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The Fall of Eutropius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The eunuch Eutropius began his ascendancy over Arcadius, Emperor of the East, in late 395, following the murder of the Praetorian Prefect Rufinus. Eutropius, despite his physical shortcomings, ‘sullied the Fasti’ by holding the consulate in 399. By the end of that same year, however, collusion between the barbarian general Gainas and Tribigild, leader of a rebellion of Ostrogoths in Asia Minor, resulted in Eutropius’ fall from power. He was exiled to Cyprus and executed shortly afterwards.
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References
1 In Eutr. 1.1–23, esp. 9f., ‘trabeata per urbes / ostentatur anus titulumque effeminat anni’, 26.
2 In Eutr. 2.Praef. 10 ‘annus qui trabeas hic dedit exilium’. For a general account of Eutropius' rise and fall see J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (repr. New York, 1958), i. 115ff., 126, and Cameron, A., Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), pp. 124–55Google Scholar.
3 The decree was promulgated in the summer of 397; see Cameron, , op. cit., pp. 86Google Scholar, 93, 124.
4 In Eutr. 2.Praef. 21f. ‘mollis feminea detruditur arce tyrannus / et thalamo pulsus perdidit imperium.’
5 Cameron, , op. cit., p. 144Google Scholar.
6 Cameron, , op. cit., p. 146Google Scholar.
7 Cameron, , op. cit., p. 149Google Scholar.
8 Seeck, O., Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt v (Berlin, 1913), p. 565Google Scholar, and Cameron, , op. cit., p. 144Google Scholar.
9 It is preserved at Cod. Theod. 9.40.17.
10 For Juvenal's popularity in late antiquity, see Cameron, , op. cit., pp. 315Google Scholar,328, and ‘Literary Allusions in the Historia Augusta’, Hermes 92 (1964), 363–77Google Scholar, p. 369.
11 Cf. Dio Cassius 58.10 κἂν τοcomflex;τῳ ⋯ ⋯πιστολ⋯ νεγνώσθη. ἦν δ⋯ μακρ⋯.
12 See e.g. Tac. Ann. 4.1 ‘corpus illi laborum tolerans’, and also the anecdote at 4.59 which tells how Sejanus showed his strength by shielding Tiberius during a rock-fall in a grotto in Campania.
13 He is a ‘semivir’ at In Eutr. 1.171.
14 In Eutr. 1.26f., 176f. ‘alteque tumescunt / serviles animi’, 181ff.
15 In Eutr. 1.252 ‘quid enim servum mollemque pudebit?’, 271ff., 320ff., Praef. 2.21 ‘mollis…tyrannus’, 2.112f. ‘necdum mollitiae, necdum, germana, mederi / possumus Eoae?’
16 In Eutr. 1.300ff.: Eutropius looks like an ape comically clothed in fine clothes, but with its hind quarters left exposed.
17 Though the description of Sejanus' abrupt fall from power to disgrace is clearly Claudian's primary model here, the apparently insignificant instrument of great events or reversals is found elsewhere in Juvenal: cf. 4.110 ‘tenui iugulos aperire susurro’ and especially 10.164–6 ‘ille / Cannarum vindex et tanti sanguinis ultor / anulus’. No doubt such reversals appealed to Juvenal's taste for both irony and rhetorical paradox. Cf. also Virg. G. 4.86f. ‘hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta / pulveris exigui iactu compressa quiescent.’