OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 219 Tatian with the hope of a favourable event ; his confidence was fortified by the solemn assurances and perfidious oaths of the president, who presumed to interpose the sacred name of Theodosius himself; and the unhappy father was at last per- suaded to recall, by a private letter, the fugitive Proculus. He was instantly seized, examined, condemned, and beheaded, in one of the suburbs of Constantinople, with a precipitation which disappointed the clemency of the emperor. Without respecting the misfortunes of a consular senator, the cruel judges of Tatian compelled him to behold the execution of his son ; the fatal cord was fastened round his own neck ; but, in the moment when he expected, and perhaps desired, the relief of a speedy death, he was permitted to consume the miserable remnant of his old age in poverty and exile J The punishment of the two praefects might perhaps be excused by the exceptionable parts of their own conduct ; the enmity of Rufinus might be palliated by the jealous and unsociable nature of ambition. But he indulged a spirit of revenge, equally repugnant to prudence and to justice, when he degraded their native country of Lycia from the rank of Roman provinces ; stigmatized a guiltless people with a mark of ignominy ; and declared that the countrymen of Tatian and Proculus should ever remain incapable of holding any employ- ment of honour or advantage under the Imperial government.^ The new praefect of the East (for Rufinus instantly succeeded to the vacant honours of his adversary) Avas not diverted, however, by the most criminal pursuits, from the performance of the religious duties which in that age were considered as the most essential to salvation. In the suburb of Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak, he had built a magnificent villa ; to which he devoutly added a stately church, consecrated to the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and continually sanctified by the prayers and . . . Juvenum rorantia colla Ante patrum vultus stricta cecidere securi ; Ibat grandsevus nato moriente superstes Post trabeas exul. in Rufin. i. 248 [246-9]. The fads of Zosimus explain the allusions of Claudian ; but his classic interpreters were ignorant of the fourth century. The fatal cord I found, with the help of Tillemont, in a sermon of St. Asterius of Amasea. 8 This odious law is recited, and repealed, by Arcadius (a.d. 396), in the Theodosian Code, 1. ix. tit. xxxviii. leg. 9. The sense, as it is explained by Claudian (in Rufin. i. 234 [232]) and Godefroy (torn. iii. p. 279), is perfectly clear. . . . Exscindere cives Funditus et nomen gentis delere laborat. The scruples of Pagi and Tillemont can arise only from their zeal for the gloiy of TJieodosjus.
