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Indeed, the taking off of Macer in Africa by Trebonius, and Fonteius by Valens in Germany, had a fair pretense, they being dreaded as armed commanders, having their soldiers at their bidding; but why refuse Turpilianus, an old man and unarmed, permission to try to clear himself, if any part of the moderation and equity at first promised were really to come to a performance?
He was a man too active to be ignored, too unstable to be trusted, too famous for ascetic piety to be lightly made an open enemy. His friendship was compromising, his enmity dangerous. We left him professing the Nicene faith before the council of Tyana. For the next three years we lose sight of him. He reappears as a friend of Basil in 370, and heartily supported him in his strife with Valens.
He obtained the permission of selecting three hundred soldiers from each of the legions; and this separate detachment soon acquired the spirit of discipline, and the exercise of arms, which were almost forgotten under the reign of Valens.
The throne of the Roman world remained ten days without a master. At the end of that period the civil and military powers of the empire solemnly elected Valentinian as emperor at Nice in Bithynia. The new Augustus divided the vast empire with his brother Valens, and this division marked the final separation of the western and eastern empires.
Meletius and Cyril were still in exile, East and West were still divided over the consecration of Paulinus, and now even Alexandria had become the prey of Lucius. The leaden rule of Valens still weighed down the East, and Valens was scarcely yet past middle life, and might reign for many years longer.
The Visigoths crowded down to the Danube, and implored Valens to give them an asylum upon Roman territory. They had previously been converted to Christianity, mainly by the labors of Ulphilas, who had framed for them an alphabet, and translated nearly the whole Bible into their tongue. Fragments of this Moeso-Gothic version are the oldest written monument in the Teutonic languages.
This was the time when the ascetic spirit, which had long been hovering round the outskirts of Christianity, began to assume the form of monasticism. There were monks in Egypt monks of Serapis before Christianity existed, and there may have been Christian monks by the end of the third century. In any case, they make little show in history before the reign of Valens.
His prayers and threats, the authority of the sovereign, the sophistry of Valens and Ursacius, the distress of cold and hunger, and the tedious melancholy of a hopeless exile, at length extorted the reluctant consent of the bishops of Rimini.
The reply was so ill managed by Valens' counsellors that the Goths were offended, and came over the river as foes when they might have come as friends; and Valens was killed in battle with them at Adrianople in 378.
When Theodosius I, surnamed "the Great," was elevated to power as ruler of the East, that part of the empire was distracted in consequence of wars with the Visigoths who, flying from the Huns, had been granted a refuge in the Roman provinces of Moesia and Thrace. Ill-treatment by the Romans drove the Visigoths to revolt, and Valens, then Emperor of the East, set out with an army to punish them.
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