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Chapter XII.—While the Emperor Theodosius is engaged in Military Preparations against Maximus, his Son Honorius is born. He then proceeds to Milan in Order to encounter the Usurper.

But the Emperor Theodosius was filled with great solicitude, and levied a powerful army against the usurper, fearing lest he should meditate the assassination of the young Valentinian also. While engaged in this preparation, an embassy arrived from the Persians, requesting peace from the emperor. Then also the empress Flaccilla bore him a son named Honorius, on the 9th of September, in the consulate of Richomelius and Clearchus. ⁷²⁵ Under the same consulate, and a little previously, Agelius bishop of the Novatians died. ⁷²⁶ In the year following, wherein Arcadius Augustus bore his first consulate in conjunction with Baudon, ⁷²⁷ Timothy bishop of Alexandria died, and was succeeded in the episcopate by Theophilus. About a year after this, Demophilus the Arian prelate having departed this life, the Arians sent for Marinus a leader of their own heresy out of Thrace, to whom they entrusted the bishopric: but Marinus did not long occupy that position, for under him that sect was divided into two parties, as we shall hereafter explain; ⁷²⁸ for they invited Dorotheus ⁷²⁹ to come to them from Antioch in Syria, and constituted him their bishop. Meanwhile the emperor Theodosius proceeded to the war against Maximus, leaving his son Arcadius with imperial authority at Constantinople. Accordingly arriving at Thessalonica he found Valentinian and those about him in great anxiety, because through compulsion they had acknowledged the usurper as emperor. Theodosius, however, gave no expression to his sentiments in public; he neither rejected nor admitted ⁷³⁰ the embassy of Maximus: but unable to endure tyrannical domination over the Roman empire, under the assumption of an imperial name, he hastily mustered his forces and advanced to Milan, ⁷³¹ whither the usurper had already gone.

Footnotes

124:725

384 a.d. Honorius afterwards shared the empire with Arcadius, reigning in the West from 398 to 423 a.d. But although the whole of this period comes within the time of Socrates’ history, he does not mention Honorius but once again before his death.

124:726

Having been bishop of the Novatians for forty years; see chap. 21.

124:727

385 a.d.

124:728

Chap. 23.

124:729

Being in the ninety-eighth year of his age as appears from VII. 6.

124:730

Zosimus, however, says (IV. 37) that the embassy of Maximus was received by Theodosius.

124:731

Rather Aquileja as appears from Zosimus and other historians.