THE CRIME OF THEODOSIUS
Everyone who stops to visit the town of Trèves, or Trier, to give it its German name, must be struck by the number and beauty of its ruins, which give us some idea of the splendour of the city at the time that Ambrose the Prefect lived there and ruled his province. About the city were hills now covered with vines, and through an opening between them ran the river Moselle. A wall with seven gates defended Trèves from the German tribes on the east of the Rhine, but only one, the Porta Nigra, or Black Gate, is left standing. Its cathedral, the oldest in Europe north of the Alps, was founded in 375 a.d. by Valentinian I., who often occupied the palace which was sacked and ruined a century later by Huns and Franks. A great bridge spanned the Moselle, and outside the walls, where the vineyards now climb the hills, was an amphitheatre which held 30,000 people, and when these came back, tired and dusty, from chariot races or games, there were baths and warm water in the underground galleries to make them clean and comfortable.
It was somewhere about the year 333 a.d. that a boy was born at Trèves in the house of the governor, and called Ambrose, after his father. He was the youngest of three children, his brother Satyrus being only a little older than himself, while Marcellina, their sister, who was nearly four, looked down upon the others as mere babies. Ambrose the elder was a very important person indeed, for the emperor Constantine had made him ruler, or prefect, of the whole of Europe west of the Rhine, that is, of Spain, Gaul or France, and Britain. The prefect was a good and just man, and the nations were happy under his sway; but he died after a few years, and his wife, unfortunately, thought it wiser to leave Trèves and take her children to Rome, where they could get the best teaching and would become acquainted with their father's friends.
It was a long and difficult journey for a lady and two boys (Marcellina had already gone to a convent in Rome), though they were rich enough to travel in tolerable comfort. Even in summer the passage of the Alps was hard enough, and the towering mountains, steep precipices, and rushing rivers must have seemed strange and alarming to anyone fresh from the fertile slopes of the Rhineland. But the boys were not frightened, only deeply interested, and they quite forgot to be sorry at leaving their old home in the excitement of what lay before them.
No doubt they had many adventures, or what they would have considered as such, before they reached the corn-covered plains of Lombardy, and stopped to rest in the city of Milan, whose name was hereafter to be bound up for all time with that of little Ambrose. But we are not told anything about their travels, and when they arrived in Rome they went straight to the old house, which had been for generations in their father's family. That family was famous in the annals of the city, and had become Christian in the time of the persecution; but nowadays Christians and pagans lived happily together, and divided the public offices between them.
The children soon settled down in their new surroundings, and felt as if they had lived all their lives in Rome. Marcellina they seldom or never saw, and, however much her mother may have longed after her, she was forced to content herself with her two boys and to take pride in their success.
The prefect of Rome, Symmachus by name, had taken a great fancy to Satyrus, in spite of the fact that the boy was brought up a Christian, while he himself was a pagan. Symmachus shared with the Christian Probus the chief authority in Rome, and while Satyrus was to be found in his house during most of the hours when he was not attending, with his brother, classes in Greek and Latin literature and in law, Ambrose was no less frequently in that of Probus. Though this caused their mother to spend many lonely evenings, she was well pleased, for both men bore a high character, and would be able to help her boys in many ways that were impossible to a woman. The two youths were very popular, pleasant, and well-mannered, and with strong common-sense which proved useful in saving them from pitfalls that might otherwise have been their ruin. They had friends without number, but they liked no one's company so much as each other's, and it was a sad moment for both when Symmachus gave Satyrus a post under his own son, and the two young men set sail for Asia Minor.