and the most distant connection
with the master-general of the West, which had so lately been a title to
wealth and honors, was studiously denied, and rigorously punished. His
family, united by a triple alliance with the family of Theodosius,
might envy the condition of the meanest peasant. The flight of his son
Eucherius was intercepted; and the death of that innocent youth soon
followed the divorce of Thermantia, who filled the place of her sister
Maria; and who, like Maria, had remained a virgin in the Imperial bed.
The friends of Stilicho, who had escaped the massacre of Pavia, were
persecuted by the implacable revenge of Olympius; and the most exquisite
cruelty was employed to extort the confession of a treasonable and
sacrilegious conspiracy. They died in silence: their firmness justified
the choice, and perhaps absolved the innocence of their patron: and
the despotic power, which could take his life without a trial, and
stigmatize his memory without a proof, has no jurisdiction over the
impartial suffrage of posterity. The services of Stilicho are great
and manifest; his crimes, as they are vaguely stated in the language of
flattery and hatred, are obscure at least, and improbable. About four
months after his death, an edict was published, in the name of Honorius,
to restore the free communication of the two empires, which had been
so long interrupted by the _public enemy_. The minister, whose fame
and fortune depended on the prosperity of the state, was accused of
betraying Italy to the Barbarians; whom he repeatedly vanquished at
Pollentia, at Verona, and before the walls of Florence. His pretended
design of placing the diadem on the head of his son Eucherius, could
not have been conducted without preparations or accomplices; and the
ambitious father would not surely have left the future emperor, till
the twentieth year of his age, in the humble station of tribune of the
notaries. Even the religion of Stilicho was arraigned by the malice
of his rival. The seasonable, and almost miraculous, deliverance was
devoutly celebrated by the applause of the clergy; who asserted, that
the restoration of idols, and the persecution of the church, would have
been the first measure of the reign of Eucherius. The son of Stilicho,
however, was educated in the bosom of Christianity, which his father had
uniformly professed, and zealously supported. Serena had borrowed her
magnificent necklace from the statue of Vesta; and the Pag