Eudoxia, and the eloquent and noble-minded Chrysostom died in exile in Pontus. But the day of his departure from Constantinople witnessed a tumult and a fire, in which perished, among numerous other buildings, the church of St. Sophia and the senate-house.
This is far the most striking and significant episode in the reign of Arcadius. It was in 404 that Chrysostom went into his first exile. Arcadius's reign was now near its end. Not one single memorable deed has been recorded of the son of Theodosius the Great. In his last years the provinces of Asia Minor were harried by the Isaurians, a robber tribe issuing from the wild country under the Taurus range, and now becoming famous and formidable. So weak was the government, that it could not stop the incursions of these barbarians, and even Syria and Palestine did not escape their ravages. The administration of the empire seems to have become thoroughly disorganized under this feeble prince. It was a period of every sort of woe and calamity, in which famines and earthquakes and flights of devouring locusts are said to have rapidly followed on each other. All this misery was set down by the unhappy and discontented people to the contemptible character of the emperor and his persecution of Chrysostom. In 408 this wretched reign of outward splendour in the capital, and real feebleness and grievous disaster around it—an inauspicious beginning for the empire of the East—came to a close.
A little boy, eight years of age, the late emperor's only son, who had received the title of Augustus in his
