Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/214

 194 THE DECLINE AND FALL were dragged in triumph at the chariot-wheels of Theodosius.-^ [AD. 394] In a full meeting of the senate, the emperor proposed, according to the forms of the republic, the important question, Whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans ? ^^ The liberty of suffrages, which he affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and fears that his presence inspired ; and the arbitrary exile of Symmachus was a recent admonition that it might be dangerous to oppose the wishes of the monarch. On a regular division of the senate, Jupiter was condemned and degraded by the sense of a very large majority ; and it is rather surprising that any members should be found bold enough to declare by their speeches and votes that they were still attached to the interest of an abdicated deity. -^ The hasty conversion of the senate must be attributed either to supernatural or to sordid motives ; and many of these reluctant proselytes betrayed, on every favourable occasion, their secret disposition to throw aside the mask of odious dissimulation. But they were gradually fixed in the new religion, as the cause of the ancient became more hopeless ; they yielded to the authority of the emperor, to the fashion of the times, and to the entreaties of their wives and children,-*^ who were instigated and governed by the clergy of Rome and the monks of the East. The edifying example of the Anician family was soon imitated by the rest of the nobility : the Bassi, the Paullini, the Gracchi, embraced the Christian religion ; and "the luminaries of the Avorld, the venerable assembly of Catos (such are the high-flown expressions of Prudentius), -were im- patient to strip themselves of their pontifical garment : to cast 23 See Prudentius (in Symmach. 1. i. 545, &c.). The Christian agrees with the Pagan Zosimus (1. iv. p. 283 [c. 59]) in placing this visit of Theodosius after the second civil war, gemini bis victor csede Tyranni (1. i. 410). But the time and circumstances are better suited to his first triumph. 2-1 [This can hardly be inferred from the lines of Prudentius.] 25 Prudentius, after proving that the sense of the senate is declared by a legal majority, proceeds to say (609, &c.) : Adspice quam pleno subsellia nostra Senatu Decernant infame Jovis pulvinar, et onine Idolium longe purgatS. ex urbe fugandum. Qua vocat egregii sententia Principis, illuc Libera, cum pedibus, turn corde, frequentia transit. Zosimus ascribes to the conscript fathers an heathenish courage, which few of them are found to possess. 26 Jerom specifies the pontiff Albinus, who was surrounded with such a believing family of children and grand-children as would have been sufficient to convert even Jupiter himself; an extraordinary proselyte I (tom. i. ad Lactam, p. 54 iuvenem is the reading of the Mss. ; and tlie correction lovem is unwarranted. Ep. 107, Migne, Hicron. i. p. 868j).