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338 to the help of his colleague Valens, when news of his defeat and death at the hands of the barbarians was brought to him, and he at once appointed as his associate Theodosius, known afterwards as the Great, and entrusted him with the government of the Eastern provinces. Theodosius, by wise and vigorous measures, quickly reduced the Goths to submission. Vast multitudes of the Visigoths were settled upon the waste lands of Thrace, while the Ostrogoths were scattered in various colonies in different regions of Asia Minor. The Goths became allies of the Emperor of the East, and more than 40,000 of these warlike barbarians, who were destined to be the subverters of the empire, were enlisted in the imperial legions.

While Theodosius was thus composing the East, the West, through the jealous rivalries of different competitors for the control of the government, had fallen into great disorder. Theodosius twice interposed to right affairs, and then took the government into his own hands. For four months he ruled as sole monarch of the empire.

Final Division of the Empire (A.D. 395).—The Roman world was now united for the last time under a single master. Just before his death, Theodosius divided the empire between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, assigning the former, who was only eighteen years of age, the government of the East, and giving the latter, a mere child of eleven, the sovereignty of the West. This was the final partition of the Roman empire—the issue of that growing tendency, which we have observed in its immoderately extended dominions, to break apart. The separate histories of the East and the West now begin.

The Eastern Empire.—The story of the fortunes of the Empire in the East need not detain us long at this point of our history. This monarchy lasted over a thousand years—from the accession to power of Arcadius, A.D. 395, to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D. 1453. It will thus be seen that the greater part of its history belongs to the mediæval period. Up to the time of the overthrow of the Empire in the West, the sovereigns of the East were engaged almost incessantly in