have been suggested by some actually
formed conspiracy, of which Eutropius discovered the threads before it
was carried out. The particular mention of soldiers and barbarians
points to a particular danger, and we may suspect that Gainas, who
afterward brought about the fall of Eutropius, had some connection with
it.

While the eunuch was sailing in the full current of success at
Byzantium, the Vandal Stilicho was enjoying an uninterrupted course of
prosperity in the somewhat less stifling air of Italy. The poet
Claudian, who acted as a sort of poet-laureate to Honorius, was really
an apologist for Stilicho, who patronized and paid him. Almost every
public poem he produced is an extravagant panegyric on that general, and
we cannot but suspect that many of his utterances were direct
manifestoes suggested by his patron. In the panegyric in honor of the
third consulate of Honorius (396), which, composed soon after the death
of Rufinus, breathes a spirit of concord between East and West, the
writer calls upon Stilicho "to protect with his right hand the two
brothers" (_geminos dextra tu protege fratres_).

Such lines as this are written to put a certain significance on
Stilicho's policy. In the panegyric in honor of the fourth consulate of
Honorius (398) he gives an absolutely false and misleading account of
Stilicho's expedition to Greece two years before, an account which no
allowance for poetical exaggeration can defend. At the same time he
extols Honorius with the most absurd eulogiums, and overwhelms him with
the most extravagant adulations, making out the boy of fourteen to be
greater than his father and grandfather. If Claudian were not a poet, we
should say that he was a most outrageous liar. We are therefore unable
to accord him the smallest credit when he boasts that the subjects in
the western provinces are not oppressed by heavy taxes and that the
treasury is not replenished by extortion.

Stilicho and Eutropius had shaken hands over the death of Rufinus, but
the good understanding was not destined to last longer than the song of
triumph. We cannot justly blame Eutropius for this. No minister of
Arcadius could regard with good-will or indifference the desire of
Stilicho to interfere in the affairs of New Rome; for this desire cannot
be denied, even if one do not accept the theory that the scheme of
detaching Illyricum from Arcadius' dominion was entertained by him at as
early a date as 396. His position as ma