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 manœuvred 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]