Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/399

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE 379 haps his resentment ; declaimed with peculiar asperity against female vices ; and condemned the profane honours which were addressed almost in the precincts of St. Sophia, to the statue of the empress. His imprudence tempted his enemies to inflame the haughty spirit of Eudoxia by reporting, or perhaps inventing, the famous exordium of a sermon : " Herodias is again furious ; Herodias again dances ; she once more requires the head of John : " an insolent allusion, which, as a woman and a sovereign, it was impossible for her to forgive.^^ The short interval of a pei*fidious truce was employed to concert more effectual mea- sures for the disgrace and ruin of the archbishop. A numerous council of the Eastern prelates, who were guided from a distance by the advice of Theophilus, confinned the validity, without examining the justice, of the former sentence ; and a detach- ment of Barbarian troops was introduced into the city, to sup- press the emotions of the people. On the vigil of Easter, the solemn administration of baptism was rudely interrupted by the soldiers, who alarmed the modesty of the naked catechumens, and violated, by their presence, the awful mysteries of the Christian worship. Arsacius occupied the church of St. Sophia and the archiepiscopal throne. The catholics retreated to the baths of Constantine, and afterwards to the fields ; where they were still pursued and insulted by the guards, the bishops, and the magistrates. The fatal day of the second and final exile of Chrysostom was marked by the conflagration of the cathedral, of the senate house, and of the adjacent buildings ; and this calamity was imputed, without proof but not without pi'obability, to the despair of a persecuted faction.^- Cicero might claim some merit, if his voluntaiy banishment ExUe of chry preserved the peace of the republic ; ^^ but the submission of 4M,j^e 20' Chrysostom was the indispensable duty of a Christian and a sub- ject. Instead of listening to his humble prayer that he might be permitted to reside at Cyzicus or Nicomedia, the inflexible empress assigned for his exile the remote and desolate town of Cucusus, among the ridges of Mount Taurus, in the Lesser Armenia. ^ See Socrates, 1. vi. c. 18. Sozomen, 1. viii. c. 20. Zosimus (1. v. p. 324, 327 [23, 24]) mentions, in general terms, his invectives against Eudoxia. The homily, which begins with those famous words, is rejected as spurious. Montfaucon, torn, xiii. p. 151. Tillemont, Mem. EccMs. torn. xi. p. 603. 62 We might naturally expect such a charge from Zosimus (L v. p. 327 [24]), but it is remarkable enough that it should be confirmed by Socrates, 1. vi. c. 18, and the Paschal Chronicle, p. 307. [Cp. Cod. Th. 16, 2, 37.] of an orator and a poljtipian.
 * •■* He displays those specious motives (Post Reditum, c. 13, 14) in the language