Eusebius the eunuch, and
the Barbarian Allobich, succeeded to the command of the bed-chamber and
of the guards; and the mutual jealousy of these subordinate ministers
was the cause of their mutual destruction. By the insolent order of the
count of the domestics, the great chamberlain was shamefully beaten to
death with sticks, before the eyes of the astonished Emperor; and the
subsequent assassination of Allobich, in the midst of a public
procession, is the only circumstance of his life in which Honorius
discovered the faintest symptom of courage or resentment.
Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich had contributed their part
to the ruin of the Empire, by opposing the conclusion of a treaty which
Jovius, from a selfish, and perhaps a criminal, motive, had negotiated
with Alaric, in a personal interview under the walls of Rimini. During
the absence of Jovius, the Emperor was persuaded to assume a lofty tone
of inflexible dignity, such as neither his situation nor his character
could enable him to support; and a letter, signed with the name of
Honorius, was immediately despatched to the praetorian prefect, granting
him a free permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly
refusing to prostitute the military honors of Rome to the proud demands
of a Barbarian.
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