Four days after the emperor had arrived at Pavia the soldiers, incited by Olympius, revolted. Zosimus exaggerates this sedition as much as possible. Sozomen, in speaking of it, says that all those were killed who were believed to be accomplices of Stilicho.
Zosimus narrates at length the sorrow of Stilicho when he heard of this revolt, the news of which reached him at Boulogne, and how he withdrew to Ravenna where Honorius sent two separate orders; the one for his arrest, the other for his death. When the officer who carried them handed in the first, Stilicho took refuge in the church. The next day he came forth and delivered himself into the hands of the soldiers, after they had taken an oath, in the presence of the bishop, that they had orders only to hold him as a prisoner. The officer however having given the second order, he was beheaded the 23rd of August, according to Zosimus. In which statement he is upheld by history.
Eucher, sometime before the death of his father, had retired to Rome, where he also had sought refuge in a church, and, although orders had been given to kill him wherever he was found, respect for the place prevented the officers from using violence until a special order arrived from the emperor commanding them to drag him forth. He was conducted out of Rome, probably to the emperor, who condemned him to death, whereupon he was sent back to Rome to be executed. He was almost rescued on the way by the troops of Alaric, who, as we shall see, overran all Italy. Eucher was finally executed before the first siege of Rome. “Thus,” says Orosius,
g “was the emperor Honorius and the church also (which had everything to fear from Eucher) delivered from a great peril and avenged with scarcely any noise and by the chastisement of but a few people.”
h Olympius, who took the place of the fallen minister, from the first used his power to ruin the empire. He filled the positions in the army and state with his creatures, put to death all Stilicho’s family, friends, and clients, on whom he could lay hands, tried in every way to gratify the ecclesiastics’ greed of power, and went so far in his hypocritical piety that when Alaric threatened Rome he appointed not the bravest and most experienced, but the most pious men as commanders.
At a time when unity was of the first necessity, he prevailed upon the emperor to make a number of intolerant decrees. It was not only ordained that no Arian was to fill a public office, but the persecution of heretics on behalf of the state was made a duty binding upon all magistrates; more than this, Honorius even gave the investigation of heresies into the hands of the clergy, and set up a special inquisitorial tribunal for the purpose. The Arian Goths in the Roman army were reduced to despair by these measures, and as, after the murder of Stilicho, the wives and children of barbarian soldiers whom the Romans held as security for their fidelity had been put to death, many thousands of Goths, Alans, and other foreigners belonging to the Roman army fled to Alaric, and offered themselves to him as combatants and guides that they might take vengeance on the Romans.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[64] [Legally the division was of the same nature as that made by Diocletian; there was still one empire divided into two administrative districts, and the two Augusti were colleagues, as before. The division was not intended to be final, and we shall see (Volume VII) that it was not absolutely so in fact; for after the abdication of Romulus, the emperor at Constantinople not only claimed sovereignty over the whole empire, but at times actually exercised his sovereignty over parts of the West.]
