ctised,
though without idolatry, by the early Christians.

The secrecy and success of the conspiracy brought great chagrin to the
overconfident Rufinus. He felt keenly the insult to himself and his
daughter, and he feared the growing power of Eutropius and the new
empress. Yet he merely tightened his grip upon the government and
continued to be a formidable factor in the intrigues of the palace.

The Empress Eudoxia rapidly adapted herself to her new life and
displayed a superiority of sense and spirit which enabled her to
maintain over her fond and youthful husband the ascendancy that her
beauty had at first created. She soon made it evident that she would be
under the control of no intriguing courtier, but that she herself would
be a dominant factor in the life of the court. Rufinus continued his
plots against the throne of Arcadius, but was constantly thwarted by the
empress, assisted by Eutropius, and their counterplays finally brought
about the minister's assassination.

After the murder of Rufinus, the empress endeavored to hold the balance
of power between the three political parties of the day--the German
party, headed by Gainas the Goth, which largely embraced the military
forces of the Empire; the party of Eutropius, who had under his control
the civil officers of the state; and the senatorial party, under the
leadership of the prefect Aurelian, who abhorred alike the growing
influence of the Goths and the bed-chamber administration of Eutropius.
Eudoxia naturally inclined to the third of these parties: she
strenuously opposed the Germans, who, under the leadership of Gainas,
demanded freedom for Arian worship, and she sought to overcome the
influence of her quondam benefactor Eutropius, that she herself might
have absolute dominion over her imperial husband. Hence, these three,
the empress, Eutropius, and Gainas, as Hodgkin remarks, "kept up a vivid
game of court intrigue and disputed with varying success for the chief
place in that empty chamber which represented the mind of the emperor."

Eudoxia first combined with Gainas to get rid of their powerful rival
Eutropius, though she owed her own position to the machinations of the
wily chamberlain. Gainas instigated a revolt among the Ostrogoths under
their commander Tribigild, and when sent out against them he took no
active measures to suppress their incursions; the Goths, at the
instigation of Gainas, finally sent word to the emperor demanding the
death