A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

would have led to him becoming co-emperor alongside the young Arcadius, he
was assassinated by his rivals in November 395.
When Theodosius moved back to Constantinople in 391, he had left Italy
comparatively undefended. He had probably wished to avoid appointing a strong
man there who might have threatened his plans to keep the west for his son
Honorius. Valentinian, who remained in Gaul, under the protection of a leading
general, Arbogast, must have grasped that he was gradually being isolated by
Theodosius. His confidence undermined by his exclusion, he asked Ambrose in
the spring of 392 to come to Gaul to baptise him. Yet before the bishop arrived,
Valentinian was found dead at his court in Vienne, probably at his own hand.
Suicide resulted in exclusion from a Christian burial, so when Ambrose brought
the corpse back to Milan and buried it with imperial honours, the impression
given to the wider world was of an unsolved murder, which gossip attributed to
Arbogast. Arbogast was determined to protect himself by appointing a new
Augustus, one Eugenius, who already had links with the eastern court of
Theodosius and who might therefore not be seen as a threat to the emperor.
Theodosius was deliberately slow to recognise him: if Eugenius was accepted as
Augustus in the west, it would destroy Theodosius’ dynastic ambitions for
Honorius. Yet delay brought its own problems. Eugenius was mild-mannered but
effective. He and Arbogast launched a successful campaign across the Rhine,
and the new Augustus proved an impressive networker in Italy. Though
nominally a Christian, Eugenius was receptive to the pagan senators of Rome,
even sending them some of his prisoners from the Rhine campaign for slaughter
in the Colosseum. When he arrived in Milan in 393 he was welcomed by the
prefect, Nichomachus Flavianus. Ambrose conveniently arranged a provincial
tour so that he would not have to be in the city to declare his own allegiance,
while Eugenius wrote to Theodosius professing friendship. His gestures were
finally rejected when in January 394 Theodosius declared that Honorius had
been elevated to the highest imperial status, that of Augustus. The Theodosian
dynasty was now in place.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Nichomachus Flavianus was ready to exploit the
opportunity Eugenius’ support had given him. All the resentment against
Theodosius’ anti-pagan laws was expunged in a major revival of the ancient
pagan cults of Rome. The Altar of Victory was triumphantly returned to the
senate house. Temples were restored and a mass of ancient rituals were
celebrated once more. Nichomachus himself presided as a priest in a variety of
cults, including those of Mithras, Sol Invictus and the Egyptian deities Isis and