Constantinople, as it was that of the West. This policy was
ratified by the second ecumenical council, called by Theodosius,
at Constantinople in 381, when the orthodoxy first promulgated by
the Council of Nicaea in 325 was substantially reaffirmed. It was
also largely through the influence of Theodosius, who was the
friend of Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, that the Roman senate, by a
great majority, voted (388) to abolish the worship of Jupiter and
to adopt the worship of Christ, thus making Christianity the state
religion. In the debate which preceded this transition the
eloquence of Symmachus, on the pagan side, was overmatched by the
arguments of Ambrose, aided by the powerful support of Theodosius
in person.

In his further dealings with the Visigoths, Theodosius, following a
precedent already established, enlisted in the Roman service a
separate Gothic army of forty thousand soldiers; but this policy,
as the event proved, was fatal to the permanency of his hitherto
successful control of these alien elements, for they soon gathered
strength to take the mastery into their own hands. Theodosius died
in 395, after publishing a decree for partition of the empire
between his two sons, Honorius to rule in the West, and Arcadius in
the East. He meant, not to establish two independent jurisdictions,
but that there should be one commonwealth, whose two rulers should
be colleagues and coadjutors in its defence. This new disposition
of the empire was followed by dissensions and intrigues against
which the weak sons of Theodosius were helpless in the hands of
able and unscrupulous self-seekers, the result of which was the
final separation of the empire into two distinct governments and
the weakening of the powers of resistance of both against those
ever-increasing encroachments of the barbarians which eventually
caused the fall of both empires.

One of the few men in history who have won the title of great, the
emperor Theodosius I, who had by his policy, at once friendly and firm,
pacified the Goths, who had confirmed the triumph of Athanasian over
Arian Christianity, who had stamped out the last flames of refractory
paganism represented by the tyrant Eugenius, died on the 17th of
January, A.D. 395. His wishes were that his younger son, Honorius, then
a boy of ten years, should re