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| Gaïnas the Goth attempts to usurp the Sovereign Power; after filling Constantinople with Disorder, he is slain.
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Chapter
VI.—Gaïnas the Goth attempts to usurp the
Sovereign Power; after filling Constantinople with Disorder, he is
slain.
I shall now narrate some
memorable circumstances that occurred at that period, in which it will be seen how Divine Providence
interposed by extraordinary agencies for the preservation of the city
and Roman empire from the utmost peril. Gaïnas was a barbarian by
extraction but after becoming a Roman subject, and having engaged in
military service, and risen by degrees from one rank to another, he was
at length appointed general-in-chief both of the Roman horse and foot.
When he had obtained this lofty position, he forgot his position and
relations, and was unable to restrain himself and on the other hand
according to the common saying ‘left no stone unturned’ in
order to gain control of the Roman government. To accomplish this he
sent for the Goths out of their own country, and gave the principal
commissions in the army to his relations. Then when Tribigildus, one of
his kinsmen who had the command of the forces in Phrygia, had at the
instigation of Gaïnas broken out into open revolt, and was filling
the people of Phrygia with confusion and dismay, he managed to have
deputed to him the oversight of matters in the disturbed province. Now
the Emperor Arcadius not suspecting [any harm] committed the charge of
these affairs to him. Gaïnas therefore immediately set out at the
head of an immense number of the barbarous Goths, apparently on an
expedition against Tribigildus, but with the real intention of
establishing his own unjust domination. On reaching Phrygia he began to
subvert everything. Consequently the affairs of the Romans were
immediately thrown into great consternation, not only on account of the
vast barbarian force which Gaïnas had at his command, but also
because the most fertile and opulent regions of the East were
threatened with desolation. In this emergency the emperor, acting with
much prudence, sought to arrest the course of the barbarian by address:
he accordingly sent him an embassy with instructions to appease him for
the present by every kind of concession. Gaïnas having demanded
that Saturninus and Aurelian, two of the most distinguished of the
senatorial order, and men of consular dignity, whom he knew to be
unfavorable to his pretensions, should be delivered up to him, the
emperor most unwillingly yielded to the exigency of the crisis; and
these two persons, prepared to die for the public good, nobly submitted
themselves to the emperor’s disposal. They therefore proceeded to
meet the barbarian, at a place used for horse-racing some distance from
Chalcedon, being resolved to endure whatever he might be disposed to
inflict; but however they suffered no harm. The usurper simulating
dissatisfaction, advanced to Chalcedon, whither the emperor Arcadius
also went to meet him. Both then entered the church where the body of
the martyr Euphemia is deposited, and there entered into a mutual
pledge on oath that neither would plot against the other. The emperor
indeed kept his engagement, having a religious regard to an oath, and
being on that account beloved of God. But Gaïnas soon violated it,
and did not swerve from his original purpose; on the contrary he was
intent on carnage, plunder, and conflagration, not only against
Constantinople, but also against the whole extent of the Roman empire,
if he could by any means carry it into effect. The city was accordingly
quite inundated by the barbarians, and its residents were reduced to a
condition equivalent to that of captives. Moreover so great was the
danger of the city that a comet of prodigious magnitude, reaching from
heaven even to the earth, such as was never before seen, gave
forewarning of it.845
| 845Cf. Vergil, Georg. I. 488, ‘Nec diri
toties arsere cometæ’; and Am. X. 272–274.
|
Gaïnas first most shamelessly attempted to make a seizure of the
silver publicly exposed for sale in the shops: but when the
proprietors, advised beforehand by report of his intention, abstained
from exposing it on their counters, his thoughts were diverted to
another object, which was to send an immense body of barbarians at
night for the purpose of burning down the palace. Then indeed it
appeared distinctly that God had providential care over the city: for a
multitude of angels appeared to the rebels, in the form of armed men of
gigantic stature, before whom the barbarians, imagining them to be a
large army of brave troops, turned away with terror and departed. When
this was reported to Gaïnas, it seemed to him quite
incredible—for he knew that the greatest part of the Roman army
was at a distance, dispersed as a garrison over the Eastern
cities—and he sent others on the following night and repeatedly
afterwards. Now as they constantly returned with the same
statement—for the angels of God always presented themselves in
the same form—he came with a great multitude, and at length
became himself a spectator of the prodigy. Then supposing that what he
saw was really a body of soldiers, and that they concealed themselves
by day, and baffled his designs by night, he desisted from his attempt,
and took another resolution which he conceived would be detrimental to
the Romans; but the event proved it to be greatly to their advantage.
Pretending to be under demoniacal possession, he went forth as if for
prayer to the church of St. John the Apostle, which is seven
miles distant from the city. Together with him went barbarians who
carried out arms, having concealed them in casks and other specious
coverings. And when the soldiers who guarded the city gates detected
these, and would not suffer them to pass, the barbarians drew their
swords and put them to death. A
fearful tumult thence arose in the city, and death seemed to threaten
every one; nevertheless the city continued secure at that time, its
gates being every where well defended. The emperor with timely wisdom
proclaimed Gaïnas a public enemy, and ordered that all the
barbarians who remained shut up in the city should be slain. Thus one
day after the guards of the gates had been killed, the Romans attacked
the barbarians within the walls near the church of the Goths—for
thither such of them as had been left in the city had betaken
themselves—and after destroying a great number of them they set
the church on fire, and burnt it to the ground. Gaïnas being
informed of the slaughter of those of his party who did not manage to
get out of the city, and perceiving the failure of all his artifices,
left St. John’s church, and advanced rapidly towards Thrace. On
reaching the Chersonnese he endeavored to pass over from thence and
take Lampsacus, in order that from that place he might make himself
master of the Eastern parts. As the emperor had immediately dispatched
forces in pursuit both by land and by sea, another wonderful
interposition of Divine Providence occurred. For while the barbarians,
destitute of ships, hastily put together rafts and were attempting to
cross on them, suddenly the Roman fleet appeared, and the west wind
began to blow hard. This afforded an easy passage to the Romans; but
the barbarians with their horses, tossed up and down in their frail
barks by the violence of the gale, were at length overwhelmed by the
waves; many of them also were destroyed by the Romans. In this manner
during the passage a vast number of the barbarians perished; but
Gaïnas departing thence fled into Thrace, where he fell in with
another body of the Roman forces and was slain by them together with
the barbarians that attended him.846
| 846Cf. an account of Gaïnas and his rebellion in
Zosimus, V. 18–22.
|
Let this cursory notice of Gaïnas suffice here.
Those who may desire more minute details of the
circumstances of that war, should read The Gaïnea of
Eusebius Scholasticus,847
| 847On the surname of ‘Scholasticus,’ see
Introd. p. ix. note 20, also Macar. Homil. 15, §24. On
Eusebius Scholasticus, see Smith and Wace, Eusebius (134)
Scholasticus.
|
who was at that time a pupil of Troïlus the sophist; and having
been a spectator of the war, related the events of it in an heroic poem
consisting of four books; and inasmuch as the events alluded to had but
recently taken place, he acquired for himself great celebrity. The poet
Ammonius has also very lately composed another description in verse of
the same transactions, which he recited before the emperor in the
sixteenth consulate848
of Theodosius the younger, which he bore with Faustus.
This war was terminated under the consulate of Stilicho
and Aurelian.849
The year following,850
the consulate was celebrated by Fravitus also a Goth by extraction, who
was honored by the Romans, and showed great fidelity and attachment to
them, rendering important services in this very war. For this reason he
attained to the dignity of consul. In that year on the tenth of April
there was born a son to the Emperor Arcadius, the good Theodosius.
But while the affairs of the state were thus troubled,
the dignitaries of the Church refrained not in the least from their
disgraceful cabals against each other, to the great reproach of the
Christian religion; for during this time the ecclesiastics incited
tumults against each other. The source of the mischief originated in
Egypt in the following manner. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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