CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE DEATH OF ARIUS

SUCH was the supplication of Alexander. Meanwhile the emperor being desirous of personally examining Arius, sent for him to the palace, and asked him whether he would assent to the determinations of the Nicene Synod. He without hesitation replied in the affirmative, and subscribed the declaration of the faith in the emperor’s presence, acting with duplicity all the while. The emperor surprised at his ready compliance, obliged him to confirm his signature by an oath. This also he did with equal promptitude and dissimulation: for it is affirmed that he wrote his own opinion on paper, and placed it under his arm, so that he then swore truly to his really holding the sentiments he had written. It must however be owned that this statement of his having so acted, is grounded on hearsay alone; but that he added an oath to his subscription, I have myself ascertained, from an examination of the emperor’s own letters. The emperor being thus convinced, ordered that he should be received into communion by Alexander bishop of Constantinople. It was then Saturday, and Arius was expecting to assemble with the church on the day following: but divine retribution overtook his daring criminalities. For going out of the imperial palace, attended by a crowd of Eusebian partisans like guards, he paraded proudly through the midst of the city, attracting the notice of all the people. On approaching the place called Constantine’s Forum, where the column of porphyry is erected, a terror arising from the consciousness of his wickedness seized him, accompanied by violent relaxation of the bowels: he therefore enquired whether there was a convenient place near, and being directed to the back of Constantine’s Forum, he hastened thither. Soon after a faintness I came over him, and together with the evacuations his bowels protruded, followed by a copious hæmorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were brought off in the effusion of blood, so that he almost immediately died. The scene of this catastrophe still exists at Constantinople, behind the shambles in the piazza, in the situation already described: and by persons going by pointing the finger at the place, there is a perpetual remembrance preserved of this extraordinary kind of death. So disastrous an occurrence filled with dread and alarm the party of Eusebius bishop of Nicomedia; and the report of it quickly spread itself over the city and throughout the whole world. The verity of the Nicene faith being thus miraculously confirmed by the testimony of God himself, the emperor adhered still more zealously to Christianity. He was also glad at what had happened, not only because of its effect on the church, but on account of the influence such an event was calculated to have on the minds of his three sons whom he had already proclaimed Cæsars; one of each of them having been created at every successive Decennalia of his reign. To the eldest, whom he called Constantine, after his own name, he assigned the government of the Western parts of the empire, on the completion of his first decade. His second son Constantius, who bore his grandfather’s name, was constituted Cæsar in the Eastern division, when the second decade had been completed. And Constans, the youngest, was invested with a similar dignity, when his father had reached the thirtieth year of his empire.