Theodosius Marches Against Maximus

But the emperor Theodosius was deeply concerned, and fearing that the usurper might plan to murder the young Valentinian too, he raised a powerful army against him. While he was busy with these preparations, an embassy arrived from the Persians asking the emperor for peace. Then too the empress Flaccilla bore him a son named Honorius, on the ninth of September, in the consulship of Richomelius and Clearchus. In the same consulship, a little before, Agelius, bishop of the Novatians, died. In the following year, in which Arcadius Augustus held his first consulship together with Baudon, Timothy, bishop of Alexandria, died, and Theophilus succeeded him as bishop. About a year after this, Demophilus, the Arian bishop, died, and the Arians sent for Marinus, a leader of their own heresy, from Thrace and entrusted the bishopric to him. But Marinus did not hold that position long, for under him the sect split into two parties, as we will explain later: they invited Dorotheus to come to them from Antioch in Syria and made him their bishop. [a]

Meanwhile the emperor Theodosius set out for the war against Maximus, leaving his son Arcadius with imperial authority at Constantinople. When he reached Thessalonica he found Valentinian and those around him in great anxiety, because they had been forced to acknowledge the usurper as emperor. Theodosius, however, gave no public sign of what he thought. He neither rejected nor received the embassy of Maximus. But he could not bear a tyrant’s rule over the Roman empire under the pretense of an imperial title, so he quickly gathered his forces and advanced to Milan, where the usurper had already gone.