From A. D.

363.

to

A. D. 395.

History. could not shut his eyes to the precarious condition of his own dominions, surrounded by enemies to whom the fatigues of war were the most agreeable relaxation, and possessed by allies, whose faith could not be expected to resist an opportunity of procuring plunder, or of extending the limits of their territory. He resolved, therefore, to prefer the alliance of Maximus to the chances of a bloody and protracted quarrel with him, reserving, by a distinct and specific condition, the sovereignty of Italy, Africa, and the Western Illyricum, for his brother, and confining, by a stipulation equally explicit, the new Monarch to the countries beyond the Alps. The image of Maximus was immediately added to those of Theodosius and Valentinianus, and exhibited in public for the recognition of the people; but, amidst these demonstrations of harmony and confidence, a discerning eye might discover tokens of suspicion on the one side, and of hatred on the other, and, on all hands, the elements of a convulsion which could not long be suppressed.*

Maximus invades Italy.

A. D. 387.

Justina and

ner son fly to Thessa

ionica.

Theodosius

Four years passed away without any actual rupture between the Emperors of the East and of the West. This interval, however, had not elapsed in total inactivity on either side; for each, knowing the power and ambition of the other, was exerting all the while his utmost endeavours to augment his military establishment, and to increase his warlike resources. Maximus enlisted a numerous body of Germans, whose licentious habits and fierce tempers rendered them fit instruments for the destructive campaign which he meditated; and as he wished to get possession of the passes of the Alps, without awakening the fears of the young Valentinianus, he pressed him to accept a reinforcement of troops from Gaul, to assist the Pannonian Legions in the defence of their frontier. The ambassador of this Prince, altogether unsuspicious of the design to which he was induced to lend himself a tool, consented to conduct the soldiers of Maximus to the borders of Italy; and the stratagem succeeded so far, that the mountain fortresses were delivered into the hands of the auxiliaries; the passes were secured for the march of a larger force which followed in their footsteps; and the Emperor himself, with the flower of his army, pushed on with so much speed that he was within sight of Milan before any intelligence could be given of his approach.†

The Empress Justina and her son had no resource but in flight. They directed their course to the strong city of Aquileia, which they reached in safety; but womanly apprehensions soon urged a further retreat, upon which the royal fugitives embarked on the Adriatic, and sailed round to Thessalonica. Maximus meantime entered Milan in triumph; and the subjects of Valentinianus, finding that no claim was made upon their allegiance, submitted without a struggle to the Government of the conqueror.

No sooner did Theodosius learn that the brother of resolves on Gratianus had taken refuge in his territory than he repaired, attended by his counsellors, to the port of Mace donia, at which the youth and his parent had landed.

war.

*It deserves notice that Orosius and some other writers do not receive Maximus into the number of Emperors, but represent Theodosius as reigning alone after the death of Gratianus. Anno ab urbe condita 1138, Theodosius quadragesimus primus, interfecto per Maximum Gratiano, Imperium Romani orbis solus obtinuit, mansitque in eo annis undecim, cum jam in Orientis partibus sex annos, Gratiano vivente, regnasset. Lib. vii. c. 35.

Sulp. Sever. Dial, iii. Pacat. lib. xii. c. 25, 26.

In the presence of his illustrious guests the great question of Peace or of War was freely agitated; and it is not concealed by the friends of Theodosius that, though he was alive to every sentiment of gratitude, of patriotism, and of generosity, he hesitated some time whether he should draw the sword or listen to terms of accommodation with the tyrant of Gaul. It is insinuated by Zosimus that the mind of the Emperor, which could not be swayed by considerations of policy or of honour, yielded at last to the softer impulse of love. The sister of Valentinianus pled the cause of the West and of the Imperial family with so much effect, that he could no longer refuse to take up arms in their defence. He made haste to solemnize his nuptials with the eloquent Princess; after which he issued orders to the Legions on the Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile, to make preparations for war.*

Roman Empire.

From

A. D. 363.

to A. D.

395

On no occasion did the military talent of Theodosius appear to greater advantage than in his arrangements for the campaign against Maximus. Expecting, from the experience of the latter in the management of an army, and more especially from the great interest which he had at stake, a formidable resistance, he brought into the field a large body of his finest troops, while he employed several detachments to threaten the Gallic Provinces near the source of the Rhine, and thereby to Armies distract the attention of the invader. The two Em- meet at perors at length came in sight of each other near Siscia, Siscia. a town of Pannonia, and prepared to decide the fate of the Roman Empire in a general action.

defeated,

The heavy Legions of Germany and Gaul viewed with contempt the Barbarian array of the Scythian cavalry and mounted archers whom Theodosius had trained to the regular movements of war; but the first charge of these furious horsemen threw them into such disorder, that the plan adopted by Maximus was immediately disconcerted, and his strongest positions transferred to the possession of his enemy. As the battle began late in the day, the conflict was interrupted Maximus is by the approach of night; but, on the renewal of the and afterfight in the morning, the tide of success ran so de- wards put cidedly in favour of the Eastern army, that the best of to death. the Gallic and German troops threw down their arms and acknowledged the conqueror. Theodosius, eager to terminate the war by the death of his antagonist, pursued him with so much speed that, on the second day, he reached Aquileia, almost at the very moment when the other entered its gates. A vigorous siege soon made him master of the fortifications; and the place was saved from military execution on the promise that Maximus should without delay be delivered up to his clemency. It is said that policy, or the natural tenderness of his heart, withheld, for a brief space, the sentence which Theodosius was expected to pronounce. After this momentary hesitation, however, he resigned him to his fate; when he and his son Victor, whom he had raised to the dignity of Augustus, were put to death by military executioners.†

The conqueror spent the remaining months of the year 387 at Milan, with the view of reforming the abuses of Government, of giving vigour to the administration of law, and, above all, of reviving the sources of

Zos. lib. iv. c. 46. Oros. lib. vii. c. 35. Pacat. Panegyr. lib. xii. c. 30-47.

Zos. lib. iv. c. 47. states that Victor was slain in the Alps by Arbogastes; and that Andragathius threw himself into the sea. Socrates, lib. v. c. 14.

From

A. D.

363.

to

A. D. 395.

History. prosperity in all the branches of national industry and public wealth. After making a few examples of just severity, in the case of the most atrocious criminals, he directed his whole attention to console and relieve the afflictions of the Province. He not only restored their lands to the husbandmen who had been deprived by the usurper, but also made ample compensation for the losses which they had sustained in the course of the war. His generosity was further manifested in conferring a yearly allowance upon the mother of Maximus, abuses in and a good education upon his daughter; both of the Govern- whom were rendered destitute by the fatal issue of the ment, and battle of Siscia, and who, under the reign of a less humane Prince, would have been left to their miserable loses of the fate. Theodosius, in short, has deserved the singular Provincials. commendation, that his virtues always seemed to expand with his fortune; the season of his prosperity was that of his moderation; and his clemency appeared most conspicuous after the danger and commotions of a Civil broil.*

Corrects

compen.

sates the

In the Spring of 389, the Emperor inade a solemn entry into the ancient city of Rome, where he was received at once as a conqueror and a deliverer. Various abuses which had crept into the Government, during the successive usurpations which had alarmed Italy since the days of Julian, were corrected with a gentle hand; but, such was the delicacy of Theodosius, that, although he was now, in fact, the master of the Roman world, he gave orders that every public measure should be pursued in the name of Valentinianus, and that his authority should be recognised in every legal deed and enactment. As soon, too, as the power of law was again sufficiently established, he invited the young monarch to return to Milan; when, besides restoring Valentini to him the dominions which had been wrested from his authority by Maximus, he subjected to his rule all the countries beyond the Alps.t

Restores

A. D.

391.

Revolt of

amus.

A. D.

392.

Roman

From

A. D. 363.

to

removed his Court, reproached him with his treasonable intentions, and finished by depriving him of all his Empire. offices. The Barbarian smiled at the impotent resentment of his Sovereign; and, in a few days, the latter was found strangled in his apartment. As there was no one to bear witness to the manner of his death, the emissaries of the traitor laboured to impress upon the public mind that it was voluntary; an argument which the Master-General of the Gallic armies afterwards employed, through the medium of the Imperial ambassador, when he communicated to Theodosius the demise of Valentinianus.*

But the brother of Gratianus appears not to have possessed sufficient activity and resolution to govern a people, who wanted principle to be loyal, and courage to oppose rebellion. His mild, virtuous, and pliant character, which would have adorned the intercourse of private life, served only to excite the contempt of rude warriors, and to afford a pretext for their treachery. Arbogastes, Arbogastes, who had performed essential services in and death of the late war, was appointed Master-General of the Valentini armies of Gaul; and it should seem that he availed himself of the influence afforded by his rank to weaken the interests of his Prince among all classes of his subjects, and to pave the way for his own accession to supreme power. He appointed his partisans to all offices of trust; officered the Legions with men who were devoted to his cause; and, in a word, usurped so completely all the functions of State, that Valentinianus soon found himself stripped of the most important privileges of royalty, as well as of the enjoyment of personal freedom. The distance between Milan and Constantinople increased the danger of his situation; for although he apprized Theodosius of the perils by which he was surrounded, he could not expect the arrival of military aid in time to thwart the designs of his rebellious General. He therefore summoned Arbogastes into his presence at Treves, whither he had

Pacat. in Panegyr, Vit. ib. xii. c. 20. Ambros. vol. ii. Epist, xl. † Zos, lib, iv, c. 47,

A. D. 395.

the West.

Arbogastes chose to govern the Empire under the Eugenius name of a dependent whom he had resolved to elevate raised to the to the throne. Eugenius, originally a Professor of Empire of Rhetoric, was first employed by the Governor of Gaul as his private secretary, and subsequently appointed by him to the duties of Master of the Offices. To the still higher rank which was destined for him by his patron, he is said to have acceded with reluctance; being aware that, although clothed with the Purple, he must still continue the servant of Arbogastes, and be exposed at the same time to all the odium and danger of Government. Theodosius, on the other hand, could not be ignorant of the motives which had guided the conduct of the Barbarian General in his selection of an Emperor; while he had grounds for the justest resentment against him, as the author of his colleague's death, and of all the confusion and distress which were likely to result from it. His indignation was further stimulated by the grief of his wife, who, with tears, deplored the unhappy fate of her brother, and urged him to take up arms to punish the rebellious murderers, and reduce to obedience the monarchy of the West. After due pre- Theodosius paration, therefore, he took the field; having under his prepares for command the troops of all the allied or tributary na- war. tions which had flocked to his standard from the East and the North. Scythians and Arabians, Goths, Huns, and Alani marched under the banners of their native leaders, among whom was the renowned Alaric, whose name is so closely associated with the downfall of Roman independence.†

Theodosius met with no resistance till he had descended from the Julian Alps into the plain which extends from their Southern limits. His opponent, the wily Arbogastes, knew that the heavy troops of Gaul and Germany would prove more efficient on level ground than among the narrow passes of the mountains; and moreover that, if he should gain a victory, the retreat of his enemies would there be more easily prevented, or at least rendered more destructive. The event had nearly established the accuracy of his calculations. The Eastern army was repulsed with great slaughter, and compelled to seek a refuge in the verge of the lofty range over which they had recently passed, while the conqueror, anticipating such a result, threw a body of light-armed men into their rear, to interrupt their flight towards Pannonia. The triumph of rebellion would Victory of have been complete, had the soldiers of Eugenius conTheodotinued faithful to his interests. But the Legions of Gaul, at the very moment when the fortune of the Empire and the fate of Theodosius, were placed in

Zos. lib. iv. c. 47. says that he had the benefit of his mother's advice; but she appears to have died immediately after his restoration. Oros. lib. vii. c. 35. Soc. lib. v. c. 25. Zos. lib. iv. c. 53.

Zos. lib. iv. c. 54-58. Claud. III. Cons. Honor. 396.

sius.

A. D. 394.

From A. D. 363.

.to

A. D. 395.

History. their hands, remembered the oaths which they had taken to support the house of Valentinianus, and offered their services to the Prince whom they had been employed to cut off. Being thus unexpectedly reinforced, the Eastern Emperor renewed, or rather, perhaps, sustained the attack, on the following morning, when he gained a decided advantage over the diminished ranks of his antagonist, and thereby quashed the insurrection. Eugenius fell into his hands, and was immediately beheaded by the indignant Guards. Arbogastes, who had of Eugenius escaped from the scene of action, and wandered some and Arbo- time in the mountains, put a period to his despair by gastes. the use of his own sword.* Prodigies attending the battle.

Death

Accession

We have intentionally passed over all the supernatural circumstances, as they were considered, which have been preserved with so much care by the Ecclesiastical writers of the IVth century, and which are faithfully recorded in the several Works of Tillemont. The storm in the Alps for example, which aided the arms of Theodosius, could not be regarded as an unusual event by the inhabitants of the mountains; while the miraculous intelligence of the victory, which reached Constantinople long before the swiftest courier could have accomplished the journey from Aquilica, must be ranked with those numerous instances in which rumour anticipates the progress of authenticated fact. The authors of the Theodosian Age were credulous and superstitious to a very high degree; and we find, accordingly, that, in selecting materials for History, they exercised very little of that discrimination which separates the fictions of a pious mind from the simple events which are brought to pass by Human agency and the operation of Physical causes. We admit, however, the unimpeachable honesty of the compilers, whose judgment or whose knowledge we find so little reason to extol; and thus, while we dissent from the Philosophy of Ambrose, Augustin, Socrates, and Theodoret, we have the utmost confidence in their narratives, so far as they themselves were witnesses of the facts which they have embodied in their pages.

The young Honorius had either accompanied his of Honorius. father in the campaign against Arbogastes, or he joined the army immediately after the throne of the West was rendered vacant by the death of Eugenius. Sozomen and Socrates are of opinion that Theodosius did not send for his son until he felt the ravages of the disease which soon afterwards terminated his life. It was at Milan that the Emperor placed in the hands of Honorius the sceptre of Rome, and with it the Sovereignty of Italy, Spain, the two Gauls, all Africa, and the Western Illyricum. At the same time he nominated Stilicho as General-in-Chief of the Legions in those parts, recommending to him the care of the Prince, whose inexperience he knew could not fail to encounter many difficulties in the government of nations so widely scattered, and influenced by views of policy so extremely different.† Having discharged this important duty, he made arrangements for the festivity which usually accompanied the accession of an Emperor; and the last effort of his strength was exhausted in returning acknowledgments to the people for the acclamations with which they had received his son. Zosimus tells

Zos. lib. iv. c. 58. Ambros. vol. ii. Epist. lxii. August, de Civit. lib. v. c. 26. Sozom. lib. vii. c. 24. Claud in IV. Cons. Honor. 70.

+ Zos. lib. iv. c. 59.

Roman

From A. D. 363.

us that he embraced this opportunity to dissuade his Pagan subjects from persevering any longer in their Empire. superstitious rites, urging upon them a cordial reception of the Christian Faith, and the more reasonable service which it enjoined; but he adds, with visible satisfaction, that no one paid any respect to the harangue of their Imperial master.* He did not live to witness the success of his zeal; for, while preparing to return to Constantinople, he was cut off by dropsy, in the fiftieth Death of year of his age. His body was embalmed, and sent to Theodosius, the Capital of the East.† January,

to

A. D.

395.

A. D. 395. Character

of Theodo

Few of the Roman Emperors died more lamented than Theodosius the Great. His sincere attachment to Christianity, and the efforts which he made to further its progress, contributed, it is true, very materially to sius. the advancement of his fame among a large and influential class of his subjects; but his character, on other accounts, exhibited so many points deserving of applause, that even the most determined of his enemies among Pagan writers are compelled to acknowledge his merits, and to praise the mild and impartial spirit in which he conducted his Government. The welfare of his people seems to have supplied the ruling motive of his policy in peace and in war; and, although bred a soldier and desirous of military glory, he, on all occasions, appeared more willing to sacrifice his reputation for courage, than to earn the renown of a hero at the expense of life and property. In drawing the sword he never yielded to the dictates of passion or of personal interests; while, in conducting the details of a campaign, he afforded the most convincing proofs that his talents qualified him to take a place in the list of the greatest Commanders, as well as in that of enlightened and patriotic Statesmen.‡

The

The times, indeed, in which he lived were prone to General corruption, and disfigured with much ignorance, super- reflections. stition, and crime. The spirit of the ancient Roman Constitution had almost entirely evaporated; the love of Country had been succeeded by avarice, luxury, and venality; the Legions had contracted the habits of mercenaries and the feelings of slaves; while the mass of the people, eager to purchase an exemption from the toils and peril of war, quietly permitted Barbarians to fight their battles and to elect their masters. The Nobles, generally speaking, had ceased to take any concern in the administration of public affairs. despotism to which, since the days of Tiberius, they had been forced to submit, was wielded by the caprice and supported by the power of the army; and, in fact, for more than three hundred years prior to the accession of Theodosius, the seat of Government was in the camp, and the Imperial Ministers were the Præfects of the Guards, or the Commanders of Cohorts. The power of the Church, in some instances, began to supply the deficiency of Law, and to give vigour to the principles of Morality; but, at the end of the IVth century, the impure tenets of Heathenism still divided the faith of the Empire, both in the East and West, and countenanced the loose maxims on which the intercourse of life was generally conducted. Zosimus accuses the sloth and effeminacy of Theodosius as the cause of the corrupt habits which prevailed among his subjects; but it is obvious, that the example of a Monarch, whose

Zos. lib. iv. c. 59.

Ibid.

Ambros. vol. ii. Epist. xl. Pacat. Panegyr, Veter. lib. xii. c. 20,