the fugitive Proculus. He was instantly
seized, examined, condemned, and beheaded, in one of the suburbs of
Constantinople, with a precipitation which disappointed the clemency of
the emperor. Without respecting the misfortunes of a consular senator,
the cruel judges of Tatian compelled him to behold the execution of his
son: the fatal cord was fastened round his own neck; but in the moment
when he expected and perhaps desired, the relief of a speedy death, he
was permitted to consume the miserable remnant of his old age in poverty
and exile. The punishment of the two praefects might, perhaps, be excused
by the exceptionable parts of their own conduct; the enmity of Rufinus
might be palliated by the jealous and unsociable nature of ambition.
But he indulged a spirit of revenge equally repugnant to prudence and to
justice, when he degraded their native country of Lycia from the rank of
Roman provinces; stigmatized a guiltless people with a mark of ignominy;
and declared, that the countrymen of Tatian and Proculus should forever
remain incapable of holding any employment of honor or advantage under
the Imperial government. The new praefect of the East (for Rufinus
instantly succeeded to the vacant honors of his adversary) was not
diverted, however, by the most criminal pursuits, from the performance
of the religious duties, which in that age were considered as the most
essential to salvation. In the suburb of Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak,
he had built a magnificent villa; to which he devoutly added a stately
church, consecrated to the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and
continually sanctified by the prayers and penance of a regular society
of monks. A numerous, and almost general, synod of the bishops of
the Eastern empire, was summoned to celebrate, at the same time, the
dedication of the church, and the baptism of the founder. This double
ceremony was performed with extraordinary pomp; and when Rufinus was
purified, in the holy font, from all the sins that he had hitherto
committed, a venerable hermit of Egypt rashly proposed himself as the
sponsor of a proud and ambitious statesman.

The character of Theodosius imposed on his minister the task of
hypocrisy, which disguised, and sometimes restrained, the abuse of
power; and Rufinus was apprehensive of disturbing the indolent slumber
of a prince still capable of exerting the abilities and the virtue,
which had raised him to the throne. But the absence, and, soon
afterwar