The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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(A.D. 368-407) were remitted in the provinces of the eastern Prefecture.12 It is interesting to observe that the most intimate friend and adviser of Anthemius is said to have been Troilus, a pagan sophist of Side, who seems to have been the leader of a literary circle at Constantinople.13
§ 2. Regency of the Empress Pulcheria (A.D. 414-416)
In her sixteenth year Pulcheria was created Augusta (July 4, A.D. 414),14 and assumed the regency in the name of her brother, who was two years younger than herself. Anthemius soon disappeared from the scene; we may conjecture that death removed him; and he was succeeded in the Prefecture of the East by Aurelian, who in the preceding reign had been the leader of the Roman party in resisting the designs of Gaïnas.15 It seems probable that he was the chief adviser of Pulcheria.
One of her first acts was to remove from the court the eunuch Antiochus,16 who had been her brother’s tutor. She superintended and assisted in the education of Theodosius. It is said that she gave him special instruction in deportment; and she sought to protect him from falling under the influence of intriguing courtiers to which his weak character might easily have rendered him a prey. The new mode of palatial life, established in the reign of Arcadius, enabled women to make their influence increasingly felt in public affairs. The example had been set by Eudoxia, and throughout the whole space of the fifth and sixth centuries we meet remarkable ladies of the imperial houses playing prominent parts. The daughters of Eudoxia were unlike their mother, and the court of Theodosius II was very different from that of Arcadius. The princesses Pulcheria, Arcadia, and Marina, and the young emperor inherited the religious temperament of their father, with which Pulcheria combined her grandfather’s strength of character. The court, as a contemporary says, assumed the character of a cloister, and pious practices and charitable works were the order of the day. Pulcheria resolved to remain a virgin, and prevailed upon her sisters to take the same resolution, in which they were confirmed by their spiritual adviser, the Patriarch Atticus, who wrote for them a book in praise of virginity.
Theodosius had studious tastes, and he formed a remarkable collection of theological books,17 but he was also interested in natural science including astronomy. He was of a gentle and kindly nature, and it is recorded that he was reluctant to inflict capital punishment.18 He seems to have possessed none of the qualities of a capable ruler either in peace or war.19
To an unprejudiced observer in the reign of Arcadius it might have seemed that the Empire in its eastern parts was doomed to a speedy decline. One possessed of the insight of Synesius might have thought it impossible that it could last for eight hundred years more when he considered the threatening masses of barbarians who encompassed it, the oppression of the subjects, and all the evils which Synesius actually pointed out. The beginning of the fifth century was a critical time for the whole Empire. At the end of the same period we find that while the western half had been found wanting in the day of its trial, the eastern half had weathered the storm; we find strong and prudent Emperors ruling at New Rome. The improvement began in the reign of Theodosius. The truth is that this Emperor, though weak like his father, was far more intelligent, and had profited more by his education. Throughout the greater part of his reign the guidance of affairs seems to have been in the hands of prudent ministers who maintained the traditions of Anthemius and Aurelian. In the chronicles we do not hear much about the Senate; everything is attributed to Pulcheria or Theodosius. But it seems probable that the Senate exercised considerable influence on the policy of the rulers. The State was not threatened in this reign by the danger of a military dictatorship, and it was only towards its close that an unworthy eunuch enjoyed undue political power.
Soon after her accession to the responsibilities of government the young Empress was called upon to deal with serious troubles which had arisen in Egypt. The old capitals, Alexandria and Antioch, although they had been overshadowed by the greatness of Byzantium, were far from degenerating into mere provincial towns. They retained much of their old importance and all their old characteristics. In Alexandria, in the fifth century, with its population of perhaps 600,000 citizens,20 life was as busy, as various, and as interesting as ever. The Romans had found no city in the Empire so difficult to govern as that of the quick-witted and quick-tempered Alexandrians; the streets were continually the scene of tumults between citizens and soldiers, and revolts against the Augustal Prefects. “While in Antioch, as a rule, the matter did not go beyond sarcasm, the Alexandrian rabble took on the slightest pretext to stones and cudgels. In street uproar, says an authority, himself Alexandrian, the Egyptians are before all others; the smallest spark suffices here to kindle a tumult. On account of neglected visits, on account of the confiscation of spoiled provisions, on account of exclusion from a bathing establishment, on account of a dispute between the slave of an Alexandrian of rank and the Roman foot-soldier as to the value or non-value of their respective slippers, the legions were under the necessity of charging among the citizens of Alexandria.”21
Instead of healing the discords and calming the intractable temper of this turbulent metropolis by diffusing a spirit of amity and long-suffering, Christianity only gave the citizens new things to quarrel about, new causes for tumult, new formulae and catchwords which they could use as pretexts for violence and rioting.
The troubles which agitated Alexandria, when Pulcheria became regent, were principally due to the bigotry and ambition of the Patriarch. In this office, Theophilus, whom we met as the enemy of Chrysostom, had been succeeded (A.D. 412) by his nephew Cyril, who was no less ambitious to elevate the prestige of his see and was even more unscrupulous in the arts of intrigue. In the first years of his pontificate his chief objects were to exalt his own authority above that of the civil governor of Egypt, the Augustal Prefect, and to make Alexandria an irreproachably Christian city by extirpating paganism which still flourished in its schools, and by persecuting the Jews who for centuries had formed a large minority of the population. He was an ecclesiastical tyrant of the most repulsive type, and the unfortunate Hypatia was the most illustrious of his victims.
Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, a distinguished mathematician,22 who was a professor at the Museum or university of Alexandria. Trained in mathematics by her father, she left that pure air for the deeper and more agitating study of metaphysics, and probably became acquainted with the older Neoplatonism of Plotinus23 which, in the Alexandrian Museum, had been transmitted untainted by the later developments of Porphyrius and Iamblichus. When she had completed her education she was appointed to the chair of philosophy, and her extraordinary talents, combined with her beauty, made her a centre of interest in the cultivated circles at Alexandria, and drew to her lecture-room crowds of admirers. Her free and unembarrassed intercourse with educated men and the publicity of her life must have given rise to many scandals and backbitings, and her own sex doubtless looked upon her with suspicion, and called her masculine and immodest. She used to walk in the streets in her academical gown (τρίβων, the philosopher’s cloak) and explain to all who wished to learn, difficulties in Plato or Aristotle.24 Of the influence of her personality on her pupils we have still a record in some letters of Synesius of Cyrene, who, although his studies under her auspices did not hinder him from adopting Christianity, always remained at heart a semi-pagan, and was devotedly attached to his instructress. That some of her pupils fell in love with her is not surprising,25 but Hypatia never married.
The cause of the tragic fate, which befell her in March A.D. 415, is veiled in obscurity. We know that she was an intimate friend of the pagan Orestes, the Prefect of Egypt; and she was an object of hatred to Cyril, both because she was an enthusiastic preacher of pagan doctrines and because she was the Prefect’s friend.
The hatred of the Jews for the Patriarch brought the strained relations between Cyril and Orestes to a crisis. On one occasion, seeing a notorious creature of Cyril present in an assembly, they cried out that the spy should be arrested, and Orestes gratified them by inflicting public chastisement on him. The menaces which Cyril, enraged by this act, fulminated against the Jews led to a bloody vengeance on the Christian population. A report was spread at night that the great church was on fire, and when the Christians flocked to the spot the Jews surrounded and massacred them. Cyril replied to this horror by banishing all Hebrews from the city and allowing the Christians