Rufinus and Eutropius successively chief Ministers

At his instance, Rufinus and Eutropius, successively chief Ministers of the Government of Arcadius, were put to death. He incited the Ostrogoths settled in Asia Minor to rebel, and brought them over to Europe to support his ambitious plans. He filled Constantinople with Gothic soldiers, and twice attempted to burn down the palace. And when, in view of the precautions taken against him, he found it prudent to quit the city, it was with the idea of returning with a larger force to make himself the master of the place. His plan failed, as such schemes often fail, through an accident of an accident.

A Gothic soldier treated a poor beggar woman roughly; a citizen took her part and struck the assailant dead. In the condition of the public mind, this proved the spark which produces a tremendous explosion. The city gates were immediately closed and the ramparts manned, while an infuriated mob went through the city hunting for Goths, and did not cease from the mad pursuit until the blood of 7000 victims had stained the streets of the city. Gain as was pursued and defeated, and eventually his head was sent to Constantinople by the Huns among whom he had sought refuge.

Column of Claudius Gothicus

This, indeed, did not put all further trouble at the hands of Goths to an end, but it was the knell of German domination in Constantinople and the East. The reign of Arcadius is the watershed upon which streams, which might have flowed together, separated to run in opposite directions and through widely diverse scenes of human affairs. The inscription, “ob deuictos Gothos” upon the column of Claudius Gothicus now acquired a deeper meaning.

But one cannot think of the reign of Arcadius without recalling the fact that for six years of that reign Constantinople was adorned by the virtues, and thrilled by the eloquence, of John Chrysostom. Although popular with the masses, he provoked the bitter hostility of the Court and of a powerful section of the clergy, by his scathing rebukes of the frivolous and luxurious habits of fashionable society, and by the strictness of his ecclesiastical rule.