582 



THEODOSIUS THKOGONY. 



be proclaimed king of Italy a title that the em- 

 peror Anastasius was reluctantly obliged to sanc- 

 tion. However indefensibly he acquired dominion, 

 he governed with extraordinary vigour and ability. 

 He attached his soldiers by assigning them a third 

 part of the lands of Italy, on the tenure of military 

 service ; while, among his Italian subjects, he en- 

 AMiraged industry and the arts of peace. He even 

 improved the administration of justice, and, though 

 a Goth, was so far from delighting in the destruc- 

 tion of public monuments, that he issued edicts to 

 protect them at Rome and elsewhere, and assigned 

 revenues for the repair of the public edifices. Able 

 in peace, and victorious in war, he maintained the 

 balance of the West until it was overthrown by the 

 ambition of Clovis, who slew Alaric, the Visigoth 

 king, the remains of whose family and property 

 were saved by Theodore, who also checked the 

 victorious Franks in their further career. Like his 

 ancestors, he was an Arian, but was indifferent to 

 controversy, and never violated the peace or privi- 

 leges of the Catholic church. The particulars of 

 the government of this memorable prince, who 

 shed a short-lived lustre on the Gothic name, are 

 recorded in twelve books, by his secretary, the 

 senator Cassiodorus, a man of learning, who induced 

 his illiterate master to become a patron of letters. 

 Towards the close of his reign, an intolerant edict 

 of the Byzantine court against the Arians in its 

 dominions, induced Theodoric, against bis usual 

 policy, to meditate a retaliation against the Catho- 

 lics of Italy, which, however, was prevented from 

 taking place by his death. It is to be lamented 

 that an act of tyranny against two exemplary char- 

 acters, Boethius (q. v.), and Symmachus, his 

 father-in-law, closed his career. These senators 

 were both put to death, on the mere suspicion of 

 an intrigue between a senatorial party and the im- 

 perial court. This cruel act had no sooner been 

 perpetrated, than Theodoric was seized with re- 

 morse ; and a fever ensued, which terminated his 

 life in three days, in 526, the seventy-second year 

 of his age, and fifty-second of his reign. The 

 ordinary residence of this king was at Ravenna, 

 above which city his daughter Amalasuntha (left 

 regent of Italy until the majority of one of her 

 nephews) erected a splendid monument to his me- 

 mory. See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxxix, 

 and the article Goths. 



THEODOSIUS, surnamed the Great, a Roman 

 emperor, was the son of a distinguished general of 

 the same name, who was executed for the alleged 

 crime of treason, at Carthage, in 376. He was 

 born about 346, at Canca, in Galicia, or, according 

 to some accounts, at Italica, near Seville. At a 

 very early age, he obtained separate command; but, 

 on the execution of his father, he sought retire- 

 ment, until selected by the emperor Gratian, in 

 379, for his partner in the empire. To his care 

 were submitted Thrace and the eastern provinces, 

 which he delivered from an invasion of the Goths. 

 This emperor distinguished himself by his zeal for 

 orthodoxy and intolerance of Arianism, which he 

 put down throughout the whole of his dominions. 

 In the space of fifteen years, he promulgated the 

 same number of edicts against heretics ; and the 

 office of inquisitors of the faith was first instituted 

 in his reign. He liberated the provinces from the 

 barbarians with great prudence and diligence, and, 

 in the various warlike and other proceedings of his 

 reign, showed himself an able and equitable 

 monarch, except when under the influence of resent- 



ment or religious zeal. On the defeat and death 

 of Maximus, he became the sole head of the em- 

 pire, although he administered the affairs of the 

 West in the name of Valentinian, the son of Gra- 

 tian, then a minor. He passed three years in Italy, 

 during which period the Roman senate, which still 

 chiefly adhered to the old religion, begged permis- 

 sion to restore the altar of victory a request which 

 he at first was inclined to grant, until prevented by 

 St Ambrose, who also induced him to pardon some 

 zealots for having burned a Jewish synagoguge. In 

 390, a sedition took place in Thessalonica, the re- 

 sult of which has branded the name of Theodosius 

 with great odium. The origin of the catastrophe 

 was in itself very trivial, being simply the imprison- 

 ment of a favourite charioteer of the circus. This 

 provocation, added to some former disputes, so in- 

 flamed the populace, that they murdered their 

 governor and several of his officers, and dragged 

 their mangled bodies through the mire. The re- 

 sentment of Theodosius was natural and merited ; 

 but the manner in which he displayed it was in the 

 highest degree detestable and inhuman. An invi- 

 tation was given in the emperor's name, to the peo- 

 ple of Thessalonica, to an exhibition at the circus, 

 and when a great concourse of spectators had as- 

 sembled, they were massacred by a body of bar- 

 barian soldiery, to the number, according to the 

 lowest computation, of 7000, and to the highest, of 

 15,000. For this atrocious proceeding, Ambrose, 

 with great courage and propriety, refused him com- 

 munion for eight months ; and the docile, and, it is 

 to be hoped, repentant Theodosius humbly submit- 

 ted. About this time, the pious emperor crowned 

 his merits, as a foe to paganism, by demolishing the 

 celebrated temple of Serapis, and all the other 

 heathen temples of Egypt ; and he also issued a 

 final edict, prohibiting the ancient worship alto- 

 gether. On the murder of Valentinian by Arbo- 

 gastes, and the advancement of Eugenius in his 

 place, the emperor carried on a war against the 

 latter, which finally terminated in his defeat and 

 death. Theodosius did not long survive this suc- 

 cess; but after investing his sons, Arcadius and 

 Honorius, with the Eastern and Western empire, 

 he was carried off, at Milan, by a dropsical disorder, 

 in January, 395, in the fiftieth year of his age, and 

 sixteenth of his reign. He died possessed of a dis- 

 tinguished reputation, which was much confirmed 

 by his services to orthodoxy and his docility towards 

 the priesthood. He was doubtless a man of con- 

 siderable abilities, and possessed many public and 

 private virtues, which, however, will scarcely ex- 

 cuse the fierceness of his intolerance, or the bar- 

 barity of his anger and revenge. See Gibbon's 

 Decline and Pall, ch. xxvi, xxvii, and xxviii. 



THEOGNIS of Megara lived between 560 and 

 470 B. C., at a time when the popular party had 

 gained the ascendency in his native town. He and 

 many others of the aristocratic party were in conse- 

 quence banished. During his banishment, which 

 he spent partly in Sparta, partly in Sicily, partly in 

 Thebes, or immediately after his return to Megara, 

 he wrote his maxims and moral precepts in elegiac 

 verse. Their aristocratic tendency is explained by 

 the circumstances of his life. They are among the 

 most valuable remains of the gnomic poetry of the 

 Greeks, and have recently been arranged and illus- 

 trated in the edition of Welcker (1826), in a new 

 and ingenious way. 



THEOGONY is the doctrine of the generation 

 and descent of the gods, as drawn from the ancicnl 



