Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/464

 444 THE DECLINE AND FALL TheodoBioa The emperor Theodosius did not long survive the most dies, AD. 450, humiliating circumstance of an inglorious life. As he was riding, or hunting, in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, he was thrown from his horse into the river Lycus ; the spine of the back was injured by the fall ; and he expired some days afterwards, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the forty-third of his reign.^'- His sister Pulcheria, whose authority had been controlled both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs by the pernicious influence of the eunuchs, was unanimously proclaimed empress of the East ; and the Romans, for the first time, submitted to a female reign. No sooner had Pulcheria ascended the throne than she indulged her own and the public resentment by an act of popular justice. Without any legal trial, the eunuch Chrv- saphius was executed before the gates of the city ; and the immense riches which had been accumulated by the rapacious favourite served only to hasten and to justify his punishment.^^ Amidst the general acclamations of the clergy and people, the empress did not forget the prejudice and disadvantage to which her sex was exposed ; and she wisely resolved to prevent their murmurs by the choice of a colleague, who would always respect andiBBuc- the superior rank and virgin chastity of his wife. She eave her C6eded bv c> j o Marcian. hand to Marcian, a senator, about sixty years of age, and the nominal husband of Pulcheria was solemnly invested with the Imperial purple. The zeal which he displayed for the orthodox creed, as it was established by the council of Chalcedon, would alone have inspired the grateful eloquence of the Catholics. But the behaviour of Marcian in a private life, and afterwards on the throne, may support a more rational belief that he was qualified to restore and invigorate an empire which had been almost dis- solved by the successive weakness of two hereditary monarchs. He was born in Thrace, and educated to the profession of arms ; but Marcian's youth had been severely exercised by poverty and misfortune, since his only resource, when he first arrived at fragments of Priscus, p. 37, 38, 39 [fr. 7 ; 8 ad init.l, 54 [p. 82], 70, 71, 72 ''p. 95, 96, 97]. The chronology of that historian is not fixed by any precise date ; but the series of negotiations between Attila and the Eastern empire must be included between the three or four years which are terminated, A.D. 450, by the death of Theodosius. ^'■^ Theodorus the Reader (see Vales. Hist. Eccles. torn. iii. p. 563) and the Paschal Chronicle mention the fall, without specifying the injury ; but the conse- quence was so likely to happen, and so unlikely to be invented, that we may safely give credit to Xicephorus Callistus, a Greek of the fourteenth century. •■"^ Pulcheriae nuiu (says Count Marcellinus) suA cum avaritiA interemptus est. She abandoned the eunuch to the pious revenge of a son whose father had suffered fit his instigation.