an side of the Greeks and Romans as completely as they did
in the age of Commodus and Aurelian; and none may dare to hurl their
indignant protests without meeting a neglect and obloquy sometimes more
hard to bear than the persecutions of Nero, of Trajan, of Leo X., of
Louis XIV.

If Theodosius were considered aside from his able administration of the
Empire and his patronage of the orthodox leaders of the Church, he would
be subject to severe criticism. He was indolent, irascible, and severe.
His name and memory are stained by a great crime,--the slaughter of from
seven to fifteen thousand of the people of Thessalonica,--one of the
great crimes of history, but memorable for his repentance more than for
his cruelty. Had Theodosius not submitted to excommunication and
penance, and given every sign of grief and penitence for this terrible
deed, he would have passed down in history as one of the cruellest of
all the emperors, from Nero downwards; for nothing can excuse, or even
palliate, so gigantic a crime, which shocked the whole civilized
world,--a crime more inexcusable than the slaughter of Saint Bartholomew
or the massacre which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

Theodosius survived that massacre about five years, and died at Milan,
395, at the age of fifty, from a disease which was caused by the
fatigues of war, which, with a constitution undermined by
self-indulgence, he was unable to bear. But whatever the cause of his
death it was universally lamented, not from love of him so much as from
the sense of public dangers which he alone had the power to ward off. At
his death his Empire was divided between his two feeble sons,--Honorius
and Arcadius, and the general ruin which everybody began to fear soon
took place. After Theodosius, no great and warlike sovereign reigned
over the crumbling and dismembered Empire, and the ruin was as rapid as
it was mournful.

The Goths, released from the restraints and fears which Theodosius
imposed, renewed their ravages; and the effeminate soldiers of the
Empire, who formerly had marched with a burden of eighty pounds, now
threw away the heavy weapons of their ancestors, even their defensive
armor, and of course made but feeble resistance. The barbarians advanced
from conquering to conquer. Alaric, leader of the Goths, invaded Greece
at the head of a numerous army. Degenerate soldiers guarded the pass
where three hundred Spartan heroes had once arrested the Persian h