CHAPTER XXVI

THE FALL OF EUTROPIUS

Claudian.

The mixture of dread, irritation, and intoxicated vanity which had come upon Eutropius as Patrician and Consul had clouded the usual keenness of his intellect and overthrown his shrewd judgment. He might have seen at some moments that, as a breath had made, so a breath could unmake him, and that the most ordinary common-sense dictated the advisability of his keeping on the best terms with the Imperial family. But of late Eudoxia had adopted towards him a tone almost of command, which he did not like. One day she spoke to him about the ravages of Tribigild, the insolence and probable treachery of Gaïnas, the certainty of a Persian war, and this intolerable menace of Stilico’s intervention. She gave him to understand that she did not think he had managed well, and blamed him for sending against the Gruthongs such a man as Leo, when he might have sent a man of proved valour like Aurelian, or a man of capacity like Count John.

‘Leave me to arrange these matters with the Emperor,’ he said curtly. ‘As for Aurelian, his appointment would have irritated Gaïnas; as for Count John—’ he shrugged his shoulders, and looked at Eudoxia.

A blush mounted her cheeks, dyed them with crimson, and rose to the roots of her fair hair; but she disdained to notice what she regarded as an insolent innuendo.

‘At any rate,’ she said, ‘you need not have sent a mere fat, incompetent glutton like Leo.’

‘Leo was my friend, madam,’ he said. ‘You are no judge of his military aptness.’

‘He has shown it egregiously,’ retorted the Empress. ’Who ever heard of a Roman general suffocated in a scramble through the mud, as he galloped away in headlong flight?’

‘It was his misfortune, not his fault.’

‘Such misfortunes seem to come thick in your Consulship.’

Eutropius could not stand this. Was he Consul and Patrician—had he broken his birth’s invidious bar—had he sold provinces and appointed præfects—had senators and nobles grovelled before him—had he made his name ring through the world side by side with Stilico’s, only to be mocked by a Frankish woman who owed her position exclusively to him?

‘Have a care, madam,’ he said rudely. ‘The same hand that raised you up can put you down.’

Eudoxia flushed into angry tears at the insult. Starting from her seat, she waved him aside with an imperious gesture, and made her way straight to the Purple Chamber, where were her two children. She took the little Flaccilla by the hand, and snatched the baby Pulcheria, afterwards destined to play so memorable a part in history, into her arms. Then, heedless of all Court ceremonial, she burst unannounced into the room where the Emperor was sitting, and flung herself, still weeping, at his knees. She could not speak for shame and anger, and the beautiful little children, understanding nothing, but catching the contagion of their mother’s emotion, wept and wailed with her, while Arcadius, deeply disturbed, kept asking what was the matter.

‘Am I your wife,’ she cried, when she found voice to speak, ‘or am I not? Am I your empress, or a slave and puppet of eunuchs? Are these your children? and is their mother nothing to you?’

‘What is the matter? What is the matter?’ Arcadius kept repeating.

‘Eutropius,’ she sobbed—’he has insulted me. I know that it is only because of him that you have withheld from me the title of Augusta, though I have borne you two children. But that is nothing. He says I owe my place solely to him. He threatens to drag me down when he likes. Is he emperor, or are you?’

Arcadius for more than a month had come to the slowly formed conviction that his supine abandonment of everything into the hands of his Chamberlain was likely to cost him dear. Nothing but the indolence which Eutropius had fostered, and the dread of innumerable worries from which the Minister had relieved him, had prevented him from taking some step for the general good. Eudoxia’s indignant fury was the last spark to fire the sluggish train. He would be a slave no longer to his own official. Eudoxia was now demanding his dismissal as the sole way to protect her from his insults, and, striking while the iron was hot, Arcadius acted on the impulse of a sudden resolution. He calmed Eudoxia’s passion by a promise that her wrongs should be redressed, and striking a silver gong with unwonted energy, bade the officer to go at once to Eutropius with the order to leave the Palace on pain of instant death.

The officer was thunderstruck. Was he really to give this message to the Patrician, the Consul, the Grand Chamberlain, who but an hour ago had wielded absolute control of life and death, and had been the most powerful man in the whole Empire?

He had not to carry his message far. Eutropius had marked the wild rage of the beautiful Empress. He recognised that he had gone too far; that she was not like one of those soft Roman and Eastern ladies who cared for nothing but scents and jewels. She was a Frank, the daughter of a Frank general, and felt herself capable of rule. The home from which she came had made her unfavourable to Eutropius, much as she owed to him. She had no intention to be his subordinate. He watched her go to the Purple Chamber, watched her hurry with her children into the presence of Arcadius, heard the tumult of cries and sobs, heard the voice of the Emperor raised to a tone which he had never heard before, heard him summon an officer. But even he did not anticipate the summariness and tremendous finality of his doom.

The officer as he passed had mentioned to others the tenor of his heart-shaking message; attendants gathered round the door had overheard what the Emperor said. The news spread through the throng of sycophantic hangers-on 206 in the Palace with the rapidity of lightning. In five minutes it was universally known. Eutropius received the mandate. He was informed that soldiers were coming to arrest him. He had not a moment to lose. The Emperor’s private passage spanned the Chalkoprateia, and led into the Church of St. Sophia. To reach it he had to walk through vast antechambers thronged with slaves, pages, soldiers, Court officials. Ten minutes earlier, if he had passed along, he would have been received with prostrations, and genuflexions, and hand-kissings, and titles of admiration, and wreathed smiles. Now he saw only scowls, and averted faces, and pointed fingers, and heard nothing but smothered curses and whispered jeers. The wretched man recognised that the sun of his fortune had suddenly plunged into deepest night. He hurried into the private passage, ran at full speed into the Cathedral, rushed up the steps among the astonished deacons and presbyters, and choosing for his asylum the most sacred and inviolable spot, he flung himself under the Holy Table, and grasped one of the gilded columns by which it was supported.

And there, still in the palm-woven robes of his consular dignity, in the purple mantle of his patrician rank, with dust scattered over his bald head, and grey thin locks, he lay and sobbed and grovelled in the dust.