CHAP. place of the interview. Gainas bowed, with reXXXII. verence, at the feet of the emperor, whilft he required the facrifice of Aurelian and Saturninus, two minifters of confular rank; and their naked necks were expofed, by the haughty rebel, to the edge of the fword, till he condefcended to grant them a precarious and disgraceful refpite. The Goths, according to the terms of the agreement, were immediately transported from Afia into Europe; and their victorious chief, who accepted the title of master-general of the Roman armies, foon filled Conftantinople with his troops, and diftributed among his dependents, the honours and rewards of the empire. In his early youth, Gainas had paffed the Danube as a fuppliant, and a fugitive his elevation had been the work of valour and fortune; and his indiscreet, or perfidious, conduct, was the cause of his rapid downfal. Notwithstanding the vigorous oppofition of the archbishop, he importunately claimed, for his Arian fectaries, the poffeffion of a peculiar church; and the pride of the catholics was offended by the public toleration of herefy 35. Every quarter of Conftantinople was filled with tumult and diforder; and the Barbarians gazed with the Chriftians. Evagrius defcribes (1. ii. c. iii.) the situation, archi, tecture, relics, and miracles of that celebrated church, in which the general council of Chalcedon was afterwards held. 25 The pious remonstrances of Chryfoftom, which do not appear in his own writings, ale ftrongly urged by Theodoret; but his infinuation, that they were fuccefsful, is difproved by facts. Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. 383.) has discovered, that the emperor, to fatisfy the rapacious demands of Gainas, was obliged to melt the plate of the church of the Apostles. fuch XXXII, fuch ardour on the rich fhops of the jewellers, CHAP. and the tables of the bankers, which were covered with gold and filver, that it was judged prudent to remove thofe dangerous temptations from their fight. They refented the injurious precaution; and fome alarming attempts were made, during the night, to attack and destroy with fire the Imperial palace ", 36 In this ftate of July 20. mutual and fufpicious hoftility, the guards, and the people of Conftantinople, fhut the gates, and rofe in arms to prevent, or to punish, the confpiracy of the Goths. During the abfence of Gainas, his troops were furprised and oppreffed; feven thousand Barbarians perifhed in this bloody maffacre. In the fury of the purfuit, the catholics uncovered the roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they overwhelmed their adverfaries, who had retreated to the church or conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the defign, or too confident of his fuccefs: he was aftonished 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 affumed the management of the war by fea and land. The enterprises of the rebel, against the cities of Thrace, were encountered by a firm and wellordered defence: his hungry foldiers were foon reduced to the grafs that grew on the margin of 36 The ecclefiaftical hiftorians, who fometimes guide, and fometimes follow, the public opinion, moft confidently affert that the palace of Conftantinople was guarded by legions of angels. the XXXII. Dec. 23. 37 CHAP. the fortifications; and Gainas, who vainly regretted the wealth and luxury of Afia, embraced a defperate resolution of forcing the paffage of the Hellefpont. He was deftitute of veffels; but the woods of the Cherfonefus afforded materials. for rafts, and his intrepid Barbarians did not refufe to truft themfelves to the waves. But Fravitta attentively watched the progress of their undertaking. As foon as they had gained the middle of the ftream, the Roman gallies ", impelled by the full force, of oars, of the current, and of a favourable wind, rufhed forwards in compact order, and with irrefiftible weight; and the Hellefpont was covered with the fragments of the Gothic fhipwreck. After the destruction of his hopes, and the lofs of many thousands of his braveft foldiers, Gainas, who could no longer afpire to govern, or to fubdue, the Romans, determined to resume the independence of a favage life. A light and active body of Barbarian horse, difengaged from their infantry and baggage, might perform, in eight or ten days, a march of three hundred miles from the Hellefpont to the Danube 38; the garrifons of that important fron tier 37 Zofimus (1. v. p. 319.) mentions thefe gallies by the name of Liburnians, and obferves, that they were as swift (without explaining the difference between them) as the veffels with fifty oars; but that they were far inferior in fpecd to the triremes, which had been long difufed. Yet he reafonably concludes, from the teftimony of Poiybius, that gallies of a still larger fize 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 Chihul (Travels, p. 61–63. 72-76.) proceeded from Gallipoli, through Hadrianople, to the Danube, in about fifteen days. He XXXII. tier had been gradually annihilated; the river, CHAP in the month of December, would be deeply frozen; and the unbounded profpect of Scythia was open to the ambition of Gainas. This defign was fecretly communicated to the national troops, who devoted themselves to the fortunes of their leader; and before the fignal of departure was given, a great number of provincial auxiliaries, whom he fufpected of an attachment to their native country, were perfidiously masfacred. The Goths advanced, by rapid marches, through the plains of Thrace; and they were foon delivered from the fear of a purfuit, by the vanity of Fravitta, who, inftead of extinguishing the war, haftened to enjoy the popular applause, and to affume the peaceful honours of the confulfhip. But a formidable ally appeared in arms to vindicate the majefty of the empire, and to guard the peace and liberty of Scythia ". The fuperior forces of Uldin, king of the Huns, oppofed the progrefs of Gainas; an hoftile and ruined country prohibited his retreat; he difdained to capitulate; and after repeatedly attempting to cut his way through the ranks of the 39 He was in the train of an English ambassador, whose baggage confifted of feventy-one waggons. That learned traveller has the merit of tracing a curious and unfrequented route. 39 The narrative of Zofimus, who actually leads Gainas beyond the Danube, must be corrected by the teftimony of Socrates, and Sozo, men, that he was killed in Thrace; and by the precife and authentic dates of the Alexandrian, or Pafchal, Chronicle, p. 307. The naval victory of the Hellefpont is fixed to the month Apellæus, the tenth of the calends of January (December 23.); the head of Gainas was brought to Conftantinople the third of the nones of January (January 3.), in the month Audynæus. enemy, CHAP. enemy, he was flain, with his desperate followers, XXXII. in the field of battle. Eleven days after the A.D.401, naval victory of the Hellefpont, the head of GaiJanuary 3. nas, the ineftimable gift of the conqueror, was received at Conftantinople with the moft liberal expreffions of gratitude; and the public deliverance was celebrated by feftivals and illuminations. The triumphs of Arcadius became the fubject of epic poems 4° 40 and the monarch, no longer oppreffed by any hostile terrors, refigned himself to the mild and abfolute dominion of his wife, the fair and artful Eudoxia; who has fullied her fame by the perfecution of St. John Chryfoftom. Election and merit A.D. 398, ; After the death of the indolent Nectarius, the fucceffor of Gregory Nazianzen, the church of Conftantinople was distracted by the ambition of rival candidates, who were not ashamed to folicit, with gold or flattery, the fuffrage of the people, or of the favourite. On this occafion, Eutropius feems to have deviated from his ordinary maxims; and his uncorrupted judgment was determined only by the fuperior merit of a stranger. In a late journey into the Eaft, he had admired the fermons of John, a native and prefbyter of Antioch, whose name has been diftinguished by the epithet of Chryfoftom, or the Golden Mouth **. A private 40 Eufebius Scholafticus acquired much fame by his poem on the Gothic war, in which he had ferved. Near forty years afterwards, Ammonius recited another poem on the same subject, in the presence of the emperor Theodofius. See Socrates, I. vi. c. 6. 41 The fixth book of Socrates, the eighth of Sozomen, and the fifth of Theodoret, afford curious and authentic materials for the |