Jezebel, also, persecuted Elijah after a
bloodthirsty fashion? Or that Herodias caused John the Baptist to be
slain?... Of women change follows on change, their hatreds alternate,
their falsehoods vary, elders assemble together, wrong done to the
emperor is made a pretence."

This homiletic punishment of the empress by the intrepid saint was
opportunely followed by the discovery of certain holy and potent relics.
By means of these, the sick were healed and the blind restored, and thus
the people were convinced that God was on their side. The empress
derided these marvels with an incredulity which would do credit to the
present time; but she was compelled to take the wise counsel of
Theodosius and surrender her purpose. She took her revenge, however, by
publishing a decree that the Arian worship should be lawful throughout
the dominions of her son, Valentinian II.

During this time, Maximus, the usurper of Gaul, had acted toward the
empress and her feeble son with apparent friendliness; but he had not in
reality set bounds to the range of his ambition. In 377, his first
hostile operations commenced. Justina was not prepared for warfare. She
fled with the emperor and her daughter, Galla, to Theodosius, the great
ruler of the East, who first married Galla, and then took up
successfully the cause of her mother and her brother. Of this marriage
was born Placidia whose strange adventures we shall shortly relate. It
is probable that Justina died during the war waged by Theodosius against
Maximus. Of her character nothing derogatory is recorded with the
exception of her heresy. It is hardly remarkable that, in an
ecclesiastical dispute, she should be unable to cope with the man who,
later, had the strength and the courage to close the door of the
cathedral in the face of the great Theodosius, after his crime at
Thessalonica.

Events so moved that, by the year 394, Theodosius had become the sole
ruler of the Empire; but four months later he died at Milan, leaving the
dominion of the East and the West to his sons Arcadius and Honorius
respectively. Honorius was of a weakly constitution, and too young to
take part in public matters. Flavius Stilicho, a Vandal, and the ablest
man both in court and in camp that those times produced, defended the
Empire in the attacks of the barbarians who poured over the Danube and
over the Rhine.

Stilicho had married the beautiful and accomplished Serena, the favorite
niece of Theodosius. Cl