The feeble and inert Arcadius died in A.D. 408, at the early age of
 thirty-one; his imperious consort had preceded him to the grave, and the
 empire of the East was left to Theodosius II., a child of seven years,
 their only son. There was hardly an instance in Roman history of a minor
 succeeding quietly to his father's throne. An ambitious relative or a
 disloyal general had habitually supplanted the helpless heir. But the
 ministers of Arcadius were exceptionally virtuous or exceptionally
 destitute of ambition. The little emperor was duly crowned, and the
 administration of the East undertaken in his name by the able Anthemius,
 who held the office of Praetorian Praefect. History relates nothing but
 good of this minister; he made a wise commercial treaty with the king of
 Persia; he repelled with ease a Hunnish invasion of Moesia; he built a
 flotilla on the Danube, where Roman warships had not been seen since the
 death of Valens, forty years before; he reorganized the corn supply of
 Constantinople; and did much to get back into order and cultivation the
 desolated north-western lands of the Balkan Peninsula, from which Alaric
 and his Visigothic hordes had now taken their final departure. The empire
 was still more indebted to him for bringing up the young Theodosius as an
 honest and god-fearing man. The palace under Anthemius' rule was the
 school of the virtues: the lives of the emperor and his three sisters,
 Pulcheria, Arcadia, and Marina, were the model and the marvel of their
 subjects. Theodosius inherited the piety and honesty of his grandfather
 and namesake, but was a youth of slender capacity, though he took some
 interest in literature, and was renowned for his beautiful penmanship. His
 eldest sister, Pulcheria, was the ruling spirit of the family, and
 possessed unlimited influence over him, though she was but two years his
 senior. When Anthemius died in A.D. 414, she took the title of Augusta,
 and assumed the regency of the East. Pulcheria was an extraordinary woman:
 on gathering up the reins of power she took a vow of chastity, and lived
 as a crowned nun for thirty-six years; her fear had been that, if she
 married, her husband might cherish ambitious schemes against her brother's
 crown; she therefore kept single herself and persuaded her sisters to make
 a similar vow. Austere, indefatigable, and unselfish, she proved equal to
 ruling the realms of the East with success, though no woman had ever made
 the attempt before.
 
 When Theodosius came of age he refused to remove his sister from power,
 and treated her as his colleague and equal. By her advice he married in
 A.D. 421, the year that he came of age, the beautiful and accomplished
 Athenais, daughter of the philosopher Leontius. The emperor's chosen
 spouse had been brought up as a pagan, but was converted before her
 marriage, and baptized by the name of Eudocia. She displayed her literary
 tastes in writing religious poetry, which had some merit, according to the
 critics of the succeeding age. The austere Pulcheria--always immersed in
 state business or occupied in religious observances--found herself ere long
 ill at ease in the company of the lively, beautiful, and volatile literary
 lady whom she had chosen as sister-in-law. If Theodosius had been less
 easy-going and good-hearted he must have sent away either his sister or
 his wife, but he long contrived to dwell affectionately with both, though
 their bickerings were unending. After many years of married life, however,
 a final quarrel came, and the empress retired to spend the last years of
 her life in seclusion at Jerusalem. The cause of her exile is not really
 known: we have only a wild story concerning it, which finds an exact
 parallel in one of the tales of the "Arabian Nights."
 
 
     "The emperor," so runs the tale, "was one day met by a peasant who
     presented him with a Phrygian apple of enormous size, so that the
     whole Court marvelled at it. And he gave the man a hundred and
     fifty gold pieces in reward, and sent the apple to the Empress
     Eudocia. But she sent it as a present to Paulinus, the 'Master of
     the Offices,' because he was a friend of the emperor. But
     Paulinus, not knowing the history of the apple, took it and gave
     it to the emperor as he reentered the Palace. And Theodosius
     having received it, recognized it and concealed it, and called his
     wife and questioned her, saying, 'Where is the apple that I sent
     you?' She answered, 'I have eaten it.' Then he bade her swear by
     his salvation the truth, whether she had eaten it or sent it to
     some one. And Eudocia swore that she had sent it to no man, but
     had herself eaten it. Then the emperor showed her the apple, and
     was exceedingly wrath, suspecting that she was enamoured of
     Paulinus, and had sent it to him as a love-gift; for he was a very
     handsome man. And on this account he put Paulinus to death, but he
     permitted Eudocia to go to the Holy Places to pray. And she went
     down from Constantinople to Jerusalem, and dwelt there all her
     days."
 
 
 That Paulinus was executed, and that Eudocia spent her last years of
 retirement in Palestine, we know for certain. All the rest of the story is
 in reality hidden from us. The chief improbability of the tale is that
 Eudocia had reached the age of forty when the breach between her and her
 husband took place, and that Paulinus was also an official of mature
 years.
 
 Theodosius' long reign passed by in comparative quiet. Its only serious
 troubles were a short war with the Persians, and a longer one with Attila,
 the great king of the Huns, whose empire now stretched over all the lands
 north of the Black Sea and Danube, where the Goths had once dwelt. In this
 struggle the Roman armies were almost invariably unfortunate. The Huns
 ravaged the country as far as Adrianople and Philippopolis, and had to be
 bought off by the annual payment of 700 lbs. of gold [L31,000]. It is true
 that they fell on Theodosius while his main force was engaged on the
 Persian frontier, but the constant ill-success of the imperial generals
 seems to show that the armies of the East had never been properly
 reorganized since the military system of Theodosius I. had been broken up
 by the revolt of Gainas forty years before. His grandson had neither a
 trustworthy body of German auxiliaries nor a sufficiently large native
 levy of born subjects of the empire to protect his borders.
 
                               
 
    Angel Of Victory. (_From a Fifth-century Diptych._) _Reproduced from
        "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._
 
 
 The reconstruction of the Roman military forces was reserved for the
 successors of Theodosius II. He himself was killed by a fall from his
 horse in 450 A.D., leaving an only daughter, who was married to her cousin
 Valentinian III., Emperor of the West. Theodosius, with great wisdom, had
 designated as his successor, not his young-son-in-law, a cruel and
 profligate prince, but his sister Pulcheria, who at the same time ended
 her vow of celibacy and married Marcianus, a veteran soldier and a
 prominent member of the Senate. The marriage was but formal, for both were
 now well advanced in years: as a political expedient it was all that could
 be desired. The empire had peace and prosperity under their rule, and
 freed itself from the ignominious tribute to the Huns. Before Attila died
 in 452, he had met and been checked by the succours which Marcianus sent
 to the distressed Romans of the West.
 
 When Marcianus and Pulcheria passed away, the empire came into the hands
 of a series of three men of ability. They were all bred as high civil
 officials, not as generals; all ascended the throne at a ripe age; not one
 of them won his crown by arms, all were peaceably designated either by
 their predecessors, or by the Senate and army. These princes were Leo I.
 (457-474), Zeno (474-491), Anastasius (491-518). Their chief merit was
 that they guided the Roman Empire in the East safely through the stormy
 times which saw its extinction in the West. While, beyond the Adriatic,
 province after province was being lopped off and formed into a new
 Germanic kingdom, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople kept a tight
 grip on the Balkan Peninsula and on Asia, and succeeded in maintaining
 their realm absolutely intact. Both East and West were equally exposed to
 the barbarian in the fifth century, and the difference of their fate came
 from the character of their rulers, not from the diversity of their
 political conditions. In the West, after the extinction of the house of
 Theodosius (455 A.D.), the emperors were ephemeral puppets, made and
 unmade by the generals of their armies, who were invariably Germans. The
 two _Magistri militum_, Ricimer and Gundovald--one Suabian, the other
 Burgundian by birth--deposed or slew no less than five of their nominal
 masters in seventeen years. In the East, on the other hand, it was the
 emperors who destroyed one after another the ambitious generals, who, by
 arms or intrigue, threatened their throne.
 
 While this comparison bears witness to the personal ability of the three
 emperors who ruled at Constantinople between A.D. 457 and A.D. 518, it is
 only fair to remember they were greatly helped by the fact that the German
 element in their armies had never reached the pitch of power to which it
 had attained in the West; the suppression of Gainas forty years before had
 saved them from that danger. But unruly and aspiring generals were not
 wanting in the East; the greatest danger of Leo I. was the conspiracy of
 the great _Magister militum_ Aspar, whom he detected and slew when he was
 on the eve of rebelling. Zeno was once chased out of his capital by
 rebels, and twice vexed by dangerous risings in Asia Minor, but on each
 occasion he triumphed over his adversaries, and celebrated his victory by
 the execution of the leaders of the revolt. Anastasius was vexed for
 several years by the raids of a certain Count Vitalian, who ranged over
 the Thracian provinces with armies recruited from the barbarians beyond
 the Danube. But, in spite of all these rebellions, the empire was never in
 serious danger of sinking into disorder or breaking up, as the Western
 realm had done, into new un-Roman kingdoms. So far was it from this fate,
 that Anastasius left his successor, when he died in A.D. 518, a loyal army
 of 150,000 men, a treasure of 320,000 lbs. of gold, and an unbroken
 frontier to East and West.
 
 The main secret of the success of the emperors of the fifth century in
 holding their own came from the fact that they had reorganized their
 armies, and filled them up with native troops in great numbers. Leo I. was
 the first ruler who utilized the military virtues of the Isaurians, or
 mountain populations of Southern Asia Minor. He added several regiments of
 them to the army of the East, but it was his son-in-law and successor,
 Zeno, himself an Isaurian born, who developed the scheme. He raised an
 imperial guard from his countrymen, and enlisted as many corps of them as
 could be raised; moreover, he formed regiments of Armenians and other
 inhabitants of the Roman frontier of the East, and handed over to his
 successor, Anastasius, an army in which the barbarian auxiliaries--now
 composed of Teutons and Huns in about equal numbers--were decidedly
 dominated by the native elements.
 
 The last danger which the Eastern Empire was to experience from the hands
 of the Germans fell into the reign of Zeno. The Ostrogoths had submitted
 to the Huns ninety years before, when their brethren the Visigoths fled
 into Roman territory, in the reign of Valens. But when the Hunnish Empire
 broke up at the death of Attila [A.D. 452], the Ostrogoths freed
 themselves, and replaced their late masters as the main danger on the
 Danube. The bulk of them streamed south-westward, and settled in Pannonia,
 the border-province of the Western Empire, on the frontier of the
 East-Roman districts of Dacia and Moesia. They soon fell out with Zeno,
 and two Ostrogothic chiefs, Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, and
 Theodoric, the son of Triarius, were the scourges of the Balkan Peninsula
 for more than twenty years. While the bulk of their tribesmen settled down
 on the banks of the Save and Mid-Danube, the two Theodorics harried the
 whole of Macedonia and Moesia by never-ending raids. Zeno tried to turn
 them against each other, offering first to the one, then to the other, the
 title of _Magister militum_, and a large pension. But now--as in the time
 of Alaric and Stilicho--it was seen that "dog will not eat dog"; the two
 Theodorics, after quarrelling for a while, banded themselves together
 against Zeno. The story of their reconciliation is curious.
 
 Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, the ally of Rome for the moment, had
 surrounded his rival on a rocky hill in a defile of the Balkans. While
 they lay opposite each other, Theodoric, the son of Triarius [he is
 usually known as Theodoric the One-Eyed], rode down to his enemy's lines
 and called to him, "Madman, betrayer of your race, do you not see that the
 Roman plan is always to destroy Goths by Goths? Whichever of us fails,
 they, not we, will be the stronger. They never give you real help, but
 send you out against me to perish here in the Desert." Then all the Goths
 cried out, "The One-Eyed is right. These men are Goths like ourselves." So
 the two Theodorics made peace, and Zeno had to cope with them both at once
 [A.D. 479]. Two years later Theodoric the One-Eyed was slain by
 accident--his horse flung him, as he mounted, against a spear fixed by the
 door of his tent--but his namesake continued a thorn in the side of the
 empire till 488 A.D.
 
 In that year Zeno bethought him of a device for ridding himself of the
 Ostrogoth, who, though he made no permanent settlement in Moesia or
 Macedonia, was gradually depopulating the realm by his incursions. The
 line of ephemeral emperors who reigned in Italy over the shrunken Western
 realm had ended in 476, when the German general Odoacer deposed Romulus
 Augustulus, and did not trouble himself to nominate another puppet-Caesar
 to succeed him. By his order a deputation from the Roman Senate visited
 Zeno at Constantinople, to inform him that they did not require an emperor
 of their own to govern Italy, but would acknowledge him as ruler alike of
 East and West; at the same time they besought Zeno to nominate, as his
 representative in the Italian lands, their defender, the great Odoacer.
 Zeno replied by advising the Romans to persuade Odoacer to recognize as
 his lord Julius Nepos, one of the dethroned nominees of Ricimer, who had
 survived his loss of the imperial diadem. Odoacer refused, and proclaimed
 himself king in Italy, while still affecting--against Zeno's own will--to
 recognize the Constantinopolitan emperor as his suzerain.
 
 In 488 A.D. it occurred to Zeno to offer Theodoric the government of
 Italy, if he would conquer it from Odoacer. The Ostrogoth, who had harried
 the inland of the Balkan Peninsula bare, and had met several reverses of
 late from the Roman arms, took the offer. He was made "patrician" and
 consul, and started off with all the Ostrogothic nation at his back to win
 the realm of Italy. After hard fighting with Odoacer and the mixed
 multitude of mercenaries that followed him, the Goths conquered Italy, and
 Theodoric--German king and Roman patrician--began to reign at Ravenna. He
 always professed to be the vassal and deputy of the emperor at
 Constantinople, and theoretically his conquest of Italy meant the reunion
 of the East and the West. But the Western realm had shrunk down to Italy
 and Illyricum, and the power of Zeno therein was purely nominal.
 
 With the departure of the Ostrogoths we have seen our last of the Germans
 in the Balkan Peninsula; after 488 the Slavs take their place as the
 molesters of the Roman frontier on the Danube.