Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/192

 1T2 THE DECLINE AND FALL confessed that, if the exercise of justice is the most important duty, the indulgence of mercy is the most exquisite pleasure, of a sovereign.^i Bedition and The sedition of Thessalonica is ascribed to a more shameful SJJJIkTomca. cause,9i*and was productive of much more dreadful consequences. A.D. 380 -phat great city, the metropolis of all the Illyrian provinces, had been protected from the dangers of the Gothic war by strong fortifications and a numerous garrison. Botheric, the general of those troops, and, as it should seem from his name, a Barbarian, had among his slaves a beautiful boy, who excited the impure desires of one of the charioteers of the Circus. The insolent and brutal lover was thro^vn into prison by the order of Botheric ; and he sternly rejected the importunate clamours of the multitude, who, on the day of the public games, lamented the absence of their favourite, and considered the skill of a charioteer as an object of more importance than his virtue. The resentment of the people was embittered by some previous disputes ; and, as the strength of the garrison had been drawn away for the service of the Italian war, the feeble remnant, whose numbers were reduced by desertion, could not save the unhappy general from their licentious fury. Botheric, and several of his principal officers, were inhumanly murdered ; their mangled bodies were dragged about the streets ; and the emperor, who then resided at Milan, was surprised by the intelligence of the audacious and wanton cruelty of the people of Thessalonica. The sentence of a dispassionate judge would have inflicted a severe punishment on the authors of the crime ; and the merit of Botheric might contribute to exasperate the grief and indignation of his master. The fiery and choleric temper of Theodosius was impatient of the dilatory forms of a judicial enquiry ; and he hastily resolved that the blood of his lieutenant should be expiated by the blood of the guilty people. Yet his mind still fluctuated between the counsels of clemency and of revenge ; the zeal of the bishops had almost extorted from the reluctant emperor the promise of a general 91 The sedition of Antioch is represented in a lively, and almost dramatic, manner by two orators, who had their respective shares of interest and merit. See Libanius (Orat. xiv. xv. [/e^. xii. xiii.] p. 389-420, edit. Morel., Orat. i. p. 1-14, Venet. 1754 and the twenty orations of St. Chrysostom, a, Statttis (torn. ii. p. i- 225, edit. Montfaucon). I do not pretend to much personal acquaintance with Chrysostom ; but Tillem. (Hist. des( Emper. tom. v. p. 263 283) and Herniant (Vie de St. Chrysostome, tom. i. p. 137-224) had read him with pious curiosity and diligence. [The dates which A. Hug (Antiochia und der Aufstand des Jahres 387 n. Chr.) has endeavoured to establish are added in the margin above.] ^i» [" Cause " in sense of occasion. But the true cause was discontent at the practice of quartering barbarian soldiers in Antioch. Cp. John Malalas, p. 347.]