master-general of the armies of
the East. He condescended to meet these ambassadors on the banks of
the River Drenco; and though he at first affected a stern and haughty
demeanor, his anger was insensibly mollified by their eloquence and
liberality. He condescended to pardon the emperor, the eunuch, and
the interpreter; bound himself by an oath to observe the conditions of
peace; released a great number of captives; abandoned the fugitives and
deserters to their fate; and resigned a large territory, to the south
of the Danube, which he had already exhausted of its wealth and
inhabitants. But this treaty was purchased at an expense which might
have supported a vigorous and successful war; and the subjects of
Theodosius were compelled to redeem the safety of a worthless favorite
by oppressive taxes, which they would more cheerfully have paid for his
destruction.

The emperor Theodosius did not long survive the most humiliating
circumstance of an inglorious life. As he was riding, or hunting, in the
neighborhood of Constantinople, he was thrown from his horse into the
River Lycus: the spine of the back was injured by the fall; and he
expired some days afterwards, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the
forty-third of his reign. His sister Pulcheria, whose authority had been
controlled both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs by the pernicious
influence of the eunuchs, was unanimously proclaimed Empress of the
East; and the Romans, for the first time, submitted to a female reign.
No sooner had Pulcheria ascended the throne, than she indulged her own
and the public resentment, by an act of popular justice. Without any
legal trial, the eunuch Chrysaphius was executed before the gates of the
city; and the immense riches which had been accumulated by the rapacious
favorite, served only to hasten and to justify his punishment. Amidst
the general acclamations of the clergy and people, the empress did not
forget the prejudice and disadvantage to which her sex was exposed;
and she wisely resolved to prevent their murmurs by the choice of
a colleague, who would always respect the superior rank and virgin
chastity of his wife. She gave her hand to Marcian, a senator, about
sixty years of age; and the nominal husband of Pulcheria was solemnly
invested with the Imperial purple. The zeal which he displayed for the
orthodox creed, as it was established by the council of Chalcedon, would
alone have inspired the grateful eloquence of the