The middle years of Theodosius I

In 383 Maximus, a Spaniard who had been proclaimed emperor by the troops in Britain, asserted himself as ruler in the Western provinces (praefectura Galliarum). Suspicions that Theodosius was in collusion with the usurper and thus implicated in the death of Emperor Gratian in August 383 are unfounded. Theodosius, who had to acknowledge the sovereignty of Gratian’s stepbrother Valentinian II, born in 371 and the nominal ruler in Italy since the end of 375, could not interfere with Maximus, for he lacked both sufficient military strength and secure borders. Yet, when Maximus invaded Italy in 387 and Valentinian was forced to flee to Thessalonica, Theodosius soon decided upon countermeasures. His decision was perhaps hastened through the influence of Valentinian’s mother, whose daughter Galla he had married at the end of 387, having been a widower since 386.

Theodosius’s position by that time had become stronger. Long-standing negotiations with the Persians over the division of power in Armenia had resulted in a treaty that was to become the basis for a long period of peace on the eastern border. Having ordered one army division from Egypt to Africa and sent Valentinian with a fleet to Italy, Theodosius set out in the spring of 388 with the main body of troops to move against Maximus’s army, which had invaded Pannonia in the Balkans. By July the enemy was defeated. When Maximus surrendered at the end of August, he was branded as a usurper, but his followers were generally treated with leniency.

In the same year, Theodosius again relinquished the West to his co-emperor Valentinian but secured his own influence by placing the Frankish general Arbogast, a man he trusted, at Valentinian’s side as principal adviser. By remaining in Italy until the spring of 391, where he resided mostly in Milan, Theodosius emphasized his claim to supreme authority throughout the empire. In 389 he visited Rome, where, accompanied by his four-year-old son Honorius, he made a triumphant entry.

In Milan, Theodosius found in Bishop Ambrose an ecclesiastic who was intent upon cooperating effectively with the emperor and even upon forming a friendship with him, although Ambrose pointed out to Theodosius the limits of the power of temporal rulers more clearly than had others. A conflict had already arisen between them in 388 over Theodosius’s punishment of orthodox fanatics who had set fire to a synagogue and to the shrine of a sect. As a devout Christian, Theodosius finally acceded to the bishop’s wishes in the matter but took pains to make him understand that he was not willing to grant the bishop greater influence in affairs of government.

A new conflict arose in 390 when, following the murder of one of his generals in Thessalonica, Theodosius issued an order for brutal retaliation. It was rescinded too late, so that a horrible massacre resulted among the population there. Ambrose had the emperor’s action condemned in a church council and bade him do public penance. After a prolonged hesitation, Theodosius complied with the order and was readmitted to communion at Christmas 390.

His penance should not be construed as a victory of the church over the emperor but only as a demonstration of the power of atonement over the penitent sinner. The claims that arose in future centuries that the church had been placed above the temporal power derived not from Theodosius’s act of penance but only from the myth generated by it. Although Theodosius had gained an important ally in Ambrose, he continued intent on preserving the emperor’s authority in the face of Ambrose and other bishops.

While maintaining an entirely friendly attitude toward the church, Theodosius still took care in his legislation to see that the material interests of the state were sacrificed only to a very limited extent to church or clergy. In addition, Theodosius decided to enforce more strongly against the pagans the religious policy he had pursued since 379. In February 391 he prohibited sacrifices and the visiting of temples. Up to that time, he had basically tolerated the pagans and had entrusted adherents of the old cults with the highest offices.

Quarrels between his second wife, Galla, and his son Arcadius, as well as his own view of the Eastern capital as the centre of the empire, prompted Theodosius to move his residence back to Constantinople, where he arrived in November 391.

Victory over pagan usurpers

A new crisis arose for Theodosius three months after Valentinian’s death on May 15, 392. Arbogast treacherously proclaimed as emperor of the West a former rhetoric teacher, Eugenius, who had close connections with the pagan aristocracy of the Senate. Theodosius, who did not yet dare to risk a civil war, delayed reception of a legation requesting recognition of Arbogast’s puppet. On November 8, 392, he made his edicts of 391 more stringent by completely prohibiting the worship of the pagan gods. He left no further doubts as to his position when he elevated his son Honorius to Augustus in January 393 and thereby demonstrated that he would no longer tolerate any emperor other than himself and his sons. Because he still refrained from military action, his enemies occupied Italy in the spring of 393. Led by Nicomachus Flavianus, the forces striving to preserve the pagan cults gathered around Eugenius.

The now inevitable struggle for power was thus at the same time a struggle that would decide whether pagan religions would once again be tolerated within the empire alongside Christianity. Theodosius did not set out from Constantinople until May 394. As in 388, he made his way toward the Danube and then the Sava with his powerful army. His force consisted largely of barbarians and their allies, one of whose leaders was Stilicho, a Vandal who had been married since 384 to the emperor’s niece Serena. Theodosius’s sons Arcadius and Honorius stayed behind in the capital. Arcadius, who had been given the right to promulgate laws independently, was supposed to direct the government in the East.

Theodosius first met the enemy at the Frigidus River on the eastern border of Italy. Although Theodosius’s advance guard, composed almost entirely of Visigoths, suffered heavy losses during an attempted breakthrough on September 5, 394, the emperor ventured to attack the following day and was victorious. Later Christian tradition, emphasizing Theodosius’s piety and trust in God, essentially interpreted the victory as a divine judgment: the god of the Christians had triumphed over the old Roman gods. Following the deaths of Eugenius, Arbogast, and Nicomachus Flavianus, Theodosius showed himself lenient and strove to achieve the settlement between opposing forces that was necessary to strengthen imperial unity.

Probably as a result of the exertion of the campaign, Theodosius fell ill. He went to Milan, where he summoned Honorius in order to present him formally as Augustus of the West. Because Theodosius had appeared to recover, his death in January 395 was generally unexpected. On his deathbed he had entrusted Stilicho, promoted to generalissimo after the victory at the Frigidus, with the care of his two sons. From Ambrose’s funeral oration, filled with praise for the Christian ruler, it is evident that contemporaries had no doubt as to the continuing unity of the empire, for the question of succession seemed to have been settled in the best possible way. Yet, all too soon it was to become apparent that Theodosius had not chosen his advisers with sufficient care and that the men who were guiding the sickly Arcadius were unwilling to cooperate with Stilicho, who remained loyal to the dynasty. After his death, Theodosius’s body was borne in state to Constantinople and interred in the mausoleum erected by Constantius II.