of tracing a
curious and unfrequented route.]

[Footnote 3833: Fravitta, according to Zosimus, though a Pagan,
received the honors of the consulate. Zosim, v. c. 20. On Fravitta,
see a very imperfect fragment of Eunapius. Mai. ii. 290, in Niebuhr.
92.--M.]

[Footnote 39: The narrative of Zosimus, who actually leads Gainas beyond
the Danube, must be corrected by the testimony of Socrates, aud Sozomen,
that he was killed in Thrace; and by the precise and authentic dates of
the Alexandrian, or Paschal, Chronicle, p. 307. The naval victory of the
Hellespont is fixed to the month Apellaeus, the tenth of the Calends of
January, (December 23;) the head of Gainas was brought to Constantinople
the third of the nones of January, (January 3,) in the month Audynaeus.]

[Footnote 40: Eusebius Scholasticus acquired much fame by his poem on
the Gothic war, in which he had served. Near forty years afterwards
Ammonius recited another poem on the same subject, in the presence of
the emperor Theodosius. See Socrates, l. vi. c. 6.]

After the death of the indolent Nectarius, the successor of Gregory
Nazianzen, the church of Constantinople was distracted by the ambition
of rival candidates, who were not ashamed to solicit, with gold or
flattery, the suffrage of the people, or of the favorite. On this
occasion Eutropius seems to have deviated from his ordinary maxims; and
his uncorrupted judgment was determined only by the superior merit of a
stranger. In a late journey into the East, he had admired the sermons
of John, a native and presbyter of Antioch, whose name has been
distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth. [41] A
private order was despatched to the governor of Syria; and as the
people might be unwilling to resign their favorite preacher, he was
transported, with speed and secrecy in a post-chariot, from Antioch to
Constantinople. The unanimous and unsolicited consent of the court, the
clergy, and the people, ratified the choice of the minister; and, both
as a saint and as an orator, the new archbishop surpassed the sanguine
expectations of the public. Born of a noble and opulent family, in the
capital of Syria, Chrysostom had been educated, by the care of a tender
mother, under the tuition of the most skilful masters. He studied the
art of rhetoric in the school of Libanius; and that celebrated sophist,
who soon discovered the talents of his disciple, ingenuously confessed
that John would have deserved to