Flavius Eutropius

The elimination of the rivals

Great chamberlain of Arcadius, becoming his favorite in April 395, it benefitted from the absence of his rival Flavius Rufinus in order to marry Arcadius with Eudoxie. Handling was so well assembled that the name of the wife was revealed only with the last moment. The assassination of Rufin in November by the men of Gaïnas offered from now on the capacity to him. It let the Visigoth Alaric devastate Greece in 396 without reacting and named it even Magister militum in Illyrie after having learned the news from the unloading of dreaded the Stilicon in Elide. It decided to confine the Visigoths in Epire in 397 and to declare Stilicon public enemy!

The complex of Icare

It receipt the title of great chamberlain then of Patrice, but to arrive at this high point of fortune, Eutrope had moved back in front of no means. Become by its flatteries absolute master of the will of the weak emperor, it could benefit from its ascending to draw aside all those which, to the court or in the provinces, carried shade to its ambition. The ones were lowered, the others disgraced, some even exiled; it made confiscate with its profit the goods of Abundantius its benefactor whom it sent in exile. Its audacity increased day in day as its power grew. It sold the public offices, created or removed the jobs, ruined the private individuals and pressed with the feet the nobility of which it was scorned. Among the men who had credit at the court, no one did not carry any more shade in Eutrope but Timase, famous general by his bravery and its exploits. The eunuque one solved its loss. Timase was exiled in the deserts of Egypt, where he died misérablement. Adulation and fear had raised to him statues of all metals, in all the forms and in all the districts; one saw of them even one in the room of the senate, decorated with a sumptuous inscription where his famous birth and his warlike exploits were raised. It was named there the third founder of Constantinople after Bysas and Constantin. Absolute master of Arcadius, it was made name Consul in 399. It was the first time that one saw the title of consul given to eunuque; it was also the last.

But dissatisfying the ones without being based on the others, he saw drawing up in front of him the majority of the dignitaries. Finally, Eutrope was driven out capacity in August 399 by Eudoxie, which found it now cumbersome. Handling in its turn the spirit of Arcadius, it exiled it with Cyprus, of which it was little of time after brought back towards Chalcédoine, to be there judged and decapitated.

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