The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

FINAL DIVISION OF ROMAN EMPIRE: THE DISRUPTIVE INTRIGUES

A.D. 395

J. B. BURY

When Theodosius I, surnamed "the Great," was elevated to power as ruler of the East, that part of the empire was distracted in consequence of wars with the Visigoths who, flying from the Huns, had been granted a refuge in the Roman provinces of Mœsia and Thrace. Ill-treatment by the Romans drove the Visigoths to revolt, and Valens, then Emperor of the East, set out with an army to punish them. In the battle of Adrianople, August 9, 378, the Roman army was defeated, and in the retreat Valens was killed. The Visigoths pressed on, ravaging the country even to the foot of the walls of Constantinople, and the doom of the empire seemed to be at hand.

At this juncture Gratian—Emperor of the West, who also upon the death of Valens succeeded him as ruler of the East—sent for Theodosius, then a Roman general living in retirement in Spain, made him his colleague in the East, and placed him, a.d., 379 at the head of an army for the suppression of the Gothic outbreaks. Theodosius enabled his soldiers to regain their lost confidence by waging a successful guerilla war with the marauding Goths; but having thus shown his mastery over their straggling bands, he did not undertake to drive them out from Roman territory, but weakened them by causing them to quarrel among themselves; then, showing himself as their friend, he gave them lands and settled them within definite limits. To the Visigoths, or West Goths, he gave Thrace, and to the Ostrogoths, or East Goths, who had also now poured into the Roman provinces, he assigned Pannonia.

By this policy Theodosius established his authority in the East and restored the empire to something of its earlier power. Except during the last four months of his life, when he was sole Emperor, his direct authority was confined to the East; but he exerted a potent influence upon the affairs of the whole empire, both temporal and spiritual. He warred steadily against paganism and heresy. He took the side of Trinitarian orthodoxy against Arianism, which had previously triumphed in the East, and restored religious unity to the empire by making the Athanasian doctrine the faith of Constantinople, as it was that of the West. This policy was ratified by the second ecumenical council, called by Theodosius, at Constantinople in 381, when the orthodoxy first promulgated by the Council of Nicæa in 325 was substantially reaffirmed. It was also largely through the influence of Theodosius, who was the friend of Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, that the Roman senate, by a great majority, voted (388) to abolish the worship of Jupiter and to adopt the worship of Christ, thus making Christianity the state religion. In the debate which preceded this transition the eloquence of Symmachus, on the pagan side, was overmatched by the arguments of Ambrose, aided by the powerful support of Theodosius in person.

In his further dealings with the Visigoths, Theodosius, following a precedent already established, enlisted in the Roman service a separate Gothic army of forty thousand soldiers; but this policy, as the event proved, was fatal to the permanency of his hitherto successful control of these alien elements, for they soon gathered strength to take the mastery into their own hands. Theodosius died in 395, after publishing a decree for partition of the empire between his two sons, Honorius to rule in the West, and Arcadius in the East. He meant, not to establish two independent jurisdictions, but that there should be one commonwealth, whose two rulers should be colleagues and coadjutors in its defence. This new disposition of the empire was followed by dissensions and intrigues against which the weak sons of Theodosius were helpless in the hands of able and unscrupulous self-seekers, the result of which was the final separation of the empire into two distinct governments and the weakening of the powers of resistance of both against those ever-increasing encroachments of the barbarians which eventually caused the fall of both empires.

One of the few men in history who have won the title of great, the emperor Theodosius I, who had by his policy, at once friendly and firm, pacified the Goths, who had confirmed the triumph of Athanasian over Arian Christianity, who had stamped out the last flames of refractory paganism represented by the tyrant Eugenius, died on the 17th of January, a.d. 395. His wishes were that his younger son, Honorius, then a boy of ten years, should reign in the West, where he had already installed him, and that his eldest son, Arcadius, whom he had left as regent in Constantinople when he set out against Eugenius, should continue to reign in the East.

But he was not willing to leave his youthful heirs—Arcadius was only eighteen—without a protector, and the most natural protector was one bound to them by ties of relationship. Accordingly on his deathbed he commended them to the care of the Vandal Stilicho, whom he had raised for his military and other talents to the rank of commander-in-chief, and, deeming him worthy of an alliance with his own family, had united to his favorite niece Serena. We can hardly doubt that it was in this capacity, as the husband of his niece and a trusted friend, not as a general, that Stilicho received Theodosius' dying wishes; it was as an elder member of the same family that the husband of their cousin could claim to exert an influence over Arcadius and Honorius, of whom, however, the latter, it would appear, was more especially committed to his care, not only as the younger, but because Stilicho, being magister militum of the armies of Italy, would come more directly into contact with him than with his brother.