a title to
wealth and honors, was studiously denied, and rigorously punished. His
family, united by a triple alliance with the family of Theodosius,
might envy the condition of the meanest peasant. The flight of his son
Eucherius was intercepted; and the death of that innocent youth soon
followed the divorce of Thermantia, who filled the place of her sister
Maria; and who, like Maria, had remained a virgin in the Imperial bed.
[107] The friends of Stilicho, who had escaped the massacre of Pavia,
were persecuted by the implacable revenge of Olympius; and the most
exquisite cruelty was employed to extort the confession of a treasonable
and sacrilegious conspiracy. They died in silence: their firmness
justified the choice, [108] and perhaps absolved the innocence of their
patron: and the despotic power, which could take his life without a
trial, and stigmatize his memory without a proof, has no jurisdiction
over the impartial suffrage of posterity. [109] The services of Stilicho
are great and manifest; his crimes, as they are vaguely stated in the
language of flattery and hatred, are obscure at least, and improbable.
About four months after his death, an edict was published, in the name
of Honorius, to restore the free communication of the two empires, which
had been so long interrupted by the public enemy. [110] The minister,
whose fame and fortune depended on the prosperity of the state, was
accused of betraying Italy to the Barbarians; whom he repeatedly
vanquished at Pollentia, at Verona, and before the walls of Florence.
His pretended design of placing the diadem on the head of his son
Eucherius, could not have been conducted without preparations or
accomplices; and the ambitious father would not surely have left the
future emperor, till the twentieth year of his age, in the humble
station of tribune of the notaries. Even the religion of Stilicho
was arraigned by the malice of his rival. The seasonable, and almost
miraculous, deliverance was devoutly celebrated by the applause of the
clergy; who asserted, that the restoration of idols, and the persecution
of the church, would have been the first measure of the reign of
Eucherius. The son of Stilicho, however, was educated in the bosom of
Christianity, which his father had uniformly professed, and zealously
supported. [111] [1111] Serena had borrowed her magnificent necklace
from the statue of Vesta; [112] and the Pagans execrated the memory
of the sacrilegious minister