Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/381

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 361 compensated for the folly of the design by any superior merit or ability in the execution. His former habits of life had not introduced him to the study of the laws or the exercises of the field ; his awkward and unsuccessful attempts provoked the secret contempt of the spectators ; the Goths expressed their wish that such a general might always command the armies of Rome ; and the name of the minister was branded with ridi- cule, more pernicious perhaps than hatred to a public character. The subjects of Arcadius were exasperated by the recollection that this deformed and decrepid eunuch/ who so perversely mimicked the actions of a man, was born in the most abject condition of servitude ; that, before he entered the Imperial palace, he had been successively sold and purchased by an hundred masters, who had exhausted his youthful strength in every mean and infamous office, and at length dismissed him, in his old age, to freedom and poverty^ While these disgraceful stories were circulated, and perhaps exaggerated, in private con- versations, the vanity of the favourite was flattei-ed with the most extraordinary honours. In the senate, in the capital, in the provinces, the statues of Eutropius were erected in brass or marble, decorated with the symbols of his civil and military virtues, and inscribed with the pompous title of the third founder of Constantinople. He was promoted to the rank o^ patrician, which began to signify, in a popular and even legal acceptation, the father of the emperor ; and the last year of the fourth century was polluted by the consulship of an eunuch and a slave. This strange and inexpiable prodigy^ awakened, however, the prejudices of the Romans. The effeminate consul was rejected 6 The poet's lively description of his deformity (i. no 125) is confirmed by the authentic testimony of Chrysostom (torn. iii. p. 384, edit. jVTontfaucon), who observes that, when the paint was washed away, the face of Eutropius appeared more ugly and wrinkled than that of an old woman. Claudian remarks (i. 469), and the remark must have been founded on experience, that there was scarcely any interval between the youth and the decrepid age of an eunuch. ' Eutropius appears to have been a native of Armenia or Assyria. His three services, which Claudian more particularly describes, were these : i. He spent many years as the catamite of Ptolemy, a groom or soldier of the Imperial stables. 2. Ptolemy gave him to the old general Arintheus, for whom he very skilfully exer- cised the profession of a pimp. 3. Pie was given, on her marriage, to the daughter of Arintheus ; and the future consul was employed to comb her hair, to present the silver ewer, to wash and to fan his mistress in hot weather. See 1. i. 31-137. 8 Claudian (L i. in Eutrop. 1-22), after enumerating the various prodigies of monstrous birds, speaking animals, showers of blood or stones, double suns, &c. , adds, with some exaggeration, Omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra. The first book concludes with a noble speech of the goddess of Rome to her favourite Honorius, deprecating the new ignominy to which she was exposed.