Theodosius I, the Great, 378 A. D. To meet this crisis, Gratian appointed as Augustus, Theodosius, the son of the Theodosius who had distinguished himself as a general under Valentinian I, but who had fallen a victim to official intrigues at the latter’s death. The new emperor undertook with vigor the task of clearing Thrace and the adjoining provinces of the plundering hordes of Goths. By 382 he had forced them to sue for peace and had settled them on waste lands to the south of the Danube. There they remained as an independent people under their native rulers, bound, however, to supply contingents to the Roman armies in return for fixed subsidies. They thus became imperial foederati.
The revolt of Arbogast and Eugenius, 392 A. D. In 391 Theodosius reduced the Goths to submission when a revolt of the troops in Britain raised Magnus Maximus to the purple. Gratian had shown himself a feeble administrator and had alienated the sympathies of the bulk of his troops by his partiality towards the Germans in his service. Maximus at once crossed into Gaul and was confronted by Gratian at Paris. But the latter was deserted by his army, and was captured and put to death. The authority of Maximus was now firmly established in Britain, Gaul and Spain. He demanded and received recognition from Theodosius, who was prevented from avenging Gratian’s death by threatening conditions in the East. The third Augustus, the young Valentinian II, acquired for the time an independent sphere of authority in Italy. However, in 387 A. D. Maximus suddenly crossed the Alps and forced him to take refuge with Theodosius. Having come to terms with Persia, Theodosius refused to sanction the action of Maximus and marched against him. The troops of Maximus were defeated, and he himself captured and executed at Aquileia (388 A. D.). Gaul and the West were speedily recovered for Theodosius by his general, Arbogast.
Theodosius and Ambrose. While Theodosius was at Milan in 390 occurred his famous conflict with Bishop Ambrose. In a riot at Thessalonica the commander of the garrison had been killed by the mob, and Theodosius, in his anger, had turned loose the soldiery upon the citizens, of whom seven thousand are said to have been butchered. Scarcely had Theodosius issued the order when he was seized with regret, and endeavored to countermand it; but it was too late. Upon the news of the massacre, Ambrose excluded the emperor from his church and refused to admit him to communion until he [pg 331]had publicly done penance for his sin. For eight months Theodosius refused to yield, but Ambrose remained obdurate, and the emperor finally humbled himself and publicly acknowledged his guilt. The question at issue was not the supremacy of secular or religious authority, but whether the emperor was subject to the same moral laws as other men. Nevertheless, it required a high degree of courage for the bishop to assert the right of the church to pass judgment in such a matter upon the head of the state.
The revolt of Arbogast and Eugenius, 392 A. D. In 391 Theodosius returned to the East, leaving Valentinian as emperor in the West with his residence at Vienna in Gaul. But the powerful Arbogast, whom Theodosius had placed in command of the western troops, refused to act under the orders of the young Augustus, and finally compassed his death (392 A. D.). However, he did not dare, in view of his Frankish origin, to assume the purple himself, and so induced a prominent Roman official named Eugenius to accept the title of Augustus. The authority of Eugenius was acknowledged in Italy and all the West, but Theodosius refused him recognition and prepared to crush the usurper. In the autumn of 394 A. D., at the river Frigidus, near Aquileia, Theodosius won a complete victory over Arbogast and Eugenius. The former committed suicide and the latter was put to death.
Early in the next year Theodosius died, leaving the empire to his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, upon both of whom he had previously conferred the rank of Augustus. The success of Theodosius in coping with the Gothic peril and in suppressing the usurpers Maximus and Eugenius, combined with his vigorous championship of orthodox Christianity, won for him the title of the “Great.” With the accession of Arcadius and Honorius and the permanent division of the empire into an eastern and a western half, there begins a new epoch of Roman history.
