s
returned to the East, leaving Valentinian as emperor in the West with his
residence at Vienna in Gaul. But the powerful Arbogast, whom Theodosius
had placed in command of the western troops, refused to act under the
orders of the young Augustus, and finally compassed his death (392 A. D.).
However, he did not dare, in view of his Frankish origin, to assume the
purple himself, and so induced a prominent Roman official named Eugenius
to accept the title of Augustus. The authority of Eugenius was
acknowledged in Italy and all the West, but Theodosius refused him
recognition and prepared to crush the usurper. In the autumn of 394 A. D.,
at the river Frigidus, near Aquileia, Theodosius won a complete victory
over Arbogast and Eugenius. The former committed suicide and the latter
was put to death.

Early in the next year Theodosius died, leaving the empire to his two
sons, Arcadius and Honorius, upon both of whom he had previously conferred
the rank of Augustus. The success of Theodosius in coping with the Gothic
peril and in suppressing the usurpers Maximus and Eugenius, combined with
his vigorous championship of orthodox Christianity, won for him the title
of the "Great." With the accession of Arcadius and Honorius and the
permanent division of the empire into an eastern and a western half, there
begins a new epoch of Roman history.

[Illustration: The Roman Empire in 395 A. D.]

CHAPTER XXII

THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF THE LATE EMPIRE

I. THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COURT

*Powers and titles of the emperor.* The government of the late Roman
empire was an autocracy, in which the emperor was the active head of the
administration and at the same time the source of all legislative,
judicial and military authority. For the exercise of this authority the
support of the army and the bureaucracy was essential. All the sovereign
rights of the Roman people were regarded as having been transferred to the
imperial power. The emperor was no longer the First of the Roman
citizens--the _primus inter pares_--but all within the empire were in equal
degree his subjects. This view of the exalted status of the emperor was
expressed in the assumption of the divine titles Jovius and Herculius by
Diocletian and Maximian. Their Christian successors, although for the
greater part of the fourth century they accepted deification from their
pagan subjects, found a