and gentle to man, his devotion to God was still more exemplary."[1]
Arcadius, the son of Theodosius, reigned thirteen years jointly with his brother Honorius. During their reign, the Goths invaded Italy, the Vandals and Alaric Gaul. Then also Pelagius in Britain,[2] and Julian in Campania, planted widely the seeds of that heresy which Saint Augustine and many other orthodox fathers attacked with innumerable authorities from Catholic writers, without succeeding in correcting their folly. Indeed their assurance seemed rather to be augmented by the controversy, than to be abated by listening to the truth. Whence the rhetorician Prosper poetically says:—
"Insidious, with the serpent's hellish spite,
A scribbler 'gainst Augustine dared to write;
Sure he was fed on Britain's sea-girt plains,
Or else Campanian plenty swell'd his veins."
Honorius reigned fifteen years with Theodosius the younger, son of his brother Arcadius. In whose times, when the Alani, the Suevi, and the Vandals desolated all Gaul, Gratian was elevated to the provincial sovereignty of Britain, but was speedily killed. In his stead was elected Constantine, a man taken from the lowest ranks of the army, and having no other merit than the promise of his name. Passing into Gaul to invade the empire, he did great mischief to the affairs of the state by suffering himself to be deluded by the Gauls into pretended treaties, till at last, under the orders of Honorius, the Count Constantine shut him up in the city of Arles, seized and put him to death. His son also, Constans, whom, from having been a monk, he had proclaimed Caesar, was by the Count Gerontius dispatched at Vienne. In these times also, A.U.C. 1164, Alaric, King of the Goths, besieged and took Rome, and having plundered the city and burned part of it, evacuated it after six days. This happened about 470 years after
