135 (return) [ Zosim. l. vi. p. 383. Orosius, (l. vii. c. 40, p.

576,) and the Chronicles of Marcellinus and Idatius, seem to

suppose, that the Goths did not carry away Placidia till after

the last siege of Rome.]

136 (return) [ See the pictures of Adolphus and Placidia, and the

account of their marriage, in Jornandes, de Reb. Geticis, c. 31,

p. 654, 655. With regard to the place where the nuptials were

stipulated, or consummated, or celebrated, the Mss. of Jornandes

vary between two neighboring cities, Forli and Imola, (Forum

Livii and Forum Cornelii.) It is fair and easy to reconcile the

Gothic historian with Olympiodorus, (see Mascou, l. viii. c. 46:)

but Tillemont grows peevish, and swears that it is not worth

while to try to conciliate Jornandes with any good authors.]

137 (return) [ The Visigoths (the subjects of Adolphus)

restrained by subsequent laws, the prodigality of conjugal love.

It was illegal for a husband to make any gift or settlement for

the benefit of his wife during the first year of their marriage;

and his liberality could not at any time exceed the tenth part of

his property. The Lombards were somewhat more indulgent: they

allowed the morgingcap immediately after the wedding night; and

this famous gift, the reward of virginity might equal the fourth

part of the husband’s substance. Some cautious maidens, indeed,

were wise enough to stipulate beforehand a present, which they

were too sure of not deserving. See Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix,

l. xix. c. 25. Muratori, delle Antichita Italiane, tom. i.

Dissertazion, xx. p. 243.]

138 (return) [ We owe the curious detail of this nuptial feast to

the historian Olympiodorus, ap. Photium, p. 185, 188.]

The hundred basins of gold and gems, presented to Placidia at her

nuptial feast, formed an inconsiderable portion of the Gothic

treasures; of which some extraordinary specimens may be selected

from the history of the successors of Adolphus. Many curious and

costly ornaments of pure gold, enriched with jewels, were found

in their palace of Narbonne, when it was pillaged, in the sixth

century, by the Franks: sixty cups, or chalices; fifteen patens,

or plates, for the use of the communion; twenty boxes, or cases,

to hold the books of the Gospels: this consecrated wealth 139 was

distributed by the son of Clovis among the churches of his

dominions, and his pious liberality seems to upbraid some former

sacrilege of the Goths. They possessed, with more security of

conscience, the famous missorium, or great dish for the service

of the table, of massy gold, of the weight of five hundred

pounds, and of far superior value, from the precious stones, the

exquisite workmanship, and the tradition, that it had been

presented by Ætius, the patrician, to Torismond, king of the

Goths. One of the successors of Torismond purchased the aid of

the French monarch by the promise of this magnificent gift. When

he was seated on the throne of Spain, he delivered it with

reluctance to the ambassadors of Dagobert; despoiled them on the

road; stipulated, after a long negotiation, the inadequate ransom

of two hundred thousand pieces of gold; and preserved the

missorium, as the pride of the Gothic treasury. 140 When that

treasury, after the conquest of Spain, was plundered by the

Arabs, they admired, and they have celebrated, another object

still more remarkable; a table of considerable size, of one

single piece of solid emerald, 141 encircled with three rows of

fine pearls, supported by three hundred and sixty-five feet of

gems and massy gold, and estimated at the price of five hundred

thousand pieces of gold. 142 Some portion of the Gothic treasures

might be the gift of friendship, or the tribute of obedience; but

the far greater part had been the fruits of war and rapine, the

spoils of the empire, and perhaps of Rome.

139 (return) [ See in the great collection of the Historians of

France by Dom Bouquet, tom. ii. Greg. Turonens. l. iii. c. 10, p.

191. Gesta Regum Francorum, c. 23, p. 557. The anonymous writer,

with an ignorance worthy of his times, supposes that these

instruments of Christian worship had belonged to the temple of

Solomon. If he has any meaning it must be, that they were found

in the sack of Rome.]

140 (return) [ Consult the following original testimonies in the

Historians of France, tom. ii. Fredegarii Scholastici Chron. c.

73, p. 441. Fredegar. Fragment. iii. p. 463. Gesta Regis

Dagobert, c. 29, p. 587. The accession of Sisenand to the throne

of Spain happened A.D. 631. The 200,000 pieces of gold were

appropriated by Dagobert to the foundation of the church of St.

Denys.]

141 (return) [ The president Goguet (Origine des Loix, &c., tom.

ii. p. 239) is of opinion, that the stupendous pieces of emerald,

the statues and columns which antiquity has placed in Egypt, at

Gades, at Constantinople, were in reality artificial compositions

of colored glass. The famous emerald dish, which is shown at

Genoa, is supposed to countenance the suspicion.]

142 (return) [ Elmacin. Hist. Saracenica, l. i. p. 85. Roderic.

Tolet. Hist. Arab. c. 9. Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique et de

l’Espagne sous les Arabes tom. i. p. 83. It was called the Table

of Solomon, according to the custom of the Orientals, who ascribe

to that prince every ancient work of knowledge or magnificence.]

After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the Goths,

some secret counsellor was permitted, amidst the factions of the

palace, to heal the wounds of that afflicted country. 143 By a

wise and humane regulation, the eight provinces which had been

the most deeply injured, Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium,

Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and Lucania, obtained an indulgence

of five years: the ordinary tribute was reduced to one fifth, and

even that fifth was destined to restore and support the useful

institution of the public posts. By another law, the lands which

had been left without inhabitants or cultivation, were granted,

with some diminution of taxes, to the neighbors who should

occupy, or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new

possessors were secured against the future claims of the fugitive

proprietors. About the same time a general amnesty was published

in the name of Honorius, to abolish the guilt and memory of all

the involuntary offences which had been committed by his unhappy

subjects, during the term of the public disorder and calamity. A

decent and respectful attention was paid to the restoration of

the capital; the citizens were encouraged to rebuild the edifices

which had been destroyed or damaged by hostile fire; and

extraordinary supplies of corn were imported from the coast of

Africa. The crowds that so lately fled before the sword of the

Barbarians, were soon recalled by the hopes of plenty and

pleasure; and Albinus, praefect of Rome, informed the court, with

some anxiety and surprise, that, in a single day, he had taken an

account of the arrival of fourteen thousand strangers. 144 In

less than seven years, the vestiges of the Gothic invasion were

almost obliterated; and the city appeared to resume its former

splendor and tranquillity. The venerable matron replaced her

crown of laurel, which had been ruffled by the storms of war; and

was still amused, in the last moment of her decay, with the

prophecies of revenge, of victory, and of eternal dominion. 145

143 (return) [ His three laws are inserted in the Theodosian

Code, l. xi. tit. xxviii. leg. 7. L. xiii. tit. xi. leg. 12. L.

xv. tit. xiv. leg. 14 The expressions of the last are very

remarkable; since they contain not only a pardon, but an

apology.]

144 (return) [ Olympiodorus ap. Phot. p. 188. Philostorgius (l.

xii. c. 5) observes, that when Honorius made his triumphal entry,

he encouraged the Romans, with his hand and voice, to rebuild

their city; and the Chronicle of Prosper commends Heraclian, qui

in Romanae urbis reparationem strenuum exhibuerat ministerium.]

145 (return) [ The date of the voyage of Claudius Rutilius

Numatianus is clogged with some difficulties; but Scaliger has

deduced from astronomical characters, that he left Rome the 24th

of September and embarked at Porto the 9th of October, A.D. 416.

See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom, v. p. 820. In this

poetical Itinerary, Rutilius (l. i. 115, &c.) addresses Rome in a

high strain of congratulation:—

Erige crinales lauros, seniumque sacrati Verticis in virides,

Roma, recinge comas, &c.]

This apparent tranquillity was soon disturbed by the approach of

a hostile armament from the country which afforded the daily

subsistence of the Roman people. Heraclian, count of Africa, who,

under the most difficult and distressful circumstances, had

supported, with active loyalty, the cause of Honorius, was

tempted, in the year of his consulship, to assume the character

of a rebel, and the title of emperor. The ports of Africa were

immediately filled with the naval forces, at the head of which he

prepared to invade Italy: and his fleet, when it cast anchor at

the mouth of the Tyber, indeed surpassed the fleets of Xerxes and

Alexander, if all the vessels, including the royal galley, and

the smallest boat, did actually amount to the incredible number

of three thousand two hundred. 146 Yet with such an armament,

which might have subverted, or restored, the greatest empires of

the earth, the African usurper made a very faint and feeble

impression on the provinces of his rival. As he marched from the

port, along the road which leads to the gates of Rome, he was

encountered, terrified, and routed, by one of the Imperial

captains; and the lord of this mighty host, deserting his fortune

and his friends, ignominiously fled with a single ship. 147 When

Heraclian landed in the harbor of Carthage, he found that the

whole province, disdaining such an unworthy ruler, had returned

to their allegiance. The rebel was beheaded in the ancient temple

of Memory; his consulship was abolished: 148 and the remains of

his private fortune, not exceeding the moderate sum of four

thousand pounds of gold, were granted to the brave Constantius,

who had already defended the throne, which he afterwards shared

with his feeble sovereign. Honorius viewed, with supine

indifference, the calamities of Rome and Italy; 149 but the

rebellious attempts of Attalus and Heraclian, against his

personal safety, awakened, for a moment, the torpid instinct of

his nature. He was probably ignorant of the causes and events

which preserved him from these impending dangers; and as Italy

was no longer invaded by any foreign or domestic enemies, he

peaceably existed in the palace of Ravenna, while the tyrants

beyond the Alps were repeatedly vanquished in the name, and by

the lieutenants, of the son of Theodosius. 150 In the course of a

busy and interesting narrative I might possibly forget to mention

the death of such a prince: and I shall therefore take the

precaution of observing, in this place, that he survived the last

siege of Rome about thirteen years.

146 (return) [ Orosius composed his history in Africa, only two

years after the event; yet his authority seems to be overbalanced

by the improbability of the fact. The Chronicle of Marcellinus

gives Heraclian 700 ships and 3000 men: the latter of these

numbers is ridiculously corrupt; but the former would please me

very much.]

147 (return) [ The Chronicle of Idatius affirms, without the

least appearance of truth, that he advanced as far as Otriculum,

in Umbria, where he was overthrown in a great battle, with the

loss of 50,000 men.]

148 (return) [ See Cod. Theod. l. xv. tit. xiv. leg. 13. The

legal acts performed in his name, even the manumission of slaves,

were declared invalid, till they had been formally repeated.]

149 (return) [ I have disdained to mention a very foolish, and

probably a false, report, (Procop. de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 2,)

that Honorius was alarmed by the loss of Rome, till he understood

that it was not a favorite chicken of that name, but only the

capital of the world, which had been lost. Yet even this story is

some evidence of the public opinion.]

150 (return) [ The materials for the lives of all these tyrants

are taken from six contemporary historians, two Latins and four

Greeks: Orosius, l. vii. c. 42, p. 581, 582, 583; Renatus

Profuturus Frigeridus, apud Gregor Turon. l. ii. c. 9, in the

Historians of France, tom. ii. p. 165, 166; Zosimus, l. v. p.

370, 371; Olympiodorus, apud Phot. p. 180, 181, 184, 185;

Sozomen, l. ix. c. 12, 13, 14, 15; and Philostorgius, l. xii. c.

5, 6, with Godefroy’s Dissertation, p. 477-481; besides the four

Chronicles of Prosper Tyro, Prosper of Aquitain, Idatius, and

Marcellinus.]

The usurpation of Constantine, who received the purple from the

legions of Britain, had been successful, and seemed to be secure.

His title was acknowledged, from the wall of Antoninus to the

columns of Hercules; and, in the midst of the public disorder he

shared the dominion, and the plunder, of Gaul and Spain, with the

tribes of Barbarians, whose destructive progress was no longer

checked by the Rhine or Pyrenees. Stained with the blood of the

kinsmen of Honorius, he extorted, from the court of Ravenna, with

which he secretly corresponded, the ratification of his

rebellious claims. Constantine engaged himself, by a solemn

promise, to deliver Italy from the Goths; advanced as far as the

banks of the Po; and after alarming, rather than assisting, his

pusillanimous ally, hastily returned to the palace of Arles, to

celebrate, with intemperate luxury, his vain and ostentatious

triumph. But this transient prosperity was soon interrupted and

destroyed by the revolt of Count Gerontius, the bravest of his

generals; who, during the absence of his son Constans, a prince

already invested with the Imperial purple, had been left to

command in the provinces of Spain. From some reason, of which we

are ignorant, Gerontius, instead of assuming the diadem, placed

it on the head of his friend Maximus, who fixed his residence at

Tarragona, while the active count pressed forwards, through the

Pyrenees, to surprise the two emperors, Constantine and Constans,

before they could prepare for their defence. The son was made

prisoner at Vienna, and immediately put to death: and the

unfortunate youth had scarcely leisure to deplore the elevation

of his family; which had tempted, or compelled him,

sacrilegiously to desert the peaceful obscurity of the monastic

life. The father maintained a siege within the walls of Arles;

but those walls must have yielded to the assailants, had not the

city been unexpectedly relieved by the approach of an Italian

army. The name of Honorius, the proclamation of a lawful emperor,

astonished the contending parties of the rebels. Gerontius,

abandoned by his own troops, escaped to the confines of Spain;

and rescued his name from oblivion, by the Roman courage which

appeared to animate the last moments of his life. In the middle

of the night, a great body of his perfidious soldiers surrounded

and attacked his house, which he had strongly barricaded. His

wife, a valiant friend of the nation of the Alani, and some

faithful slaves, were still attached to his person; and he used,

with so much skill and resolution, a large magazine of darts and

arrows, that above three hundred of the assailants lost their

lives in the attempt. His slaves when all the missile weapons

were spent, fled at the dawn of day; and Gerontius, if he had not

been restrained by conjugal tenderness, might have imitated their

example; till the soldiers, provoked by such obstinate

resistance, applied fire on all sides to the house. In this fatal

extremity, he complied with the request of his Barbarian friend,

and cut off his head. The wife of Gerontius, who conjured him not

to abandon her to a life of misery and disgrace, eagerly

presented her neck to his sword; and the tragic scene was

terminated by the death of the count himself, who, after three

ineffectual strokes, drew a short dagger, and sheathed it in his

heart. 151 The unprotected Maximus, whom he had invested with the

purple, was indebted for his life to the contempt that was

entertained of his power and abilities. The caprice of the

Barbarians, who ravaged Spain, once more seated this Imperial

phantom on the throne: but they soon resigned him to the justice

of Honorius; and the tyrant Maximus, after he had been shown to

the people of Ravenna and Rome, was publicly executed.

151 (return) [ The praises which Sozomen has bestowed on this act

of despair, appear strange and scandalous in the mouth of an

ecclesiastical historian. He observes (p. 379) that the wife of

Gerontius was a Christian; and that her death was worthy of her

religion, and of immortal fame.]

The general, (Constantius was his name,) who raised by his

approach the siege of Arles, and dissipated the troops of

Gerontius, was born a Roman; and this remarkable distinction is

strongly expressive of the decay of military spirit among the

subjects of the empire. The strength and majesty which were

conspicuous in the person of that general, 152 marked him, in the

popular opinion, as a candidate worthy of the throne, which he

afterwards ascended. In the familiar intercourse of private life,

his manners were cheerful and engaging; nor would he sometimes

disdain, in the license of convivial mirth, to vie with the

pantomimes themselves, in the exercises of their ridiculous

profession. But when the trumpet summoned him to arms; when he

mounted his horse, and, bending down (for such was his singular

practice) almost upon the neck, fiercely rolled his large

animated eyes round the field, Constantius then struck terror

into his foes, and inspired his soldiers with the assurance of

victory. He had received from the court of Ravenna the important

commission of extirpating rebellion in the provinces of the West;

and the pretended emperor Constantine, after enjoying a short and

anxious respite, was again besieged in his capital by the arms of

a more formidable enemy. Yet this interval allowed time for a

successful negotiation with the Franks and Alemanni and his

ambassador, Edobic, soon returned at the head of an army, to

disturb the operations of the siege of Arles. The Roman general,

instead of expecting the attack in his lines, boldly and perhaps

wisely, resolved to pass the Rhone, and to meet the Barbarians.

His measures were conducted with so much skill and secrecy, that,

while they engaged the infantry of Constantius in the front, they

were suddenly attacked, surrounded, and destroyed, by the cavalry

of his lieutenant Ulphilas, who had silently gained an

advantageous post in their rear. The remains of the army of

Edobic were preserved by flight or submission, and their leader

escaped from the field of battle to the house of a faithless

friend; who too clearly understood, that the head of his

obnoxious guest would be an acceptable and lucrative present for

the Imperial general. On this occasion, Constantius behaved with

the magnanimity of a genuine Roman. Subduing, or suppressing,

every sentiment of jealousy, he publicly acknowledged the merit

and services of Ulphilas; but he turned with horror from the

assassin of Edobic; and sternly intimated his commands, that the

camp should no longer be polluted by the presence of an

ungrateful wretch, who had violated the laws of friendship and

hospitality. The usurper, who beheld, from the walls of Arles,

the ruin of his last hopes, was tempted to place some confidence

in so generous a conqueror. He required a solemn promise for his

security; and after receiving, by the imposition of hands, the

sacred character of a Christian Presbyter, he ventured to open

the gates of the city. But he soon experienced that the

principles of honor and integrity, which might regulate the

ordinary conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose

doctrines of political morality. The Roman general, indeed,

refused to sully his laurels with the blood of Constantine; but

the abdicated emperor, and his son Julian, were sent under a

strong guard into Italy; and before they reached the palace of

Ravenna, they met the ministers of death.

152 (return) [ It is the expression of Olympiodorus, which he

seems to have borrowed from Aeolus, a tragedy of Euripides, of

which some fragments only are now extant, (Euripid. Barnes, tom.

ii. p. 443, ver 38.) This allusion may prove, that the ancient

tragic poets were still familiar to the Greeks of the fifth

century.]

At a time when it was universally confessed, that almost every

man in the empire was superior in personal merit to the princes

whom the accident of their birth had seated on the throne, a

rapid succession of usurpers, regardless of the fate of their

predecessors, still continued to arise. This mischief was

peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain and Gaul, where the

principles of order and obedience had been extinguished by war

and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the purple, and in the

fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was received in

the Imperial camp, that Jovinus has assumed the diadem at Mentz,

in the Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the

Alani, and of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the

candidate, on whom they had bestowed the empire, advanced with a

formidable host of Barbarians, from the banks of the Rhine to

those of the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and extraordinary

in the short history of the reign of Jovinus. It was natural to

expect, that a brave and skilful general, at the head of a

victorious army, would have asserted, in a field of battle, the

justice of the cause of Honorius. The hasty retreat of

Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons; but he

resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and

Dardanus, the Prætorian praefect, is recorded as the only

magistrate who refused to yield obedience to the usurper. 153

When the Goths, two years after the siege of Rome, established

their quarters in Gaul, it was natural to suppose that their

inclinations could be divided only between the emperor Honorius,

with whom they had formed a recent alliance, and the degraded

Attalus, whom they reserved in their camp for the occasional

purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch. Yet in a

moment of disgust, (for which it is not easy to assign a cause,

or a date,) Adolphus connected himself with the usurper of Gaul;

and imposed on Attalus the ignominious task of negotiating the

treaty, which ratified his own disgrace. We are again surprised

to read, that, instead of considering the Gothic alliance as the

firmest support of his throne, Jovinus upbraided, in dark and

ambiguous language, the officious importunity of Attalus; that,

scorning the advice of his great ally, he invested with the

purple his brother Sebastian; and that he most imprudently

accepted the service of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the

soldier of Honorius, was provoked to desert the court of a

prince, who knew not how to reward or punish. Adolphus, educated

among a race of warriors, who esteemed the duty of revenge as the

most precious and sacred portion of their inheritance, advanced

with a body of ten thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary

enemy of the house of Balti. He attacked Sarus at an unguarded

moment, when he was accompanied only by eighteen or twenty of his

valiant followers. United by friendship, animated by despair, but

at length oppressed by multitudes, this band of heroes deserved

the esteem, without exciting the compassion, of their enemies;

and the lion was no sooner taken in the toils, 154 than he was

instantly despatched. The death of Sarus dissolved the loose

alliance which Adolphus still maintained with the usurpers of

Gaul. He again listened to the dictates of love and prudence; and

soon satisfied the brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he

would immediately transmit to the palace of Ravenna the heads of

the two tyrants, Jovinus and Sebastian. The king of the Goths

executed his promise without difficulty or delay; the helpless

brothers, unsupported by any personal merit, were abandoned by

their Barbarian auxiliaries; and the short opposition of Valentia

was expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest cities of Gaul.

The emperor, chosen by the Roman senate, who had been promoted,

degraded, insulted, restored, again degraded, and again insulted,

was finally abandoned to his fate; but when the Gothic king

withdrew his protection, he was restrained, by pity or contempt,

from offering any violence to the person of Attalus. The

unfortunate Attalus, who was left without subjects or allies,

embarked in one of the ports of Spain, in search of some secure

and solitary retreat: but he was intercepted at sea, conducted to

the presence of Honorius, led in triumph through the streets of

Rome or Ravenna, and publicly exposed to the gazing multitude, on

the second step of the throne of his invincible conqueror. The

same measure of punishment, with which, in the days of his

prosperity, he was accused of menacing his rival, was inflicted

on Attalus himself; he was condemned, after the amputation of two

fingers, to a perpetual exile in the Isle of Lipari, where he was

supplied with the decent necessaries of life. The remainder of

the reign of Honorius was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be

observed, that, in the space of five years, seven usurpers had

yielded to the fortune of a prince, who was himself incapable

either of counsel or of action.

153 (return) [ Sidonius Apollinaris, (l. v. epist. 9, p. 139, and

Not. Sirmond. p. 58,) after stigmatizing the inconstancy of

Constantine, the facility of Jovinus, the perfidy of Gerontius,

continues to observe, that all the vices of these tyrants were

united in the person of Dardanus. Yet the praefect supported a

respectable character in the world, and even in the church; held

a devout correspondence with St. Augustin and St. Jerom; and was

complimented by the latter (tom. iii. p. 66) with the epithets of

Christianorum Nobilissime, and Nobilium Christianissime.]

154 (return) [ The expression may be understood almost literally:

Olympiodorus says a sack, or a loose garment; and this method of

entangling and catching an enemy, laciniis contortis, was much

practised by the Huns, (Ammian. xxxi. 2.) Il fut pris vif avec

des filets, is the translation of Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs,

tom. v. p. 608. * Note: Bekker in his Photius reads something,

but in the new edition of the Bysantines, he retains the old

version, which is translated Scutis, as if they protected him

with their shields, in order to take him alive. Photius, Bekker,

p. 58.—M]

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By

Barbarians.—Part VII.

The situation of Spain, separated, on all sides, from the enemies

of Rome, by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate

provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and

sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of

domestic happiness, that, in a period of four hundred years,

Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman

empire. The footsteps of the Barbarians, who, in the reign of

Gallienus, had penetrated beyond the Pyrenees, were soon

obliterated by the return of peace; and in the fourth century of

the Christian era, the cities of Emerita, or Merida, of Corduba,

Seville, Bracara, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most

illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal,

the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, was improved and

manufactured by the skill of an industrious people; and the

peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an

extensive and profitable trade. 155 The arts and sciences

flourished under the protection of the emperors; and if the

character of the Spaniards was enfeebled by peace and servitude,

the hostile approach of the Germans, who had spread terror and

desolation from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed to rekindle

some sparks of military ardor. As long as the defence of the

mountains was intrusted to the hardy and faithful militia of the

country, they successfully repelled the frequent attempts of the

Barbarians. But no sooner had the national troops been compelled

to resign their post to the Honorian bands, in the service of

Constantine, than the gates of Spain were treacherously betrayed

to the public enemy, about ten months before the sack of Rome by

the Goths. 156 The consciousness of guilt, and the thirst of

rapine, prompted the mercenary guards of the Pyrenees to desert

their station; to invite the arms of the Suevi, the Vandals, and

the Alani; and to swell the torrent which was poured with

irresistible violence from the frontiers of Gaul to the sea of

Africa. The misfortunes of Spain may be described in the language

of its most eloquent historian, who has concisely expressed the

passionate, and perhaps exaggerated, declamations of contemporary

writers. 157 “The irruption of these nations was followed by the

most dreadful calamities; as the Barbarians exercised their

indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and the

Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open

country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable inhabitants

to feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even the wild

beasts, who multiplied, without control, in the desert, were

exasperated, by the taste of blood, and the impatience of hunger,

boldly to attack and devour their human prey. Pestilence soon

appeared, the inseparable companion of famine; a large proportion

of the people was swept away; and the groans of the dying excited

only the envy of their surviving friends. At length the

Barbarians, satiated with carnage and rapine, and afflicted by

the contagious evils which they themselves had introduced, fixed

their permanent seats in the depopulated country. The ancient

Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of Old Castille, was

divided between the Suevi and the Vandals; the Alani were

scattered over the provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, from

the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean; and the fruitful

territory of Boetica was allotted to the Silingi, another branch

of the Vandalic nation. After regulating this partition, the

conquerors contracted with their new subjects some reciprocal

engagements of protection and obedience: the lands were again

cultivated; and the towns and villages were again occupied by a

captive people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even

disposed to prefer this new condition of poverty and barbarism,

to the severe oppressions of the Roman government; yet there were

many who still asserted their native freedom; and who refused,

more especially in the mountains of Gallicia, to submit to the

Barbarian yoke.” 158

155 (return) [ Without recurring to the more ancient writers, I

shall quote three respectable testimonies which belong to the

fourth and seventh centuries; the Expositio totius Mundi, (p. 16,

in the third volume of Hudson’s Minor Geographers,) Ausonius, (de

Claris Urbibus, p. 242, edit. Toll.,) and Isidore of Seville,

(Praefat. ad. Chron. ap. Grotium, Hist. Goth. 707.) Many

particulars relative to the fertility and trade of Spain may be

found in Nonnius, Hispania Illustrata; and in Huet, Hist. du

Commerce des Anciens, c. 40. p. 228-234.]

156 (return) [ The date is accurately fixed in the Fasti, and the

Chronicle of Idatius. Orosius (l. vii. c. 40, p. 578) imputes the

loss of Spain to the treachery of the Honorians; while Sozomen

(l. ix. c. 12) accuses only their negligence.]

157 (return) [ Idatius wishes to apply the prophecies of Daniel

to these national calamities; and is therefore obliged to

accommodate the circumstances of the event to the terms of the

prediction.]

158 (return) [ Mariana de Rebus Hispanicis, l. v. c. 1, tom. i.

p. 148. Comit. 1733. He had read, in Orosius, (l. vii. c. 41, p.

579,) that the Barbarians had turned their swords into

ploughshares; and that many of the Provincials had preferred

inter Barbaros pauperem libertatem, quam inter Romanos

tributariam solicitudinem, sustinere.]

The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had

approved the friendship of Adolphus, and restored Gaul to the

obedience of his brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with

the situation and temper of the king of the Goths. He readily

accepted the proposal of turning his victorious arms against the

Barbarians of Spain; the troops of Constantius intercepted his

communication with the seaports of Gaul, and gently pressed his

march towards the Pyrenees: 159 he passed the mountains, and

surprised, in the name of the emperor, the city of Barcelona. The

fondness of Adolphus for his Roman bride, was not abated by time

or possession: and the birth of a son, surnamed, from his

illustrious grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him forever in

the interest of the republic. The loss of that infant, whose

remains were deposited in a silver coffin in one of the churches

near Barcelona, afflicted his parents; but the grief of the

Gothic king was suspended by the labors of the field; and the

course of his victories was soon interrupted by domestic treason.

He had imprudently received into his service one of the followers

of Sarus; a Barbarian of a daring spirit, but of a diminutive

stature; whose secret desire of revenging the death of his

beloved patron was continually irritated by the sarcasms of his

insolent master. Adolphus was assassinated in the palace of

Barcelona; the laws of the succession were violated by a

tumultuous faction; 160 and a stranger to the royal race,

Singeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on the Gothic

throne. The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of the

six children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he

tore, without pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop.

161 The unfortunate Placidia, instead of the respectful

compassion, which she might have excited in the most savage

breasts, was treated with cruel and wanton insult. The daughter

of the emperor Theodosius, confounded among a crowd of vulgar

captives, was compelled to march on foot above twelve miles,

before the horse of a Barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom

Placidia loved and lamented. 162

159 (return) [ This mixture of force and persuasion may be fairly

inferred from comparing Orosius and Jornandes, the Roman and the

Gothic historian.]

160 (return) [ According to the system of Jornandes, (c. 33, p.

659,) the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested

in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the

Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant

parts of Germany or Scythia.]

161 (return) [ The murder is related by Olympiodorus: but the

number of the children is taken from an epitaph of suspected

authority.]

162 (return) [ The death of Adolphus was celebrated at

Constantinople with illuminations and Circensian games. (See

Chron. Alexandrin.) It may seem doubtful whether the Greeks were

actuated, on this occasion, be their hatred of the Barbarians, or

of the Latins.]

But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge, and the view

of her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people

against the tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of

his usurpation. After the death of Singeric, the free choice of

the nation bestowed the Gothic sceptre on Wallia; whose warlike

and ambitious temper appeared, in the beginning of his reign,

extremely hostile to the republic. He marched in arms from

Barcelona to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the ancients

revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he

reached the southern promontory of Spain, 163 and, from the rock

now covered by the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the

neighboring and fertile coast of Africa, Wallia resumed the

designs of conquest, which had been interrupted by the death of

Alaric. The winds and waves again disappointed the enterprise of

the Goths; and the minds of a superstitious people were deeply

affected by the repeated disasters of storms and shipwrecks. In

this disposition the successor of Adolphus no longer refused to

listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were enforced by

the real, or supposed, approach of a numerous army, under the

conduct of the brave Constantius. A solemn treaty was stipulated

and observed; Placidia was honorably restored to her brother; six

hundred thousand measures of wheat were delivered to the hungry

Goths; 164 and Wallia engaged to draw his sword in the service of

the empire. A bloody war was instantly excited among the

Barbarians of Spain; and the contending princes are said to have

addressed their letters, their ambassadors, and their hostages,

to the throne of the Western emperor, exhorting him to remain a

tranquil spectator of their contest; the events of which must be

favorable to the Romans, by the mutual slaughter of their common

enemies. 165 The Spanish war was obstinately supported, during

three campaigns, with desperate valor, and various success; and

the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire

the superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the

Silingi, who had irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the

province of Boetica. He slew, in battle, the king of the Alani;

and the remains of those Scythian wanderers, who escaped from the

field, instead of choosing a new leader, humbly sought a refuge

under the standard of the Vandals, with whom they were ever

afterwards confounded. The Vandals themselves, and the Suevi,

yielded to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The promiscuous

multitude of Barbarians, whose retreat had been intercepted, were

driven into the mountains of Gallicia; where they still

continued, in a narrow compass and on a barren soil, to exercise

their domestic and implacable hostilities. In the pride of

victory, Wallia was faithful to his engagements: he restored his

Spanish conquests to the obedience of Honorius; and the tyranny

of the Imperial officers soon reduced an oppressed people to

regret the time of their Barbarian servitude. While the event of

the war was still doubtful, the first advantages obtained by the

arms of Wallia had encouraged the court of Ravenna to decree the

honors of a triumph to their feeble sovereign. He entered Rome

like the ancient conquerors of nations; and if the monuments of

servile corruption had not long since met with the fate which

they deserved, we should probably find that a crowd of poets and

orators, of magistrates and bishops, applauded the fortune, the

wisdom, and the invincible courage, of the emperor Honorius. 166

163 (return) [

Quod Tartessiacis avus hujus Vallia terris Vandalicas turmas, et

juncti Martis Alanos Stravit, et occiduam texere cadavera Calpen.

Sidon. Apollinar. in Panegyr. Anthem. 363 p. 300, edit. Sirmond.]

164 (return) [ This supply was very acceptable: the Goths were

insulted by the Vandals of Spain with the epithet of Truli,

because in their extreme distress, they had given a piece of gold

for a trula, or about half a pound of flour. Olympiod. apud Phot.

p. 189.]

165 (return) [ Orosius inserts a copy of these pretended letters.

Tu cum omnibus pacem habe, omniumque obsides accipe; nos nobis

confligimus nobis perimus, tibi vincimus; immortalis vero

quaestus erit Reipublicae tuae, si utrique pereamus. The idea is

just; but I cannot persuade myself that it was entertained or

expressed by the Barbarians.]

166 (return) [ Roman triumphans ingreditur, is the formal

expression of Prosper’s Chronicle. The facts which relate to the

death of Adolphus, and the exploits of Wallia, are related from

Olympiodorus, (ap. Phot. p. 188,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 43 p.

584-587,) Jornandes, (de Rebus p. 31, 32,) and the chronicles of

Idatius and Isidore.]

Such a triumph might have been justly claimed by the ally of

Rome, if Wallia, before he repassed the Pyrenees, had extirpated

the seeds of the Spanish war. His victorious Goths, forty-three

years after they had passed the Danube, were established,

according to the faith of treaties, in the possession of the

second Aquitain; a maritime province between the Garonne and the

Loire, under the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of

Bourdeaux. That metropolis, advantageously situated for the trade

of the ocean, was built in a regular and elegant form; and its

numerous inhabitants were distinguished among the Gauls by their

wealth, their learning, and the politeness of their manners. The

adjacent province, which has been fondly compared to the garden

of Eden, is blessed with a fruitful soil, and a temperate

climate; the face of the country displayed the arts and the

rewards of industry; and the Goths, after their martial toils,

luxuriously exhausted the rich vineyards of Aquitain. 167 The

Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift of some

neighboring dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their

royal residence at Thoulouse, which included five populous

quarters, or cities, within the spacious circuit of its walls.

About the same time, in the last years of the reign of Honorius,

the Goths, the Burgundians, and the Franks, obtained a permanent

seat and dominion in the provinces of Gaul. The liberal grant of

the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian allies, was confirmed by

the lawful emperor; the lands of the First, or Upper, Germany,

were ceded to those formidable Barbarians; and they gradually

occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces which

still retain, with the titles of Duchy and County, the national

appellation of Burgundy. 168 The Franks, the valiant and faithful

allies of the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the

invaders, whom they had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital

of Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble

colony, which they so long maintained in the district of

Toxandia, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks of

the Meuse and Scheld, till their independent power filled the

whole extent of the Second, or Lower Germany. These facts may be

sufficiently justified by historic evidence; but the foundation

of the French monarchy by Pharamond, the conquests, the laws, and

even the existence, of that hero, have been justly arraigned by

the impartial severity of modern criticism. 169

167 (return) [ Ausonius (de Claris Urbibus, p. 257-262)

celebrates Bourdeaux with the partial affection of a native. See

in Salvian (de Gubern. Dei, p. 228. Paris, 1608) a florid

description of the provinces of Aquitain and Novempopulania.]

168 (return) [ Orosius (l. vii. c. 32, p. 550) commends the

mildness and modesty of these Burgundians, who treated their

subjects of Gaul as their Christian brethren. Mascou has

illustrated the origin of their kingdom in the four first

annotations at the end of his laborious History of the Ancient

Germans, vol. ii. p. 555-572, of the English translation.]

169 (return) [ See Mascou, l. viii. c. 43, 44, 45. Except in a

short and suspicious line of the Chronicle of Prosper, (in tom.

i. p. 638,) the name of Pharamond is never mentioned before the

seventh century. The author of the Gesta Francorum (in tom. ii.

p. 543) suggests, probably enough, that the choice of Pharamond,

or at least of a king, was recommended to the Franks by his

father Marcomir, who was an exile in Tuscany. Note: The first

mention of Pharamond is in the Gesta Francorum, assigned to about

the year 720. St. Martin, iv. 469. The modern French writers in

general subscribe to the opinion of Thierry: Faramond fils de

Markomir, quo que son nom soit bien germanique, et son regne

possible, ne figure pas dans les histoires les plus dignes de

foi. A. Thierry, Lettres l’Histoire de France, p. 90.—M.]

The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the

establishment of these Barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous

and oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest

or passion, to violate the public peace. A heavy and partial

ransom was imposed on the surviving provincials, who had escaped

the calamities of war; the fairest and most fertile lands were

assigned to the rapacious strangers, for the use of their

families, their slaves, and their cattle; and the trembling

natives relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their

fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot

of a vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans

themselves, not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in

the madness of civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen

of the most flourishing colonies of Italy; and distributed their

lands and houses to the veterans who revenged the death of

Caesar, and oppressed the liberty of their country. Two poets of

unequal fame have deplored, in similar circumstances, the loss of

their patrimony; but the legionaries of Augustus appear to have

surpassed, in violence and injustice, the Barbarians who invaded

Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not without the utmost

difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the Centurion,

who had usurped his farm in the neighborhood of Mantua; 170 but

Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money from his Gothic

purchaser, which he accepted with pleasure and surprise; and

though it was much inferior to the real value of his estate, this

act of rapine was disguised by some colors of moderation and

equity. 171 The odious name of conquerors was softened into the

mild and friendly appellation of the guests of the Romans; and

the Barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly

declared, that they were bound to the people by the ties of

hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance and

military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their

laws, and their civil magistrates, were still respected in the

provinces of Gaul, of which they had resigned the possession to

the Barbarian allies; and the kings, who exercised a supreme and

independent authority over their native subjects, ambitiously

solicited the more honorable rank of master-generals of the

Imperial armies. 172 Such was the involuntary reverence which the

Roman name still impressed on the minds of those warriors, who

had borne away in triumph the spoils of the Capitol.

170 (return) [ O Lycida, vivi pervenimus: advena nostri (Quod

nunquam veriti sumus) ut possessor agelli Diseret: Haec mea sunt;

veteres migrate coloni. Nunc victi tristes, &c.——See the whole of

the ninth eclogue, with the useful Commentary of Servius. Fifteen

miles of the Mantuan territory were assigned to the veterans,

with a reservation, in favor of the inhabitants, of three miles

round the city. Even in this favor they were cheated by Alfenus

Varus, a famous lawyer, and one of the commissioners, who

measured eight hundred paces of water and morass.]

171 (return) [ See the remarkable passage of the Eucharisticon of

Paulinus, 575, apud Mascou, l. viii. c. 42.]

172 (return) [ This important truth is established by the

accuracy of Tillemont, (Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 641,) and by

the ingenuity of the Abbe Dubos, (Hist. de l’Etablissement de la

Monarchie Francoise dans les Gaules, tom. i. p. 259.)]

Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble

tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British

island separated itself from the body of the Roman empire. The

regular forces, which guarded that remote province, had been

gradually withdrawn; and Britain was abandoned without defence to

the Saxon pirates, and the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The

Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy

and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They assembled in arms,

repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important discovery of

their own strength. 173 Afflicted by similar calamities, and

actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a name

which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul between the

Seine and the Loire 174 resolved to imitate the example of the

neighboring island. They expelled the Roman magistrates, who

acted under the authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free

government was established among a people who had so long been

subject to the arbitrary will of a master. The independence of

Britain and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the

lawful emperor of the West; and the letters, by which he

committed to the new states the care of their own safety, might

be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of the

exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in

some measure, justified by the event.

After the usurpers of Gaul had successively fallen, the maritime

provinces were restored to the empire. Yet their obedience was

imperfect and precarious: the vain, inconstant, rebellious

disposition of the people, was incompatible either with freedom

or servitude; 175 and Armorica, though it could not long maintain

the form of a republic, 176 was agitated by frequent and

destructive revolts. Britain was irrecoverably lost. 177 But as

the emperors wisely acquiesced in the independence of a remote

province, the separation was not imbittered by the reproach of

tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance and protection

were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary offices of national

friendship. 178

173 (return) [ Zosimus (l. vi. 376, 383) relates in a few words

the revolt of Britain and Armorica. Our antiquarians, even the

great Cambder himself, have been betrayed into many gross errors,

by their imperfect knowledge of the history of the continent.]

174 (return) [ The limits of Armorica are defined by two national

geographers, Messieurs De Valois and D’Anville, in their Notitias

of Ancient Gaul. The word had been used in a more extensive, and

was afterwards contracted to a much narrower, signification.]

175 (return) [ Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes,

Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta. Torva, ferox, ventosa,

procax, incauta, rebellis; Inconstans, disparque sibi novitatis

amore; Prodiga verborum, sed non et prodiga facti.

Erricus, Monach. in Vit. St. Germani. l. v. apud Vales. Notit.

Galliarum, p. 43. Valesius alleges several testimonies to confirm

this character; to which I shall add the evidence of the

presbyter Constantine, (A.D. 488,) who, in the life of St.

Germain, calls the Armorican rebels mobilem et indisciplinatum

populum. See the Historians of France, tom. i. p. 643.]

176 (return) [ I thought it necessary to enter my protest against

this part of the system of the Abbe Dubos, which Montesquieu has

so vigorously opposed. See Esprit des Loix, l. xxx. c. 24. Note:

See Mémoires de Gallet sur l’Origine des Bretons, quoted by Daru

Histoire de Bretagne, i. p. 57. According to the opinion of these

authors, the government of Armorica was monarchical from the

period of its independence on the Roman empire.—M.]

177 (return) [ The words of Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c.

2, p. 181, Louvre edition) in a very important passage, which has

been too much neglected Even Bede (Hist. Gent. Anglican. l. i. c.

12, p. 50, edit. Smith) acknowledges that the Romans finally left

Britain in the reign of Honorius. Yet our modern historians and

antiquaries extend the term of their dominion; and there are some

who allow only the interval of a few months between their

departure and the arrival of the Saxons.]

178 (return) [ Bede has not forgotten the occasional aid of the

legions against the Scots and Picts; and more authentic proof

will hereafter be produced, that the independent Britons raised

12,000 men for the service of the emperor Anthemius, in Gaul.]

This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and

military government; and the independent country, during a period

of forty years, till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the

authority of the clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns. 179

I. Zosimus, who alone has preserved the memory of this singular

transaction, very accurately observes, that the letters of

Honorius were addressed to the cities of Britain. 180 Under the

protection of the Romans, ninety-two considerable towns had

arisen in the several parts of that great province; and, among

these, thirty-three cities were distinguished above the rest by

their superior privileges and importance. 181 Each of these

cities, as in all the other provinces of the empire, formed a

legal corporation, for the purpose of regulating their domestic

policy; and the powers of municipal government were distributed

among annual magistrates, a select senate, and the assembly of

the people, according to the original model of the Roman

constitution. 182 The management of a common revenue, the

exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the habits of

public counsel and command, were inherent to these petty

republics; and when they asserted their independence, the youth

of the city, and of the adjacent districts, would naturally range

themselves under the standard of the magistrate. But the desire

of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of

political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of

discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed, that the restoration

of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The

preeminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently

violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles,

who complained that they were become the subjects of their own

servants, 183 would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary

monarch.

II. The jurisdiction of each city over the adjacent country, was

supported by the patrimonial influence of the principal senators;

and the smaller towns, the villages, and the proprietors of land,

consulted their own safety by adhering to the shelter of these

rising republics. The sphere of their attraction was proportioned

to the respective degrees of their wealth and populousness; but

the hereditary lords of ample possessions, who were not oppressed

by the neighborhood of any powerful city, aspired to the rank of

independent princes, and boldly exercised the rights of peace and

war. The gardens and villas, which exhibited some faint imitation

of Italian elegance, would soon be converted into strong castles,

the refuge, in time of danger, of the adjacent country: 184 the

produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to

maintain a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of

licentious followers; and the chieftain might assume, within his

own domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these

British chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient kings;

and many more would be tempted to adopt this honorable genealogy,

and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which had been

suspended by the usurpation of the Caesars. 185 Their situation

and their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the

language, and the customs of their ancestors. If the princes of

Britain relapsed into barbarism, while the cities studiously

preserved the laws and manners of Rome, the whole island must

have been gradually divided by the distinction of two national

parties; again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and

faction, by the various provocations of interest and resentment.

The public strength, instead of being united against a foreign

enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the

personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head

of his equals, might enable him to subdue the freedom of some

neighboring cities; and to claim a rank among the tyrants, 186

who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman

government. III. The British church might be composed of thirty

or forty bishops, 187 with an adequate proportion of the inferior

clergy; and the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor

188) would compel them to deserve the public esteem, by a decent

and exemplary behavior.

The interest, as well as the temper of the clergy, was favorable

to the peace and union of their distracted country: those

salutary lessons might be frequently inculcated in their popular

discourses; and the episcopal synods were the only councils that

could pretend to the weight and authority of a national assembly.

In such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat

promiscuously with the bishops, the important affairs of the

state, as well as of the church, might be freely debated;

differences reconciled, alliances formed, contributions imposed,

wise resolutions often concerted, and sometimes executed; and

there is reason to believe, that, in moments of extreme danger, a

Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected by the general consent of the

Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal

character, were interrupted, however, by zeal and superstition;

and the British clergy incessantly labored to eradicate the

Pelagian heresy, which they abhorred, as the peculiar disgrace of

their native country. 189

179 (return) [ I owe it to myself, and to historic truth, to

declare, that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded

only on conjecture and analogy. The stubbornness of our language

has sometimes forced me to deviate from the conditional into the

indicative mood.]

180 (return) [ Zosimus, l. vi. p. 383.]

181 (return) [ Two cities of Britain were municipia, nine

colonies, ten Latii jure donatoe, twelve stipendiarioe of eminent

note. This detail is taken from Richard of Cirencester, de Situ

Britanniae, p. 36; and though it may not seem probable that he

wrote from the Mss. of a Roman general, he shows a genuine

knowledge of antiquity, very extraordinary for a monk of the

fourteenth century.

Note: The names may be found in Whitaker’s Hist. of Manchester

vol. ii. 330, 379. Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, i. 216.—M.]

182 (return) [ See Maffei Verona Illustrata, part i. l. v. p.

83-106.]

183 (return) [ Leges restituit, libertatemque reducit, Et servos

famulis non sinit esse suis. Itinerar. Rutil. l. i. 215.]

184 (return) [ An inscription (apud Sirmond, Not. ad Sidon.

Apollinar. p. 59) describes a castle, cum muris et portis,

tutioni omnium, erected by Dardanus on his own estate, near

Sisteron, in the second Narbonnese, and named by him Theopolis.]

185 (return) [ The establishment of their power would have been

easy indeed, if we could adopt the impracticable scheme of a

lively and learned antiquarian; who supposes that the British

monarchs of the several tribes continued to reign, though with

subordinate jurisdiction, from the time of Claudius to that of

Honorius. See Whitaker’s History of Manchester, vol. i. p.

247-257.]

186 (return) [ Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 3, p. 181.

Britannia fertilis provincia tyrannorum, was the expression of

Jerom, in the year 415 (tom. ii. p. 255, ad Ctesiphont.) By the

pilgrims, who resorted every year to the Holy Land, the monk of

Bethlem received the earliest and most accurate intelligence.]

187 (return) [ See Bingham’s Eccles. Antiquities, vol. i. l. ix.

c. 6, p. 394.]

188 (return) [ It is reported of three British bishops who

assisted at the council of Rimini, A.D. 359, tam pauperes fuisse

ut nihil haberent. Sulpicius Severus, Hist. Sacra, l. ii. p. 420.

Some of their brethren however, were in better circumstances.]

189 (return) [ Consult Usher, de Antiq. Eccles. Britannicar. c.

8-12.]

It is somewhat remarkable, or rather it is extremely natural,

that the revolt of Britain and Armorica should have introduced an

appearance of liberty into the obedient provinces of Gaul. In a

solemn edict, 190 filled with the strongest assurances of that

paternal affection which princes so often express, and so seldom

feel, the emperor Honorius promulgated his intention of convening

an annual assembly of the seven provinces: a name peculiarly

appropriated to Aquitain and the ancient Narbonnese, which had

long since exchanged their Celtic rudeness for the useful and

elegant arts of Italy. 191 Arles, the seat of government and

commerce, was appointed for the place of the assembly; which

regularly continued twenty-eight days, from the fifteenth of

August to the thirteenth of September, of every year. It

consisted of the Prætorian praefect of the Gauls; of seven

provincial governors, one consular, and six presidents; of the

magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of about sixty cities; and

of a competent, though indefinite, number of the most honorable

and opulent possessors of land, who might justly be considered as

the representatives of their country. They were empowered to

interpret and communicate the laws of their sovereign; to expose

the grievances and wishes of their constituents; to moderate the

excessive or unequal weight of taxes; and to deliberate on every

subject of local or national importance, that could tend to the

restoration of the peace and prosperity of the seven provinces.

If such an institution, which gave the people an interest in

their own government, had been universally established by Trajan

or the Antonines, the seeds of public wisdom and virtue might

have been cherished and propagated in the empire of Rome. The

privileges of the subject would have secured the throne of the

monarch; the abuses of an arbitrary administration might have

been prevented, in some degree, or corrected, by the

interposition of these representative assemblies; and the country

would have been defended against a foreign enemy by the arms of

natives and freemen. Under the mild and generous influence of

liberty, the Roman empire might have remained invincible and

immortal; or if its excessive magnitude, and the instability of

human affairs, had opposed such perpetual continuance, its vital

and constituent members might have separately preserved their

vigor and independence. But in the decline of the empire, when

every principle of health and life had been exhausted, the tardy

application of this partial remedy was incapable of producing any

important or salutary effects. The emperor Honorius expresses his

surprise, that he must compel the reluctant provinces to accept a

privilege which they should ardently have solicited. A fine of

three, or even five, pounds of gold, was imposed on the absent

representatives; who seem to have declined this imaginary gift of

a free constitution, as the last and most cruel insult of their

oppressors.

190 (return) [ See the correct text of this edict, as published

by Sirmond, (Not. ad Sidon. Apollin. p. 148.) Hincmar of Rheims,

who assigns a place to the bishops, had probably seen (in the

ninth century) a more perfect copy. Dubos, Hist. Critique de la

Monarchie Francoise, tom. i. p. 241-255]

191 (return) [ It is evident from the Notitia, that the seven

provinces were the Viennensis, the maritime Alps, the first and

second Narbonnese Novempopulania, and the first and second

Aquitain. In the room of the first Aquitain, the Abbe Dubos, on

the authority of Hincmar, desires to introduce the first

Lugdunensis, or Lyonnese.]

Chapter XXXII: Emperors Arcadius, Eutropius, Theodosius II.—Part I.

Arcadius Emperor Of The East.—Administration And Disgrace Of

Eutropius.—Revolt Of Gainas.—Persecution Of St. John

Chrysostom.—Theodosius II. Emperor Of The East.—His Sister

Pulcheria.—His Wife Eudocia.—The Persian War, And Division Of

Armenia.

The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius

marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which,

from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the

Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years, in a state

of premature and perpetual decay. The sovereign of that empire

assumed, and obstinately retained, the vain, and at length

fictitious, title of Emperor of the Romans; and the hereditary

appellation of Caesar and Augustus continued to declare, that he

was the legitimate successor of the first of men, who had reigned

over the first of nations. The place of Constantinople rivalled,

and perhaps excelled, the magnificence of Persia; and the

eloquent sermons of St. Chrysostom 1 celebrate, while they

condemn, the pompous luxury of the reign of Arcadius. “The

emperor,” says he, “wears on his head either a diadem, or a crown

of gold, decorated with precious stones of inestimable value.

These ornaments, and his purple garments, are reserved for his

sacred person alone; and his robes of silk are embroidered with

the figures of golden dragons. His throne is of massy gold.

Whenever he appears in public, he is surrounded by his courtiers,

his guards, and his attendants. Their spears, their shields,

their cuirasses, the bridles and trappings of their horses, have

either the substance or the appearance of gold; and the large

splendid boss in the midst of their shield is encircled with

smaller bosses, which represent the shape of the human eye. The

two mules that drew the chariot of the monarch are perfectly

white, and shining all over with gold. The chariot itself, of

pure and solid gold, attracts the admiration of the spectators,

who contemplate the purple curtains, the snowy carpet, the size

of the precious stones, and the resplendent plates of gold, that

glitter as they are agitated by the motion of the carriage. The

Imperial pictures are white, on a blue ground; the emperor

appears seated on his throne, with his arms, his horses, and his

guards beside him; and his vanquished enemies in chains at his

feet.” The successors of Constantine established their perpetual

residence in the royal city, which he had erected on the verge of

Europe and Asia. Inaccessible to the menaces of their enemies,

and perhaps to the complaints of their people, they received,

with each wind, the tributary productions of every climate; while

the impregnable strength of their capital continued for ages to

defy the hostile attempts of the Barbarians. Their dominions were

bounded by the Adriatic and the Tigris; and the whole interval of

twenty-five days’ navigation, which separated the extreme cold of

Scythia from the torrid zone of Æthiopia, 2 was comprehended

within the limits of the empire of the East. The populous

countries of that empire were the seat of art and learning, of

luxury and wealth; and the inhabitants, who had assumed the

language and manners of Greeks, styled themselves, with some

appearance of truth, the most enlightened and civilized portion

of the human species. The form of government was a pure and

simple monarchy; the name of the Roman Republic, which so long

preserved a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the Latin

provinces; and the princes of Constantinople measured their

greatness by the servile obedience of their people. They were

ignorant how much this passive disposition enervates and degrades

every faculty of the mind. The subjects, who had resigned their

will to the absolute commands of a master, were equally incapable

of guarding their lives and fortunes against the assaults of the

Barbarians, or of defending their reason from the terrors of

superstition.

1 (return) [ Father Montfaucon, who, by the command of his

Benedictine superiors, was compelled (see Longueruana, tom. i. p.

205) to execute the laborious edition of St. Chrysostom, in

thirteen volumes in folio, (Paris, 1738,) amused himself with

extracting from that immense collection of morals, some curious

antiquities, which illustrate the manners of the Theodosian age,

(see Chrysostom, Opera, tom. xiii. p. 192-196,) and his French

Dissertation, in the Mémoires de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, tom.

xiii. p. 474-490.]

2 (return) [ According to the loose reckoning, that a ship could

sail, with a fair wind, 1000 stadia, or 125 miles, in the

revolution of a day and night, Diodorus Siculus computes ten days

from the Palus Moeotis to Rhodes, and four days from Rhodes to

Alexandria. The navigation of the Nile from Alexandria to Syene,

under the tropic of Cancer, required, as it was against the

stream, ten days more. Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 200,

edit. Wesseling. He might, without much impropriety, measure the

extreme heat from the verge of the torrid zone; but he speaks of

the Moeotis in the 47th degree of northern latitude, as if it lay

within the polar circle.]

The first events of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius are so

intimately connected, that the rebellion of the Goths, and the

fall of Rufinus, have already claimed a place in the history of

the West. It has already been observed, that Eutropius, 3 one of

the principal eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, succeeded

the haughty minister whose ruin he had accomplished, and whose

vices he soon imitated. Every order of the state bowed to the new

favorite; and their tame and obsequious submission encouraged him

to insult the laws, and, what is still more difficult and

dangerous, the manners of his country. Under the weakest of the

predecessors of Arcadius, the reign of the eunuchs had been

secret and almost invisible. They insinuated themselves into the

confidence of the prince; but their ostensible functions were

confined to the menial service of the wardrobe and Imperial

bed-chamber. They might direct, in a whisper, the public

counsels, and blast, by their malicious suggestions, the fame and

fortunes of the most illustrious citizens; but they never

presumed to stand forward in the front of empire, 4 or to profane

the public honors of the state. Eutropius was the first of his

artificial sex, who dared to assume the character of a Roman

magistrate and general. Sometimes, in the presence of the

blushing senate, he ascended the tribunal to pronounce judgment,

or to repeat elaborate harangues; and, sometimes, appeared on

horseback, at the head of his troops, in the dress and armor of a

hero. The disregard of custom and decency always betrays a weak

and ill-regulated mind; nor does Eutropius seem to have

compensated for the folly of the design by any superior merit or

ability in the execution. His former habits of life had not

introduced him to the study of the laws, or the exercises of the

field; his awkward and unsuccessful attempts provoked the secret

contempt of the spectators; the Goths expressed their wish that

such a general might always command the armies of Rome; and the

name of the minister was branded with ridicule, more pernicious,

perhaps, than hatred, to a public character. The subjects of

Arcadius were exasperated by the recollection, that this deformed

and decrepit eunuch, 6 who so perversely mimicked the actions of

a man, was born in the most abject condition of servitude; that

before he entered the Imperial palace, he had been successively

sold and purchased by a hundred masters, who had exhausted his

youthful strength in every mean and infamous office, and at

length dismissed him, in his old age, to freedom and poverty. 7

While these disgraceful stories were circulated, and perhaps

exaggerated, in private conversation, the vanity of the favorite

was flattered with the most extraordinary honors. In the senate,

in the capital, in the provinces, the statues of Eutropius were

erected, in brass, or marble, decorated with the symbols of his

civil and military virtues, and inscribed with the pompous title

of the third founder of Constantinople. He was promoted to the

rank of patrician, which began to signify in a popular, and even

legal, acceptation, the father of the emperor; and the last year

of the fourth century was polluted by the consulship of a eunuch

and a slave. This strange and inexpiable prodigy 8 awakened,

however, the prejudices of the Romans. The effeminate consul was

rejected by the West, as an indelible stain to the annals of the

republic; and without invoking the shades of Brutus and Camillus,

the colleague of Eutropius, a learned and respectable magistrate,

9 sufficiently represented the different maxims of the two

administrations.

3 (return) [ Barthius, who adored his author with the blind

superstition of a commentator, gives the preference to the two

books which Claudian composed against Eutropius, above all his

other productions, (Baillet Jugemens des Savans, tom. iv. p.

227.) They are indeed a very elegant and spirited satire; and

would be more valuable in an historical light, if the invective

were less vague and more temperate.]

4 (return) [ After lamenting the progress of the eunuchs in the

Roman palace, and defining their proper functions, Claudian adds,

A fronte recedant. Imperii. —-In Eutrop. i. 422.

Yet it does not appear that the eunuchs had assumed any of the

efficient offices of the empire, and he is styled only

Praepositun sacri cubiculi, in the edict of his banishment. See

Cod. Theod. l. leg 17.

Jamque oblita sui, nec sobria divitiis mens In miseras leges

hominumque negotia ludit Judicat eunuchus....... Arma etiam

violare parat......

Claudian, (i. 229-270,) with that mixture of indignation and

humor which always pleases in a satiric poet, describes the

insolent folly of the eunuch, the disgrace of the empire, and the

joy of the Goths.

Gaudet, cum viderit, hostis, Et sentit jam deesse viros.]

6 (return) [ The poet’s lively description of his deformity (i.

110-125) is confirmed by the authentic testimony of Chrysostom,

(tom. iii. p. 384, edit Montfaucon;) who observes, that when the

paint was washed away the face of Eutropius appeared more ugly

and wrinkled than that of an old woman. Claudian remarks, (i.

469,) and the remark must have been founded on experience, that

there was scarcely an interval between the youth and the decrepit

age of a eunuch.]

7 (return) [ Eutropius appears to have been a native of Armenia

or Assyria. His three services, which Claudian more particularly

describes, were these: 1. He spent many years as the catamite of

Ptolemy, a groom or soldier of the Imperial stables. 2. Ptolemy

gave him to the old general Arintheus, for whom he very skilfully

exercised the profession of a pimp. 3. He was given, on her

marriage, to the daughter of Arintheus; and the future consul was

employed to comb her hair, to present the silver ewer to wash and

to fan his mistress in hot weather. See l. i. 31-137.]

8 (return) [ Claudian, (l. i. in Eutrop. l.—22,) after

enumerating the various prodigies of monstrous births, speaking

animals, showers of blood or stones, double suns, &c., adds, with

some exaggeration,

Omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra.

The first book concludes with a noble speech of the goddess of

Rome to her favorite Honorius, deprecating the new ignominy to

which she was exposed.]

9 (return) [ Fl. Mallius Theodorus, whose civil honors, and

philosophical works, have been celebrated by Claudian in a very

elegant panegyric.]

The bold and vigorous mind of Rufinus seems to have been actuated

by a more sanguinary and revengeful spirit; but the avarice of

the eunuch was not less insatiate than that of the praefect. 10

As long as he despoiled the oppressors, who had enriched

themselves with the plunder of the people, Eutropius might

gratify his covetous disposition without much envy or injustice:

but the progress of his rapine soon invaded the wealth which had

been acquired by lawful inheritance, or laudable industry. The

usual methods of extortion were practised and improved; and

Claudian has sketched a lively and original picture of the public

auction of the state. “The impotence of the eunuch,” says that

agreeable satirist, “has served only to stimulate his avarice:

the same hand which in his servile condition, was exercised in

petty thefts, to unlock the coffers of his master, now grasps the

riches of the world; and this infamous broker of the empire

appreciates and divides the Roman provinces from Mount Haemus to

the Tigris. One man, at the expense of his villa, is made

proconsul of Asia; a second purchases Syria with his wife’s

jewels; and a third laments that he has exchanged his paternal

estate for the government of Bithynia. In the antechamber of

Eutropius, a large tablet is exposed to public view, which marks

the respective prices of the provinces. The different value of

Pontus, of Galatia, of Lydia, is accurately distinguished. Lycia

may be obtained for so many thousand pieces of gold; but the

opulence of Phrygia will require a more considerable sum. The

eunuch wishes to obliterate, by the general disgrace, his

personal ignominy; and as he has been sold himself, he is

desirous of selling the rest of mankind. In the eager contention,

the balance, which contains the fate and fortunes of the

province, often trembles on the beam; and till one of the scales

is inclined, by a superior weight, the mind of the impartial

judge remains in anxious suspense. Such,” continues the indignant

poet, “are the fruits of Roman valor, of the defeat of Antiochus,

and of the triumph of Pompey.” This venal prostitution of public

honors secured the impunity of future crimes; but the riches,

which Eutropius derived from confiscation, were already stained

with injustice; since it was decent to accuse, and to condemn,

the proprietors of the wealth, which he was impatient to

confiscate. Some noble blood was shed by the hand of the

executioner; and the most inhospitable extremities of the empire

were filled with innocent and illustrious exiles. Among the

generals and consuls of the East, Abundantius 12 had reason to

dread the first effects of the resentment of Eutropius. He had

been guilty of the unpardonable crime of introducing that abject

slave to the palace of Constantinople; and some degree of praise

must be allowed to a powerful and ungrateful favorite, who was

satisfied with the disgrace of his benefactor. Abundantius was

stripped of his ample fortunes by an Imperial rescript, and

banished to Pityus, on the Euxine, the last frontier of the Roman

world; where he subsisted by the precarious mercy of the

Barbarians, till he could obtain, after the fall of Eutropius, a

milder exile at Sidon, in Phoenicia. The destruction of Timasius

13 required a more serious and regular mode of attack. That great

officer, the master-general of the armies of Theodosius, had

signalized his valor by a decisive victory, which he obtained

over the Goths of Thessaly; but he was too prone, after the

example of his sovereign, to enjoy the luxury of peace, and to

abandon his confidence to wicked and designing flatterers.

Timasius had despised the public clamor, by promoting an infamous

dependant to the command of a cohort; and he deserved to feel the

ingratitude of Bargus, who was secretly instigated by the

favorite to accuse his patron of a treasonable conspiracy. The

general was arraigned before the tribunal of Arcadius himself;

and the principal eunuch stood by the side of the throne to

suggest the questions and answers of his sovereign. But as this

form of trial might be deemed partial and arbitrary, the further

inquiry into the crimes of Timasius was delegated to Saturninus

and Procopius; the former of consular rank, the latter still

respected as the father-in-law of the emperor Valens. The

appearances of a fair and legal proceeding were maintained by the

blunt honesty of Procopius; and he yielded with reluctance to the

obsequious dexterity of his colleague, who pronounced a sentence

of condemnation against the unfortunate Timasius. His immense

riches were confiscated in the name of the emperor, and for the

benefit of the favorite; and he was doomed to perpetual exile a

Oasis, a solitary spot in the midst of the sandy deserts of

Libya. 14 Secluded from all human converse, the master-general of

the Roman armies was lost forever to the world; but the

circumstances of his fate have been related in a various and

contradictory manner. It is insinuated that Eutropius despatched

a private order for his secret execution. 15 It was reported,

that, in attempting to escape from Oasis, he perished in the

desert, of thirst and hunger; and that his dead body was found on

the sands of Libya. 16 It has been asserted, with more

confidence, that his son Syagrius, after successfully eluding the

pursuit of the agents and emissaries of the court, collected a

band of African robbers; that he rescued Timasius from the place

of his exile; and that both the father and the son disappeared

from the knowledge of mankind. 17 But the ungrateful Bargus,

instead of being suffered to possess the reward of guilt was soon

after circumvented and destroyed, by the more powerful villany of

the minister himself, who retained sense and spirit enough to

abhor the instrument of his own crimes.

10 (return) [ Drunk with riches, is the forcible expression of

Zosimus, (l. v. p. 301;) and the avarice of Eutropius is equally

execrated in the Lexicon of Suidas and the Chronicle of

Marcellinus Chrysostom had often admonished the favorite of the

vanity and danger of immoderate wealth, tom. iii. p. 381.

-certantum saepe duorum Diversum suspendit onus: cum pondere

judex Vergit, et in geminas nutat provincia lances. Claudian (i.

192-209) so curiously distinguishes the circumstances of the

sale, that they all seem to allude to particular anecdotes.]

12 (return) [ Claudian (i. 154-170) mentions the guilt and exile

of Abundantius; nor could he fail to quote the example of the

artist, who made the first trial of the brazen bull, which he

presented to Phalaris. See Zosimus, l. v. p. 302. Jerom, tom. i.

p. 26. The difference of place is easily reconciled; but the

decisive authority of Asterius of Amasia (Orat. iv. p. 76, apud

Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 435) must turn the

scale in favor of Pityus.]

13 (return) [ Suidas (most probably from the history of Eunapius)

has given a very unfavorable picture of Timasius. The account of

his accuser, the judges, trial, &c., is perfectly agreeable to

the practice of ancient and modern courts. (See Zosimus, l. v. p.

298, 299, 300.) I am almost tempted to quote the romance of a

great master, (Fielding’s Works, vol. iv. p. 49, &c., 8vo.

edit.,) which may be considered as the history of human nature.]

14 (return) [ The great Oasis was one of the spots in the sands

of Libya, watered with springs, and capable of producing wheat,

barley, and palm-trees. It was about three days’ journey from

north to south, about half a day in breadth, and at the distance

of about five days’ march to the west of Abydus, on the Nile. See

D’Anville, Description de l’Egypte, p. 186, 187, 188. The barren

desert which encompasses Oasis (Zosimus, l. v. p. 300) has

suggested the idea of comparative fertility, and even the epithet

of the happy island ]

15 (return) [ The line of Claudian, in Eutrop. l. i. 180,

Marmaricus claris violatur caedibus Hammon,

evidently alludes to his persuasion of the death of Timasius. *

Note: A fragment of Eunapius confirms this account. “Thus having

deprived this great person of his life—a eunuch, a man, a slave,

a consul, a minister of the bed-chamber, one bred in camps.” Mai,

p. 283, in Niebuhr. 87—M.]

16 (return) [ Sozomen, l. viii. c. 7. He speaks from report.]

17 (return) [ Zosimus, l. v. p. 300. Yet he seems to suspect that

this rumor was spread by the friends of Eutropius.]

The public hatred, and the despair of individuals, continually

threatened, or seemed to threaten, the personal safety of

Eutropius; as well as of the numerous adherents, who were

attached to his fortune, and had been promoted by his venal

favor. For their mutual defence, he contrived the safeguard of a

law, which violated every principal of humanity and justice. 18

I. It is enacted, in the name, and by the authority of Arcadius,

that all those who should conspire, either with subjects or with

strangers, against the lives of any of the persons whom the

emperor considers as the members of his own body, shall be

punished with death and confiscation. This species of fictitious

and metaphorical treason is extended to protect, not only the

illustrious officers of the state and army, who were admitted

into the sacred consistory, but likewise the principal domestics

of the palace, the senators of Constantinople, the military

commanders, and the civil magistrates of the provinces; a vague

and indefinite list, which, under the successors of Constantine,

included an obscure and numerous train of subordinate ministers.

II. This extreme severity might perhaps be justified, had it been

only directed to secure the representatives of the sovereign from

any actual violence in the execution of their office. But the

whole body of Imperial dependants claimed a privilege, or rather

impunity, which screened them, in the loosest moments of their

lives, from the hasty, perhaps the justifiable, resentment of

their fellow-citizens; and, by a strange perversion of the laws,

the same degree of guilt and punishment was applied to a private

quarrel, and to a deliberate conspiracy against the emperor and

the empire. The edicts of Arcadius most positively and most

absurdly declares, that in such cases of treason, thoughts and

actions ought to be punished with equal severity; that the

knowledge of a mischievous intention, unless it be instantly

revealed, becomes equally criminal with the intention itself; 19

and that those rash men, who shall presume to solicit the pardon

of traitors, shall themselves be branded with public and

perpetual infamy. III. “With regard to the sons of the traitors,”

(continues the emperor,) “although they ought to share the

punishment, since they will probably imitate the guilt, of their

parents, yet, by the special effect of our Imperial lenity, we

grant them their lives; but, at the same time, we declare them

incapable of inheriting, either on the father’s or on the

mother’s side, or of receiving any gift or legacy, from the

testament either of kinsmen or of strangers. Stigmatized with

hereditary infamy, excluded from the hopes of honors or fortune,

let them endure the pangs of poverty and contempt, till they

shall consider life as a calamity, and death as a comfort and

relief.” In such words, so well adapted to insult the feelings of

mankind, did the emperor, or rather his favorite eunuch, applaud

the moderation of a law, which transferred the same unjust and

inhuman penalties to the children of all those who had seconded,

or who had not disclosed, their fictitious conspiracies. Some of

the noblest regulations of Roman jurisprudence have been suffered

to expire; but this edict, a convenient and forcible engine of

ministerial tyranny, was carefully inserted in the codes of

Theodosius and Justinian; and the same maxims have been revived

in modern ages, to protect the electors of Germany, and the

cardinals of the church of Rome. 20

18 (return) [ See the Theodosian Code, l. ix. tit. 14, ad legem

Corneliam de Sicariis, leg. 3, and the Code of Justinian, l. ix.

tit. viii, viii. ad legem Juliam de Majestate, leg. 5. The

alteration of the title, from murder to treason, was an

improvement of the subtle Tribonian. Godefroy, in a formal

dissertation, which he has inserted in his Commentary,

illustrates this law of Arcadius, and explains all the difficult

passages which had been perverted by the jurisconsults of the

darker ages. See tom. iii. p. 88-111.]

19 (return) [ Bartolus understands a simple and naked

consciousness, without any sign of approbation or concurrence.

For this opinion, says Baldus, he is now roasting in hell. For my

own part, continues the discreet Heineccius, (Element. Jur. Civil

l. iv. p. 411,) I must approve the theory of Bartolus; but in

practice I should incline to the sentiments of Baldus. Yet

Bartolus was gravely quoted by the lawyers of Cardinal Richelieu;

and Eutropius was indirectly guilty of the murder of the virtuous

De Thou.]

20 (return) [ Godefroy, tom. iii. p. 89. It is, however,

suspected, that this law, so repugnant to the maxims of Germanic

freedom, has been surreptitiously added to the golden bull.]

Yet these sanguinary laws, which spread terror among a disarmed

and dispirited people, were of too weak a texture to restrain the

bold enterprise of Tribigild 21 the Ostrogoth. The colony of that

warlike nation, which had been planted by Theodosius in one of

the most fertile districts of Phrygia, 22 impatiently compared

the slow returns of laborious husbandry with the successful

rapine and liberal rewards of Alaric; and their leader resented,

as a personal affront, his own ungracious reception in the palace

of Constantinople. A soft and wealthy province, in the heart of

the empire, was astonished by the sound of war; and the faithful

vassal who had been disregarded or oppressed, was again

respected, as soon as he resumed the hostile character of a

Barbarian. The vineyards and fruitful fields, between the rapid

Marsyas and the winding Maeander, 23 were consumed with fire; the

decayed walls of the cities crumbled into dust, at the first

stroke of an enemy; the trembling inhabitants escaped from a

bloody massacre to the shores of the Hellespont; and a

considerable part of Asia Minor was desolated by the rebellion of

Tribigild. His rapid progress was checked by the resistance of

the peasants of Pamphylia; and the Ostrogoths, attacked in a

narrow pass, between the city of Selgae, 24 a deep morass, and

the craggy cliffs of Mount Taurus, were defeated with the loss of

their bravest troops. But the spirit of their chief was not

daunted by misfortune; and his army was continually recruited by

swarms of Barbarians and outlaws, who were desirous of exercising

the profession of robbery, under the more honorable names of war

and conquest. The rumors of the success of Tribigild might for

some time be suppressed by fear, or disguised by flattery; yet

they gradually alarmed both the court and the capital. Every

misfortune was exaggerated in dark and doubtful hints; and the

future designs of the rebels became the subject of anxious

conjecture. Whenever Tribigild advanced into the inland country,

the Romans were inclined to suppose that he meditated the passage

of Mount Taurus, and the invasion of Syria. If he descended

towards the sea, they imputed, and perhaps suggested, to the

Gothic chief, the more dangerous project of arming a fleet in the

harbors of Ionia, and of extending his depredations along the

maritime coast, from the mouth of the Nile to the port of

Constantinople. The approach of danger, and the obstinacy of

Tribigild, who refused all terms of accommodation, compelled

Eutropius to summon a council of war. 25 After claiming for

himself the privilege of a veteran soldier, the eunuch intrusted

the guard of Thrace and the Hellespont to Gainas the Goth, and

the command of the Asiatic army to his favorite, Leo; two

generals, who differently, but effectually, promoted the cause of

the rebels. Leo, 26 who, from the bulk of his body, and the

dulness of his mind, was surnamed the Ajax of the East, had

deserted his original trade of a woolcomber, to exercise, with

much less skill and success, the military profession; and his

uncertain operations were capriciously framed and executed, with

an ignorance of real difficulties, and a timorous neglect of

every favorable opportunity. The rashness of the Ostrogoths had

drawn them into a disadvantageous position between the Rivers

Melas and Eurymedon, where they were almost besieged by the

peasants of Pamphylia; but the arrival of an Imperial army,

instead of completing their destruction, afforded the means of

safety and victory. Tribigild surprised the unguarded camp of the

Romans, in the darkness of the night; seduced the faith of the

greater part of the Barbarian auxiliaries, and dissipated,

without much effort, the troops, which had been corrupted by the

relaxation of discipline, and the luxury of the capital. The

discontent of Gainas, who had so boldly contrived and executed

the death of Rufinus, was irritated by the fortune of his

unworthy successor; he accused his own dishonorable patience

under the servile reign of a eunuch; and the ambitious Goth was

convicted, at least in the public opinion, of secretly fomenting

the revolt of Tribigild, with whom he was connected by a

domestic, as well as by a national alliance. 27 When Gainas

passed the Hellespont, to unite under his standard the remains of

the Asiatic troops, he skilfully adapted his motions to the

wishes of the Ostrogoths; abandoning, by his retreat, the country

which they desired to invade; or facilitating, by his approach,

the desertion of the Barbarian auxiliaries. To the Imperial court

he repeatedly magnified the valor, the genius, the inexhaustible

resources of Tribigild; confessed his own inability to prosecute

the war; and extorted the permission of negotiating with his

invincible adversary. The conditions of peace were dictated by

the haughty rebel; and the peremptory demand of the head of

Eutropius revealed the author and the design of this hostile

conspiracy.

21 (return) [ A copious and circumstantial narrative (which he

might have reserved for more important events) is bestowed by

Zosimus (l. v. p. 304-312) on the revolt of Tribigild and Gainas.

See likewise Socrates, l. vi. c. 6, and Sozomen, l. viii. c. 4.

The second book of Claudian against Eutropius, is a fine, though

imperfect, piece of history.]

22 (return) [ Claudian (in Eutrop. l. ii. 237-250) very

accurately observes, that the ancient name and nation of the

Phrygians extended very far on every side, till their limits were

contracted by the colonies of the Bithvnians of Thrace, of the

Greeks, and at last of the Gauls. His description (ii. 257-272)

of the fertility of Phrygia, and of the four rivers that produced

gold, is just and picturesque.]

23 (return) [ Xenophon, Anabasis, l. i. p. 11, 12, edit.

Hutchinson. Strabo, l. xii p. 865, edit. Amstel. Q. Curt. l. iii.

c. 1. Claudian compares the junction of the Marsyas and Maeander

to that of the Saone and the Rhone, with this difference,

however, that the smaller of the Phrygian rivers is not

accelerated, but retarded, by the larger.]

24 (return) [ Selgae, a colony of the Lacedaemonians, had

formerly numbered twenty thousand citizens; but in the age of

Zosimus it was reduced to a small town. See Cellarius, Geograph.

Antiq tom. ii. p. 117.]

25 (return) [ The council of Eutropius, in Claudian, may be

compared to that of Domitian in the fourth Satire of Juvenal. The

principal members of the former were juvenes protervi lascivique

senes; one of them had been a cook, a second a woolcomber. The

language of their original profession exposes their assumed

dignity; and their trifling conversation about tragedies,

dancers, &c., is made still more ridiculous by the importance of

the debate.]

26 (return) [ Claudian (l. ii. 376-461) has branded him with

infamy; and Zosimus, in more temperate language, confirms his

reproaches. L. v. p. 305.]

27 (return) [ The conspiracy of Gainas and Tribigild, which is

attested by the Greek historian, had not reached the ears of

Claudian, who attributes the revolt of the Ostrogoth to his own

martial spirit, and the advice of his wife.]

Chapter XXXII: Emperors Arcadius, Eutropius, Theodosius II.—Part II.

The bold satirist, who has indulged his discontent by the partial

and passionate censure of the Christian emperors, violates the

dignity, rather than the truth, of history, by comparing the son

of Theodosius to one of those harmless and simple animals, who

scarcely feel that they are the property of their shepherd. Two

passions, however, fear and conjugal affection, awakened the

languid soul of Arcadius: he was terrified by the threats of a

victorious Barbarian; and he yielded to the tender eloquence of

his wife Eudoxia, who, with a flood of artificial tears,

presenting her infant children to their father, implored his

justice for some real or imaginary insult, which she imputed to

the audacious eunuch. 28 The emperor’s hand was directed to sign

the condemnation of Eutropius; the magic spell, which during four

years had bound the prince and the people, was instantly

dissolved; and the acclamations that so lately hailed the merit

and fortune of the favorite, were converted into the clamors of

the soldiers and people, who reproached his crimes, and pressed

his immediate execution. In this hour of distress and despair,

his only refuge was in the sanctuary of the church, whose

privileges he had wisely or profanely attempted to circumscribe;

and the most eloquent of the saints, John Chrysostom, enjoyed the

triumph of protecting a prostrate minister, whose choice had

raised him to the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople. The

archbishop, ascending the pulpit of the cathedral, that he might

be distinctly seen and heard by an innumerable crowd of either

sex and of every age, pronounced a seasonable and pathetic

discourse on the forgiveness of injuries, and the instability of

human greatness. The agonies of the pale and affrighted wretch,

who lay grovelling under the table of the altar, exhibited a

solemn and instructive spectacle; and the orator, who was

afterwards accused of insulting the misfortunes of Eutropius,

labored to excite the contempt, that he might assuage the fury,

of the people. 29 The powers of humanity, of superstition, and of

eloquence, prevailed. The empress Eudoxia was restrained by her

own prejudices, or by those of her subjects, from violating the

sanctuary of the church; and Eutropius was tempted to capitulate,

by the milder arts of persuasion, and by an oath, that his life

should be spared. 30 Careless of the dignity of their sovereign,

the new ministers of the palace immediately published an edict to

declare, that his late favorite had disgraced the names of consul

and patrician, to abolish his statues, to confiscate his wealth,

and to inflict a perpetual exile in the Island of Cyprus. 31 A

despicable and decrepit eunuch could no longer alarm the fears of

his enemies; nor was he capable of enjoying what yet remained,

the comforts of peace, of solitude, and of a happy climate. But

their implacable revenge still envied him the last moments of a

miserable life, and Eutropius had no sooner touched the shores of

Cyprus, than he was hastily recalled. The vain hope of eluding,

by a change of place, the obligation of an oath, engaged the

empress to transfer the scene of his trial and execution from

Constantinople to the adjacent suburb of Chalcedon. The consul

Aurelian pronounced the sentence; and the motives of that

sentence expose the jurisprudence of a despotic government. The

crimes which Eutropius had committed against the people might

have justified his death; but he was found guilty of harnessing

to his chariot the sacred animals, who, from their breed or

color, were reserved for the use of the emperor alone. 32

28 (return) [ This anecdote, which Philostorgius alone has

preserved, (l xi. c. 6, and Gothofred. Dissertat. p. 451-456) is

curious and important; since it connects the revolt of the Goths

with the secret intrigues of the palace.]

29 (return) [ See the Homily of Chrysostom, tom. iii. p. 381-386,

which the exordium is particularly beautiful. Socrates, l. vi. c.

5. Sozomen, l. viii. c. 7. Montfaucon (in his Life of Chrysostom,

tom. xiii. p. 135) too hastily supposes that Tribigild was

actually in Constantinople; and that he commanded the soldiers

who were ordered to seize Eutropius Even Claudian, a Pagan poet,

(praefat. ad l. ii. in Eutrop. 27,) has mentioned the flight of

the eunuch to the sanctuary.

Suppliciterque pias humilis prostratus ad aras, Mitigat iratas

voce tremente nurus,]

30 (return) [ Chrysostom, in another homily, (tom. iii. p. 386,)

affects to declare that Eutropius would not have been taken, had

he not deserted the church. Zosimus, (l. v. p. 313,) on the

contrary, pretends, that his enemies forced him from the

sanctuary. Yet the promise is an evidence of some treaty; and the

strong assurance of Claudian, (Praefat. ad l. ii. 46,) Sed tamen

exemplo non feriere tuo, may be considered as an evidence of some

promise.]

31 (return) [ Cod. Theod. l. ix. tit. xi. leg. 14. The date of

that law (Jan. 17, A.D. 399) is erroneous and corrupt; since the

fall of Eutropius could not happen till the autumn of the same

year. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 780.]

32 (return) [ Zosimus, l. v. p. 313. Philostorgius, l. xi. c. 6.]

While this domestic revolution was transacted, Gainas 33 openly

revolted from his allegiance; united his forces at Thyatira in

Lydia, with those of Tribigild; and still maintained his superior

ascendant over the rebellious leader of the Ostrogoths. The

confederate armies advanced, without resistance, to the straits

of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus; and Arcadius was instructed

to prevent the loss of his Asiatic dominions, by resigning his

authority and his person to the faith of the Barbarians. The

church of the holy martyr Euphemia, situate on a lofty eminence

near Chalcedon, 34 was chosen for the place of the interview.

Gainas bowed with reverence at the feet of the emperor, whilst he

required the sacrifice of Aurelian and Saturninus, two ministers

of consular rank; and their naked necks were exposed, by the

haughty rebel, to the edge of the sword, till he condescended to

grant them a precarious and disgraceful respite. The Goths,

according to the terms of the agreement, were immediately

transported from Asia into Europe; and their victorious chief,

who accepted the title of master-general of the Roman armies,

soon filled Constantinople with his troops, and distributed among

his dependants the honors and rewards of the empire. In his early

youth, Gainas had passed the Danube as a suppliant and a

fugitive: his elevation had been the work of valor and fortune;

and his indiscreet or perfidious conduct was the cause of his

rapid downfall. Notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of the

archbishop, he importunately claimed for his Arian sectaries the

possession of a peculiar church; and the pride of the Catholics

was offended by the public toleration of heresy. 35 Every quarter

of Constantinople was filled with tumult and disorder; and the

Barbarians gazed with such ardor on the rich shops of the

jewellers, and the tables of the bankers, which were covered with

gold and silver, that it was judged prudent to remove those

dangerous temptations from their sight. They resented the

injurious precaution; and some alarming attempts were made,

during the night, to attack and destroy with fire the Imperial

palace. 36 In this state of mutual and suspicious hostility, the

guards and the people of Constantinople shut the gates, and rose

in arms to prevent or to punish the conspiracy of the Goths.

During the absence of Gainas, his troops were surprised and

oppressed; seven thousand Barbarians perished in this bloody

massacre. In the fury of the pursuit, the Catholics uncovered the

roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they

overwhelmed their adversaries, who had retreated to the church or

conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the

design, or too confident of his success; he was astonished by the

intelligence that the flower of his army had been ingloriously

destroyed; that he himself was declared a public enemy; and that

his countryman, Fravitta, a brave and loyal confederate, had

assumed the management of the war by sea and land. The

enterprises of the rebel, against the cities of Thrace, were

encountered by a firm and well-ordered defence; his hungry

soldiers were soon reduced to the grass that grew on the margin

of the fortifications; and Gainas, who vainly regretted the

wealth and luxury of Asia, embraced a desperate resolution of

forcing the passage of the Hellespont. He was destitute of

vessels; but the woods of the Chersonesus afforded materials for

rafts, and his intrepid Barbarians did not refuse to trust

themselves to the waves. But Fravitta attentively watched the

progress of their undertaking. As soon as they had gained the

middle of the stream, the Roman galleys, 37 impelled by the full

force of oars, of the current, and of a favorable wind, rushed

forwards in compact order, and with irresistible weight; and the

Hellespont was covered with the fragments of the Gothic

shipwreck. After the destruction of his hopes, and the loss of

many thousands of his bravest soldiers, Gainas, who could no

longer aspire to govern or to subdue the Romans, determined to

resume the independence of a savage life. A light and active body

of Barbarian horse, disengaged from their infantry and baggage,

might perform in eight or ten days a march of three hundred miles

from the Hellespont to the Danube; 38 the garrisons of that

important frontier had been gradually annihilated; the river, in

the month of December, would be deeply frozen; and the unbounded

prospect of Scythia was opened to the ambition of Gainas. This

design was secretly communicated to the national troops, who

devoted themselves to the fortunes of their leader; and before

the signal of departure was given, a great number of provincial

auxiliaries, whom he suspected of an attachment to their native

country, were perfidiously massacred. The Goths advanced, by

rapid marches, through the plains of Thrace; and they were soon

delivered from the fear of a pursuit, by the vanity of Fravitta,

3811 who, instead of extinguishing the war, hastened to enjoy the

popular applause, and to assume the peaceful honors of the

consulship. But a formidable ally appeared in arms to vindicate

the majesty of the empire, and to guard the peace and liberty of

Scythia. 39 The superior forces of Uldin, king of the Huns,

opposed the progress of Gainas; a hostile and ruined country

prohibited his retreat; he disdained to capitulate; and after

repeatedly attempting to cut his way through the ranks of the

enemy, he was slain, with his desperate followers, in the field

of battle. Eleven days after the naval victory of the Hellespont,

the head of Gainas, the inestimable gift of the conqueror, was

received at Constantinople with the most liberal expressions of

gratitude; and the public deliverance was celebrated by festivals

and illuminations. The triumphs of Arcadius became the subject of

epic poems; 40 and the monarch, no longer oppressed by any

hostile terrors, resigned himself to the mild and absolute

dominion of his wife, the fair and artful Eudoxia, who was

sullied her fame by the persecution of St. John Chrysostom.

33 (return) [ Zosimus, l. v. p. 313-323,) Socrates, (l. vi. c.

4,) Sozomen, (l. viii. c. 4,) and Theodoret, (l. v. c. 32, 33,)

represent, though with some various circumstances, the

conspiracy, defeat, and death of Gainas.]

34 (return) [ It is the expression of Zosimus himself, (l. v. p.

314,) who inadvertently uses the fashionable language of the

Christians. Evagrius describes (l. ii. c. 3) the situation,

architecture, relics, and miracles, of that celebrated church, in

which the general council of Chalcedon was afterwards held.]

35 (return) [ The pious remonstrances of Chrysostom, which do not

appear in his own writings, are strongly urged by Theodoret; but

his insinuation, that they were successful, is disproved by

facts. Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 383) has

discovered that the emperor, to satisfy the rapacious demands of

Gainas, was obliged to melt the plate of the church of the

apostles.]

36 (return) [ The ecclesiastical historians, who sometimes guide,

and sometimes follow, the public opinion, most confidently

assert, that the palace of Constantinople was guarded by legions

of angels.]

37 (return) [ Zosmius (l. v. p. 319) mentions these galleys by

the name of Liburnians, and observes that they were as swift

(without explaining the difference between them) as the vessels

with fifty oars; but that they were far inferior in speed to the

triremes, which had been long disused. Yet he reasonably

concludes, from the testimony of Polybius, that galleys of a

still larger size had been constructed in the Punic wars. Since

the establishment of the Roman empire over the Mediterranean, the

useless art of building large ships of war had probably been

neglected, and at length forgotten.]

38 (return) [ Chishull (Travels, p. 61-63, 72-76) proceeded from

Gallipoli, through Hadrianople to the Danube, in about fifteen

days. He was in the train of an English ambassador, whose baggage

consisted of seventy-one wagons. That learned traveller has the

merit of tracing a curious and unfrequented route.]

3811 (return) [ Fravitta, according to Zosimus, though a Pagan,

received the honors of the consulate. Zosim, v. c. 20. On

Fravitta, see a very imperfect fragment of Eunapius. Mai. ii.

290, in Niebuhr. 92.—M.]

39 (return) [ The narrative of Zosimus, who actually leads Gainas

beyond the Danube, must be corrected by the testimony of

Socrates, aud Sozomen, that he was killed in Thrace; and by the

precise and authentic dates of the Alexandrian, or Paschal,

Chronicle, p. 307. The naval victory of the Hellespont is fixed

to the month Apellaeus, the tenth of the Calends of January,

(December 23;) the head of Gainas was brought to Constantinople

the third of the nones of January, (January 3,) in the month

Audynaeus.]

40 (return) [ Eusebius Scholasticus acquired much fame by his

poem on the Gothic war, in which he had served. Near forty years

afterwards Ammonius recited another poem on the same subject, in

the presence of the emperor Theodosius. See Socrates, l. vi. c.

6.]

After the death of the indolent Nectarius, the successor of

Gregory Nazianzen, the church of Constantinople was distracted by

the ambition of rival candidates, who were not ashamed to

solicit, with gold or flattery, the suffrage of the people, or of

the favorite. On this occasion Eutropius seems to have deviated

from his ordinary maxims; and his uncorrupted judgment was

determined only by the superior merit of a stranger. In a late

journey into the East, he had admired the sermons of John, a

native and presbyter of Antioch, whose name has been

distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth.

41 A private order was despatched to the governor of Syria; and

as the people might be unwilling to resign their favorite

preacher, he was transported, with speed and secrecy in a

post-chariot, from Antioch to Constantinople. The unanimous and

unsolicited consent of the court, the clergy, and the people,

ratified the choice of the minister; and, both as a saint and as

an orator, the new archbishop surpassed the sanguine expectations

of the public. Born of a noble and opulent family, in the capital

of Syria, Chrysostom had been educated, by the care of a tender

mother, under the tuition of the most skilful masters. He studied

the art of rhetoric in the school of Libanius; and that

celebrated sophist, who soon discovered the talents of his

disciple, ingenuously confessed that John would have deserved to

succeed him, had he not been stolen away by the Christians. His

piety soon disposed him to receive the sacrament of baptism; to

renounce the lucrative and honorable profession of the law; and

to bury himself in the adjacent desert, where he subdued the

lusts of the flesh by an austere penance of six years. His

infirmities compelled him to return to the society of mankind;

and the authority of Meletius devoted his talents to the service

of the church: but in the midst of his family, and afterwards on

the archiepiscopal throne, Chrysostom still persevered in the

practice of the monastic virtues. The ample revenues, which his

predecessors had consumed in pomp and luxury, he diligently

applied to the establishment of hospitals; and the multitudes,

who were supported by his charity, preferred the eloquent and

edifying discourses of their archbishop to the amusements of the

theatre or the circus. The monuments of that eloquence, which was

admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constantinople, have

been carefully preserved; and the possession of near one thousand

sermons, or homilies has authorized the critics 42 of succeeding

times to appreciate the genuine merit of Chrysostom. They

unanimously attribute to the Christian orator the free command of

an elegant and copious language; the judgment to conceal the

advantages which he derived from the knowledge of rhetoric and

philosophy; an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes of

ideas and images, to vary and illustrate the most familiar

topics; the happy art of engaging the passions in the service of

virtue; and of exposing the folly, as well as the turpitude, of

vice, almost with the truth and spirit of a dramatic

representation.

41 (return) [ The sixth book of Socrates, the eighth of Sozomen,

and the fifth of Theodoret, afford curious and authentic

materials for the life of John Chrysostom. Besides those general

historians, I have taken for my guides the four principal

biographers of the saint. 1. The author of a partial and

passionate Vindication of the archbishop of Constantinople,

composed in the form of a dialogue, and under the name of his

zealous partisan, Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, (Tillemont,

Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 500-533.) It is inserted among the works

of Chrysostom. tom. xiii. p. 1-90, edit. Montfaucon. 2. The

moderate Erasmus, (tom. iii. epist. Mcl. p. 1331-1347, edit.

Lugd. Bat.) His vivacity and good sense were his own; his errors,

in the uncultivated state of ecclesiastical antiquity, were

almost inevitable. 3. The learned Tillemont, (Mem.

Ecclesiastiques, tom. xi. p. 1-405, 547-626, &c. &c.,) who

compiles the lives of the saints with incredible patience and

religious accuracy. He has minutely searched the voluminous works

of Chrysostom himself. 4. Father Montfaucon, who has perused

those works with the curious diligence of an editor, discovered

several new homilies, and again reviewed and composed the Life of

Chrysostom, (Opera Chrysostom. tom. xiii. p. 91-177.)]

42 (return) [ As I am almost a stranger to the voluminous sermons

of Chrysostom, I have given my confidence to the two most

judicious and moderate of the ecclesiastical critics, Erasmus

(tom. iii. p. 1344) and Dupin, (Bibliothèque Ecclesiastique, tom.

iii. p. 38:) yet the good taste of the former is sometimes

vitiated by an excessive love of antiquity; and the good sense of

the latter is always restrained by prudential considerations.]

The pastoral labors of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked,

and gradually united against him, two sorts of enemies; the

aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate

sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom

thundered, from the pulpit of St. Sophia, against the degeneracy

of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without

wounding, or even marking, the character of any individual. When

he declaimed against the peculiar vices of the rich, poverty

might obtain a transient consolation from his invectives; but the

guilty were still sheltered by their numbers; and the reproach

itself was dignified by some ideas of superiority and enjoyment.

But as the pyramid rose towards the summit, it insensibly

diminished to a point; and the magistrates, the ministers, the

favorite eunuchs, the ladies of the court, 43 the empress Eudoxia

herself, had a much larger share of guilt to divide among a

smaller proportion of criminals. The personal applications of the

audience were anticipated, or confirmed, by the testimony of

their own conscience; and the intrepid preacher assumed the

dangerous right of exposing both the offence and the offender to

the public abhorrence. The secret resentment of the court

encouraged the discontent of the clergy and monks of

Constantinople, who were too hastily reformed by the fervent zeal

of their archbishop. He had condemned, from the pulpit, the

domestic females of the clergy of Constantinople, who, under the

name of servants, or sisters, afforded a perpetual occasion

either of sin or of scandal. The silent and solitary ascetics,

who had secluded themselves from the world, were entitled to the

warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and

stigmatized, as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd

of degenerate monks, who, from some unworthy motives of pleasure

or profit, so frequently infested the streets of the capital. To

the voice of persuasion, the archbishop was obliged to add the

terrors of authority; and his ardor, in the exercise of

ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was not always exempt from passion;

nor was it always guided by prudence. Chrysostom was naturally of

a choleric disposition. 44 Although he struggled, according to

the precepts of the gospel, to love his private enemies, he

indulged himself in the privilege of hating the enemies of God

and of the church; and his sentiments were sometimes delivered

with too much energy of countenance and expression. He still

maintained, from some considerations of health or abstinence, his

former habits of taking his repasts alone; and this inhospitable

custom, 45 which his enemies imputed to pride, contributed, at

least, to nourish the infirmity of a morose and unsocial humor.

Separated from that familiar intercourse, which facilitates the

knowledge and the despatch of business, he reposed an

unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion; and seldom

applied his speculative knowledge of human nature to the

particular character, either of his dependants, or of his equals.

Conscious of the purity of his intentions, and perhaps of the

superiority of his genius, the archbishop of Constantinople

extended the jurisdiction of the Imperial city, that he might

enlarge the sphere of his pastoral labors; and the conduct which

the profane imputed to an ambitious motive, appeared to

Chrysostom himself in the light of a sacred and indispensable

duty. In his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed

thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia; and indiscreetly declared

that a deep corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected

the whole episcopal order. 46 If those bishops were innocent,

such a rash and unjust condemnation must excite a well-grounded

discontent. If they were guilty, the numerous associates of their

guilt would soon discover that their own safety depended on the

ruin of the archbishop; whom they studied to represent as the

tyrant of the Eastern church.

43 (return) [ The females of Constantinople distinguished

themselves by their enmity or their attachment to Chrysostom.

Three noble and opulent widows, Marsa, Castricia, and Eugraphia,

were the leaders of the persecution, (Pallad. Dialog. tom. xiii.

p. 14.) It was impossible that they should forgive a preacher who

reproached their affectation to conceal, by the ornaments of

dress, their age and ugliness, (Pallad p. 27.) Olympias, by equal

zeal, displayed in a more pious cause, has obtained the title of

saint. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi p. 416-440.]

44 (return) [ Sozomen, and more especially Socrates, have defined

the real character of Chrysostom with a temperate and impartial

freedom, very offensive to his blind admirers. Those historians

lived in the next generation, when party violence was abated, and

had conversed with many persons intimately acquainted with the

virtues and imperfections of the saint.]

45 (return) [ Palladius (tom. xiii. p. 40, &c.) very seriously

defends the archbishop 1. He never tasted wine. 2. The weakness

of his stomach required a peculiar diet. 3. Business, or study,

or devotion, often kept him fasting till sunset. 4. He detested

the noise and levity of great dinners. 5. He saved the expense

for the use of the poor. 6. He was apprehensive, in a capital

like Constantinople, of the envy and reproach of partial

invitations.]

46 (return) [ Chrysostom declares his free opinion (tom. ix. hom.

iii in Act. Apostol. p. 29) that the number of bishops, who might

be saved, bore a very small proportion to those who would be

damned.]