Placidia might now be restored without detriment to Gothic honour.

Attalus escaped in a ship, and tried to elude the vigilance of the Romans, but he was captured and delivered alive to Constantius. In the eleventh consulship of Honorius and the second of Constantius, the Emperor entered Rome in triumph, with Attalus at the wheels of his chariot. He punished the inveterate and harmless tyrant by maiming him of a finger and thumb, and condemning him to the same fate that he had wished to inflict upon himself. Honorius had doubtless not forgotten how Attalus demanded, with an air of patronising clemency, that the son of Theodosius should retire to some small island, and he now banished his prisoner to Lipara. If the consulate of Honorius was sweetened by the triumph over Attalus, the second consulate of Constantius was sweetened for him by attainment to the object of his hopes, the hand of Placidia, even as his first consulate, three years ago, had been embittered by her marriage with Athaulf. On the first day of January she married him against her own will, by the constraint of her brother. The marriage was followed by the birth of two children, Honoria in 418 and Valentinian III in 419 (3d July).

A personal description of the Count and Patrician Constantius, now the most influential minister of Honorius, the brother-in-law of the Emperor, and destined to be an Emperor himself, has come down to us from the pen of a contemporary writer, "When he walked in public," says Olympiodorus, "his eyes were downcast, and he looked askance; he had large eyes and a large neck and a flat head; when he rode, his whole body inclined over the neck of his steed, and he used to cast his eyes obliquely hither and thither; all deemed his appearance that of one who might aim at empire. At feasts and carouses he was amenable and sociable, descending even to vie with the mountebanks who performed for the guests." We can understand that Placidia was not attracted by this rough Roman. In 420 he entered upon his third consulate, and early in the following year was co-opted by Honorius and proclaimed Augustus, Placidia at the same time receiving the title Augusta, against whose assumption by his sister-in-law Eudoxia Honorius had protested more than twenty years ago.

We must now return to Spain, which we left in 409 when the barbarian, at the invitation of Gerontius, entered that fair land, rich in corn and crops, rich in mines of gold and precious stones. The four nations, the Vandal Asdings and the Vandal Silingis, the Suevians and the Alans, divided the land between them. The Suevians and the Asdings together occupied the north-western province of Gallaecia, the regions north of the Douro; the Alans took up their abode in Lusitania, the modern Portugal; and the Silingi obtained the southern lands of the Baetis, whose name was changed by the Saracen occupation, and is now called Guadalquiver. The eastern coast of the peninsula was not occupied by the invaders, and throughout the whole country the Spaniards were able to defend themselves in the cities; but the bloody harryings and devastations of the Germans soon forced the inhabitants to make a compro­mise, by which the natives retained the cities and the invaders possessed the open country.

Wallia's treaty with the Empire had been made before the month of June in 416. He marched against the barbarians of Spain before the year was over, and fought successfully against the conquerors of Lusitania and Baetica. The chief of the Silingian Vandals was sent to Honorius. In the following year, still fighting "for the Roman name," Romani nominis causa, he inflicted great slaughter upon the barbarians, and in 418 the Silingians were totally extinct through the valour of the Visigoth. Hispalis, Corduba, and Gades were at length delivered from the presence of a menacing foe. The Alans were not so completely exterminated, but their king Atax was killed, and the remnant of them who escaped the sword of Wallia fled to Gallaecia and submitted to Gunderic, the king of the Asdinman Vandals.

Thus Wallia the chief, who had been elected for the express purpose of reversing the policy of Athaulf and warring with the Romans, is by the stress of events found fighting for the Roman name, and carrying out the ideal which Athaulf professed to have set before himself—the ideal of restoring the Roman power by Gothic arms. He received his reward. He was not obnoxious to Constantius and Honorius, as the rival and brother-in-law had been; and they were ready to recompense him for his services in Spain, as they were unwilling to recompense Athaulf for his similar services in Gaul. It was apparently in the consulship of Monaxius and Plintha (419) that the compact was made by which the Empire granted to the Visigoths a permanent home in south-western Gaul. The whole province of Aquitania Secunda, the northern part of the province of Narbonensis and part of Novempopulania, formed the nucleus of the Visigothic kingdom, which was afterwards to include a larger portion of Gaul. Thus the two great cities that are built on the banks of the Garonne, Burdigala at its mouth, now Bordeaux, and Tolouse, were ruled over by Wallia and his successors; but Narbo Martius, on the  Mediterranean coast, was reserved by the prudence of Constantius, who was the author of this compact. This final settlement of the Visigoths—who had been able to find no home in Illyricum, nor yet in Italy—after many wanderings, was a momentous event; it was the beginning of that compromise between the Empire and the Teutons to which everything had been tending for many years. Constantius was herein the successor of Theodosius the Great and Stilicho; he carried out that in which they had failed. About the same time the same policy was adopted in regard to the Burgundians who had settled on the Middle Rhine; a definite territory was marked out for them, and they were re­cognised as dependent on the Empire.

It has been justly pointed out that this arrangement in regard to the Visigoths must have been acceptable to the Gallo-Roman inhabitants of those regions. In the year 418 an edict of Honorius—the work of Constantius—conferred local government on the inhabitants of the Seven Provinces; a representative council was to be held every year at Arelate; and we may assume that the government, solicitous for the welfare of those provinces, would not have imposed the Visigoths upon any one of them against the will of the inhabitants. In fact, is it not legitimate to assume that the settlement of the Goths and the measure which instituted a provincial assembly were closely connected?

The imperial government seems to have been deeply concerned for the state of southern Gaul, which had lately endured so much at the hands of tyrants and barbarians, and Constantius conceived the idea of combining a remedy with the solution of another problem. It was evident that the Visigoths must be allowed to occupy the lands which they had conquered for the Empire in Spain, or else receive an allotment of territory elsewhere. In any case the Roman Emperor would probably have hesitated to concede Spain, the land of gold mines, the land of Theodosius, to a German people; but perhaps the choice of south-western Gaul was influenced by the idea that the presence of the Visigoths might invigorate a declining region.

The Roman inhabitants of the provinces where the strangers settled would naturally be in a looser relation to the Empire; but it was important that the relation should not cease to exist. We can hardly then avoid seeing in the edict of Honorius of April 418 a very ingenious idea, intended not only to give new life to southern Gaul, but to enable the Empire to retain a hold on the lands which it was determined to surrender to the Goths. The idea consisted in relaxing the strict bonds of administration which connected all the Seven Provinces with the central government, by removing the imperial governors and allowing the inhabitants, as a dependent federation, to conduct their own affairs, for which purpose representatives of all the towns were to meet every year in Arles. Thus the Gallo-Romans of those provinces and towns, which were to pass into the hands of the Goths, would, without clashing with their masters, belong to a Roman political body, which was under imperial control.

It seems hardly possible to set aside the notion (although, as far as I know, it has never been put forward) that the rescript was drawn up with full consciousness on the part of Constantius that the Visigoths were to be settled in Gaul. That settlement cannot have been made on the spur of the moment; it must have received long and serious consideration, for it is represented by the consent of all our authorities as coming spon­taneously from the Patrician.

The scheme of representative government for the Seven Provinces, intended to multiply social relations, to increase commerce and healthy life, was not taken up with enthusiasm by the municipalities. If the idea had taken root the history of southern Gaul might have been different. "The city of Constantine," the little Rome of Gaul, where all the famous products of the rich Orient, of perfumed Arabia and of delicate Assyria, of fertile Africa, of fair Spain and of brave Gaul, abounded so profusely that one might have thought the various marvels of all the world were indigenous in its soil—Arelate, built at the union of the Rhone with the Tuscan sea, provided with all the facilities of trade, might have been the centre of a federation, able to have maintained a distinct Gallo-Roman life for many centuries, to have accelerated the civilisation of the Franks, and to have prevented the Asiatic stranger from ever crossing the Pyrenees.

After the Visigoths left Spain there was war between Gunderic, king of the Vandals, and Hermeric, king of the Suevians. The latter were blockaded in the Nervasian moun­tains; but suddenly Asterius, count of the Spains, appears upon the scene, and in consequence of his operations the Vandals abandoned their blockade of the Suevians. At Bracara a large number were slain by the Romans, and then they left Gallaecia and passed into the southern provinces of Baetica (420), which Wallia had cleared of their kinsmen two years before. Vigorous measures were now demanded if the Roman Emperor desired to save Spain, if the work of the Visigoths was not to be undone. The elevation of Constantius in February 4212 seemed of good augury for the interests of the Roman republic; but the third Constantius was not destined to wear the purple long. It is characteristic that he is said to have found the restraints attending imperial power intolerably irksome; he was not free to go and come as he used, when he was still a private individual. We shall see how this trait came out in his daughter Honoria. And his elevation was not without a bitter element. The announcement of his co-option was sent to Constantinople, but Theodosius refused to recognise him; and the new Augustus, indignant at the insult, prepared to force recognition by the sword. We are in the dark as to the motive of the hesitation of the ruler of New Rome to acquiesce in the choice of his uncle; it has been conjectured that he looked forward to the death of Honorius without heirs and the devolution of the western provinces upon himself. The warlike intentions of Constantius were fortunately not to be realised. After a reign of seven months he died of pleurisy (2d September). We know not whether it was at his suggestion that an expedition was undertaken in the following year (422) against the Vandals in Spain.  Castinus commanded this expedition; but all the expeditions which were sent at various times against the Vandals were destined to fail, until the days when the great Belisarius overcame Gelimer. The general Castinus fled before the enemy to Tarraco.

After the death of Constantius the relations between Honorius and his step-sister became close and tender, and slanderous tongues whispered that their kisses and endearments portended a criminal intimacy. But the sweetness was soon turned into gall. A cabal was formed, in which Leonteus, the steward of Placidia, and two of her women, Spadusa and Elpidia, played a prominent part in fostering suspicion and unkindness. There were frays in the streets of Ravenna, and the barbarians who had come with the widow of Athaulf from Barcelona struck blows for the name and the fame of their mistress. The breach widened, and at length the Augusta, with her two children, was banished from the city which Honorius loved, and sought refuge with her kindred in New Rome (423), even as her mother had once fled from the usurper Maximus.

It is probable that in the court intrigue more powerful personages were involved than the subordinates, such as the nurse Elpidia, who are mentioned as sowing the seeds of discord. We can hardly help conjecturing that the general Castinus and the Count Boniface were concerned in it. The celebrated Boniface now appears on the stage of history, and he was at this time probably count of Africa (422).

The circumstances, however, which attended his presence in Africa are veiled in obscurity. In 422 he was ordered to accompany Castinus on the expedition against the Vandals in Spain, but he quarrelled with the commander and proceeded to Africa. It is hard to decide whether this was more than an act of disobedience,—whether he seized the African government without imperial warrant, or, having been already governor in that province and having been summoned specially to Italy to organise the expedition, he returned in pique to the sphere of his administration. It may be observed that there is no hint that at this time Boniface really quarrelled with the court of Ravenna, and there is no mention of any commander in Africa whom Boniface ousted from his office; we may therefore best suppose that the intention was to combine the forces of Italy and the forces of Africa against the invaders of Spain, and that a quarrel between the two commanders thwarted its execution.

This act of Boniface, whatever character it bore, was, according to a chronicler, "the beginning of many labours to the republic." His administration was highly lauded by a contemporary, and he is not represented as having defied, at this period, the court of Ravenna. On the contrary, we shall find him espousing the cause of legitimacy against the usurper John in 424, when that very Castinus with whom he had quarrelled "connived" at the usurpation. If we combine with this the fact that Boniface strongly upheld the cause of Placidia in her quarrel with Honorius in so far as he supported her with money in her exile at Constantinople, and remember that the quarrel between the brother and sister must have begun much upon the same time as the ambiguous departure of Boniface for Africa (422) took place, we shall be disposed to conjecture that the two events had some links of connection. If, when the Augustus and Augusta were in conflict, the latter were supported by Boniface and opposed by Castinus, not only would the conduct of Boniface be explained, but the uncertain language of the chroniclers in regard to his "seizure" of Africa would be accounted for. If he  deserted the palace" and proceeded to Africa, the seat of his administration, against the will and consent of Honorius, his act might be regarded as disobedient and illegitimate; while the same act, if it were approved of and supported by the Augusta Placidia, might be regarded as lawful.

Honorius, who, weak though he was, had by his mere existence held things together, died of dropsy on 15th August 423. When the news arrived at Constantinople, the first care of the government was to occupy the port of Salona in the province of Dalmatia, which belonged to the prefecture of Italy. The event was then made public; for seven days the hippodrome of Constantinople was closed, and the city mourned for the deceased Emperor. The intervention of Theodosius at this crisis was evidently indispensable, and two courses were open. He might overlook the claims of Valentinian, the son of the Augustus whom he had refused to recognise, he might aspire to rule the whole Empire himself, as his grandfather and name­sake had ruled it, without dividing the power; or else he might recognise his child step-cousin as his colleague and act provisionally as his regent and protector. In either case there was fighting to be done in the West, for a usurper, whose name was John, had arisen at Ravenna, and the general Castinus did not disapprove of the usurpation. Theodosius and Pulcheria decided to take the second course, and to support the rights of their kinsman Valentinian and their kinswoman Placidia. The ambassadors of John, who soon arrived to demand his recognition by the sovereign of New Rome, were banished to different places on the Propontis; if Theodosius had disdained Constantius as a colleague, how much more would he have disdained John, the primicerius notariorum?

When Constantius had been proclaimed Augustus, Placidia had also been proclaimed Augusta, and the child Valentinian had received the title of nobilissimus; but the court of Constantinople had as little vouchsafed to recognise the nobilissimus or even the Augusta, as to recognise the Augustus. And so now Placidia and Valentinian received those titles anew, and then set forth with a large army to recover their inheritance. The army was commanded by Ardaburius, who was supported by his son Aspar, and by Candidian, who had probably accompanied Placidia in her exile. At Thessalonica, which by this time had recovered from the terrible vengeance of the great Theodosius, the grandson of Theodosius was raised to the rank of Caesar. It was destined that he should once more see its churches, and look forth over Grecian waters, when he returned, not from a sort of exile, but from marriage festivities, accompanied by his bride Eucloxia.

The infantry were commanded by Ardaburius and the cavalry by Aspar, and when they arrived at Salona, the city of Diocletian's palace, the troops of Ardaburius embarked in the ships which were stationed there and sailed across to the coast of  Italy, while the troops  of Aspar proceeded by land to Sirmium, and thence over the Julian Alps to the great city of the Venetian march, Aquileia.

The fleet of Ardaburius was unfortunate; it was caught in a storm and scattered. The general himself, driven ashore near Ravenna, was captured by the soldiers of John. If the usurper had immediately proceeded to operate against Aspar, he might have thwarted the expedition. But he waited and gave the enemy time. He relied on the arrival of an army of Huns, who were advancing to support him under the command of Aetius.

Ardaburius employed the time of his captivity in forming connections with the officers and ministers of the tyrant, and shaking the fidelity of his adherents in Ravenna. He then succeeded in sending a message to his son, who waited uneasily and expectantly at Aquileia, bidding him advance against Ravenna with all haste. Guided by a shepherd through the morasses which secured that city, the soldiers of Aspar entered without opposition; some thought that the shepherd was an angel of God in disguise. John was captured and con­ducted to Aquileia, where Placidia doomed him to death. His right hand was cut off; and, mounted on an ass, he was driven through the circus before he was executed.

Aetius now arrived on the scene with 6000 Huns; but John was no longer there to employ their aid. Aetius himself was pardoned and reconciled with Placidia; and his influence with the Huns was so great that he was able by a donation of money to induce that large army to retire to their homes. The general Castinus, who had connived at the tyranny of John, was banished; and when all things had been peacefully arranged Valentinian was proclaimed Augustus at Rome on 23d October (425).

It is strange that the first appearance of Count Aetius, who was destined to be the great support of the Theodosian house, the  right hand of Valentinian as was afterwards said, should have been as the champion of a usurper; it may seem strange too that the first sight we have of him who was to be the great deliverer of Europe from the Huns is as the leader of an army of Huns, with whom he is on the best terms. But it has been well pointed out by Mr. Freeman that there was nothing remarkable—nothing recreant, we may say—at this period for a Roman to use Huns in contending against Romans; every general used Hun and Alan, as well as German, mercenaries in civil as well as in other wars. This employment of Huns on the part of Aetius did not mean that he Hunnised in an opprobrious sense. The circumstances of his youth had brought about his familiarity with the barbarians. He was the son of an Italian mother and of Gaudentius, who had fought with Theodosius against the tyrant Eugenius; and he was born at the town of Dorostena (now Dristra or Silistria) in Lower Moesia. He had been, as a child, a hostage with Alaric, and had afterwards been sent as a hostage to Rugila, king of the Huns; his sojourn in Hunland made him familiar with Scythian ways. In later years too he was on friendly terms with Attila, until Attila threatened Europe.

 

VII

INVASIONS OF  THE HUNS

 

In 441 AD the realm of Theodosius was in danger from a powerful combination. It was involved in war with three powers, the Huns, Vandals, and Persians, at the same time, and at least two of them, the Huns and Vandals, were in league. The rise of the great Hunnic power, which threatened European civilization in the fifth century, was as sudden and rapid as its fall. The Huns had gradually advanced from their Caucasian abodes, pressing westward the Goths who lined the north shores of the Black Sea, and had now become a great power. Attila, their king, ruled over a European empire stretching from the Don to Pannonia, and including many barbarian kingdoms. In 395 Asia Minor and Syria had been ravaged by Huns entering by the north-east passes, but in 400 we find Uldes, a king of other Huns, hovering on the shores of the Danube and putting Gainas to death. At the beginning of Theodosius’ reign the Romans gained a victory over this Uldes, and followed up the success by defensive precautions. The strong cities in Illyricum were fortified, and new walls were built to protect Byzantium; the fleet on the Danube was increased and improved. But a payment of money was a more effectual barrier against the barbarians than walls, and about 424 Theodosius consented to pay 350 lbs. of gold to Rugila or Rua, king of the Huns, who had established himself in the land which is now Hungary, and to whom, about 433, the western government conceded a part of Pannonia. It was to Rugila probably, that Aetius, afterwards to be the terror of Huns, was sent as a hostage; and it was he who supplied Aetius with the auxiliaries for the support of the tyrant John. When Rugila died in 434 his nephews Attila and Bleda, the sons of Mundiuch, succeeded him, and a new treaty was contracted by which the payment was doubled.

Attila cherished friendly relations with Aetius, the general of Valentinian, and entered into an alliance with Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who had passed from Spain into Africa in 429 and established themselves there, as will be related in another chapter. The movements of Attila from 434 to 441 are lost to us, but at the latter date we find him ruler over an enormous barbaric empire in central Europe, which stretched to the Caucasian mountains on the east, threatening the provinces of Theodosius. At the same time the forces of the East were required against the Vandals and the Persians; and it has been suspected that the hostilities of the latter were not un­influenced by the Huns, as the hostilities of Attila were certainly influenced by the movements of Gaiseric.

The Vandals were unique among the German nations by the fact that they maintained a fleet, so that they were able to afflict the eastern as well as the western lands of the Mediter­ranean, and to make piratical raids on the coasts of Greece; it was even thought advisable to fortify the shore and harbours of Constantinople against a possible Vandal expedition. The security of traders and commercial interests demanded that an attempt should be made to suppress this evil, and a large armament, whose numbers have perhaps been exaggerated, was fitted out by Theodosius, and placed under the command of Areobindus. It was despatched to Sicily to operate against Gaiseric, who had taken Lilybaeum and was besieging Panormus; but tidings of some dark danger which threatened him in Africa induced the friend of pirates to make a truce with the Roman general and hurry back to his kingdom. The danger came from a son-in-law of Boniface, the famous Sebastian, who died as a martyr and became a favourite subject with Italian painters; but how his passage into Mauretania, of which Prosper tells us, menaced Gaiseric is not clear. From a fragment, attributed to John of Antioch and preserved by Suidas, it would seem that he was the commander of a pirate crew which served the Emperor Theodosius; and so we might suspect that his invasion of Mauretania was closely connected with the Sicilian expedition.

Most of the military forces which had not accompanied Areobindus to the West accompanied Anatolius and Aspar to the East. What happened there is not recorded clearly, but the hostilities were of short duration and slight importance.

At this moment Attila determined to invade the Empire. It was destined that he, like Alaric the Visigoth at an earlier, and Theodoric the Ostrogoth at a later time, should desolate the provinces of the East before he turned to the West. He condescended to allege a cause for his invasion; he complained of the irregular payment of tribute, and that deserters had not been restored; but the government at Constantinople disregarded his embassy. Then Attila, who had advanced towards the Danube from his home, which was somewhere on the Theiss, laid siege to the city of Ratiaria, an important town on the Ister in Dacia ripensis. Here ambassadors arrived from New Rome to remonstrate with the Huns for breaking the peace, and the invader replied to their complaints by alleging that the bishop of Margus had entered Hunnic territory and robbed treasures from the tombs of their kings; the surrender of these treasures and of deserters was demanded as the condition  of peace.

The   negotiations   were  futile, and, having captured Ratiaria, the Hunnic horsemen rode up the course of the Ister and took the great towns which are situated on its banks. Viminacium and Singidunum, in Upper Moesia, were overwhelmed in the onslaught of the "Scythian shepherds," and it seems that the friendship of Attila with Aetius did not preserve the town of Sirmium in Lower Pannonia from being stormed. The town of Margus, which faces Constantia on the opposite side of the river, fell by treachery; the same bishop whom Attila accused of robbing tombs incurred the eternal disgrace of betraying a Roman town and its Christian inhabitants to the greed and cruelty of the heathen destroyer. The invaders advanced up the valley of the Margus, now called the Morawa, and halted before the walls of Naissus, now called Nisch, in the province of Dardania—the city which had been strengthened and improved by the affection of the great Constantine, and which had recently given to the Empire a Third Constantius. The inhabitants made a brave defence, but the place fell before the machines of Attila and the missiles of a countless host. Then the victors passed south-eastward through narrow denies into Thrace and penetrated to the neighbourhood of Constantinople. Attila was not to lay siege to New Rome, just as ten years later when he invaded Italy he was not to lay siege to Old Rome; but he took Philippopolis and Arcadiopolis, and a fort named Athyras, not far from the Bosphorus.

If the nameless bishop of Margus is branded with infamy for his recreant Hunnism, the name of the strong fortress of Asemus in Lower Moesia deserves to be handed down by history in golden letters for its brave and successful resistance to the Hun, even as the town of Plataea earned an eternal fame by its noble action in the Persian war. While the great towns like Naissus and Singidunum yielded to the violence of the whirlwind, Asemus did not bend. A division of the Huns, different from that which marched to Thrace, but of countless multitude, invaded Lower Moesia and laid siege to Asemus. The garrison not only defied the foes, but so effectually harassed them by sallying forth that they retreated. The Asemuntians were not satisfied with a successful defence. Their scouts discovered the opportune times, when plundering bodies of the Hunnic army were returning to the camp with spoils, and these moments were eagerly seized by the adventurous citizens; the pillagers were unexpectedly attacked; many Scythians were slain, and many Roman prisoners, destined to languish in the wilds of Hungary, were rescued from captivity.

Meanwhile the Roman armies were returning from their campaigns in the East and in the West, but it is not clear whether the troops were actually employed against Attila, or whether Areobindus, who had commanded against Gaiseric, or Aspar, who had commanded against Isdigerd (Yezdegerd), the Persian king, accomplished anything of note against the Huns. A battle was certainly fought in the Thracian Chersonese, and Attila won the victory; but we know not who was his opponent. Nor do we know what the master of soldiers in Thrace, Theodulus by name, was doing at Odessus. After this battle a peace was concluded between Theodosius and Attila. As it was Anatolius who was the negotiator, it was generally known as the "Peace of Anatolius" (443 D) . The terms were that the former payment of 700 lbs. of gold, made by the Romans to the Huns, was to be trebled; besides this 6000 lbs. of gold were to be paid at once; all Hunnic deserters were to be restored, while Roman deserters were only to be given up for a payment of 10 solidi a head.

For four years after this the Illyrian and Balkan lands were not laid waste by the harryings of the great enemy, but in 447 Scythia and Lower Moesia, which had suffered less in the former invasion, felt the presence of the Hun again. Marcianopolis was taken, and the Roman general Arnegisclus fell in a battle fought on the banks of the river Utus. At the same time another multitude descended the valley of the Vardar and advanced southward—though some doubt the record—as far as Thermopylae.

Meanwhile embassies passed to and fro between the court of Attila and the court of Theodosius; and of the embassy of Maximin the historian Priscus, who accompanied the am­bassador, has left us copious and interesting details, which give us a glimpse of Hun life, and will be reproduced in another chapter.

Until the end of the reign of Theodosius the oppressive Hun-money was paid to Attila; but when Marcian came to the throne he refused to pay the stipulated tribute. It seemed that the Illyrian peninsula would be again trampled under the horse-hoofs of Hunnic cavalry; but complications in the West averted the course of the destroyer in that direction, and the realm of Valentinian, not the realm of Marcian, was to resist the storm.

The Hunnic empire had assumed a really formidable size and power under the ambitious warrior Attila, who, we are told, in spite of his hideous features and complexion, had the unmistakable aspect of a ruler of men. Gepids and Ostro­goths, with many other German tribes, acknowledged the over-lordship of the king of the Huns, who, as Jordanes says, "possessed Scythian and German kingdoms"—Scythica et Germanica regna possedit—though the extent of his domination is often exaggerated. Before 440 the Huns had attempted an invasion of Persia, and Roman officers talked of the chances of the overthrow of the Persian power by Attila and the possible consequences of such an event for the Roman world. But it was not destined that Attila should attempt to confront the great power of Asia; he was to shatter his strength in a contest with the forces of Europe on one of the great battlefields of the world's history.

 

VIII

THE  PATRICIAN AETIUS

 

We have seen how Spain was lost to the Empire and occupied by the Teutonic Vandals and Suevians, and the probably not Aryan Alans, whom the rebel Gerontius invited south of the Pyrenees. We have seen too how the Visigoths, who crossed the Alps to put down the usurpers in Gaul, formed a dependent kingdom in Aquitaine—the kingdom of Toulouse, as it is called by Dahn. Stilicho and Alaric, Constantius and Athaulf, who played such prominent parts in the first scene of the dismemberment of the Empire, have passed from the stage; new figures, Bonifacius and Aetius, Theodoric and Gaiseric, will now come to the front; we shall see what became of Africa and what became of Spain, and follow further the fortunes of Gaul, where so many peoples ruled and so many kingdoms fell; we shall see, finally, how the shadow of the Hun fell upon Teutons and Romans, invaders and invaded alike, and how they successfully united to drive away the horror of darkness and desolation which menaced them.

Africa, so far away from the Rhine and the Danube, where the Teutonic foes were pressing on the Empire, had not as yet suffered from their invasion; but the occupation of Spain by the hordes of Vandals and Suevians was now bringing them into closer proximity. But the Roman legions in the Afric provinces had work enough to occupy them in defending the southern frontier against another persistent enemy, the Moors, who at this time seem to have been carrying on active operations. At least we find the heroic Boniface shortly after, if not before, the year 422, delivering Africa from many barbarous nations.

We have seen how Boniface supported the claims of the sister and nephew of Honorius, and refused to acknowledge the claims of John. After the restoration of the legitimate dynasty, he may have been rewarded by the title "Count of Africa," though it seems more likely that he held that title before; but it appears that he began to degenerate, and complaints were made that he no longer repelled the incursions of the Afric barbarians with his pristine energy. In 427 he was summoned to Ravenna to answer the charges and account for his conduct, Placidia acting here by the advice of Felix, the master of soldiers who had succeeded Castinus. By refusing to obey the order, Boniface placed himself in the position of an "enemy of the republic," and an army was sent against him under three commanders, all of whom were slain.

Thus there was civil war in Africa, but its events are merged in obscurity. Of the following facts alone can we be certain. The Goth Sigisvult was sent to Africa against Boniface, after the death of the three commanders (probably in 428): the Vandals, under Gaiseric (who succeeded Gunderic in 427), arrived in Africa in May 429, having perhaps been summoned thither by Boniface or by his opponents, or by both; there were operations at Hippo, which was besieged by the Vandals, and an army was sent from the East under Aspar against the invaders. But the relations between the recalcitrant general, the general who was sent to crush him, and the alien nation cannot be recovered; it seems most likely that the two former combined against the common enemy. However this may have been, the Vandals conquered Africa; both the rebel and the suppressor of rebellion seem to have soon retired; and in the year 432 Boniface appears in Italy restored to favour and holding the office of master of soldiers. His rival Felix had been slain in a military tumult in 430, but now he has a new opponent in Aetius, the hero who had been lately distinguishing himself in Gaul, and was destined to win yet greater distinction when it devolved upon him to resist the Hun.

For some unknown cause Placidia decided to depose Aetius from his office as general; and Aetius, as Boniface before, refused to submit. Boniface was now called upon to play the opposite part to that which he had recently played, and, like Sigisvult, to force a self-willed general to submission. There was civil war in Italy. A battle was fought near Ariminum and Aetius was defeated, but he proved superior to his opponent in strategy, and Boniface died shortly afterwards of disease—it is said produced by chagrin—and his opponent obtained possession of his property and his wife. Curious legends have grown up round this battle which was fought at Ariminum; Boniface and Aetius were afterwards represented as rivals of ancient date, who decided their feud by single combat, and the story has only recently been finally exploded by our greatest living English historian.

We saw the Vandals in Africa besieging Hippo, which, however, they did not take. But they extended their dominion rapidly over Africa; they defeated the army which was sent from the East under Aspar; and soon they held all the strong cities except Cirta, Hippo, and Carthage herself. This expeditious conquest is to be explained not only by the fact that in Italy Africa was forgotten for the more immediate struggle between Aetius and Boniface, but by the state of Africa itself, where a large portion of the population were heretics and prepared to welcome a change of rule. The oppression of the Donatists, and their consequent opposition to the imperial government, gave an excellent opening for an invader, and if any invitation was sent to Gaiseric, who was known not to be a Catholic—he had lapsed from Catholicism to Arianism—it probably came from these heretics. The bands of Circumcellions, who went about the country preaching and practising socialism, sworn foes of existing circumstances and closely identified with the followers of Donatus, also prepared the way for a conqueror.

In spite of his wonderfully rapid career of success, Gaiseric was glad to make a compact with the Empire in 435 (11th February, at Hippo), of a similar nature with the compacts which had been made with the Burgundians and the West Goths. The province of Africa—except the city of Carthage—the province of Byzacena, and a part of Numidia, were handed over to the Vandals, who bound themselves to pay a tribute, perhaps of corn and oil, for their lands. Thus the Vandals were in the same position as the Burgundians and Visigoths, the position of dependants allowed to live in Roman territory. Aetius, who was now the right hand of Placidia and Valentinian, had pursued the policy of Constantius, and might be called the friend of the Vandals with more justice than Boniface, who, if he had lived, might have taken steps to expel the invader.

But this compact could only be provisional, and Gaiseric did not intend to stop short of the total conquest of Africa. In less than five years Carthage was taken (October 439), and Africa had become a Vandalic kingdom. A large part of the land was reserved as a royal domain, another portion was distributed among the Vandal warriors in lots; probably the poorest territory was left to the Roman provincials.

It is to be observed that the Vandals now held a position of vantage in regard to the Empire that none of the other Teutonic nations ever occupied. In relation to the foreign peoples of northern Europe, the front of the Roman Empire was the Rhine and the Danube. And so we may say that the Vandals had come round to the back of the Empire and were able to attack it behind. Another peculiar feature was that, in the language of a chronicler, the sea was made pervious to them; they created a naval power and attacked the Empire by sea, as no other Teutonic people had done in the Mediterranean, though the Saxons and other men of the north used ships to harry it in the northern ocean. Sicily was soon the object of their attacks; Panormus was besieged, but not taken; and Corsica and Sardinia became for a time parts of the Vandalic kingdom.

The dependent kingdom of the Burgundians in the districts of Mainz and Worms (Gesoriacum) was not of long endurance, for in 437 Aetius almost exterminated the nation, and the small remnant which escaped the punishment of disloyalty moved south-westward, and received from the Romans territory in Sapaudia (Savoy), about Lake Leman, which may be called the second Bungundian kingdom.

This change made way for the Alemanni. They had been driven from Roman ground by the arms of Julian, but at the beginning of the fifth century, amid the general confusion of migration, they came back to their old haunts and settled on the Upper Rhine. Thus before 437 there were three nations, two at least nominally under Roman supremacy, from the mouth of the Rhine to its source, the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Alemanni. When the Burgundian kingdom was overthrown, the Alemanni profited by the event, and extended their dominion northwards. Before the end of the century their extended kingdom was incorporated in Francia by the battle of Tolbiacum (496).

It was not only against the Burgundians that Aetius was active in Gaul to maintain the respect due to the Roman name, and prevent the nations from trespassing on soil which was not opened to them. He warred successfully against the Franks, who had invaded the regions between the Somme and the Rhine, and he kept the ambition of Visigothic Theodoric, Wallia's successor, in check. For Theodoric tried to do what Gaiseric actually did in Africa, to enlarge the land which he held with Roman consent by acquiring new lands without Roman consent. Aetius prevented him from realising his aims, as Boniface, if he had lived, might have prevented Gaiseric; and the Visigoths were beaten back from Arelate. We need not follow these hostilities, but it may be noticed that Aetius employed Alan and Hunnic auxiliaries against the Teutons. In 439 an event occurred which paved the way for friendly relations between the great general and the great king. When Aetius was absent in Italy the Roman captain Litorius, whom he had left in charge of the army, hoping to accomplish a success which would throw the deeds of his commander in the shade, attacked Toulouse, and was repulsed by Theodoric. The opposition between Christianity and paganism was emphasised here, and the fact that the Visigoths were believers in Christ and the Huns infidels. Litorius gratified the Hunnic soldiers by the performance of pagan rites and the consultation of auspices; and this rendered conspicuous the Christian attitude of Theodoric; it showed how much nearer he was to Aetius than were Aetius’ soldiers.

It is time for us to speak more particularly of Aetius himself, the great figure of the West. So far we see in him only the successor of Stilicho and Constantius, with the former of whom he presents many points of resemblance. It was the function of both Stilicho and Aetius to keep the Teutonic barbarians in check, and yet both, coming of barbarian stock themselves, had considerable sympathy with the barbarian. In this neither of them was like Constantius, who was a Roman of the Romans; but nevertheless, in regard of the Visigoths and Gaul, Aetius carried on the work which Constantius had begun. But he never fully won the confidence of Placidia, or even of Valentinian, as Stilicho had won the confidence of Honorius; and his disgrace in 432, a strange reward for his services in Gaul, indicates clearly this distrust. When the war with Boniface was over, Aetius, after several adventures, withdrew to Pannonia, and obtained the assistance of the Huns, whose help he had obtained nine years before to support John. They did not fail him in his need; by their means, by a menacing embassy, perhaps, or even by a hostile demonstration, the court of Ravenna received the general again into favour, and conferred on him the title of Patrician (433) and the office of magister utriusque militiae.  This transaction is significant of Aetius’ position throughout his career; he forced Placidia and Valentinian to have him against their will. Conscious, perhaps, that he was the one man who could guide the Empire through this critical stage, and arrange the delicate relations into which it was thrown with the Teutonic nations, by both yielding and refusing to yield at the right time, he pressed himself on the court, and made it follow his leadership. A panegyrical description of the man has been preserved to us, written by Renatus Frigeridus. He was "of middle height, of manly condition, well shaped, so that his body was neither too weak nor too weighty, active in mind, vigorous in limb, a most dexterous horseman, skilled in shooting the arrow, and brave in using the spear; he was an excellent warrior and famous in the arts of peace; free from avarice and greed, endowed with mental virtues, one who never deviated at the instance of evil instigators from his own purpose, most patient of wrongs, a lover of work, dauntless in perils, able to endure the hardships of hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness."

But the successful accomplishment of the gigantic task which now awaited Aetius has made him justly famous as no panegyrics could have done.

Hitherto he has appeared to us greater indeed than Constantius, but not as great as Stilicho; we shall now see him as the man who had most to do with the happy decision of a crisis which concerned wider interests than those of the Roman Empire. The exigency of a common interest—the opposition to a common foe—was now to set a seal on the relations which had been recently established between the Empire and many of the Teutonic nations; and the germ of a new idea, the idea of Europe as the habitation of Teutons and Romans—Romans in the widest sense,—was to be sown on the Catalaunian Fields.

The rise of the Hunnic empire under Attila, and the devastation suffered by the Illyrian and Thracian provinces, have been related. At the time of the embassy of Maximin it had seemed that there was little likelihood of serious hostility  against western Europe on the part of the Huns; for, though small points of difference arose, Aetius had kept up very friendly relations with Attila. The factors which operated in bringing about Attila's invasion of Gaul seem to have been three, but one of these was more important than the others.

Here we are brought to speak of the strange story of the princess Honoria, daughter of Placidia and Constantius. At the age of sixteen she had condescended to the embraces of a chamberlain named Eugenius, and when the signs of pregnancy revealed the degradation of a princess, the indignation of her mother and her brother banished her to Constantinople, where she lived for fifteen years or more in the prim and irksome society of her religious step-cousins. She was betrothed against her will to a respectable consular named Herculanus, and at length, with a wildness which she had perhaps inherited from her father's Illyrian ancestors, she took the adventurous course of offering her hand to the great enemy of the Empire; the daughter of the lady who shrank from union with Christian Athaulf was willing to unite herself to heathen Attila, the husband of innumerable wives. Attila was not slow to take advantage of her impetuous act. Adopting the principle that all children, male and female, inherit equal portions from their father, he sent the ring of betrothal which he had received from Hyacinthus, the secret messenger of Honoria, to her brother Valentinian, and demanded that the share of the Empire, whereof that sovereign had unrighteously deprived his sister, should be instantly restored.

The act of Honoria gave Attila an excellent pretext against the Empire, but he might not have taken advantage of it so soon save for another event which arose, not from a quarrel at the court of Ravenna, but from the relations between the Teutonic courts of Carthage and Toulouse. Theodoric had two daughters, of whom one was married to the king of the Suevians in Spain, and the other to Huneric, the son of Gaiseric the Vandal. The Suevic son-in-law was on good terms with the Visigoths—we hear of his paying his father-in-law a visit at Toulouse; but for the daughter who was sent across the seas to Carthage misfortunes were reserved by fate. Gaiseric suspected her of plotting against himself, and with a cruelty which even Attila might hardly have practised, he mutilated her ears and nose, and sent her back to her father. The bitter hatred which followed upon this outrage influenced the attitude of the Huns. Theodoric was the friend and ally of Aetius; Gaiseric sought the friendship and alliance of Attila, and stirred him up to make war upon the Romans and their allies. Priscus, who is our best contemporary authority, and especially credible in all that relates to Hunnic politics, states expressly that Attila made war "to oblige Gaiseric."

But the quarrel in the imperial court itself and the quarrel between the barbarians within the Roman pale were not the only factors which operated in bringing about Attila's invasion; a quarrel among barbarians outside the pale also operated. In a struggle for the succession between two Frank princes the rivals appealed to Attila, and he against whom Attila decided appealed for help to Aetius. Here was another circumstance which forced the Huns and the Romans to measure swords.

Thus when Attila invaded Gaul in 451, he came to wrest from Valentinian half of his dominion, in the name of Honoria, and he came equally to make war on the Visigoths for the sake of the Vandals. As against the Empire he could claim to be the champion of a recreant imperial princess; as against the Teutons he could claim to be the ally of a recreant Teutonic nation. But the question at stake was not a quarrel between Valentinian and Honoria, nor a feud between two German peoples, nor a disputed succession of the Franks; it was the perpetual question of history, the struggle told long ago by Herodotus, told recently by Trikoupis, the struggle between Europe and Asia, the struggle between cosmos and chaos—the struggle between Aetius and Attila. For Aetius was the man who now stood in the breach, and sounded the Roman trumpet to call the nations to do battle for the hopes of humanity, and defend the cause of reason against champions of brute force. The menace of that monstrous host, which was preparing to pass the Rhine, was to exterminate the civilisation that had grown up for centuries, to spread desolation in Gaul and Italy, to undo the work of Plataea and the Metaurus, and to paralyse the beginnings of Teutonic life. If Attila had not been repelled, western Europe might have been converted into a spiritual waste, unspeakably more lost and degraded than Turkey at the present day.

But the interests of the Teutons were more vitally concerned at this crisis than the interests of the Empire. We can imagine that if Attila had been the victor on the great day, and had hurled Valentinian from his throne, and had reigned at Rome or Ravenna, cities which were happily never to be called the seats of an Asiatic sovereign, or at Arelate, which was once to pine for a short space under the rule of the Saracen, even then the Empire might have held out in the East, and Marcian and Leo and Aspar might have beaten back the Hun. But the doom of the Visigoths and the Burgundians and the Franks would have been inevitable; their nascent civilization would have been crushed under the yoke of that servitude which crushes and blights, and they would not have been able to learn longer at the feet of Rome the arts of peace and culture.

The work of Aetius, then, was as much for the future of the Teutonic nations as it was for the Roman Empire. Theodoric the Visigoth did not realise the danger. But Avitus, the emissary of Aetius, explained the situation, and persuaded him to join the Romans against the invader. This decision was momentous; the Roman and the Teuton were to make common cause against the Hun. Neither knew—that was the secret of history—that there was a latent affinity between them, and that in the remote past their ancestors had spoken the same language; they knew not that they were kindred nations fight­ing against a true enemy. Burgundians and Franks joined their ranks, and all the inhabitants of Brittany and Armorica. The Ostrogoths and the Gepids and the Thuringians, some Burgundians and Franks and Suevians, fought in the ranks of Attila, but these were yet wild peoples without the pale, mostly Attila's subjects and possessing no choice in the matter.

Attila, having taken Metz and other towns, laid siege to Aureliani (Orleans), but the city was relieved by the arrival of Aetius (June 451), and the great battle took place in the wide district known as the Catalaunian Fields. Neither the day of this event nor the exact place are known; the month was perhaps July, and the locus Mauriacus was probably either Mery-sur-Seine or Moirey, in the neighbourhood of Troyes.

The chief feature of this battle is that Attila was rendered unable to advance; herein lay the great success of the Romans and their allies. Strictly speaking, the battle was drawn; the Huns and the Visigoths fought long and hard without any result, except slaughter on both sides. But the Hunnic forces were innumerable, while the soldiers of Aetius and Theodoric were comparatively few, as were the Greek soldiers at Plataea or the Greek sailors at Salamis, against the overwhelming numbers of the foe. The fact, then, that the small army hewed down the ranks of the immense host, and withstood, though it did not rout, the Huns, was a tremendous victory. The king of the Visigoths, Theodoric,—whose name deserves to be handed down to fame, no less than that of his more celebrated Ostrogothic namesake, whose father and uncles fought with Attila,—was killed in the fray, and his son Thorismond was proclaimed king on the field of battle. As for the part played by the Roman general himself in the engagement, we hear that at the onslaught of Attila the "prudence of the Patrician Aetius, was such that by hastily collecting around him a band of warriors from all sides he was able to oppose the multitude of the enemy on an equality" (non impar).  The union of a certain clearness with a certain obscurity as to the events of this great day of deliverance lends the tale of the battle of the Catalaunian Fields a peculiar charm, preparing us for those legends which afterwards grew up that the spirits of the fallen warriors continued the battle in the air.

Thus the cause of the Romans and the Teutons, the cause of Europe, prevailed; the cause even of those Teutons who fought for the invader. The Ostrogoths were in his ranks, and the Thuringians, who out-Hunned the Huns by deeds of unutterable cruelty; but both Thuringians and Ostrogoths were as yet without the pale, as were all the other Germans who warred for Attila. We cannot forget that the only Teutons within the Roman pale, who, though they did not take part in the conflict, not only hoped for the victory of the Hun, but had even provoked him to war, were the settlers in Africa; we cannot forget that when Aetius and Theodoric did battle for the common cause of cosmos and civilization, the Vandals alone sided with chaos and barbarism; even as the Greeks could not forget that the Thebans had chosen the side of the Persian invader and refused to fight for the freedom of all the Greeks. But the Vandals had no Epaminondas, no Pindar, no Plutarch to redeem their name. It seemed that, when they entered Africa, a part of the mantle of the Phoenicians had fallen upon them, though they came by another way, from the West and not from the East, and though they were Christians; it seemed that something in their nature drove them to espouse the cause which had been before represented by the Carthaginians, and was afterwards to be represented by the Saracens on the northern coast of Africa. But their power passed away quickly, even as the power of the Huns passed away, and their name has only been commemorated in an opprobrious word expressing the barbarous spirit which defaces the exterior graces of civilization.

After the great check, Attila, "having lost confidence in fighting," returned to his own land, and then with renewed strength invaded Italy. Aquileia, the city of the Venetian march, the city which two hundred years before had endured with bravery and constancy the terrible siege of the barbarian tyrant Maximin, now fell before the Huns, and was razed to the ground, never to rise again; in the next century hardly a trace of it could be seen. Verona and Vicentia did not share this fate, but they were exposed to the violence of the Scythian, while Ticinum and Mediolanum were compelled to buy from the invader exemption from fire and sword.

But the Hun was suddenly induced to retreat; the lands south of the Po, and Rome herself, were spared the humiliating sight of the presence of the Scythian shepherds. According to the generally received account, the thanks of Italy were on this occasion owed not to the general Aetius but to the bishop of Rome. Aetius, now unaided by his Visigoths and other German allies, is said to have dreamed of departing with Valentinian to Byzantium; but Leo I with two noble Romans, Avienus and Trigetius, visited the camp of Attila, perhaps near the south shore of Lake Garda, and the majesty of the Church persuaded the barbarian to withdraw. The story is surrounded with a legendary halo; the apostles Peter and Paul are said to have appeared to Attila, and by their threats terri­fied him into leaving Italian soil.

The fact of the embassy cannot be doubted; but that it was the sole cause which brought about the departure of the Huns cannot be admitted. It is not in itself probable that heathen Attila, the enemy of Christendom, would have cared for the thunders or the persuasions of the Church; and a trustworthy authority hands down another account, which does not conflict with the circumstance of the embassy, but gives a rational and evidently correct explanation of the true reasons which induced Attila to receive the embassy favourably. “The Huns”, says Idatius, “are stricken by strokes  from heaven, partly by famine and partly by disease; moreover, they are slain by auxiliary troops, which were sent by the Emperor Marcian, under the leadership of Aetius ... And being thus subdued, having made peace with the Romans, they all returned to their own abodes”.

Thus the position of the Huns was untenable in northern Italy; famine and pestilence thinned their ranks, and the troops of Aetius, which had been sent from Marcian, harassed them. Thus Aetius was not skulking or preparing to flee; with a force too small to venture an open battle, he was vexing the host of the destroyers. Attila was glad to make peace, he had obtained sufficient booty to satisfy him, and he yielded graciously to the arguments or entreaties of Leo and Avienus.

Attila survived this Italian expedition only one year. He died of the bursting of an artery, and in the morning his attendants found the bride whom he had married the night before sitting beside his bed in tears. Some said that he was  stabbed by the hand and knife of a woman."

"It is a saying," writes Gibbon, "worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage destroyer unclesignedly laid the foundation of a republic, which revived, in the feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial industry." But there was another benefit as well as the doubtful foundation of the city of St. Mark that Attila conferred unclesignedly on Europe,—a spiritual benefit. It was the need of opposition to him that first awoke the idea of a Roman and Teutonic Europe in the West; it was under the dread of his unshapely shadow that it first dawned upon Romans and Teutons that they had a common cause. Greece alone fought at Salamis; republican Rome alone fought at Metaurus and Zama; imperial Rome alone held the Euphrates against the Persian Sassanid; but both Romans and Teutons, both Romania and Germania (not Gothia alone), fought side by side on the Mauriac Plain.

As the death of Attila followed hard upon his defeat, the death of Aetius followed hard upon his victory.  His reward for supporting Valentinian's Empire was, that he should fall by Valentinian’s hand; his fate was like that of Stilicho, and due to a similar cause, the cabal of certain persons who were jealous of his power and had influence at court.

Maximus, a noble and powerful man, who had been twice consul, entertained enmity against Aetius, the master of soldiers in Italy. He discovered that Heraclius, a eunuch who had very great influence with the Emperor, was also an enemy of Aetius, and wished, like himself, to oust the general from power; accordingly, he conspired with him, and they persuaded the Emperor that he would perish at the hands of Aetius, unless he hastened to slay him first.

"It was fated that Valentinian should pull down the bul­wark of his own government; so he admitted the representation of Maximus, and devised death against Aetius." Even when the general was in the palace, laying his account before the Emperor and reckoning up the moneys that had been collected by taxation, Valentinian suddenly leaped from the throne and accused him of treason, perhaps of seeking the Empire for his son Gaudentius. Not allowing him time to defend himself, he drew his sword, and rushed upon the defenceless officer, who was at the same moment attacked by the chamberlain Heraclius. Thus perished the patrician and consul Aetius; and someone after­wards aptly remarked, it is said, to the Emperor, “You have cut off your right hand with your left”. Who was now to oppose the Vandals?

The assassination of Aetius led directly to the assassination of Valentinian, of which the most authentic account has been preserved by the historian John of Antioch. It will be best to narrate it in his own words.

"And after the murder of Aetius, Valentinian slew also Boethius, the prefect, who was a very dear friend of Aetius. And having exposed their bodies unburied in the forum, he immediately summoned the senate, and brought many charges against the men: this was a precaution against a revolt on account of the fate of Aetius. And Maximus, after the death of Aetius, went to Valentinian, seeking to be promoted to the consulship; and failing it he desired to obtain the rank of patrician, but in this too was foiled by Heraclius, who countervailed the aims of Maximus and persuaded Valentinian that being well rid of the oppressive influence of Aetius he ought not to transfer his power to Maximus. Thwarted in both his wishes, Maximus was wroth, and he sent for two Scythians (Huns), brave in war, named Optila and Thraustila, who had fought campaigns with Aetius, and were intimate with Valentinian. "When he met them pledges were exchanged, and he accused the Emperor of the murder of Aetius and advised them to take vengeance on him, suggesting that they would win very great advantages by justly avenging the victim.

"A few days later, it seemed good to Valentinian to ride in the Campus Martius with a few guards, accompanied by Optila and Thraustila and their attendants. And when he dismounted and proceeded to practise archery, Optila and those with him attacked him. Optila struck Valentinian on the temple, and when the prince turned to see who struck him, dealt him a second blow on the face and felled him. And Thraustila slew Heraclius. And the two assassins taking the imperial diadem and the horse hastened to Maximus ... They escaped all punishment for their deed. But a strange marvel happened to the corpse of Valen­tinian. A swarm of bees lit upon it, and drained and wiped away all the blood that flowed from it to the ground. Thus died Valentinian, having lived thirty-seven years."

The death of Aetius and the death of Valentinian, which were causally in close connection, were grave misfortunes for the West. The strong man who might have opposed the immi­nent danger from the Vandals, and the weak man whose mere existence maintained the Imperium, were removed; there was no general to succeed Aetius as there was no member of the Theodosian house to succeed Valentinian. Marcellinus speaks of the Patrician Aetius as "the great safety of the western republic", the terror of King Attila; "and with him the Hesperian realm fell, and up to the present day has not been able to raise its head." We cannot disagree with this judgment; the death of Aetius marked a distinct stage in the dismemberment of the western provinces. But we must not leave out of sight the importance of the death of his master Valentinian without male offspring. A legitimate heir of the Theodosian house might have prevented some of the troubles which befell Italy in the days of Count Ricimer and the array of Emperors whom he pulled down or set up.

 

IX

THE CHURCH IN THE  FIFTH  CENTURY

 

In the fourth century the Church had to solve two problems; one was political and the other theological. The political problem was to determine the relation of the Church to the Imperium; the theological problem was to determine the relation of the Son to the Father. At the end of the fourth century both these questions had received general solutions; and these very solutions gave birth to new problems which agitated the fifth century.

I. Whether Constantine the Great was personally a Christian is a point that is open to dispute. The evidence seems to show that his religion was a syncretistic monotheism, he was content to see the Deity in the Sun, or in Mithras, or in the God of the Hebrews. The important point, however, is that he did not break with the old Roman ritual; although, as Constantine, he may possibly have been a Christian before he died, as Emperor he was a pagan. He extended special favour to the new religion, but the general line of his policy was toleration.

Constantius conceived a political idea which was a distinct advance on his father's system, the idea of a close union between the Imperium and the Christian Church, but of such a kind that the Church should be entirely dependent on the Emperor. Herein he anticipated the policy of Justinian; he wished to concentrate all things in imperial absolutism. Ammianus speaks of him as wearing on all occasions the cothurnus of imperial power.   In order to realize his idea it was desirable to produce a unity in the Church itself, which was rent asunder by the schism of Arius; and Constantius' interference took the form of adopting the formula that the Son was of like essence (homoiousios) with the Father—a compromise between the homoousios (of same essence) of Athanasius and the heterousios (of other essence) of Arius. This intermediate formula of Sirmium could not stand; it was merely a way of avoiding the difficulty; but Constantius carried it at the time, in spite of much opposition, by his personal influence. His policy is further characterised by his persecution of Athanasius, whose stability and power in the Church stood most in the way of the designed unification.

The depression of the Church under the pagan Julian; whose reign was the last glimmer of the ancient faiths, only strengthened it. And just as Julian's championship of the dying cause furthered the victorious creed, so the patronage which the Emperor Valens bestowed on the less deep doctrine of the Godhead, the doctrine of Arius, went far to strengthen the deeper, less easily comprehensible homo-ousian belief of Athanasius, which prevailed in the West.

Gratian and Theodosius the Great completed the union of the Church with the Imperium. Their edict in 380 officially adopted Athanasianism, the creed of Damasus, bishop of Rome; and the councils of 381 (at Constantinople and Aquileia) defined one creed for the universal Church. But the union of State and Church could not be looked on as complete, as long as the official religion of the Empire, as distinguished from the personal religion of the Emperor, was not Christian. Gratian had abdicated and abolished the office of Pontifex Maximus; but an act of the pagan party in Rome in 384 brought the question to a crisis. The restoration of the altar of Victory in the senate house, which Constans had removed, was requested by the senate. Symmachus, prefect of the city, addressed a petition of this purport to Valentinian II; it was rejected through the influence of Ambrosius, bishop of Milan. But the decision of the young Valentinian was not so important as the attitude of Theodosius, Emperor in the East. The revolt of Eugenius, which was directly connected with the pagan party in Rome, and aimed at restoring the religious customs of the old Imperium, rendered a declaration on the part of Theodosius necessary; he took the side of Ambrose and Valentinian. The defeat of Eugenius combined the Church and State closer than ever, and the penance of Theodosius at Milan indicated that if the Church was not to be first, at least it was not to be second. At the same time the State entered upon a path of intolerance, and heretics were esteemed as guilty and as dangerous as pagans; it may be said that the last spark of religious freedom was contained in the law of Valentinian II in favour of Arians, passed in 386. Almost at the same time we have the earliest example of a State inquisition in the prosecution of Priscillian by Maximus (385).

Thus at the end of the fourth century the Roman Imperium was Christian, and at the same epoch the Church had asserted her independence. The bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, was the head of the Church, and the weakness of the Empire in the West increased his power and confirmed his independence, while from Constantinopolitan interference he was quite free. But the geographical distance from Constantinople had also another effect; it contributed to rendering the Patriarch of Constantinople and the eastern churches independent of the bishop of Rome. The oriental and occidental churches had a tendency to separate along with the political systems to which they belonged; and consistent with this tendency was the desire of the Patriarch of Constantinople, which in the fifth century became the most important city in the world, to free himself from the jurisdiction of Rome. In order to do so he naturally leaned on the power of the Emperor, whose ecclesiastical authority was further increased by the fact that his capital was the Patriarch's residence, whereas the independence of the bishop of Rome was aided by the fact that the Emperors resided at Milan or Ravenna.

The result was that in the West the ecclesiastical hierarchy was independent in spiritual matters, and afterwards attained secular power, but in the East the Church and the Imperium were closely allied, the Church being dependent on the Emperor. This  was a leading  feature in the Byzantine  world. The Emperor was the head of the three hierarchies, the Church, the army, and the civil service; and his position depended on the allegiance of all three. The consent of the Church was officially recognised as a condition of elevation to the throne by the introduction of the ceremony of coronation. Leo I was the first Emperor crowned by the Patriarch.

The career of John Chrysostom illustrates the power and the weakness of the Patriarchs, and it was his defeat in a long struggle with the court that mainly determined the subsequent relations between the imperial and the patriarchal palaces. In one respect the Patriarchs obtained a new hold on the sovereigns during the fifth century, when the custom of coronation became indispensable, and Euphemius made use of this power to extort a confession of faith from Anastasius; but Anastasius’ treatment of the same hierarch some years later shows how subordinate the representative of spiritual was to the holder of temporal power. The opposition of Chrysostom to Eudoxia naturally suggests the opposition which Ambrose of Milan presented to the Empress Justina. In both cases the populace sided with the bishop; but Ambrose defied the Empress with impunity and carried the day, while the Patriarch of Constanti­nople was not strong enough even to avoid punishment,

II. The great controversy between Arius and Athanasius concerned the relation of Christ to the Father. Arius adopted the rationalistic and easier doctrine that their essence was not the same: the Son had a beginning. Athanasius held that their essence was the same; the Logos was God, co-eternal with God the Father.

The question might be raised whether this controversy was really of importance for the future of mankind, whether its interest is more than merely ecclesiastical, or is only of historical note in so far as it affected the immediate politics of the fourth century; whether in fine, if Arianism had survived, the spirit of the world would have been much altered. I conceive that its importance is world-historical, and that the victory of Athanasianism, representing the triumph of a distinct idea, is of just as great consequence to the general historian as to the ecclesiastical specialist. The very essence of Christianity was at stake. For the special power of Christianity depended on the idea of Christ, and the doctrine of Arius tended to depress Christ, as less than God, a tendency which, if it had prevailed, would have ultimately banished Christ prematurely from the world. For the whole significance of Christ, or the Logos, was contained in his Divinity.

Soon after the final decision of the Church (381) that the Son was co-essential with the Father, the political divergence of the East and West began. The western and eastern Churches henceforward underwent each a different development, and the controversies which distracted them were of a different kind. The western Church held fast by the Athanasian doctrine, and was not concerned to probe it further; its divines turned from the rare air of the sphere of the Absolute to anthro­pological questions concerning original sin, faith, and works. The tendency of eastern theologians was always metaphysical. They could not rest content with the general symbolum that the Son was "of one substance with the Father"; they must determine the exact mode of this coincident identity and difference.

And thus in the fifth century the eastern Church embarked in a series of christological controversies as bitter as the Arian.

How were the two natures, the human and the divine, combined in Christ—this was the problem of Christology. We can see from the mere statement of the question that two opposite views would necessarily arise according as the human or the divine nature were emphasised.

Early authorities had contented themselves with vague phrases to express the union of the natures, such as mixture, inweaving, envelope. But such phrases were unsatisfactory, because they were vague. The problem was to find a category which could express the union and avoid the confusion of the two natures—"an unconfounded nature-union," as Athanasius said.

The two opposite schools of the fifth century which swerved from the rigid mean line of orthodoxy on either side were the schools of Nestorius and Eutyches. But the spiritual fathers of Nestorianism and Eutychianism were Theodoros of Mopsuestia and Apollinaris of Laodicea, men who did not, like the eponymous propagators of the heresies, take an active part in party contention.

Apollinaris explained the nature of Christ on this wise. The nature of a human individual, he said, consists of body, soul, and spirit; the nature of the Divine man consists of body, soul, and logos,—logos, not spirit, for spirit implies free will, and thereby the possibility of change.

In opposition to this theory, which did not ascribe complete humanity to Christ, Theodore of Mopsuestia founded a new christological theory, which ascribed to Christ the fullness of humanity, including a free will, but a will higher than mere choice. To explain the union of the two natures he adopted the category of inhabitation; the category of becoming (the "Word became flesh") he judged rightly to be inadequate for philosophical purposes. But the main point is that he assumed two persons, whom in their union he esteemed one person, illustrating this junction by man and woman being-one flesh; whereas Apollinaris blended two natures in one person.

The theory of Theodore was taken up by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and the controversy turned especially upon what was really an incidental corollary of the main doctrine, namely, whether Mary should be called Mother of God, or, as Nestorius held, only Mother of Christ; and thus the word Theotokos (Mother of God) became the catchword of the controversy. The Nestorian heresy was crushed at the council of Ephesus in 431, chiefly through the energy of Cyril of Alexandria, the most influential opponent of Nestorius.

One of the most vehement anti-Nestorians was Eutyches; his zeal against the heresy of the two persons made him rebound into the opposite extreme and promulgate the doctrine that there was only one nature in Christ, the doctrine of monophysitism. He did not clearly see that the tenet of two natures does not imply the tenet of two persons; he did not understand the category of hypostasis; being, as Pope Leo I wrote in his celebrated Dogmatic Epistle to Elavian, "very imprudent and exceedingly unskilled."

This Dogmatic Epistle was the basis of the symbolum of orthodox doctrine, the unio hypostatica, or unity of person in both natures, laid down at the ecumenical council of Chalcedon (451). That council, at which the Emperor Marcian presided, condemned monophysitism, of which the real originator was Apollinaris. The value of this doctrine turns evidently on the category of hypostasis, which seems to have received a new shade of meaning since it was used by Athanasius. Athanasius rejected hypostatic union, for he understood thereby merely substantial union, which seemed to confound the sub­stances. The hypostasis of Chalcedon is not substance; it is a category higher than substance, but is not yet the subject of modern philosophy; we may perhaps render it approximately by personal substrate.

We must make a remark on the attitude of Theodosius II. Both he and his father were religious men, and took a great interest in ecclesiastical affairs. But it cannot be said that Theodosius was consistent either in orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Before the synod of 431 he was a partisan of Nestorius, and wrote rather sharply in answer to the appeals of Cyril; afterwards he completely deserted to the opposite side. In the Eutychian strife, which was not decided until the reign of his successor Marcian, he was a partisan of Eutyches, who held diametrically opposite views to the Nestorians. In this he was probably influenced by the favourite eunuch Chrysaphius, who patronised Eutyches, as Eutropius had patronised Chrysostom.

Dyophysitism became, by the council of 451, the recognised doctrine of the whole Christian Church, but the heresies lingered on, Nestorianism especially in the far east, Eutychian­ism in Alexandria, Palestine, and Armenia. In the reigns of Leo and Zeno the scandalous acts of violence committed by both the orthodox and the monophysites in Alexandria under Timothy the Weasel (monophysite), who was deposed by Leo, and Timothy Salophakialos, who succeeded him, and in Antioch, under Peter the Fuller, became so serious that a new attempt at union was demanded. In the struggle of Basiliscus and Zeno the religious question played an important part, and the restoration of Zeno was a triumph for orthodoxy. Zeno and the Patriarch Acacius, in order to effect the desired union, manufactured the Henotikon, a symbolum which was intended to reconcile both parties by veiling the point at issue. It was expressly stated that Christ was both God and man, in accordance with the doctrine of Chalcedon; but the word "nature" was diligently avoided, and an indirectly slighting allusion to the council of Chalcedon was inserted to win the monophysites. This half measure (which reminds us in its spirit of the homoiousian doctrine of the preceding century) not only failed  to satisfy either party, but was a  live coal  blown between the eastern and western Churches, unquenched for thirty years. In this schism the rivalry of the see of Rome and the see of Constantinople comes to a climax, and represents the opposition of the East and West. During the first half of the fifth century the western Church had, as it were, come of age; it was no longer dependent on the Greeks for its theology. Jerome's translation of the Scriptures and Augustine's new theological system had set occidental Christendom on an independent path of development—had, we may say, founded Latin Christianity.

Simplicius was Pope when the Henotikon of Zeno was published (482). A special circumstance tended to widen the breach which was caused by the opposition of Simplicius to Acacius. In the same year Timothy Salophakialos, Patriarch of Alexandria, died, and two rivals for the vacancy appeared, John Talaias, who was actually consecrated bishop, and Peter the Stammerer, who was favoured by Zeno. The rejected Talaias repaired to Rome and laid his case before Simplicius, who took his part. Soon after this Simplicius died, and Felix II, his successor, prosecuted the opposition to Constantinople with vehement energy. The legates whom he sent thither were induced, by imprisonment and threats, to recognise the appointment of Peter, whereupon Felix, informed of the circumstance by the "sleepless" monks, who were strong pillars of orthodox Chalcedonism in Byzantium, held a council at Rome (484), at which he deposed the apostate legates from their bishoprics, and excommunicated Acacius. It would have been dangerous for any one to deliver the sentence of excommunication openly to the Patriarch, and a secret stratagem was adopted. It was pinned to the back of Acacius as he was officiating in St. Sophia, and a few moments afterwards he retorted the sentence on Felix, thus placing his power on a par with that of the bishop of Rome.

The schism continued after the deaths of Felix and Acacius, during the reign of Anastasius, who, though not unquestionably orthodox like Zeno, adopted Zeno's Henotikon. At this time the Ostrogoths ruled in Italy, and the Popes were thus independent of the Emperor, and able to resist his authority. Felix was succeeded by Gelasius, who emphatically insisted on the precedence of the Roman see as the highest spiritual authority on earth; we may refer especially to his letter to the bishops of Dardania. His successor, Pope Anastasius, was a milder man, like his namesake the Emperor, and more conciliatory, but the bitterness broke out again in the episcopate of Hormisdas, and was not finally allayed until 519, the year after Anastasius’ death, when the new Emperor Justin inaugurated an orthodox reaction. This pacification was a victory for Rome; the names of Acacius and Peter the Stammerer were erased from the diptychs of Constantinople.

 

DONATISM AND PELAGIANISM.—It has already been noticed that the foundations of Latin Christianity, or western Catholicism, as well as the foundations of the German kingdoms, were laid in the first half of the fifth century. It is not our business here to go into the work of Augustine and Jerome, whose varied activity chiefly contributed to the creation of an inde­pendent western Church with a Latin theology. But we must briefly notice the suppression of the schisms of Donatus and Pelagius, against both of which the bishop of Hippo was a leading combatant.

Britain was said to have been fertile in tyrants; Africa may be said to have been fertile in schisms; at least there was no part of the Empire which was more rent and riven by the divisions and the furies of religious sects. In the fourth century the followers of Donatus had been men of strict and pure morals, and presented an edifying contrast to the demoralisation that infected the orthodox Church; but pride in their own sanctity led to a holy contempt for all who were not of themselves, and ultimately to a fanatical hatred which doomed Catholics and other sects to the flames of hell. They were highly objectionable to the civil power, nor was the saying of Donatus forgotten, "What has the Emperor to do with the Church?" But in Africa they had force on their side. The rich proprietors lived in constant fear of bands of men, who were called circumcellions and threatened their possessions and their lives. These men were socialists, infected with religious fanaticism. Having suffered from the stress of the times, they desired to introduce into society an equality, by which they could profit, and regarded themselves as the instruments of divine vengeance. They posed as the protectors of slaves, and used clubs in their deeds of violence, because Christ had said to Peter, "Put up thy sword." In 348, when the Donatists were threatened by the military power, they enlisted the circumcellions to fight in their cause. Julian favoured the Donatists, perhaps because Constantius had oppressed them; but Gratian deprived them of the right of holding services (377). In 405 severe laws were passed against them, and in 411 the great public controversy took place, in which the dialectic of Augustine won the victory—according to the judgment of the tribune Marcellinus, who was appointed to arbitrate—over the Donatist Petilian. After this judgment, which Honorius confirmed, severe penalties were enforced; the Donatists were persecuted, but they continued to exist as an unquiet factor, and probably assisted in the conquest of Africa by the Vandals.

But in the last twenty years of St. Augustine's life (410-430) the great question of the day was the problem of predestination and free will. Pelagius, born of a Roman family in Britain, propounded, and his friend Celestius supported, the doctrine that man's will is free; that God has given us the capacity for good, but that the will and the performance are our own. The doctrine was opposed by Orosius and Augustine; it was condemned by synods in Africa; it was condemned by Innocent, bishop of Rome; it was condemned by his successor Zosimus, who had at first exonerated Pelagius and his views from blame. In 418 an imperial rescript ordained that all Pelagians should be banished, and their theory was afterwards rejected at the general council of Ephesus. Thus the wisdom of the Church condemned the deadly doctrine of free will, and the most learned and earnest theologians did not shrink from the possible consequence of the denial of moral responsibility.

On consideration it can hardly be denied that the view of Pelagius was fraught with peril to Christianity. If man is born as sinless as Adam was before the fall, and if his will is free, there is no inconsistency in assuming that many may pass their lives utterly devoid of sin; and thus there may be righteous men in the world who need no redemption, men who can dispense with the work of Christ and the consolation of Christianity. Such a position was extremely dangerous, and Augustine naturally adopted the more consistent and simple doctrine of Christian fatalism, which in later ages assumed the form of Calvinism.

But in this controversy the question was argued on the platform of the understanding; and the view of Augustine won, not because his metaphysical armoury was better, but because he and those who embraced his view had more authority. As each party embraced one horn of the antinomy and rejected the other, the question itself could not be rationally decided, any more than a controversy between men who regard space as finite and men who regard it as infinite. Reason knows that both the doctrine of free will and the doctrine of necessity are defective and therefore false; and that true freedom does not conflict with necessity, but that necessity is only a moment in it. But in the fifth century the opponents did not rise to the point of view of reason; and when Cassian of Massilia tried to compromise between the two views by mixing a little of one with a little of the other—semi-pelagianism—it was really as if one tried to solve the antinomy of Zeno by blending an element of the finite nature of space with an element of its infinity, though the former mixture might not have been on the face of it so absurd.

 

X

LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY

 

The life of the higher classes at Constantinople was distinguished by its oriental richness and luxury. To some small extent this oriental colouring may have been due to direct eastern influences affecting Byzantium during the fourth century, but in the main it was merely the splendour of Old Rome translated to the palaces of New Rome.

To begin with the Emperor, a rich purple dress enveloped his whole body, wrought dragons shone on his silken robes, and a golden diadem set with precious gems adorned his head. His golden chariot was drawn by white mules, whose harness glittered with the same metal, and when he drove out men gazed in wonder at the sheen of the purple and the gold, the whiteness of the mules, and the revolving plates of gold which gleamed in the sun as the car to which they were attached moved along. The caparisons of his horse were of gold, and as he rode, seated on a saddle white as snow, through the city or the neighbouring country, he was accompanied by imperial guards who carried spears with golden tips and shields with golden centres encircled by golden eyes. And it was not only the Emperor whose appointments were enriched with the most precious of the metals; his courtiers and attendants and all men of opulence used it in ornamenting their saddles and bridles, their belts and their boots; their garments were of gold-threaded silk, their carriages were covered with gold or silver, their servants were tricked out with golden ornaments.

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. In their gorgeous houses the 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. Spacious verandahs and baths adjoined the houses. 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 the harps and pipes of musicians delighted the ears of the feasters.

These are some of the details which may be gleaned from the writings of Chrysostom respecting the luxurious life of the great and opulent men of his time, which was so revolting to him that it drove him in the direction of social communism. In the preceding chapters many things have been related in the course of the narrative which illustrate the manners and morals of the age, and they need not be repeated here. It is hardly necessary to say that Christianity had not been able to do very much towards refining the character of theatrical representations, or improving the morality of green-rooms. Chrysostom complained of the lewdness prevalent in theatres and the obscenity of the songs that delighted the audiences; he was specially scandalised by the exhibition of women swimming. We must, however, remember that Chrysostom was unusually austere. It surprises us somewhat to learn that the habit was kept up in Christian society of permitting courtesans to exhilarate or contaminate weddings with their presence. As to the amusements of the Emperor and the nobles, we know that they used to hunt in the neighbourhood of Byzantium. Theodosius II was passionately fond of riding, and it was probably in his reign that the game of tzukan or polo was introduced at Constantinople, if we may trust the evidence of a very late writer, who states that he laid out a tzukanisterion, or polo-ground, in the precincts of the palace. The game was perhaps derived from the Huns, who were accomplished riders.

The oriental court life which was developed at Byzantium with an elaboration which, perhaps more than anything else, gave that city its peculiar flavour, was stigmatised by the Neoplatonic bishop Synesius, in the speech he delivered before the Emperor Arcadius, as one of the evils that endangered the weal and safety of the Empire. The concern of the Emperors for their dignity, he said, and their fear lest they should become ordinary mortals if their subjects beheld them often, lead to the result that they see and hear as little as they well can of those things by which the wisdom of life is acquired; they live in a sort of sensual retirement, and their soul is a mist. He compares this life to the life of oysters, or of lizards which peep out occasionally on a hot day; and likens the small and stupid men by whom the monarch is surrounded to peacocks flaunting their colours. The motive of this retirement, he insists, is the wish to appear more than man.

As nothing, perhaps, is more effective in conveying an idea of the ways and manners of an age than the actual words of a contemporary narrator describing the unimportant details of a journey or an enterprise, I have thought it well to give a tolerably literal translation of the narrative of Marcus the deacon, recounting what befell Porphyrius, bishop of Gaza, when he and others  visited  Constantinople,  including  an  account  of  the baptism of Theodosius II.

The bishops set sail from Caesarea and reached Rhodes in ten days, where they visited a holy hermit named Procopius, who was gifted with second sight, and told them all that would befall them when they should arrive at Byzantium. The voyage to Byzantium occupied likewise ten days. Having secured lodgings, they visited the Patriarch John Chrysostom on the morrow of their arrival:

"And he received us with great honour and courtesy, and asked us why we undertook the fatigue of the journey, and we told him; and when he learned the reason he recollected that on a former occasion we made this petition by letter, and recognising me [Marcus] greeted me kindly. 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 ... Tomorrow I shall 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, and if God consents all will go well! 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, and Amantius was told that we were the persons of whom he had heard, he 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 most holy archbishop John bade them explain orally their affair to the chamberlain. And the most holy Porphyrius explained to him all the concernment 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. And I trust in the God of the Universe that He will show His mercy according to his wont'. With these injunctions he departed, and we having conversed on many spiritual topics with the archbishop John, and having received his blessing, withdrew.

"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 says 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 oppression1 of the Christians, whom they did not allow to perform a public duty  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 king 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 darics apiece to the most holy 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 thrown 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 very 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 holy bishops according to her custom, she bade them sit down. And after a long spiritual talk, she said, 'I spoke to the Emperor, and he was rather put out. But do not despond, for, God willing, I cannot cease until ye be satisfied and depart, having succeeded in your holy purpose.' And the bishops made obeisance. Then the sainted Porphyrius, pricked 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 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 my confinement 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 proceed to the most holy Johannes, the archbishop, and had the fruition of his holy words, 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 the Empress brought forth a male child, 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 and arisen from her chair of confinement, 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 confinement 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 holy 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 heart-pricking, 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 the holy 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 holy baptismal rite, give the petition to him who holds the child in his arms; but I shall instruct him what to do, and I trust in the Son of God that He can arrange the whole matter according to the will of His loving kindness.' 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 holy Church was poor.

"The days ran by, and the day on which the young Emperor Theodosius was to be illuminated arrived. And all the city was crowned with garlands and decked out in garments entirely 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 various dresses. 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 proceed to my present true history. When the young Theodosius was baptized and came forth from the church to the Palace, you might behold the excellence of the multitude of the magnates and their dazzling raiment, for all were dressed in white, and you would have thought the multitude was 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.

"Then the holy Porphyrius says to us: 'If the things which soon vanish possess such glory, how much more glorious are the things celestial, prepared for the elect, which neither eye hath beheld nor ear heard, nor hath it come into the heart of man to consider.'

"And we stood at the portal of the church, with the document of 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 concernment, 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 it 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, one of whose offices was 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 intrusted 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 is extremely interesting. It gives us a concrete idea of the manner in which things were done, and of the kind of little dramas that probably lay behind the greater number of the formal decrees and rescripts contained in the Codices of Theodosius and Justinian. 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 in attempting 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 the Emperor than the churchman.

As a favourable example of an educated Byzantine of noble position we may take Anthemius, who became Emperor in the West as the colleague of Leo I, and who was the grandson of that prefect Anthemius who guided the State through the critical period following the death of Arcadius. He knew Latin as well as Greek, and a knowledge of Latin was very necessary for a politician, as it was still the official language throughout all the Empire. Yet acquaintance with the imperial language was beginning already to decline in the eastern provinces, and the fact that Pulcheria knew it was considered deserving of especial remark. Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, Plautus, and Virgil were among the books that Anthemius studied, so that he was quite at home in the society of the cultivated senators of Old Rome, when he resided there as Emperor. But if he had studied the Latin language and delighted in the Roman literature, he had not put away from himself the Greek love of speculation and mysticism. He dabbled in theosophy and magic, and this propensity gave him a bad name in Rome. He loved to surround himself with sorcerers, and with men who held strange opinions; pagans and heretics were more welcome guests than orthodox Christians. One of his best friends was Severus, a pagan magician who had lived at Alexandria and made his house the resort of spiritualists, brahmans, and theosophists; and it was said that Severus was wont to ride on a fiery horse which emitted sparks as it galloped. Another of his friends, Philotheus, was an adherent of the sublime or impious doctrine of Macedonius, which held that the Holy Ghost was not a person but a thing spread generally through nature—somewhat like the Earth-spirit in Goethe's Faust. The bishop of Rome felt himself obliged to interfere with the meetings which Philotheus held in that city to propagate his doctrine.

Let us now turn to the city of the Ptolemies, Alexandria-on-Nile, where life was as busy, as various, and as interesting as ever. Here Ptolemy Soter had established his "brilliant palace and court, with festivals which were the wonder of the world". “The city”, writes Mr. Mahaffy, “was adequate by the largeness and splendour of its external experience”. We have it described in later times as astonishing the beholder not only with its vastness—to wander through its streets, says Achilles Tatius, is taking a tour without leaving home—but with the splendour of the colonnades which lined the streets for miles and kept the ways cool for passengers; with the din and bustle of the thoroughfares, of which the principal were horse and carriage ways, contrary to the usual Greek practice; with the number and richness of its public buildings; and with the holiday and happy air of its vast population, who rested not day and night, but had their streets so well lighted that the author just named says 'the sun did not set, but was distributed in small change to illumine the gay night.' The palaces and other royal buildings and parks were walled off, like the palace at Pekin [and that at Constantinople], and had their own port and seashore; but all the rest of the town had water near it and ship traffic in all directions. Every costume and language must have been met in its streets and quays. It had its fashionable suburbs, too, and its bathing resorts to the east—Canopus, Eleusis, and Nicopolis; to the west its Necropolis. But of all this splendour no eyewitness has left us in detail, what we are reduced to infer by conjecture”.

The Romans found no city in the Empire so difficult to govern as that of the quick-witted and quick-tempered Alex­andrians; the streets were continually the scene of tumults between citizens and soldiers, and revolts against the augustal prefects. “While in Antioch, as a rule, the matter did not go beyond sarcasm, the Alexandrian rabble took on the slightest pretext to stones and cudgels. In street uproar, says an authority, himself Alexandrian, the Egyptians are before all others; the smallest spark suffices here to kindle a tumult. On account of neglected visits, on account of the confiscation of spoiled provisions, on account of exclusion from a bathing establishment, on account of a dispute between the slave of an Alexandrian of rank and the Roman footsoldier as to the value or non-value of their respective slippers, the legions were under the necessity of charging among the citizens of Alexandria”.

Instead of healing the discords and calming the intractable temper of this turbulent metropolis by diffusing a spirit of amity and long-suffering, the introduction of Christianity only gave the citizens new things to quarrel about, new causes for tumult, new formulae and catchwords which they could use as pretexts for violence and rioting. It was only in Alexandria that such acts as the destruction of the Serapeum or the cruel death of Hypatia could take place.

An account of the latter event falls within the limits of our period, and I have reserved it for this chapter, as it illustrates the nature of the Alexandrian atmosphere.

Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, the great mathematician, who was a professor at the Museum or university of Alexandria. Trained in mathematics by her father, she left that pure air for the deeper and more agitating study of metaphysics, and probably became acquainted with the older Neoplatonism of Plotinus which, in the Alexandrian Museum, had been trans­mitted untainted by the later developments of Porphyrius and Iamblichus. When she had completed her education she was appointed to the chair of philosophy, and her extraordinary talents, combined with her beauty, made her a centre of interest in the cultured and aristocratic circles at Alexandria, and drew to her lecture-room crowds of admirers. Her free and unembarrassed intercourse with educated men and the publicity of her life must have given rise to many scandals and backbitings, and her own sex doubt­less looked upon her with suspicion, and called her masculine and immodest. She used to walk in the streets in her academical gown (the philosopher's cloak) and explain to any person who wished to learn, difficulties in Plato or Aristotle. Of the influence of her personality on her pupils we have still a record in the letters of Synesius of Cyrene, who, although his studies under her auspices did not hinder him from going over to Christianity, always remained at heart a semi-pagan, and was devotedly attached to his instructress. That some of her pupils fell in love with her is not surprising, but Hypatia never married, though a later tradition made her the wife of a heathen philosopher, Isidorus.

The real cause of her tragic fate, which befell her in March 415, is veiled in obscurity. We know that she was an intimate friend of the pagan Orestes, the prefect augustalis of Egypt; and we could be sure, even if we had not the testimony of Suidas, that she was an object of hatred to Cyrillus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, both because she was an enthusiastic preacher of pagan doctrines and because she was Orestes' friend. Moreover, she was murdered just after the great conflict between Orestes and Cyril, in which the Jews played an important part.

The Alexandrian bishop was already very powerful, and Cyril, who succeeded to the chair in 412, aimed at attaining the supreme power in the city and reducing the authority of the imperial  prefect to a minimum. The opposition of  the Jews to the bishop brought matters to a crisis, for when, on one occasion, they saw a notorious creature of Cyril present in an assembly, they cried out that the spy should be arrested, and Orestes gratified them by inflicting public chastisement on him. The menaces which Cyril, enraged by this act, fulminated against the Jews led to a bloody vengeance on the Christian population. A report was spread at night that the great church was on fire, and when the Christians flocked to the spot the Jews surrounded and massacred them. Cyril replied to this horror by banishing all Hebrews from the city, and allowing the Christians to plunder their property, a proceeding which was quite beyond the Patriarch's rights, and was a direct and insulting interference with the authority of Orestes, who immediately wrote a complaint to Constantinople. At this juncture 500 monks of Nitria, sniffing the savour of blood and bigotry from afar, hastened to the scene. These fanatics insulted Orestes publicly, one of them hitting him with a stone; in fact the governor ran a serious risk of his life. The culprit who hurled the missile was executed, and Cyril treated his body as the remains of a martyr.

It was then that Hypatia seems to have fallen a victim in the midst of these infuriated passions. As she was returning home one day she was seized by a band of men, led by a certain Peter, who dragged her to a church and, tearing off her garments, hewed her in pieces and burned the fragments of her body. The reason alleged in public for this act of barbarity was that she hindered a reconciliation between Orestes and Cyrillus; but this, of course, was only a pretext, and the real reason, as Socrates tells us, was envy. Whether the motive of Cyrillus in instigating this murder—for that he was the insti­gator may be considered almost certain—was a grudge against Hypatia herself, or whether, as has been suggested, he intended by her assassination to wound another person (Orestes or Synesius) we cannot determine.

In my opinion we shall do most wisely to consider that the conflict of Orestes with Cyril was exacerbated by the fact that Orestes was really, though not openly, a heathen,  and that Cyril wished it to appear that the struggle was not merely the collision of rival authorities or conditioned by his own ambition, but rather a strife of the Christian Church with the "Hellenic" society of Alexandria. Hence Hypatia, as a prominent pagan teacher and as the intimate friend of Orestes, was sacrificed in order to lend this aspect to the conflict; and the sacrifice was all the more grateful to the bishop as it was a personal blow to his enemy.

Such was Alexandria at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, when Christianity was in con­flict with paganism; in the latter half of the fifth century it was as turbulent as ever, but the conflict was then among Christians themselves—various sects of monophysites and orthodox Chalcedonians.

Let us now glance for a moment at Antioch-on-Orontes, the famous capital of another great successor of Alexander, and in Christian times a city of note as the seat of one of the great Patriarchs of Christendom. "In no city of antiquity," says Mommsen, "was the enjoyment of life so much the main thing and its duties so incidental as in Antioch-upon-Daphne as the city was significantly called, somewhat as if we should say Vienna-upon-Prater. For Daphne was a pleasure-garden about five miles from the city, ten miles in circumference, famous for its laurel trees, after which it was named, for its old cypresses, which even the Christian Emperors ordered to be spared, for its flowing and gushing waters, for its shining temple of Apollo, and its magnificent much-frequented festival of the 10th August." Its chief street, nearly four and a half miles long, stretched straight along the river, and a covered colonnade afforded shade from sun or rain. Its streets were brilliantly lighted at night, and the supply of water, it has been remarked, was so good that there was no fighting at the public baths. Mommsen, comparing it with Alexandria, observes that "for enjoyment of life, dramatic spectacles, dining, pleasures of love, Antioch had more to offer than the city in which no one went idle." It was a gay and corrupt place. Julian had abhorred it for its corruption and Christianity, and it had abhorred Julian for his paganism and austerity. Syria was the home of actors, singers, ballet-dancers, and circus clowns, as well as of eloquent theologians; and the heart of Chrysostom was distressed in vain for the depravity of the Antiochian amusements. When riots occurred the causes were generally connected with the circus; and though the men of Antioch, like the men of Alexandria, had sharp tongues, they were generally content with using them, and did not proceed to anything more violent. In Antioch, as well as in Alexandria, it may be observed the Jews formed an important element of the population, which, not counting slaves and children, numbered about 200,000.

The situation of Antioch, however, was not so fortunate as that of its rival. It was fourteen miles from the coast, and thus had not the advantage of being a seaport; and it was liable to be shaken by frequent and violent earthquakes, which ultimately proved its ruin.

Antioch does not seem to have been a resort of pagans. In the fourth century, indeed, Libanius may be mentioned as a pagan of Antioch, but in the fifth century probably very few non-Christians of a serious type were to be found there. If a writer of Antioch were named, we might guess with considerable certainty that he was a Christian, just as we might guess that a writer of Athens was a pagan. An Alexandrian author, except he were a theologian, would more probably be a pagan than a Christian; a Byzantine author would more probably be a Christian than a pagan. As for a native of Asia Minor, the chances in regard to his faith would be about equal.

As a contrast to the highly civilised life of the Roman Empire, it will be well to take a glimpse at the primitive manners of the Huns, as they impressed a contemporary Roman, whose account of an embassy to Attila in the year 448 has been preserved. As the narrative, which I have translated freely, with some omissions, is of considerable length, a separate chapter may be devoted to it.

 

XI

A  GLIMPSE  OF  HUN  LIFE

 

The historian Priscus accompanied his friend Maximin on an embassy to Scythia or Hunland in the year 448, and wrote a full account of what befell them. Of this account, which has been fortunately preserved, the following is a free translation:

"We set out with the barbarians, and arrived at Sardica, which is thirteen days for a fast traveller from Constantinople. Halting there we considered it advisable to invite Edecon and the barbarians with him to dinner. The inhabitants of the place sold us sheep and oxen, which we butchered, and prepared a meal. In the course of the feast, as the barbarians lauded Attila and we lauded the Emperor, Bigilas remarked that it was not fair to compare a man and a god, meaning Attila by the man and Theodosius by the god. The Huns grew excited and hot at this remark. But we turned the conversation in another direction, and soothed their wounded feelings; and after dinner, when we separated, Maximin presented Edecon and Orestes with silk garments and Indian gems...

''When we arrived at Naissus we found the city deserted, as though it had been sacked; only a few sick persons lay in the churches. We halted at a short distance from the river, in an open space, for all the ground adjacent to the bank was full of the bones of men slain in war. On the morrow we came to the station of Agintheus, the commander-in-chief of the Illyrian armies, who was posted not far from Naissus, to announce to him the imperial commands, and to receive five of those seventeen deserters, about whom Attila had written to the Emperor. We had an interview with him, and having treated the deserters with kindness, he committed them to us.

The next day we proceeded from the district of Naissus towards the Danube, we entered a covered valley with many bends and windings and circuitous paths. We thought we were travelling due west, but when the day dawned the sun rose in front; and some of us unacquainted with the topography cried out that the sun was going the wrong way, and portending unusual events. The fact was that that part of the road faced the east, owing to the irregularity of the ground. Having passed these rough places we arrived at a plain which was also well wooded. At the river we were received by barbarian ferrymen, who rowed us across the river in boats made by themselves out of single trees hewn and hollowed. These preparations had not been made for our sake, but to convey across a company of Huns; for Attila pretended that he wished to hunt in Roman territory, but his intent was really hostile, because all the deserters had not been given up to him.

Having crossed the Danube, and proceeded with the barbarians about seventy stadia, we were compelled to wait in a certain plain, that Edecon and his party might go on in front and inform Attila of our arrival. As we were dining in the evening we heard the sound of horses approaching, and two Scythians arrived with directions that we were to set out to Attila. We asked them first to partake of our meal, and they dismounted and made good cheer.

On the next day, under their guidance, we arrived at the tents of Attila, which were numerous, about three o'clock, and when we wished to pitch our tent on a hill the barbarians who met us prevented us, because the tent of Attila was on low ground, so we halted where the Scythians desired ... (Then a message is received from Attila, who was aware of the nature of their embassy, saying that if they had nothing further to communicate to him he would not receive them, so they reluctantly prepared to return.) When the baggage had been packed on the beasts of burden, and we were perforce preparing to start in the night time, messengers came from Attila bidding us wait on account of the late hour. Then men arrived with an ox and river fish, sent to us by Attila, and when we had dined we retired to sleep.

When it was day we expected a gentle and courteous message from the barbarian, but he again bade us depart if we had no further mandates beyond what he already knew. We made no reply, and prepared to set out, though Bigilas insisted that we should feign to have some other communication to make. When I saw that Maximin was very dejected, I went to Scottas (one of the Hun nobles, brother of Onegesius), taking with me Rusticius, who understood the Hun language. He had come with us to Scythia, not as a member of the embassy, but on business with Constantius, an Italian whom Aetius had sent to Attila to be that monarch's private secretary. I informed Scottas, Rusticius acting as interpreter, that Maximin will give him many presents if he would procure him an interview with Attila; and, moreover, that the embassy will not only conduce to the public interests of the two powers, but to the private interest of Onegesius, for the Emperor desired that he should be sent as an ambassador to Byzantium, to arrange the disputes of the Huns and Romans, and that there he would receive splendid gifts. As Onegesius was not present it was for Scottas, I said, to help us, or rather help his brother, and at the same time prove that the report was true which ascribed to him an influence with Attila equal to that possessed by his brother.

Scottas mounted his horse and rode to Attila's tent, while I returned to Maximin, and found him in a state of perplexity and anxiety, lying on the grass with Bigilas. I described my interview with Scottas, and bade him make preparations for an audience of Attila. They both jumped up, approving of what I had done, and recalled the men who had started with the beasts of burden. As we were considering what to say to Attila, and how to present the Emperor's gifts, Scottas came to fetch us, and we entered Attila's tent, which was surrounded by a multitude of barbarians. We found Attila sitting on a wooden chair. "We stood at a little distance and Maximin advanced and saluted the barbarian, to whom he gave the Emperor's letter, saying that the Emperor prayed for the safety of him and his. The king replied, 'It shall be unto the Romans as they wish it to be unto me,' and immediately addressed Bigilas, calling him a shameless beast, and asking him why he ventured to come when all the deserters had not been given up ...

"After the departure of Bigilas, who returned to the Empire (nominally to find the deserters whose restoration Attila demanded, but really to get the money for his fellow-conspirator Edecon), we remained one day in that place, and then set out with Attila for the northern parts of the country.

"We accompanied the barbarian for a time, but when we reached a certain point took another route by the command of the Scythians who conducted us, as Attila was proceeding to a village where he intended to marry the daughter of Eskam, though he had many other wives, for the Scythians practised polygamy.

We proceeded along a level road in a plain and met with navigable rivers—of which the greatest, next to the Danube, are the Drecon, Tigas, and Tiphesas—which we crossed in the monoxyles, boats made of one piece, used by the dwellers on the banks: the smaller rivers we traversed on rafts which the barbarians carry about with them on carts, for the purpose of crossing morasses.

In the villages we were supplied with food—millet instead of corn, and mead, as the natives call it, instead of wine. The attendants who followed us received millet, and a drink made of barley, which the barbarians call him. Late in the evening, having travelled a long distance, we pitched our tents on the banks of a fresh-water lake, used for water by the inhabitants of the neighbouring village. But a wind and storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning and heavy rain, arose, and almost threw down our tents: all our utensils were rolled into the waters of the lake. Terrified by the mishap and the atmospherical disturbance, we left the place and lost one another in the dark and the rain, each following the road that seemed most easy. But we all reached the village by different ways, and raised an alarm to obtain what we lacked. The Scythians of the village sprang out of their huts at the noise, and, lighting the reeds which they use for kindling fires, asked what we wanted. Our conductors replied that the storm had alarmed us; so they invited us to their huts and provided warmth for us by lighting large fires of reeds.

The lady who governed the village—she had been one of Bleda's wives—sent us provisions and good-looking girls to console us (this is a Scythian compliment). We treated the young women to a share in the eatables, but declined to take any further advantage of their presence. We remained in the huts till day dawned and then went to look for our lost utensils, which we found partly in the place where we had pitched the tent, partly on the bank of the lake, and partly in the water. We spent that day in the village drying our things; for the storm had ceased and the sun was bright. Having looked after our horses and cattle, we directed our steps to the princess, to whom we paid our respects and presented gifts in return for her courtesy. The gifts consisted of things which are esteemed by the barbarians as not produced in the country—three silver phialai, red skins, Indian pepper, palm fruit, and other delicacies.

"Having advanced a distance of ten days further, we halted at a village; for as the rest of the route was the same for us and Attila, it behoved us to wait, so that he might go in front. Here we met with some of the 'western Romans,' who had also come on an embassy to Attila—the Count Romulus, Promotus governor of Noricum, and Romanus a military captain. With them was Constantius whom Aetius had sent to Attila to be his secretary, and Tatulus, the father of Orestes; these two were not connected with the embassy, but were friends of the ambassadors. Constantius had known them of old in the Italies, and Tatulus' son Orestes had married the daughter of Romulus.

"The object of the embassy was to soften the soul of Attila, who de­manded the surrender of one Silvanus, a silversmith (or banker) in Rome, because he had received golden vessels from a certain Constantius. This Constantius, a native of Gaul, had preceded his namesake in the office of secretary to Attila. When Sirmium in Pannonia was besieged by the Scythians, the bishop of the place consigned the vessels to his (Constantius') care, that if the city were taken and he survived they might be used to ransom him; and in case he were slain, to ransom the citizens who were led into captivity. But when the city was enslaved, Constantius violated his engagement, and, as he happened to be at Rome on business, pawned the vessels to Silvanus for a sum of money, on condition that if he gave back the money within a prescribed period the dishes should be returned, but otherwise should become Silvanus' property. Constantius, suspected of treachery, was crucified by Attila and Bleda; and afterwards, when the affair of the vessels became known to Attila, he demanded the surrender of Silvanus on the ground that he had stolen his property. Accordingly Aetius and the Emperor of the Western Romans sent to explain that Silvanus was Constantius' creditor, the vessels having been pawned and not stolen, and that he had sold them to priests and others for sacred purposes. If, however, Attila refused to desist from his demand, he, the Emperor, would send him the value of the vessels, but would not surrender the innocent Silvanus.

"Having waited for some time until Attila advanced in front of us, we proceeded, and having crossed some rivers we arrived at a large village, where Attila's house was said to be more splendid than his residences in other places. It was made of polished boards, and surrounded with a wooden enclosure, designed, not for protection, but for appearance. The house of Onegesius was second to the king's in splendour, and was also encircled with a wooden enclosure, but it was not adorned with towers like that of the king. Not far from the enclosure was a large bath which Onegesius—who was the second in power among the Scythians—built, having transported the stones from Pannonia; for the barbarians in this district had no stones or trees, but used imported material. The builder of the bath was a captive from Sirmium, who expected to win his freedom as payment for making the bath. But he was disappointed, and greater trouble befell him than mere captivity among the Scythians, for One­gesius appointed him bathman, and he used to minister to him and his family when they bathed.

"When Attila entered the village he was met by girls advancing in rows, under thin white canopies of linen, which were held up by the outside women who stood under them, and were so large that seven or more girls walked beneath each. There were many lines of damsels thus canopied, and they sang Scythian songs. When he came near the house of Onegesius, which lay on his way, the wife of Onegesius issued from the door, with a number of servants, bearing meat and wine, and saluted him and begged him to partake of her hospitality. This is the highest honour that can be shown among the Scythians. To gratify the wife of his friend, he ate, just as he sat on his horse, his attendants raising the tray to his saddlebow; and having tasted the wine, he went on to the palace, which was higher than the other houses and built on an elevated site. But we remained in the house of Onegesius, at his invitation, for he had returned from his expedition with Attila's son. His wife and kinsfolk entertained us to dinner, for he had no leisure himself, as he had to relate to Attila the result of his expedition, and explain the accident which had happened to the young prince, who had slipped and broken his right hand.

After dinner we left the house of Onegesius, and took up our quarters nearer the palace, so that Maximin might be at a convenient distance for visiting Attila or holding intercourse with his court. The next morning, at dawn of day, Maximin sent me to Onegesius, with presents offered by himself as well as those which the Emperor had sent, and I was to find out whether he would have an interview with Maximin and at what time. When I arrived at the house, along with the attendants who carried the gifts, I found the doors closed, and had to wait until someone should come out and announce our arrival.

As I waited and walked up and down in front of the enclosure which surrounded the house, a man, whom from his Scythian dress I took for a barbarian, came up and addressed me in Greek, with the word Xoupe, Hail!' I was surprised at a Scythian speaking Greek. For the subjects of the Huns, swept together from various lands, speak, beside their own barbarous tongue, either Hunnic or Gothic, or—as many as have commercial dealings with the western Romans—Latin; but none of them easily speak Greek, except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian sea-coast; and these last are easily known to any stranger by their torn garments and the squalor of their head, as men who have met with a reverse. This man, on the contrary, resembled a well-to-do Scythian, being well dressed, and having his hair cut in a circle after Scythian fashion.

Having returned his salutation, I asked him who he was and whence he had come into a foreign land and adopted Scythian life. "When he asked me why I wanted to know, I told him that his Hellenic speech had prompted my curiosity. Then he smiled and said that he was born a Greek and had gone as a merchant to Viminacium, on the Danube, where he had stayed a long time, and married a very rich wife. But the city fell a prey to the barbarians, and he was stript of his prosperity, and on account of his riches was allotted to Onegesius in the division of the spoil, as it was the custom among the Scythians for the chiefs to reserve for themselves the rich prisoners. Having fought bravely against the Romans and the Acatiri, he had paid the spoils he won to his master, and so obtained freedom. He then married a barbarian wife and had children, and had the privilege of partaking at the table of Onegesius.

"He considered his new life among the Scythians better than his old life among the Romans, and the reasons he urged were as follows: 'After war the Scythians live in inactivity, enjoying what they have got, and not at all, or very little, harassed. The Romans, on the other hand, are in the first place very liable to perish in war, as they have to rest their hopes of safety on others, and are not allowed, on account of their tyrants, to use arms. And those who use them are injured by the cowardice of their generals, who cannot support the conduct of war. But the condition of the subjects in time of peace is far more grievous than the evils of war, for the exaction of the taxes is very severe, and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others, because the laws are practically not valid against all classes. A transgressor who belongs to the wealthy classes is not punished for his injustice, while a poor man, who does not understand business, undergoes the legal penalty, that is if he does not depart this life before the trial, so long is the course of lawsuits protracted, and so much money is expended on them. The climax of the misery is to have to pay in order to obtain justice. For no one will give a court to the injured man except he pay a sum of money to the judge and the judge's clerks.'

"In reply to this attack on the Empire, I asked him to be good enough to listen with patience to the other side of the question. 'The creators of the Roman republic,' I said, 'who were wise and good men, in order to prevent things from being done at haphazard, made one class of men guardians of the laws, and appointed another class to the profession of arms, who were to have no other object than to be always ready for battle, and to go forth to war without dread, as though to their ordinary exercise, having by practice exhausted all their fear beforehand. Others again were assigned to attend to the cultivation of the ground, to support both themselves and those who fight in their defence, by contributing the military corn-supply ... To those who protect the interests of the litigants a sum of money is paid by the latter, just as a payment is made by the farmers to the soldiers. Is it not fair to support him who assists and requite him for his kindness. The support of the horse benefits the horseman. ... Those who spend money on a suit and lose it in the end cannot fairly put it down to anything but the injustice of their case. And as to the long time spent on lawsuits, that is due to concern for justice, that judges may not fail in passing accurate judgments, by having to give sentence offhand; it is better that they should reflect, and conclude the case more tardily, than that by judging in a hurry they should both injure man and transgress against the Deity, the institutor of justice ... The Romans treat their servants better than the king of the Scythians treats his subjects. They deal with them as fathers or teachers, admonishing them to abstain from evil and follow the lines of conduct which they have esteemed honourable; they reprove them for their errors like their own children. They are not allowed, like the Scythians, to inflict death on them. They have numerous ways of conferring freedom; they can manumit not only during life, but also by their wills, and the testamentary wishes of a Roman in regard to his property are law.'

"My interlocutor shed tears, and confessed that the laws and constitution of the Romans were fair, but deplored that the governors, not possessing the spirit of former generations, were ruining the State.

"As we were engaged in this discussion a servant came out and opened the door of the enclosure. I hurried up, and inquired how Onegesius was engaged, for I desired to give him a message from the Roman ambassador. He replied that I should meet him if I waited a little, as he was about to go forth. And after a short time I saw him coming out, and addressed him, saying, 'The Roman ambassador salutes you, and I have come with gifts from him, and with the gold which the Emperor sent you. The ambassador is anxious to meet you, and begs you to appoint a time and place.'

Onegesius bade his servants receive the gold and the gifts, and told me to announce to Maximin that he would go to him immediately. I delivered the message, and Onegesius appeared in the tent without delay. He expressed his thanks to Maximin and the Emperor for the presents, and asked why he sent for him. Maximin said that the time had come for Onegesius to have greater renown among men, if he would go to the Emperor, and by his wisdom arrange the objects of dispute between the Romans and Huns, and establish concord between them; and thereby he will also procure many advantages for his own family, as he and his children will be always friends of the Emperor and the imperial race. Then Onegesius inquired what measures would gratify the Emperor, and how he could arrange the disputes. Maximin replied: 'If you cross into the lands of the Roman Empire you will lay the Emperor under an obligation, and you will arrange the matters at issue by investigating their causes and deciding them on the basis of the peace. Onegesius said he would inform the Emperor and his ministers of Attila's wishes, but the Romans need not think they could ever prevail with him to betray his master or neglect his Scythian training and his wives and children, or to prefer wealth among the Romans to bondage with Attila. He added that he would be of more service to the Romans by remaining in his own land and softening the anger of his master, if he were indignant for aught with the Romans, than by visiting them and subjecting himself to blame if he made arrangements that Attila did not approve of. He then retired, having consented that I should act as intermediate in conveying messages from Maximin to himself, for it would not have been consistent with Maximin's dignity as ambassador to visit him constantly.

"The next day I entered the enclosure of Attila's palace, bearing gifts to his wife, whose name was Kreka. She had three sons, of whom the eldest governed the Acatiri and the other nations who dwell in Pontic Scythia. Within the enclosure were numerous buildings, some of carved boards beautifully fitted together, others of straight planed beams, without carving, fastened on round wooden blocks which rose to a moderate height from the ground. Attila's wife lived here, and, having been admitted by the barbarians at the door, I found her reclining on a soft couch. The floor of the room was covered with woollen mats for walking on. A number of servants stood round her, and maids sitting on the floor in front of her embroidered with colours linen cloths intended to be placed over the Scythian dress for ornament. Having approached, saluted her, and presented the gifts, I went out, and walked to the other houses, where Attila was, and waited for Onegesius, who, as I knew, was with Attila. I stood in the middle of a great crowd—the guards of Attila and his attendants knew me, and so no one hindered me. I saw a number of people advancing, and a great commotion and noise, Attila's egress being expected. And he came forth from the house with a dignified strut, looking round on this side and on that. He was accompanied by Onegesius, and stood in front of the house; and many persons who had lawsuits with one another came up and received his judgment. Then he returned into the house, and received ambassadors of barbarous peoples.

"As I was waiting for Onegesius, I was accosted by Romulus and Promotus and Romanus, the ambassadors who had come from Italy about the golden vessels; they were accompanied by Rusticius and by Constantiolus, a man from the Pannonian territory, which was subjected to Attila. They asked me whether we had been dismissed or are constrained to remain, and I replied that it was just to learn this from Onegesius that I was waiting outside the palace. When I inquired in my turn whether Attila had vouchsafed them a kind reply, they told me that his decision could not be moved, and that he threatened war unless either Silvanus or the drinking vessels should be given up . . .

"As we were talking about the state of the world, Onegesius came out; we went up to him and asked him about our concerns. Having first spoken with some barbarians, he bade me inquire of Maximin what consular the Romans are sending as an ambassador to Attila. When I came to our tent I delivered the message to Maximin, and deliberated with him what answer we should make to the question of the barbarian. Returning to Onegesius, I said that the Romans desired him to come to them and adjust the matters of dispute, otherwise the Emperor will send whatever ambassador he chooses. He then bade me fetch Maximin, whom he conducted to the presence of Attila. Soon after Maximin came out, and told me that the barbarian wished Nomos or Anatolius or Senator to be the ambassador, and that he would not receive any other than one of these three; when he (Maximin) replied that it was not meet to mention men by name and so render them suspected in the eyes of the Emperor, Attila said that if they do not choose to comply with his wishes the differences will be adjusted by arms.

"When we returned to our tent the father of Orestes came with an invitation from Attila for both of us to a banquet at three o'clock. When the hour arrived we went to the palace, along with the embassy from the western Romans, and stood on the threshold of the hall in the presence of Attila. The cup-bearers gave us a cup, according to the national custom, that we might pray before we sat down. Having tasted the cup, we proceeded to take our seats; all the chairs were ranged along the walls of the room on either side. Attila sat in the middle on a couch; a second couch was set behind him, and from it steps led up to his bed, which was covered  with linen sheets and wrought coverlets for ornament, such as Greeks and Romans use to deck bridal beds.

The places on the right of Attila were held chief in honour, those on the left, where we sat, were only second. Berichus, a noble among the Scythians, sat on our side, but had the precedence of us. Onegesius sat on a chair on the right of Attila's couch, and over against Onegesius on a chair sat two of Attila's sons; his eldest son sat on his couch, not near him, but at the extreme end, with his eyes fixed on the ground, in shy respect for his father. When all were arranged, a cupbearer came and handed Attila a wooden cup of wine. He took it, and saluted the first in precedence, who, honoured by the salutation, stood up, and might not sit down until the king, having tasted or drained the wine, returned the cup to the attend­ant. All the guests then honoured Attila in the same way, saluting him, and then tasting the cups; but he did not stand up.

Each of us had a special cupbearer, who would come forward in order to present the wine, when the cupbearer of Attila retired. When the second in precedence and those next to him had been honoured in like manner, Attila toasted us in the same way according to the order of the seats. When this ceremony was over the cupbearers retired, and tables, large enough for three or four, or even more, to sit at, were placed next the table of Attila, so that each could take of the food on the dishes without leaving his seat. The attendant of Attila first entered with a dish full of meat, and behind him came the other attendants with bread and viands, which they laid on the tables. A luxurious meal, served on silver plate, had been made ready for us and the barbarian guests, but Attila ate nothing but meat on a wooden trencher.

In everything else, too, he showed himself temperate; his cup was of wood, while to the guests were given goblets of gold and silver. His dress, too, was quite simple, affecting only to be clean. The sword he carried at his side, the latchets of his Scythian shoes, the bridle of his horse were not adorned, like those of the other Scythians, with gold or gems or anything costly. When the viands of the first course had been consumed we all stood up, and did not resume our seats until each one, in the order before observed, drank to the health of Attila in the goblet of wine presented to him.

We then sat down, and a second dish was placed on each table with eatables of another kind. After this course the same ceremony was observed as after the first. When evening fell torches were lit, and two barbarians coming forward in front of Attila sang songs they had composed, celebrating his victories and deeds of valour in war. And of the guests, as they looked at the singers, some were pleased with the verses, others reminded of wars were excited in their souls, while yet others, whose bodies were feeble with age and their spirits compelled to rest, shed tears.

After the songs a Scythian, whose mind was deranged, appeared, and by uttering outlandish and senseless words forced the company to laugh. After him Zerkon, the Moorish dwarf, entered. He had been sent by Attila as a gift to Aetius, and Edecon had persuaded him to come to Attila in order to recover his wife, whom he had left behind him in Scythia; the lady was a Scythian whom he had obtained in marriage through the influence of his patron Bleda. He did not succeed in recovering her, for Attila was angry with him for returning. On the occasion of the banquet he made his appearance, and threw all except Attila into fits of unquenchable laughter by his appearance, his dress, his voice, and his words, which were a confused jumble of Latin, Hunnic, and Gothic. Attila, however, remained immovable and of unchanging countenance, nor by word or act did he betray anything approaching to a smile of merriment except at the entry of Ernas, his youngest son, whom he pulled by the cheek, and gazed on with a calm look of satisfaction. I was sur­prised that he made so much of this son, and neglected his other children; but a barbarian who sat beside me and knew Latin, bidding me not reveal what he told, gave me to understand that prophets had forewarned Attila that his race would fall, but would be restored by this boy. When the night had advanced we retired from the banquet, not wishing to assist further at the potations."

It will be noticed that in the foregoing narrative the word Scythian and the word Hun seem at first sight to be used indifferently. A certain distinction between them can, however, be perceived, and therefore, though they are most often practically synonymous, I have reproduced both words in the translation just as they occur in the original. Scythian is not merely an ancient term applied to a new people, in the same way as the Goths and the Slaves were often called Getae by pedantic historians; Scythian was a generic term for all nomadic nations, and as a great many different nomadic nations were united under the sovereignty of Attila, it was a very convenient and natural name to apply to his subjects. The Huns, Attila's own nation, were Scythians, but all Scythians were not Huns. And thus, to use a more modern distinction, we might say that Attila was king of the Huns and emperor of the Scythians.