point on which she had serious difficulty with her subjects, and this
appears to have affected only the people of Milan. Gibbon, in his
inimitable manner, thus describes the incident: "The government of Italy
and of the young emperor naturally devolved to his mother Justina, a
woman of beauty and spirit, but who, in the midst of an orthodox people,
had the misfortune of professing the Arian heresy, which she endeavored
to instil into the mind of her son. Justina was persuaded that a Roman
emperor might claim, in his own dominions, the public exercise of his
religion; and she proposed to the archbishop, as a moderate and
reasonable concession, that he should resign the use of a single church,
either in the city or suburbs of Milan. But the conduct of Ambrose was
governed by very different principles. The palaces of earth might indeed
belong to Cæsar, but the churches were the houses of God; and, within
the limits of his diocese, he himself, as the lawful successor of the
apostles, was the only minister of God. The privileges of Christianity,
temporal as well as spiritual, were confined to the true believers; and
the mind of Ambrose was satisfied that his own theological opinions were
the standard of truth and orthodoxy. The archbishop, who refused to hold
any conference or negotiation with the instruments of Satan, declared
with modest firmness his resolution to die a martyr rather than to yield
to the impious sacrilege; and Justina, who resented the refusal as an
act of insolence and rebellion, hastily determined to exert the imperial
prerogative of her son."
Under ordinary circumstances, in a like situation, it is very probable
that the bishop's reiterated desire for martyrdom would have been
gratified. But Ambrose was secure, owing to the intense orthodoxy of all
Justina's subjects. In an attack on religion, there was no one to carry
out her commands. "As she desired to perform her public devotions on the
approaching festival of Easter, Ambrose was ordered to appear before the
council. He obeyed the summons with the respect of a faithful subject,
but he was followed, without his consent, by an innumerable people: they
pressed, with impetuous zeal, against the gates of the palace; and the
affrighted ministers of Valentinian, instead of pronouncing a sentence
of exile on the archbishop of Milan, humbly requested that he would
interpose his authority, to protect the person of the emperor, and to
restore the tranquillity of the capital."
In the end the bishop prevailed. There are extant certain letters
written by the saint to his sister, Marcellina, in which he describes
the circumstances of this dispute with Justina. He recounts how soldiers
were sent to occupy the church which the empress desired for her own
heretical use, and how they fraternized with the Catholic people who
refused to give up the sacred building. The bishop asserts that in the
midst of all this tumult and public inharmony, he gave utterance only to
"freer groans." But there is evidence in bis own letters that Ambrose
took a more active and also a more effective course than mere pious
groaning; indeed, he showed a remarkable boldness of decision, as well
as astuteness, in his political methods. He met the occasion with a
sermon on the trials of Job, which could hardly have aroused pleasant
reflections in the mind of Justina. "But Job was tried by accumulated
tidings of evils, he was also tried by his wife, who said, 'Speak a word
against God and die.' You see what terrible things are of a sudden
stirred up, the Goths, armed men, the heathen.... You observe what was
commanded when the order was given: 'Surrender the Basilica!' that is,
speak a word against God and die.... So, then, we are prepared by the
imperial commands, but are strengthened by the words of Scripture, which
replies: 'Thou hast spoken as one of the foolish.' That temptation then
is no light one, for we know that those temptations are more severe
which arise through women. For even Adam was overthrown by Eve, whereby
it came to pass that he erred from the divine commandments.... Why
should I relate that Jezebel, also, persecuted Elijah after a
bloodthirsty fashion? Or that Herodias caused John the Baptist to be
slain?... Of women change follows on change, their hatreds alternate,
their falsehoods vary, elders assemble together, wrong done to the
emperor is made a pretence."
This homiletic punishment of the empress by the intrepid saint was
opportunely followed by the discovery of certain holy and potent relics.
By means of these, the sick were healed and the blind restored, and thus
the people were convinced that God was on their side. The empress
derided these marvels with an incredulity which would do credit to the
present time; but she was compelled to take the wise counsel of
Theodosius and surrender her purpose. She took her revenge, however, by
publishing a decree that the Arian worship should be lawful throughout
the dominions of her son, Valentinian II.
During this time, Maximus, the usurper of Gaul, had acted toward the
empress and her feeble son with apparent friendliness; but he had not in
reality set bounds to the range of his ambition. In 377, his first
hostile operations commenced. Justina was not prepared for warfare. She
fled with the emperor and her daughter, Galla, to Theodosius, the great
ruler of the East, who first married Galla, and then took up
successfully the cause of her mother and her brother. Of this marriage
was born Placidia whose strange adventures we shall shortly relate. It
is probable that Justina died during the war waged by Theodosius against
Maximus. Of her character nothing derogatory is recorded with the
exception of her heresy. It is hardly remarkable that, in an
ecclesiastical dispute, she should be unable to cope with the man who,
later, had the strength and the courage to close the door of the
cathedral in the face of the great Theodosius, after his crime at
Thessalonica.
Events so moved that, by the year 394, Theodosius had become the sole
ruler of the Empire; but four months later he died at Milan, leaving the
dominion of the East and the West to his sons Arcadius and Honorius
respectively. Honorius was of a weakly constitution, and too young to
take part in public matters. Flavius Stilicho, a Vandal, and the ablest
man both in court and in camp that those times produced, defended the
Empire in the attacks of the barbarians who poured over the Danube and
over the Rhine.
Stilicho had married the beautiful and accomplished Serena, the favorite
niece of Theodosius. Claudian, in a poem devoted to the praise of
Serena, has portrayed her excellences of mind and person as being of the
most attractive quality. To her devotion to her husband the modern
historian pays this tribute: "The arts of calumny might have been
successful, if the tender and vigilant Serena had not protected her
husband against his domestic foes, while he vanquished in the field the
enemies of the empire."
The daughter of Serena, whose name was Maria, was made the wife of
Honorius when that emperor was in his fourteenth year. Claudian wrote an
epithalamium and some fescennine verses for the occasion, after the
ancient manner; nothing else of this kind could ever have been quite so
ridiculously conventional, for, on the authority of Zosimus, we learn
that Maria died a virgin after she had been ten years a wife. The
debility of her husband's constitution rendered the continence, which
the ecclesiastic of that time so greatly admired, uncommonly easy.
Honorius sat on the Roman throne through a period of twenty-eight years,
with little more influence or effect upon the history of his time than
would have been exerted if his place had been filled by a wooden image.
In the meantime, those commotions had taken place in the interior of
Asia which were to result in the flooding and overthrowing of the Roman
Empire by hordes of migrating barbarians. The most formidable of these
were the Huns, a Mongol race which had roamed the steppes from time
immemorial. The Huns were the more terrible because of their extreme
ugliness. Their appearance was a fearful visitation for the women of the
civilized nations which they overran. These hardy and vicious savages
suddenly swarmed out from their own country, and, driving the Ostrogoths
before them, with devastating persistence rolled, a human wave, to the
westward. The Goths were between "the devil and the deep sea." But,
while the Huns were an irresistible force, the Romans were not an
immovable body. Steadily the Goths gained ground westward with the Huns
surging after them. Rome was doomed. The effeminating arts of
civilization prepared a prey for the necessities of virile barbarism. A
brave ruler like Theodosius, who was not of the enervated Roman race,
might stem the tide for a while; but the disintegration of the Empire
was as inevitable as is that of a pile of lumber when caught in the
flooding of a river.
In the year 402, Alaric the Goth for the first time broke into the
Western empire. He carried his conquering arms into Italy, spreading a
pathway of devastation and misery wherever he went. In modern times, it
is impossible to estimate the suffering which an invasion brought upon
the women of that fated country. The old and those deficient in personal
attractions were robbed and, as likely as not, murdered; the young and
the beautiful were outraged and enslaved. All this wretchedness and
more, the barbarians visited upon Rome; but Alaric's first exploit was
ended at Pollentia by the brave generalship of Stilicho, though the
goodwill of the barbarian was purchased by tribute. As soon as this
danger was, for the time, averted, a new and not less fearful invasion
spread over the Empire. Horde after horde of Vandals, Alani,
Burgundians, and Alemannians crossed the frontiers in search of plunder
and adventure. They, too, were held in check by the able minister; but
gratitude for public service rendered is never so potential as is envy
of the high position of the one giving it, and the sole defender of the
Empire fell a victim to political machinations at the precise moment
when the peril of Rome was greatest.
With Alaric pounding on the gates of the capital, the Romans, with the
consent of Honorius, murdered the only man in the world who had proved
himself the barbarian's match. Nor did they stop with the death of
Stilicho; as Gibbon says: "Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans
might have respected the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the
adoptive mother of the reigning emperor; but they abhorred the widow of
Stilicho; and they listened with credulous passion to the tale of
calumny which accused her of maintaining a secret and criminal
correspondence with the Gothic invader. Actuated, or overawed, by the
same popular frenzy, the senate, without requiring any evidence of her
guilt, pronounced the sentence of her death. Serena was ignominiously
strangled; and the infatuated multitude were astonished to find that
this cruel act of injustice did not immediately produce the retreat of
the barbarians, and the deliverance of the city." One offence alleged
against Serena was that she had taken a necklace from the statue of
Vesta--it was then the fashion to clothe and adorn the statues, whether
in the interest of modesty or ostentation we cannot say.
The description which the great student of ancient history just now
quoted gives of the siege which Rome at that time endured is entirely in
keeping with our subject. "That unfortunate city gradually experienced
the distress of scarcity, and at length the horrid calamities of famine.
The daily allowance of three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to
one-third, to nothing.... The poorer citizens, who were unable to
purchase the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of
the rich; and for a while the public misery was alleviated by the
humanity of Lasta, the widow of the emperor Gratian, who had fixed her
residence at Rome, and consecrated to the use of the indigent the
princely revenue which she annually received from the grateful
successors of her husband. But these private and temporary donatives
were insufficient to appease the hunger of a numerous people; and the
progress of famine invaded the marble palaces of the senators
themselves. The persons of both sexes, who had been educated in the
enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to
supply the demands of nature; and lavished their unavailing treasures of
gold and silver, to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance which they
would formerly have rejected with disdain."
The outbreak of a pestilence soon added to the horrors of famine. Rome
again suffered the loss of thousands of her citizens through disease. If
the extent of this calamity was less than during the Great Plague, a
century and a half before, mourning was nevertheless almost universal.
Gibbon says, "many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired in their
houses or in the streets, for want of sustenance." But the almost
unending funeral procession of the former period was now lacking, as the
public sepulchres without the walls were within the circle of the
invading horde.
[Illustration 4: _FAMINE AND PESTILENCE After the painting by A.
Hirschl.
The outbreak of a pestilence soon added to the horrors of
famine. Rome again suffered the loss of thousands of her
citizens through disease. If the extent of this calamity was
less than during the Great Plague, a century and a half before,
mourning was nevertheless almost universal. Gibbon says, "many
thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired in their houses or
in the streets, for want of sustenance." But the almost
unending funeral procession of the former period was now
lacking, as the public sepulchres without the walls were within
the circle of the invading horde._]
There was no relief. When ambassadors pleaded with Alaric for the great
multitude of the people against whom he was contending, his sole reply
was: "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed." When he stipulated
the ransom by which alone the city could be saved, and the ministers of
the senate humbly inquired what he purposed to leave to them, he
haughtily replied: "Your lives." The promise of five thousand pounds of
gold, thirty thousand pounds of silver, four thousand robes of silk,
three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and three thousand pounds
of pepper suspended for a time the vengeance which centuries of
oppression by Rome had accumulated in barbarian hearts.
The Roman courtiers, however, had neither the wisdom nor the honesty to
keep faith with the enemy whom they could not resist and on whose good
graces depended their safety. The patience of Alaric became exhausted.
He threw off all restraint, determining to take the fate and also the
resources of the Empire into his own hands. The year 410 saw the city,
which had for a millennium been the proud mistress of the world,
captured and at the mercy of the barbaric nations which for so many
centuries had furnished her wealth and slaves.
The conqueror declared that he waged war with the Romans and not with
the Apostles. Consequently, while he encouraged his soldiers to seize
the opportunity to enrich themselves and enjoy the fruits of victory, he
gave commands that the sanctity of the churches should be observed. The
ecclesiastical writers recount instances of seemingly remarkable
protection vouchsafed to the holy virgins, who were at the mercy of a
licentious soldiery. But there is every evidence that the customary fate
of the conquered in those savage times was abundantly meted out. It is
on record that many Christian women, in order to save themselves from
what they dreaded still more, sought death in the waters of the Tiber.
Others were more fortunate in being able to find protection in flight.
"The most illustrious of these fugitives," says Gibbon, "was the noble
and pious Proba, the widow of the prefect, Petronius. After the death of
her husband, the most powerful subject of Rome, she had remained at the
head of the Anician family, and successively supplied, from her private
fortune, the expense of the consulships of her three sons. When the city
was besieged and taken by the Goths, Proba supported, with Christian
resignation, the loss of immense riches; embarked in a small vessel,
from which she beheld, at sea, the flames of her burning palace, and
fled with her daughter, Læta, and her grand-daughter, the celebrated
virgin, Demetrias, to the coast of Africa. The benevolent profusion with
which the matron distributed the fruits or the price of her estates
contributed to alleviate the misfortunes of exile and captivity. But the
family of Proba herself was not exempt from the rapacious oppression of
Count Heraclian, who basely sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the
noblest maidens of Rome to the lust or avarice of Syrian merchants."
Alaric died shortly after his conquest, and the sceptre of the Gothic
kingdom passed to the hand of Adolphus, his brother-in-law. The latter
was a brave and able general, and seems to have possessed a nature not
discreditable to the time in which he lived. He proposed--the proposal
had all the effect of a command--a treaty of alliance with Honorius. It
practically amounted to annexation; but the Roman emperor was not in a
position to refuse any proposition which the Goth might see fit to make.
Nor could the Romans prevent Adolphus from strengthening his own
interest, as well as consulting his passion, in taking to wife the
half-sister of Honorius, Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius and Galla.
Placidia was just ripening into womanhood when Alaric first appeared
before Rome. She was taken as a hostage by the Gothic conqueror, and,
though reduced to the indignity of being a prisoner in a barbarian camp,
was treated with great consideration. Her beauty and her mental gifts
won the regard of Adolphus: and no sooner had he succeeded to the
kingship, than he requested of Honorius her hand. Such an alliance was
repugnant to the Romans, but, as in other matters, the request was only
a polite form of command. Placidia herself does not appear to have been
unwilling to accept the situation, and her nuptials were celebrated in
splendid state. The exploits of his army in Italy had enabled Adolphus
to present his bride with a magnificent wedding gift. The historian
Olympiodorus recounts that fifty handsome boys were employed to carry
this present. They came before her, carrying a bowl in each hand. One
bowl was filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious gems.
Adolphus always manifested a strong and tender affection for his wife;
nor did he ever lose an opportunity to honor her birth, seating her
above himself on state occasions.
This union, however, was destined to be short-lived. Adolphus was
stricken down by the hand of an assassin; his enemy was seated upon his
throne; and Placidia, being brutally and of purpose made one of a number
of common captives, was compelled to run for twelve miles before the
horse of the barbarian chieftain, the murderer of a husband whom she had
sincerely loved. Possibly it was her sufferings which aroused the
people; however, her persecutor was himself assassinated a few days
after his own murderous act; and Placidia was restored to her brother,
her ransom being six hundred thousand measures of wheat.
Placidia would have been willing, in accordance with the Christian
teaching of the time, to have lamented the loss of Adolphus in continual
widowhood. But another marriage was arranged for her, without her
consent: she was awarded as a prize to Constantius the general for his
services to Honorius. The results of this marriage were the birth of
Honoria and of Valentinian III., and, probably through the schemes of
Placidia, the promotion of her husband to the title of Augustus. But it
was not long before the princess again found herself a widow; and though
mischievous tongues magnified the caresses of childish affection on the
part of Honorius to signs of a fondness warmer than their kinship would
warrant, a quarrel between these two caused Placidia to go with her
children to Constantinople.
At the death of Honorius, Valentinian, though no more than six years of
age, was invested with the purple. But his mother was empress; the
policy of the Empire was directed by her; and for twenty-five years she
maintained her power. Gibbon speaks slightingly of her ability; but it
could not have been little, else how did she retain a rule which any
chance military adventurer might be tempted to seize? The historian
refers to Cassiodorus, who compares the regencies of Placidia and
Amalasuntha, to the disadvantage of the former.
The life of the Roman empress had been filled with more adventures and
changes of fortune than were wont to fall to the lot of woman, even in
those troublous times, but her story is less strange and is certainly
happier than that of her daughter, Honoria. There is in existence a
medal bearing the countenance of Honoria, and it is a fair face; it
bears the inscription Augusta. The young princess was invested with this
honor and rank in order that she might be above the aspirations of any
subject. As early as her sixteenth year, however, she chafed against the
isolation to which she was doomed. Denied legitimate love, she abandoned
herself to an illicit relationship with one of the domestic officers of
the palace, the fact of which was soon revealed by her pregnancy. She
was exiled by her mother to Constantinople, where she spent several
years in close restraint and great unhappiness. Attila the Hun was at
that time the particular barbarian who was harassing the Empire; and
suddenly he announced that he had received the betrothal of the princess
Honoria, and that he claimed her as his bride. Then her astonished
relatives learned that she really had been in correspondence with
Attila, and had besought him to claim her in marriage. It is probable
that a spirit of mischief actuated Honoria in this; for no educated
woman could in reality desire to be joined in marriage with the Hun,
unless it were from motives very different from love. The king had at
first disdained her advances, and was willing to act upon them only when
it suited the policy dictated by his ambition. But Placidia steadfastly
refused to countenance her daughter's procedure; and Honoria, being
first married to a man of mean extraction, in order that the question of
her matrimonial disposal might never again be a source of trouble, was
shut up in a close prison for the rest of her days. It is not unlikely
that her misfortunes arose rather from her position than her character.
That her life with Attila, had she attained her object, would have
proved more desirable than perpetual imprisonment is difficult to
believe. His respect for woman may be estimated from the fact that he
was a polygamist, and also from the fact that he watched his soldiers
amuse themselves with the awful death agonies of two hundred maidens,
whom they tore limb from limb with wild horses and crushed under the
wheels of heavy wagons.
Placidia died in the year 450. She was buried at Ravenna; and, with some
ambiguity of meaning, it is said that there her corpse, seated in a
chair of cypress wood, was preserved for ages. Her son perished by the
avenging hand of a senator whose wife he had perfidiously violated. He
was the last emperor of the house of Theodosius; and his mother was the
last woman, with a name in history, who was worthy of mention in the
records of the perishing Western Empire.