cle. Chaste,
temperate, merciful, superstitious, pious, he was rich in negative
qualities; but, being feeble in energy and lacking all initiative, he
became merely a good-hearted and well-meaning, instead of active and
courageous, ruler. Consequently in every official act it was Pulcheria
who supplied the wisdom and the energy which made the earlier years of
Theodosius's reign such happy and peaceful ones. Pulcheria, however, was
content to keep her power in the background and to attribute to the
genius of the emperor the smoothness with which the wheels of government
turned, as well as the mildness and prosperity of his reign.

The choice of a wife for Theodosius naturally lay in the hands of
Pulcheria. The young prince, influenced by the example of his father,
had expressed to his sister his preference for rare physical perfection
and high intellectual endowments over exalted station and royal blood in
the choice of a consort; and Pulcheria, in conjunction with his boyhood
friend Paulinus, set herself to the task of finding in the capital or in
the provinces an ideal corresponding to the wishes of the imperial
youth. Yet, while they were engaged in the search, by happy chance a
wonderful concatenation of events in the pagan city of Athens determined
the destiny of the nineteen-year-old ruler.

In the story of Athenais we have the beautiful romance of a maiden of
modest station raised by destiny to the exalted dignity of a throne. She
was the favorite child of Leontius, an Athenian philosopher, who devoted
most of his time to training his daughter in the religion and philosophy
of his native city, and who sought to cultivate in her all that charm of
manner and richness of temperament which characterized the Greek women
in the best days of ancient Athens. The story goes that the old
philosopher was so confident that, because of her beauty and
intellectual gifts, a high destiny awaited his daughter, that he
bequeathed her as a legacy only a hundred pieces of gold, while he
divided the bulk of his estate between his two sons, Valerius and
Genesius. The brothers, being avaricious by nature and jealous of the
superior qualities of their sister, treated her with neglect and cruelty
in her distress. Athenais implored them to repair the obvious injustice
and to grant her her rights, representing to them how she did not
deserve this disgrace and that the indigence of their sister would be to
them, if not a cause of grief, yet