CHAPTER XII

WHILE THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS IS ENGAGED IN MILITARY PREPARATIONS AGAINST THE TYRANT, HIS SON HONORIUS IS BORN. HE THEN PROCEEDS TO MILAN IN ORDER TO ENCOUNTER MAXIMUS

BUT the emperor Theodosius, filled with the utmost solicitude, levied a powerful army against the tyrant, fearing lest he should meditate the destruction of the young Valentinian also. While engaged in this preparation, an embassy arrived from the Persians, requesting questing peace from the emperor. Then also the empress Flaccilla bore him a son named Honorins, on the 9th of September, in the consulate of Richomeres and Clearchus. Under the same consulate, and a little before the birth of this prince, Agelius bishop of the Novatians died. In the year following, wherein Arcadius Augustus bore his first consulate in conjunction with Bauton, Timothy bishop of Alexandria died, and was succeeded in the episcopate by Theophilus. About a year after this, Demophilus the Arian prelate having departed this life, the Arians sent for Marinus a leader of their own heresy out of Thrace, to whom they entrusted the bishopric: but he did not long occupy that position, for under him that sect was divided into two parties, as we shall hereafter explain; they therefore invited Dorotheus to come to them from Antioch in Syria, and constituted him their bishop. Meanwhile the emperor Theodosius proceeded to the war against Maximus, leaving his son Arcadius with imperial authority at Constantinople. On his arrival at Thessalonica he finds Valentinian and those about him in great anxiety, because through compulsion they had acknowledged the tyrant as emperor. Without however giving expression to his sentiments, he neither rejected nor admitted the embassy of Maximus: but unable to endure tyrannical domination over the Roman empire, under the assumption of an imperial name, he hastily mustered his forces and advanced to Milan, whither the usurper had already come.