eodosius, the union of the two reigning houses meant possibly
the reunion of the Empire under one emperor, should a son be born to the
newly married couple. Possibly feeling lonely after the marriage and
departure of her daughter; possibly tiring of the intrigues of the
court, Eudocia, with the concurrence of the emperor, shortly afterward
undertook a solemn pilgrimage to Jerusalem to discharge her vows and to
return thanks to the Deity for the welfare of her daughter.

Attended by a royal cortege of courtiers and eunuchs and slaves, the
Empress Eudocia set out on her journey. Her ostentatious progress
through the East hardly seems in keeping with the spirit of Christian
humility. One of the most impressive events of her journey was the
sojourn in Antioch, the metropolis of the Far East. Here she pronounced
to the senate, from a throne of gold, studded with precious gems, an
eloquent Greek oration, which was regarded as a marvel of Hellenic
rhetoric. In Antioch, probably far more than in Constantinople or
Alexandria, there was a hearty appreciation of Greek culture and art,
and many of the renowned rhetoricians of the day had in this city their
lecture halls, to which thronged enthusiastic students; and to the most
cultivated audience of the metropolis was granted the presence of an
empress glorying in her Athenian nativity, trained in all the rhetorical
art of the Greek, and combining in her own personality all that was most
pleasing in both pagan and Christian culture. The last words of
Eudocia's address--a quotation from Homer--are said to have occasioned
prolonged applause:

tautes toi genees te kai aimatos euchonai einai--Iliad Z 211.

"I boast to be of your own race and blood."

Eudocia was also generous in her gifts to the city. She induced the
emperor to enlarge its walls, and herself bestowed upon it a donation of
two hundred pounds of gold to restore the public baths. She graciously
accepted the statues which were decreed to her in gratitude for her
munificence--a statue of gold erected in the Curia, and one of bronze in
the museum. To the empress, with her earlier love of the sacred
traditions of the city of the violet crown, her enthusiastic reception
in the most thoroughly Hellenized city of the Orient must have been a
most gratifying occurrence.

From Antioch the empress probably followed the pilgrims highway to the
Holy Land. There with doubly chastened soul the cultivated co