136 On this Valesius remarks that Valentinian was already dead (_ 375) when the Goths crossed the Danube and ravaged Thrace (376). Theodoretus should have written "Gratianus" for "Valentinianus," and "nephew" for "brother."
137 Magister equitum. Amm. xxxi. 7.
138 Gibbon (chap. xxvi) records the conduct of the war by "Trajan and Profuturus, two generals who indulged themselves in a very false and favourable opinion of their own abilities." "Anhelantes altius. sed imbelles." Amm.
The battle alluded to is presumably the doubtful one of Salices. Ammianus does not, as Gibbon supposes, imply that he had himself visited this particular battlefield, but speaks generally of carrion birds as "adsuetae illo tempore cadaveribus pasci, ut indicant nunc usque albentes ossibus campi." Amm. xxxi. 7. 16.
139 Possibly the Isaac who opposed Chrysostom. Soz. viii. 9.
141 Psalm cxix. 46. The text quotes the Sept. elaloun en toij marturioij sou enantion basilewn kai ouk hsxunomhn.
142 "On the 9th August, 378, a day long and fatally memorable in the annals of the empire, the legions of Valens moved forth from their entrenched camp under the walls of Hadrian. ople, and after a march of eight miles under the hot sun of August came in sight of the barbarian vanguard, behind which stretched the circling line of the waggons that guarded the Gothic host. The soldiers of the empire, hot, thirsty, wearied out with hours of waiting under the blaze of an August sun, and only half understanding that the negotiations were ended and the battle begun, fought at a terrible disadvantage but fought not ill. The infantry on the left wing seem even to have pushed back their enemies and penetrated to the Gothic waggons. But they were for some reason not covered as usual by a force of cavalry and they were jammed into a too narrow space of ground where they could not use their spears with effect, yet presented a terribly easy mark to the Gothic arrows. They fell in dense masses as they had stood. Then the whole weight of the enemy's attack was directed against the centre and right. When the evening began to close in, the utterly routed Roman soldiers were rushing in disorderly flight from the fatal field. The night, dark and moonless, may have protected some, but more met their death rushing blindly over a rugged and unknown country.
"Meanwhile Valens had sought shelterwith a little knot of soldiers (the two regiments of "Lancearii and Mattiarii"), who still remained unmoved amidst the surging sea of ruin. When their ranks too were broken, and when some of his bravest officers. had fallen around him, he joined the common soldiers in their headlon flight. Struck by a Gothic arrow he fell to the ground, but was carried off by some of the eunuchs and life-guardsmen who still accompanied him, to a peasant's cottage hard by. The Goths, ignorant of his rank, but eager to strip the gaily-clothed guardsmen, surrounded the cottage and attempted in vain to burst in the doors. Then mounting to the roof they tried to smoke out the imprisoned inmates, but succeeding beyond their desires, set fire to the cottage, and emperor, eunuchs, and life-guardsmen perished in the flames. Only one of the body-guard escaped, who climbed out through one of the blazing windows and fell into the hands of the barbarians. He told them when it was too late what a prize they had missed in their cruel eagerness, nothing less than the emperor of Rome.
Ecclesiastical historians for generations delighted to point the moral of the story of Valens, that he who had seduced the whole Gothic nation into the heresy of Arius, and thus caused them to suffer the punishment of everlasting fire, was himself by those very Goths burned alive on the terrible 9th of August. Thomas Hodgkin - "The Dynasty of Theodosius," page 97.
143 Christianity is first found among the Goths and some German tribes on the Rhine about a.d. 300, the Visigoths taking the lead, and being followed by the Ostrogoths. They were converted under Arian influences, and simply accepted an Arian creed. So Salvian writes of them with singular charity, in a passage partly quoted by Milman (Lat. Christ. I. p. 349.) "Haeretici sunt sed non scientes. Denique apud nos sunt haeretici, apud se non sunt. Nam in tantum se catholicos esse judicant ut nos ipsos titulo haereticae appellationis infament. Quod ergo illi nobis sunt, hoc nos illis. Nos eos injuriam divinae generationis facere certi sumus quod minorem patre filium dicant. Illi nos injuriosos patri existimant, quia aequales esse credamus. Veritas spud nos est. Sed illi spud se esse proesumunt. Honor Dei apud nos est, sed illi hoc arbitrantur honorem divinitatis esse quod credunt. Inofficiosi sunt; sed illis hoc est summum religionis officium. Impii sunt; sed hoc putant veram esse pietatem. Errant ergo, sed bono animo errant, non odio, sed affectu Dei, honorare se dominum atque amare credentes." (Salvianus de Gub. Dei V. p. 87.) The spirit of this good Presbyter of Marseilles of the 5th century might well have been more often followed in Christian controversy.
"Of the early Arian missionaries the Arian Records, if they ever existed, have almost entirely perished. The church was either ignorant of or disdained to preserve their memory. Ulphilas alone," - himself a semi-Arian, and accepter of the creed of Ariminum,-"the apostle of the Goths, has, as it were, forced his way into the Catholic records, in which, as in the fragments of his great work, his translation of the Scriptures into the Moeso-Gothic language, this admirable man has descended to posterity." "While in these two great divisions, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the nation gathering its descendants from all quarters, spread their more or less rapid conquests over Gaul, Italy, and Spain Ulphilas formed a peaceful and populous colony of shepherds and herdsmen on the pastures below Mt. Haemus. He became the primate of a simple Christian nation. For them he formed an alphabet of twenty-four letters, and completed all but the fierce books of Kings"-which he omitted, as likely to whet his wild folks' warlike passions, - "his translation of the Scriptures." Milman Lat. Christ. III. Chap. ii.
The fragments of the work of Ulphilas now extant are (1) Codex Argenteus, at Upsala. (2) Codex Catolinus. (3) Ambrosian fragments published by Mai. cf. Philost. ii. 5, Soc. ii. 41 and iv. 33.
On Eudoxius, who baptized Valens, and was "the worst of the Arians," cf. note on page 86.
1 Gratian was proclaimed Augustus by Valentinian in 367. (Soc. IV. 11. Soz. vi. 10.) He came to the throne on the death of Valentinian at Bregetio, Nov. 17, 375. He associated his brother Valentinian II. with him, and succeeded his uncle Valens Aug. 9, 378. On Jan. 19, 379 he nominated Theodosius Augustus.
3 to thj oikonomiaj musthrion. Vide note on page 72.
4 Adopting Platonic and Pauline psychology giving body, soul and spirit (cf. I. Thess. v. 23, and Gal. v. 17) Apollinarius attributed to Christ a human body and a human soul or anima animans shared by man with brutes, but not the reasonable soul, spirit or anima rationalis. In place of this be put the Divine Logos. The Word, he said, was made Flesh not Spirit, God was manifest in the Flesh not Spirit.
8 Ad Orentem, now Famiah. This John was prefect at Constantinople in 381. A better known John of Apamea is an ascetic of the 5th c., fragments of whose works are among the Syriac mss. in the British Museum.
9 This seems to be all that is known of Stephanus of Germanicia (now Marash or Banicia in Syria) mentioned also as the see of Eudoxius. cf. Book II. p. 86.
10 Acacius of Beroea (Aleppo) was later an opponent of Chrysostom and of Cyril, but in his old age of more than 100 in 436.
11 Theodotus is mentioned also in the Relig. Hist. c. iii. as paying an Easter visit to the hermit Marcian. Hierapolis, or Bambyce, is now Bumbouch in the Pachalic of Aleppo.
12 Similarly mentioned in Relig. Hist. c. iii. Chalcis is in Coele Syria.
13 Also one of Marcian's Easter party. As well as these bishops there were present some men of high rank and position, who were earnest Christians. When all were seated, Marcian was asked to address them. "But he fethced a deep sigh and said `the God of all day by day utters his voice by means of the visible world, and in the divine scriptures discourses with us, urging on us our duties, telling us what is befitting, terrifying us by threats, winning us by promises, and all the while we get no good. Marcian turns away this good like the rest of his kind, and does not care to enjoy its blessing. What could be the use of his lifting up his voice? 0'" Relig. Hist. iii. 3.
19 The Martyrdom of Eusebius is commemorated in the Eastern Churches on June 22; in the Roman Kalendar on June 21.
We compare the fate of Abimelech at Thebez (Judges ix. 53, and II. Sam. xi. 21) and Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, at Argos, b.c. 272. "Inter confertissimos violentissime dimicans, saxo de muris ictus occiditur." Justin. xxv. 5. The story is given at greater length by Plutarch. Vit: Pyrrh:
20 His father, a distinguished general in Britain and elsewhere, was treacherously slain in 376, probably because an oracle warned Valens of a successor with a name beginning "QEOD." cf. Soc. iv. 19. Soz. vi. 35. Ammian. xxix. I. 29.
21 At his paternal estate at Cauca in Spain; to the cast of the Vaccaei in Tarraconensis.
22 xeirotonhsaj. Vide note on page 125.
23 Theodoret's is the sole authority for this connexion of the association of Theodosius in the Empire with a victory, and his alleged facts do not fit in with others which are better supported. Gratian, a vigorous and sensible lad of nineteen, seems to have felt that the burden was too big for his shoulders, and to have looked out for a suitable colleague. For the choice which he made, or was advised to make, he had good ground in the reputation already won by Theodosius in Britain and in the campaign of 373 against the Sarmatians and Quadi, and the elevation of the young general (born in 346, he was thirty two when Gratian declared him Augustus at Sirmium, Jan. 19, 379) was speedily vindicated. Theodoret, with his contempt for exact chronology, may have exaggerated one of the engagements of the guerrilla warfare waged by the new emperor after his accession, when he carefully avoided the error of Valens in risking all on a pitched battle. By the end of 379 he had driven the barbarians over the Balkan range. Dr. Stokes (Dict. Christ. Biog. iv. 960) points out that between Aug. 9, 378, and Jan. 19, 379, there was no time for news to travel from Hadrianople to Mitrovitz, where Gratian was, for couriers to fetch Theodosius thither from remoter Spain, for Theodosius then in the winter months to organize and carry out a campaign.
24 "Cave credas episcopum Nazianzi his verbis designari," says Valesius; - because before 381 the great Gregory of Nazianzus had at the most first helped his father in looking after the church at Nazianzus, and on his father's death taken temporary and apparently informal charge of the see. But in the latter part of his note Valesius suggest that ta teleutaia may refer to the episcopate of Gregory at Nazianzus in his last days, after his abdication of the see of Constantinople,-"Atque hic sensus magis placet, magis enim convenire videtur verbis Theodoreti;" "Recent feeder," then, or "he who most recently fed," will mean "he who after the events at Constantinople which I am about to relate, acted as bishop of Nazianzus." Gregory left Constantinople in June 381, repaired to Nazianzus, and after finding a suitable man to occupy the see, retired to Arianzus, but was pressed to return and take a leading post in order to check Apollinariuan heretics. His health broke down, and he wished to retire. He would have voted in the election of his successor, but his opponents objected on the ground that he either was bishop of Nazianzus, or not; if he was, there was no vacancy; if he was not, he had no vote. Eulalius was chosen in 383, and Gregory spent six weary years in wanderings and troubles, and at last found in rest in 389.
25 It was probably in 379 that Gregory first went to Constantinople and preached in a private house which was to him a "Shiloh, where the ark rested, an Anastasia, a place of resurrection" (Orat. 42. 6). Hence the name "Anastasia" given to the famous church built on the site of the too strait house.
26 i.e. the xvth of Nacaea, forbidding any bishop, presbyter or deacon, to pass form one city to another. Gregory himself classes it among "Nomouj palai teqnhkotaj" (Carm. 1810-11).
27 Gregory had been practically acting as bishop, when an intriguing party led by Peter of Alexandria tried to force Maximus, a cynic professor, who was one of Gregory's admiring hearers, on the Constantinopolitan Church. "At this time," i.e. probably in the middle of 380, and certainly before Nov. 24, when Theodosius entered the capital, "A priest from Thasco had come to Constantinople with a large sum of money to buy Proconnesian marble for a church. He too was beguiled by the specious hope held out to him. Maximus and his party thus gained the power of purchasing the service of a mob, which was as forward to attack Gregory as it had been to praise him. It was night, and the bishop was ill in bed, when Maximus with his followers went to the church to be consecrated by five suffragans who had been sent from Alexandria for the purpose. Day began to dawn while they were till preparing for the consecration. They had but half finished the tonsure of the cynic philosopher, who wore the flowing hair common to his sect, when a mob, excited by the sudden news, rushed in upon them, and drove them from the church. They retired to a flute player's shop to complete their work, and Maximus, compelled to flee from Constantinople, went to Thessalonica with the hope of gaining over Theodosius himself." Archdeacon Watkins. Dict. Christ. Biog. ii. 752.
28 Helladius, successor or Basil at the Cappadocian Caesarea, was orthodox, but on important occasions clashed unhappily with each of the two great Gregories of Nyssa and Nazianzus.
On Gregorius of Nyssa and Petrus his brother, vide page 129. Amphilochius, vide note on page 114. Optimus, vide note on page 129. Diodorus, vide note on pages 85, 156 and 133.