SURVEY OF EVENTS BETWEEN A.D. 387 AND A.D. 397—AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS—REVOLT OF ARBOGASTES—DEATH OF THEODOSIUS—THE MINISTERS OF ARCADIUS—RUFINUS AND EUTROPIUS.

Some account has now been given of the most remarkable among the homilies delivered by Chrysostom during the first year of his priesthood; not only because to follow the course of the Christian seasons through the cycle of one year seemed the most convenient method of giving specimens of his ordinary style of preaching, but also because these first efforts were seldom if ever surpassed in power and beauty by his later productions. A more extensive survey of his theology, under its several heads, is reserved for the concluding chapter; and the remainder of the ten years during which he resided at Antioch being uneventful as regards his life, it will be profitable to fill up the gap by taking a glance at the world outside his present sphere. Some knowledge of contemporary events and men is indeed necessary to a just appreciation of his position and conduct, when he is summoned to occupy a more public and exalted station.

It is a melancholy scene which meets the eye. The mighty fabric of the Empire crumbles, perhaps more rapidly in this decade than in any previous period of equal length—like an old man whose constitution is thoroughly broken.

Effeminate luxury in the civilised population is matched by the rude ferocity of the barbarians who hem it in or mingle with it, and the new barbarian patch agrees ill with the old garment, which is not strong enough to bear it. The pages of historians are filled with tales of murder, massacre, treachery, venality, corruption, everywhere and of all kinds. There is no national greatness, but great men move across the stage: Theodosius himself, generous, just though passionate, vigorous when roused to a sense of emergency; the last Emperor who deserved the name of “great;” Ambrose, the intrepid advocate of religious duty to God and man, the champion of the rights of Church and hierarchy; Stilicho, the skilful commander of armies and able guardian of the Empire after the death of Theodosius; Alaric, the very type of Gothic force; Rufinus and Eutropius, the clever, scheming adventurers, destitute of all nobility, who in a degenerate court contrive to raise themselves to the pinnacle of power, and are suddenly toppled headlong from it.

The most commanding public character in the West at this time was, and for some years had been, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan. Disliked but feared by the Arian court, respected and beloved by the people, he fought in some respects a similar battle to that in which Chrysostom was afterwards engaged in the East, and amidst many differences there are also many parallels in the character and history of the two men: the same fearless courage to speak what they believed to be God’s truth, in the face of royalty itself, animated both; in both cases was it rewarded by virulent persecution; both had to contend with an imperious, passionate woman; both were protected from her fury by the populace keeping guard night and day before the walls of the church. In A.D. 384, Ambrose had been summoned before a royal council, and, in the presence of the young Emperor Valentinian II. and the Queen-mother Justina, had been commanded to surrender the Portian Basilica for the use of the Arians. But Ambrose had replied undauntedly, that not one inch of ground which had been consecrated to truth would he concede to error.352 For more than two years Ambrose maintained his ground against all the stratagems of his adversaries. On one occasion they seized the Portian Basilica, but dared not hold it in the face of the infuriated people. Messengers from court endeavoured to maintain before the archbishop that the Emperor had a right to dispose of the churches as he pleased, but the argument was contemptuously dismissed as a base sophistry. “What!” he cried; “the Emperor has no right to violate the house of a private individual, and think you that he may do violence to the house of God? No! let him take all that is mine—my land, my money, though these belong to the poor; if he seeks my patrimony, let him seize it; if my person, I will present it to him: but the church it is not lawful for me to surrender, or for him to accept.”353 Force was not more successful than argument. Soldiers were sent to dislodge him and his congregation from one of the basilicas, but instead of drawing their swords they fell on their knees, and declared that they came not to attack the archbishop, but to pray with him. The effect of an edict was tried in A.D. 386,354 which permitted free worship to all who professed the creed of Rimini (an Arian creed), and rendered liable to capital punishment any who should impede the action of the edict, as offenders against the imperial majesty. Under shelter of this edict, the Portian Basilica was again demanded, but Ambrose refused to recognise such an edict, which militated against his sense of duty to a higher power. “God forbid that I should yield the heritage of Jesus Christ. Naboth would not part with the vineyard of his fathers to Ahab, and should I surrender the house of God? the heritage of Dionysius, who died in exile for the faith; of Eustorgius the confessor; of Miroclus, and all the faithful bishops which were before me?”355 But though Ambrose disobeyed, the penalties of the edict were not enforced upon him. An order of banishment was served upon him, expressed in vague terms: “Depart from the city, and go where you please.” But Ambrose did not please to go anywhere, and remained where he was, moving up and down the city, and officiating as usual in the churches, using in his sermons the same Scripture parallels to indicate the Queen-mother, “Herodias” and “Jezebel,” which Chrysostom afterwards applied to the Empress Eudoxia. He preaches day after day, guarded by his faithful flock, who during passion-tide suffered him not to quit the cathedral for fear of violence to his person. Amongst that crowd, touched by the spell of the chants and hymns which Ambrose taught the people356 to beguile the tediousness of their watch, and impressed by his pungent and decisive doctrine, are two remarkable persons, a mother and her son. They are Monica and Augustine. Monica is among the most faithful in watching, the most earnest in praying for the welfare of the bishop and the church. Augustine is about thirty-two years old; he has been in many places and passed through many phases of thought. He has subdued the vices and follies which stained his youth; he has shaken off the errors of Manicheism which for a time enthralled him; he has been a teacher of rhetoric at Tagaste, at Carthage, at Rome; and Symmachus has now obtained for him a professorial chair at Milan. But Pagan literature is losing its hold upon him. Plato no longer fascinates him equally with Holy Scripture. He is gravitating steadily towards Christianity, and in another year, April 387, just about the time that Chrysostom is delivering his homilies on the Statues, he will crown his mother’s hopes by making a public confession of his faith, and receiving baptism at the hands of Ambrose.357

One more effort was made to win the contest, this time through diplomacy. The court proposed that the question under dispute should be settled by arbitration, the judges to be selected by Ambrose and Auxentius the Arian bishop. But Ambrose would not accept the arbitrators nominated by Auxentius, four of whom were Pagans and one a catechumen. In the name of himself and the clergy of his province he denied the validity of the tribunal. In an address to the people the same lofty tone of independence was maintained. “He would pay deference to the Emperor, but never yield in things unlawful: the Emperor was ‘in the Church, not above it.’”358 So he remained master of the field. The unfinished basilica, which had been the prize contended for, was consecrated by Ambrose with great pomp, and the joy of the people was completed by the discovery of the martyrs’ skeletons beneath the pavement, pronounced to be those of Gervasius and Protasius, who had suffered in the persecution of Diocletian. When demoniacs shuddered on being placed in proximity to these reliques, and a blind man was cured by the application to his eyes of a handkerchief which had been placed in contact with these same reliques, the crown was put on the triumph of Ambrose; the people were more firmly convinced than ever that his cause was the cause of God.359

He was so indisputably the ablest man of the time in the West, that, when danger impended over the state, the very court which persecuted him turned to him to rescue the country. Threatening messages came from the court of Maximus at Treves. Ambrose was the ambassador selected to go and pacify or intimidate the tyrant. Maximus was a Catholic, and a ruthless persecutor of those whom he deemed heretics, especially Priscillianists; yet Ambrose did not hesitate to denounce his cruelty to brethren who were Christians, however erring, as well as his disloyal attitude towards Valentinian. The embassy was unsuccessful, but the dignity of the ambassador and of the court which he represented was fully maintained. The artifices by which another ambassador, the Syrian Domninus, was blinded to the preparations of Maximus for the invasion of Italy; the passage of the Alps by the usurper; the flight of Justina and her son to Thessalonica; the prompt march of Theodosius to the succour of Italy, and his complete victory over Maximus, near Aquileia,—belong to the secular historian; but the connection between Theodosius and Ambrose will be related here more in detail.

There is no account of the first meeting between the two great characters of the day—the Emperor and the archbishop. That Ambrose immediately exercised influence over the imperial mind may be inferred from the mildness of the measures by which the embers of the late revolution were extinguished. No bloody executions took place; no rigorous search for rebels was made; the mother and daughter of Maximus—who had been himself beheaded—were provided with a maintenance. Ambrose, in one of his letters, thanks the Emperor for granting liberty, at his request, to several exiles and prisoners, and for remitting the sentence of death to others.

Theodosius could be generous to enemies, and was the zealous friend of Catholic Christianity, but he was a strict punisher of any violations of civil order, even when the offenders were Christian. The people of Callinicum in Osrhoene, instigated by the bishop and some fanatical monks, had set fire to a Jewish synagogue, and to a church of the sect of Valentinians. The Emperor directed the Count of the East to punish the offenders, and commanded the bishop to restore the buildings at the expense of the Church. But the extension of such favour to heretics was in the sight of Ambrose intolerable. It might, indeed, have been wrong to disturb civil order, but it was far more wrong to reinstate error: to order Christians to rebuild a place of worship for those who set Christ at naught was, in his eyes, simple profanity. He expressed his opinion to the Emperor in a letter. It is the first great instance of the Church distinctly claiming a pre-eminence of authority superseding that of civil law. “If I am not worthy to be listened to by you, how can I be worthy to transmit, as your priest, your vows and prayers to God?” Basing on this ground his right to speak out his mind, he declares that “if the Bishop of Callinicum obeyed the imperial command, he would be guilty of culpable weakness, and the Emperor would be responsible for it. If he refused to obey, the Emperor could execute his will by force of arms only; the labarum, perhaps the standard of Christ, would be employed to rebuild a temple where Christ would be denied. What a monstrous inconsistency!” The last words which it contained were: “I have endeavoured to make myself heard in the palace; do not place me under the necessity of making myself heard in the church;” but the letter was unanswered, and so Ambrose put his threat into execution. He preached in Milan in the presence of the Emperor; “he compared the Christian priest to the prophets of the Old Testament, whose duty it was to proclaim God’s message to the king himself, as Nathan did to David. As the Israelites were warned not to say, when they entered the land of Canaan, ‘My virtue has deserved these good things,’ but ‘the Lord God has given them,’ so the Emperor should remember that he was what he was by the mercy of God. Therefore, he ought to love the body of Christ, the Church—to wash, kiss, and anoint her feet, that all the dwelling where Christ reposes might be filled with the odour; that is, he ought to honour his least disciples, and pardon their faults; every one of the members of the Christian body was necessary to it, and ought to receive his protection.”

Having uttered such words, he descended from the altar steps. Theodosius perceived that the archbishop had taken up his parable against him, and as Ambrose was going out of the church he stopped him, saying, “Is it I whom you have made the subject of your discourse?” “I have said that which I deemed useful for you,” Ambrose replied. “I perceive it is of the synagogue that you would speak,” rejoined Theodosius. “I own that my commands have been a little severe, but I have already softened them, and these monks are troublesome men.” “I am going to offer the sacrifice,” said Ambrose; “enable me to do so without fear for you; deliver me from the load which oppresses my spirit.” “It shall be so,” responded the Emperor; “my orders shall be mitigated; I give you my promise.” But Ambrose was not satisfied with so vague an assurance. “Suppress the whole matter,” he said; “swear it to me, and, on your sworn promise, I proceed to offer the sacrifice.” The Emperor swore; Ambrose celebrated mass; “and never,” said he, in a letter written the day after to his sister, “did I experience such sensible marks of the presence of God in prayer.”360

In the spring of A.D. 389, Theodosius made his triumphal entry into Rome, accompanied by Valentinian and his own son Honorius, a boy of ten. His arrival was preceded by two popular enactments: one a decree, renouncing for himself and family all bequests made by codicils—striking a blow at a vicious custom, which had long prevailed, of bribing imperial favour for particular families, by bequeathing large legacies to the reigning sovereign. By heathen emperors these bequests had been sought with great cupidity; sick or old men were sometimes threatened with an acceleration of death, unless they satisfied the royal expectations in this way. The other, no less popular, decree was, to abolish the custom by which royal couriers, when conveying news of victory, exacted donations from the villages through which they passed. The victory of Theodosius over Maximus was the first which had been gratuitously proclaimed along the route to Rome; and the people greeted the Emperor as he made his progress to the capital with all the warmer welcome in consequence.361

Rome had at this period scarcely recovered from the ferment into which society had been thrown by the three years’ residence of Jerome, A.D. 382-385. His denunciations of clerical luxury; his cutting satires on the vices and follies of the laity; his allurement to monastic life of some of the wealthiest and noblest of the Roman ladies, had stirred up a tumult of feeling for the most part adverse to him. But Theodosius prudently abstained from interfering with the religious debates of Rome. In Constantinople he was the absolute sovereign; in Rome he desired to appear simply as the successful general and the foremost citizen. He assumed no imperial or Asiatic splendour; he exhibited no fastidious abhorrence of statues, temples, and other remnants of Paganism. Symmachus, the most eminent Pagan citizen, was cordially received, and gratified by the promise of consulship. The result of this amiable and moderate conduct was that some of the most powerful Roman families embraced the faith of the Emperor.

A.D. 390. But the generosity which Theodosius had manifested towards the people of Antioch, his moderation after the defeat of Maximus, and during his triumphal residence in Rome, was presently stained by one of those paroxysms of anger to which he was occasionally subject. The intercession of Flavian had averted any such outburst in the case of the sedition of Antioch; the authority of Ambrose, too late to prevent the crime, enforced penance for the cruel vengeance executed on the people of Thessalonica.

Botheric, the governor of Thessalonica, had imprisoned a favourite charioteer for attempting to commit a disgusting crime. The people, passionately attached to the races of the circus, demanded his release on a certain day to take part in the contest. The governor refused, and the people then broke out into rebellion; the tumult was with difficulty quelled by the troops, and not before Botheric had been mortally wounded, several other officers torn to pieces, and their mangled remains dragged through the streets. The irritation of the Emperor, on hearing of this barbarous violence, was extreme; and all the more so, because of Thessalonica he could have expected better things. It did not contain, like Antioch, Rome, or Alexandria, a large mixed population, but one almost exclusively Christian, and for the most part even Catholic. The city was the scene of his early triumphs, and frequently honoured by his visits. It is possible that Ambrose may have pushed his exhortations to clemency too far in the first glow of the Emperor’s resentment. At any rate, the counsel of those rivals or enemies of Ambrose, who represented that the affair belonged purely to civil government, and should be decided independently of all clerical interference, prevailed. Rufinus, the flattering, heartless courtier, persuaded Theodosius that a public offence of such magnitude deserved the most merciless punishment which could be inflicted. Orders were issued to the officials at Thessalonica to assemble the populace, as if for a fÊte, in the circus, and then to let in the troops upon them. This barbarous mandate was too faithfully executed. The unsuspecting victims crowded into their favourite place of amusement; at a given signal the soldiers rushed in, and in the course of two or three hours the ground was strewn with some 7000 corpses of men, women, and children.362 The horror of the people of Milan was only equalled by their astonishment. Was it possible that he who had displayed such magnanimity and Christian moderation could be guilty of an act which savoured of the most heathen treachery and ferocity? When the Emperor returned from Rome, Ambrose withdrew from Milan into the country, and thence wrote to him a letter expressing his horror at the recent massacre; exhorting him to the deepest repentance and humiliation as the only hope of obtaining mercy from God, and declaring that he could not celebrate mass again in his presence. The mode by which the Emperor was to expiate his guilt is not indicated in this epistle, and he presented himself soon afterwards at the doors of the cathedral church with his usual royal retinue. But he was confronted by Ambrose in his pontifical robes, who with flashing eyes expressed his astonishment at such audacity, and barred the entrance with his person. “I see, Emperor, you are ignorant of the flagrancy of the murder which you have perpetrated. Perhaps your unlimited power blinds you to your guilt, and obscures your reason. Yet consider your frail and mortal nature; think of the dust from which you were formed, and to which you will return, and beneath the splendid veil of your purple recognise the infirmity of the flesh which it covers. You rule over men who are your brethren by nature, and by service to a common King, the Creator of all things. How then will you dare to plant your feet in His sanctuary, and elevate your hands towards Him, all dripping as they are with the blood of men unjustly slain? How will you take into your hands the sacred body of the Lord, or dare to put His precious blood to those lips, which by a word of anger have spilt the blood of so many innocent victims? Withdraw, then, and add not a fresh crime to those with which you are already burdened.” The Emperor returned, conscience-stricken and weeping, to his palace. For eight months no intercourse took place between him and Ambrose. Christmas approached; exclusion from the church at such a season seemed insupportable to the Emperor. Rufinus found him one day dissolved in tears. “The church of God,” he cried, “is open to the slave and the beggar, but to me it is closed, and with it the gates of heaven; for I remember the words of the Lord: ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’” Rufinus sought to console him: “I will hasten to Ambrose, and force him to release you from this bond.” “No,” said the Emperor, “you will not persuade Ambrose to violate divine law from any fear of imperial power.” Rufinus, however, sought an interview with the archbishop; but Ambrose spurned him indignantly from him, as being the chief counsellor of the late massacre. Rufinus informed him that the Emperor was approaching. “If he comes,” said the prelate, “I will repel him from the vestibule of the church.” The minister returned to the Emperor discomfited, and advised him to abstain from visiting the church; but Theodosius had subdued all pride, and replied that he would now go and submit to any humiliation which Ambrose might see proper to impose. He advanced to the church. Perceiving the archbishop in the exterior court or atrium, he cried, “I have come; deliver me from my sins.” “What madness,” replied Ambrose, “has prompted you to violate the sanctuary, and to trample on divine law?” “I ask for my deliverance,” said the humbled monarch; “shut not the door which God has opened to all penitents.” “And where is your penitence?” said the archbishop; “show me your remedies for healing your wounds.” “It is for you to show them to me,” Theodosius replied; “for me to accept them.” Once more Ambrose had gained the day. He could prescribe his own terms. First, he required that the recurrence of a similar crime should be guarded against by a decree which should interpose a delay of thirty days between a sentence of confiscation or death and the execution of it. At the expiration of this period the sentence was to be presented to the Emperor for final reconsideration. Theodosius consented, ordered the law to be drawn up, and subscribed it with his own hand. He was then admitted within the walls, but in deeply penitential guise; stripped of imperial ornaments, prostrate on the pavement, beating his breast, tearing his hair, and crying aloud, “My soul cleaveth unto the dust, quicken thou me according to thy word.” So he remained during the first portion of the Liturgy. When the offertory began, he rose, advanced within the choir to present his offering, and was about to resume the place which at Constantinople he usually occupied—a seat in the midst of the clergy, in the more elevated portion of the choir. But Ambrose determined, by taking advantage of the Emperor’s present humiliation, to put a stop to this custom. An archdeacon stepped up to Theodosius, and informed him that no layman might remain in the choir during the celebration. The submissive Emperor withdrew outside the rails. When he had returned to Constantinople, he was invited by Nectarius, the archbishop, to occupy his accustomed chair in the choir. “No!” replied Theodosius, with a sigh; “I have learned at Milan the insignificance of an Emperor in the Church, and the difference between him and a bishop. But no one here tells me the truth. I know not any bishop save Ambrose who deserves the name.”363 He had hit the truth. The difference between the conduct of Ambrose and of Nectarius symbolised the difference between the character of the Western and Eastern Church generally: the one stern, commanding, jealous of any encroachment of the civil power; the other, subservient, submissive, courtier-like; the one aspiring and advancing, the other receding and decadent. Chrysostom would have told him the truth; but Chrysostom, in his uncompromising and fearless honesty of purpose and speech, is such a grand exception among the patriarchs of Constantinople, that he proves the general rule. Even Flavian had only supplicated mercy from the Emperor; Ambrose commanded it.

On one subject the deference of Theodosius for the opinion of Ambrose caused him some embarrassment. Ambrose, in common with the other Western prelates, had recognised Paulinus as Bishop of Antioch—the priest of the Eustathian party who had been consecrated by Lucifer of Cagliari; and he now acknowledged Evagrius, his successor. Theodosius was distracted between his friendship for Flavian, the rival of Evagrius, and for Ambrose. Flavian was summoned to court. The Emperor implored him to go to Rome and justify his claims before the Pope; but Flavian refused. At the suggestion of Ambrose, the Western Bishops assembled in council at Capua, and there delegated the decision to Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria. Once more Flavian was summoned to court, and advised to submit to the arbitration of Theophilus; but he was still intractable. “Take my bishopric at once, and give it to whom you please; but I will submit neither my honour nor my faith to the judgment of my equals.” Nearly eighteen months were consumed in these negotiations. The West grew impatient. The letters of Ambrose took a severer tone: “Flavian has something to fear; that is why he avoids examination. Will he place himself outside the Church, the communion of Rome, and intercourse with his brethren?” The strife was mercifully broken off by the sudden death of Evagrius, before he had time to designate a successor; and the wound was salved, though not healed. That final good work was destined to be accomplished by Chrysostom.364

A.D. 392. Only a few years more of life remained for Theodosius, and his reign was occupied at the end as at the beginning by quelling rebellion in the West. When he returned to the East, in A.D. 391, after the defeat of Maximus, he had generously left the youthful Valentinian in full possession of all his hereditary dominions, which he had rescued for him from the usurper. Arbogastes, a Gaul, was appointed general of the forces; Ambrose was a kind of general counsellor. But Arbogastes was bold, ambitious, unscrupulous. He possessed much power; he determined to acquire the whole. He obeyed the commands of his young sovereign or not, as suited his pleasure and purposes, and surrounded him with creatures of his own, who, under the semblance of courtiers, acted as spies and gaolers. Valentinian’s residence at Vienne, in Gaul, became his prison rather than his palace. The sequel belongs to secular history, and is well known. An open rupture took place. Arbogastes threw off the mask. Valentinian was found strangled, too late to receive baptism at the hands of Ambrose, whose coming he had awaited with great eagerness as soon as he knew that his life was in danger.365 Once more Italy became the prey of a usurper; once more the veteran Emperor of the East roused himself from his well-earned repose, collected a huge force, consulted John, the hermit of the Thebaid, on the issue of the war, solicited the favour of Heaven by visiting the principal places of devotion in the city, and kneeling on flint before the tombs of martyrs and apostles, then set out on his march, and by the summer of A.D. 394 again looked down from the Alps on the plains of Venetia, near the scene of his former victory over one usurper, and now covered with the tents belonging to the army of another. He prosecuted the campaign in the same religious spirit in which he had undertaken it. The first assault made on the 5th of September against the enemy was repulsed. Theodosius rallied and harangued the troops lifted up his eyes to heaven, and cried: “O Lord, Thou knowest that I have undertaken this war only for the honour of thy Son, and to prevent crime going unpunished; stretch forth, I pray Thee, thy hand over thy servants, that the heathen say not of us, ‘Where is their God?’” The second assault was more successful; the night was spent by the Emperor in prayer, who was rewarded towards dawn by a vision of two horsemen, clothed in white, who bade him be of good cheer, for that they were the apostles St. Philip and St. John, and would not fail to come to his succour on the following day. The issue of that day was decisive; the overthrow of Arbogastes complete; his army routed; himself slain.366

The conqueror was received by Ambrose, at Milan, with transports of joy. The victory was nobly signalised by a display of Christian clemency. Free pardon was proclaimed in the church (whither the offenders had fled for refuge) to all those Milanese who had joined the side of the usurper. Among them were the children of Arbogastes, and of the puppet king whom he had set up, Eugenius. They were made to expiate the crimes of their Pagan fathers by submitting to baptism.367

But there was an increasing shade of gloom which overcast the general sunshine of joy. The health of Theodosius, long undermined by a disease, was now manifestly fast giving way. He was sensible of his danger, and despatched a message to Constantinople, desiring that his younger son, Honorius, should be sent to join him at Milan. The young prince, accompanied by his cousin Serena (the wife of Stilicho) and his little sister Placidia, set off without delay. They reached Milan early in the year A.D. 395. Some shocks of earthquake, and terrific storms, which coincided with their arrival, were regarded as portents of future evil. The malady of Theodosius, a dropsical disorder, was rapidly gaining ground. He revived a little at the sight of his son, and received the Eucharist from the hands of Ambrose, which he had hitherto refused, as having too recently been engaged in the sanguinary scenes of war. He gave audience to a deputation of Western bishops, who came to pay him homage, and besought them to heal the schism of Antioch by acknowledging Flavian. He besought the Pagan members of the senate of Rome to embrace the Christian faith, adding the somewhat potent argument, that Pagan worship must no longer expect any pecuniary aid from the State. He appeared for a few times at the circus, where races were held in honour of his victory and the arrival of the young prince; but one day, while dining, he was taken suddenly worse, and expired early the next morning, Jan. 17th, A.D. 395, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the sixteenth of his reign. Those who watched by his bedside thought they detected the name of Ambrose faintly murmured by his dying lips.368

So passed away the last great Emperor of the Roman world.369 He had persistently kept in view a single and noble aim—the consolidation of the Empire. He had repelled invasion, crushed rebellion, laboured to extirpate heathenism, to suppress heresy, to reconcile opposing factions in the Church; and the work seemed advancing when he was called away, and years ensued of misrule and disorder, Gothic devastation, and internal corruption and decadence.

The history of the Empire under Arcadius and Honorius presents a pitiable picture of imbecility on the part of the sovereigns; of infidelity and unscrupulous ambition on the part of their ministers. Theodosius himself, as he lay on his death-bed, was perhaps conscious of impending troubles. The words supposed by Claudian to be spoken by the shade of Theodosius to his son Arcadius: “Res incompositas fateor tumidasque reliqui,”370 express at any rate the true condition of affairs. To Stilicho he commended his younger son, Honorius, and the interests of the Western Empire, but added a request that he would not neglect Arcadius and the Eastern portion of the Empire also. The legal guardian, however, of Arcadius was not a man who would tamely submit to any supervision, or to any encroachment, fancied or real, upon the rights of his office. He was as jealous of Stilicho as Constantinople was of Rome. Discernment of character cannot be reckoned among the great qualities of Theodosius; otherwise he would not have intrusted his two sons to the guardianship of two men dissimilar in all respects but one—an insatiable love of power. He had placed the two weak princes in the hands of deadly rivals.

Rufinus, the guardian of Arcadius and regent of the East, was an Aquitanian Gaul, born at Elusa, the modern Eauze, at the foot of the Pyrenees.371 He was the very model of an accomplished adventurer. Sprung from poverty and obscurity, he was gifted by nature with a handsome figure, a noble demeanour, a ready tongue, an inventive, versatile wit.372 He made his way, after residing in Milan and Rome, to the court of Constantinople; and found in Theodosius a patron who could appreciate his talents without detecting his vices. He rapidly rose till he had attained the high distinction of “Master of the Offices,” in A.D. 390; of consul, in connection with Arcadius, in A.D. 392; and, in A.D. 394, prÆtorian prefect in presenti, a position second only to that of the Emperor himself.373 He affected the warmest zeal for the Catholic faith, and threw himself heartily into the schemes of Theodosius for the suppression of heresy, no less than into those for the consolidation of the social and political fabric.

But underneath this appearance of patriotic enthusiasm he indulged what Claudian terms an “accursed thirst” for gain.374 By unjust law-suits he wrested patrimonies from the poor, and manoeuvred to marry the daughters and widows of the wealthy to his own favourites, in order that he might reap their legacies and gifts. If any exposure of these iniquities was threatened, he stopped the mouths of accusers by large bribes, and compensated his extortions from towns by making presents to their churches or enlarging their public buildings.

When Theodosius departed for the Italian war, Rufinus, being left as guardian of Arcadius, began to conceive the project of elevating himself to the imperial throne. He made a magnificent display of his piety. Hard by his villa, or rather palace, in the suburb of Chalcedon, called the Oak, a spot which afterwards acquired a melancholy notoriety in the history of Chrysostom, he had built a church and a monastery attached to it. This church he now determined to dedicate with great pomp, and at the same time to be baptized himself. For this purpose he assembled nineteen Eastern bishops, chiefly metropolitans, and a number of Egyptian hermits; strange-looking figures, who, with their raiment of skins, their flowing beards and long hair, excited much superstitious reverence. In the midst of this august assembly, the depredator of the East descended into the baptismal waters, arrayed in the white robes typical of innocence. The celebrated Egyptian solitary, Ammonius (who will come before us again), administered the sacrament, and Gregory of Nyssa delivered a discourse.375 Rufinus now surrounded himself with a powerful party of followers; Arcadius was too stupid to see, or too timid to oppose, the dangerous ambition of his so-called protector.

But the death of Theodosius and the elevation of Stilicho to the guardianship of the West brought the intriguer face to face with an able and determined soldier, who united some of the ferocity of the barbarian with the steadfast patriotism of an old Roman. This last, indeed, was the character which Stilicho, a Vandal by birth, but educated at Rome, more especially emulated. It was his ambition to be compared to Fabricius, Curtius, Camillus.376 Great was his delight when Claudius, himself called a second Virgil, likened him in his verses to Scipio.377 The poet declared that Theodosius had never fought without Stilicho, though Stilicho had fought without Theodosius. He was made not only the guardian but father-in-law of Honorius, who was betrothed to his eldest daughter beside the death-bed of Theodosius; the father dying in the happy assurance that, by creating this parental tie, he had secured the fidelity of his minister. The boy and girl were brought into the sick-room, exchanged rings, and repeated the words which were dictated to them.378

The regent of the East naturally became profoundly jealous of the regent of the West, and in point of royal connection determined to be even with him. He humoured Arcadius into a consent to marry his own daughter; and his scheme seemed on the point of completion when an inopportune matter of business took him away to Antioch, and his enemy, the chamberlain Eutropius, took advantage of his absence to frustrate the plan. A Frankish general, called Bautho, who had been elevated to the consulship, but had prematurely died, left a daughter of rare beauty named Eudoxia. The orphan girl was brought up by a friend of Bautho, the son of Promotus, a magister militum, whom Rufinus, in revenge for an insult, had caused to be assassinated. Eutropius introduced a portrait of the young beauty to the notice of Arcadius. Curiosity, and soon a tenderer sentiment, were excited in the young Emperor’s breast; the cunning chamberlain fanned the flame, till he was able to persuade the royal youth that Eudoxia was a more eligible bride than the daughter of the low-born Gaul.379 The intrigue was conducted with such secrecy that Rufinus, on his return from Antioch, remained unsuspicious, and his boastful remarks on the approaching nuptials excited the indignation of the public. The wedding-day was fixed for April 25, A.D. 395. Eutropius selected from the imperial wardrobe some of the costliest female robes and jewels which it contained. They were placed on litters, which, escorted by a large train of splendidly apparelled serving-men, paraded the streets, on the way, as was supposed, to the house of Rufinus. What was the astonishment of the populace when the procession suddenly turned in another direction, and presently stopped in front of the house of Promotus! A loud shout of joy burst from the lips of the multitude, and proclaimed to Rufinus the unpopularity of his project, and the general satisfaction at its defeat. The bride thus cunningly substituted was destined to play a conspicuous part in the later scenes of Chrysostom’s career. She inherited the fair beauty, the energetic spirit, the impulsive, sometimes fierce, temper of the race from which she sprang. Her father had remained firmly attached to the Pagan religion of his ancestors, but, in deference to Theodosius, his patron, he had allowed his daughter to be baptized and educated in the Christian faith.380 Impatient of control, she resolved to possess herself of her husband’s confidence in order to govern through him, and gradually to disengage herself from the management alike of Rufinus and Eutropius.

Rufinus had been thoroughly outwitted in his matrimonial scheme, but his resources were far from being exhausted. The sequel of his life belongs too exclusively to secular history to be more than glanced at here. He played a subtle and desperate game, seldom if ever surpassed in villainy. Some Hunnish tribes, encouraged by him, made incursions into Armenia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and even as far as the vicinity of Antioch.381 The court was in the extremity of alarm, for the main forces of the army and treasury had been drained to the West when Theodosius marched against Arbogastes, and remained in the hands of Stilicho. Worse still, the formidable chieftain Alaric, of the royal race of the Visigoths, who had lately distinguished himself in the Italian wars under Theodosius, began to complain of unrequited services, and with a motley force of Huns, Alani, Sarmatians, and Goths, descended into Thrace, and ravaged the country up to the walls of Constantinople. The inhabitants were convulsed with panic; all except the artful intriguer, who had already struck his bargain with the invaders. He rode out of Constantinople accoutred as a Gothic warrior, went through the farce of an interview with Alaric, and returned with the joyful intelligence that his intercessions had saved the city, and that the Gothic prince had consented to withdraw his troops. And so he did; not, however, to retire to the Gothic settlements in the north, but to pour southwards in a devastating flood over Greece. This was the plot of Rufinus. The possession of the Illyrian provinces was disputed between the courts of East and West. Alaric occupied these. Stilicho, with extraordinary energy, collected a large army, advanced against the devastator, who was supposed to be the common enemy of the whole Empire; but when on the point of attacking him, he was arrested by a message from Constantinople, which commanded him to abstain from any hostilities against the ravager of Greece. “He was the good friend of Arcadius: he occupied the province of Illyria as his ally, which Stilicho was to evacuate immediately, and to restore the troops and treasure which belonged to the East.” The troops were sent back by Stilicho under the command of GaÏnas, but with the secret understanding that he should compass the death of Rufinus. The result is well known. Rufinus fell just as he was placing his foot on the topmost round of his ladder of ambition. He was standing on the tribune, where Arcadius was to proclaim him CÆsar, in the presence of a vast multitude; he was making a flowery harangue to the troops, complimenting them on their exploits, congratulating them on their restoration to their homes, when those very troops closed in upon him, plunged their swords into his body, and presently hacked it to pieces. A soldier who got hold of his right arm, and having crooked the fingers of the hand, went about the town, holding it in front of him, and crying, “An obol, an obol for him who never had enough,” collected a large sum by his grim and savage jest.382

Arcadius was quite incapable of handling the reins of government himself, and the downfall of one all-powerful minister would in any case have been quickly followed by the rise of another; but, as it happened, there was one ready to step immediately into the vacant place. The fortunes of this person, the eunuch Eutropius, ran a strange career. Born a slave, somewhere in the region of the Euphrates, and condemned in infancy to the most degraded condition possible even to slavery, he passed in boyhood and youth through the hands of many owners. He performed the most menial offices as a household slave, cutting wood, drawing water, or whisking the flies from his mistress’s face with a large fan. Arinthus, an old magister militum, who had become possessed of him, presented him to his daughter on her marriage; and, in the words of Claudian, “the future consul of the East was made over as part of a marriage dowry.”383 But the young lady grew tired of the slave, who was getting elderly and wrinkled, and without attempting to sell him, simply turned him out of doors.384 He lived for a time, picking up a precarious livelihood, and often in great want, till an officer about court at Constantinople took pity on him, and with some difficulty obtained for him a situation in the lowest ranks of the imperial chamberlains.385 This was the beginning of his rise. By the diligence and precision with which he discharged his ordinary duties, by occasional witty sayings, and the semblance of a fervent piety, he attracted the notice of the Emperor Theodosius, and gradually acquired his confidence so as to be employed on difficult and delicate missions. He it was whom the Emperor sent to consult the hermit John in Egypt before undertaking the Italian campaign in A.D. 394.386

On the death of Theodosius he became, in the capacity of grand chamberlain, the intimate adviser and constant attendant of Arcadius; and, when Rufinus was removed, the government was practically in his hands, though he was careful to avoid the error of his late rival, and was content with the reality without the display of power. He continued to execute all the household duties which fell to his lot as chamberlain with humble assiduity, and sought no other title than what he possessed.387 But it was soon apparent, to the amusement of the East and the indignation of the West, that the eunuch slave was really master of the Emperor of half the Roman world. He gradually removed by his arts the friends of Theodosius from the principal posts of trust, and replaced them by creatures of his own. By surrounding his royal charge with a crowd of frivolous companions; by dissipating his thoughts amidst a perpetual round of amusement, public spectacles, chariot races, and the like; by taking him every spring to Ancyra in Phrygia, where he was subjected to the soft enchantments of a delicious climate and luxurious manner of life, he made the naturally feeble mind of Arcadius more feeble still, and withdrew it from the influence of every superior intellect but his own.388

Whilst the effeminate monarch languished in inglorious ease in Phrygia, the fairest and most renowned portions of his Empire were overrun by the barbarian forces of Alaric. The sacred pass of ThermopylÆ was violated by the Gothic prince, and the ravager spread his devastations over Peloponnesus. Once more Stilicho hastened to the rescue; once more his hand was stayed by the astonishing announcement that Alaric was rewarded for his career of spoliation by being made commander-in-chief of the forces of the East. Thus the invader was turned into the position of friend, and the defender into the position of rebel, who had to withdraw with feelings of shame, disappointment, and rage. To such base arts did the court of Arcadius, under the direction of Eutropius, stoop to protect itself in its pitiful jealousy of its rival in the West.389

Eutropius mounted to the summit of power by the simple process of putting all dangerous competitors out of the way, under various pretexts, as treasonable or otherwise public offenders.390 He deprived them of their last hope of escape, by abolishing the right of the Church to afford asylum to fugitives.391 He sold the chief functions of the State, and the command of the provinces, to the highest bidders. He was ambitious even of military glory; and, to the amusement of the enemy, as well as of the imperial army, appeared in military costume at the head of the troops, to repel an incursion of Huns. He succeeded, however, more in his negotiations by which he bought off the enemy, than in his martial exploits, and returned mortified by the ridicule which had attended his attempts in war.392

From the pettiest detail of domestic life to the most serious affairs of state, the minister was supreme. Arcadius was little more than a magnificently dressed puppet. The descriptions of his palace read like accounts in fairy tales: it swarmed with slaves of every conceivable variety of race, profession, and costume; the floors of the imperial apartments were sprinkled with gold dust, in the carriage of which from Asia a special service of vessels and wagons was constantly engaged.393 The great annual public spectacle was the departure of the Emperor for his summer sojourn in Phrygia. From an early hour the streets were thronged with people eagerly waiting for the pageant. At length, from the portals of the palace there issued a gorgeous procession; soldiers in white uniform, with gold-brocaded ensigns; then the body guard, called domestics, with their tribunes and generals arrayed in robes flashing with gold, mounted on horses with golden caparisons; each rider bore a gilded lance in the right hand, and in the left a gilded shield studded with precious stones. In the rear, surrounded by a grand cortÉge of state officials, came the imperial car, drawn by milk-white mules, clothed in purple housings, which were tricked out with gold and jewels. The sides of the car also were gilded, and flashed out rays of golden light as it moved along towards the harbour, where rode a fleet of barges richly decorated, waiting to convey the royal traveller to the opposite shore of the Bosporus. In strange contrast to all this splendour appeared in the centre of the car the dull and somnolent countenance of the young Arcadius and the wrinkled visage of his old minister. The multitude, ever greedy of show, would eagerly strain forward their necks to catch a glimpse, if it were only of the imperial ear-rings, or the circlet of his diadem, or the strings of pearls upon his robe. With such empty exhibitions of their puppet king did the wily minister seek to amuse the frivolous inhabitants of the capital, while he himself enjoyed the exercise of real power.394