18.2 The near east: a.d. 301 to 400  (Page 3/3)

Besides being constantly at war with Persia under Shapur II, Constantine I had to put up with bitter battles which developed over creeds in his newly recognized Christian hierarchy. He attempted to resolve these differences by calling a council of Nicaea which proceeded to establish the orthodox creed that in essence said that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten not made, being of one essence with the Father, was made flesh for the salvation of men. Of some 318 bishops present, only two plus the unrepentant Arius, refused to sign the formula. These were exiled and an imperial edict ordered that all books by Arius should be burned. All Christians were agreed that pagan temples must be closed but Arianism remained in Asia Minor and throughout the Near East and "paganism" in the form of Mithraism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism and Cynicism was widespread. Constantine also had serious financial troubles so that he had to confiscate properties of cities and temples and finally impoverished the middle class and the peasants by tremendous taxation and land transfers. By A.D. 350, some years after his death, there were 80,000 people getting free bread in Constantinople. (Ref. 48 )

After a few murders of other claimants to the throne, Constantine's son, Constantius II, became emperor in 337 but he ruled for only nine years and accomplished nothing except to choose as Caesar (a top general) the half-brother of Gallus, Flavius Claudius lulianus, soon to be known as Julian. He was given command against the Alamanni and the Franks, but after five years he apparently sought greater things and marched against Constantius. The latter died before Julian reached him so he became emperor in 361 without further difficulty. Known as Julianus, the Apostate, he reversed the trend to Christianity, upholding paganism while attempting to make Mithraism the supreme religion. He was a learned man who devoted much time to books and the study of philosophies, while allowing full freedom to Christians. At his death in 364 while fighting with his armies in Persia, Hellenism and its philosophies disappeared for 11 centuries. After some further juggling of east and west emperors elected by their troops, Valentinianus I became emperor in the west in 364 and he named his brother Valens as co-Augustus in the east. He had his hands full battling Visigoths who won independence north of the Danube. All of the emperors' most dangerous enemy, however, still remained the Sassanid Dynasty of Persia, and this squeezing effect with the Goths in the north and the Persians in the south resulted in Byzantium giving up part of Armenia and Georgia in the Causasus to Persia. Finally in 378 the Visigoths crossed the Danube 80,000 strong, engaged the eastern co-Augustus, Valens, in a great battle at Adrianople and the latter was killed. Gratianus appointed Theodosius, a strong Christian and son of a successful general in Britain, to succeed him as co-emperor of the East. He immediately banned the practice of all current religions except Christianity (although it was still in a minority at the time) and handed over all Christian churches to the Trinitarians (Athanasiasts), being greatly influenced by St. Ambrose of Milan. When Theodosius massacred 7,000 people at Thessalonica in Greece in revenge for an insurrection, however, Bishop Ambrose forced him to do penance, thereby emphasizing the independence of the western church from imperial domination. When the Frank Count Arobast murdered the western emperor, Valentinian II, and set up the pagan Eugenius as Roman Emperor in 392, Theodosius, with Gothic auxiliaries, led by Alaric, defeated and killed both Arbogast and Eugenius at Frigidus in northeastern Italy. Theodosius died soon after this victory and he was the last emperor serving jointly with a western counterpart.

Following the death of Theodocius in 396 the eastern and western emperors were completely separate and served only in their own regions. The East benefited from this split, retaining the taxes and tribute that had previously been remitted to Rome. Egyptian wheat was rerouted to Constantinople and the new capital, which incorporated the city of Byzantium, soon grew to metropolitan size. Theodocius' son, Arcadius, governed the East under the prefect Rufina, but on their return from Italy Theodocius' eastern army assassinated Rufinus and effective rule fell to the eunuch, Eutropius, who in turn was murdered in 399 in part by a conspiracy of Goths in Phrygia. H.G. Wells (Ref. 229 , page 414) wrote that this new Byzantium was a damaged resumption of the Hellenic Empire of Alexander, although the monarch had a Roman title. (Ref. 48 , 8 , 221 , 229 , 213 )

At the base of the Anatolian peninsula, Armenia, under Terdat, a pro-Roman ruler, became the first entirely Christian state as it adopted the Monophysite variation in A. D. 303. Chosrov II reigned from 330 to 338 but by a treaty of 386 following one of the innumerable Roman-Persian wars, Armenia was divided between Byzantium and Persia, the latter getting the larger share. The Armenian alphabet was introduced by St. Mesrop about A.D. 400, such alphabet containing 38 letters and designed to handle the Armenian variation of the Indo-European language. (Ref. 8 )

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