Arcadius and Honorius Divide the Empire

The Emperor Theodosius died on the seventeenth of January, in the consulship of Olybrius and Probinus, and his two sons took over the government of the Roman empire. Arcadius took the government of the East, and Honorius that of the West. At that time Damasus was bishop of the church in imperial Rome, Theophilus of the church in Alexandria, John of Jerusalem, and Flavian of Antioch. The bishop’s chair at Constantinople, or New Rome, was held by Nectarius, as we mentioned in the previous book. [a]

The body of the emperor Theodosius was brought to Constantinople on the eighth of November in the same consulship, and was buried with honor by his son Arcadius, with the customary funeral rites. Not long afterward, on the twenty-eighth of the same month, the army also arrived that had served under the emperor Theodosius in the war against the usurper. When the emperor Arcadius, as the custom was, went out to meet the army outside the gates, the soldiers killed Rufinus, the praetorian prefect. For he was suspected of aiming at the throne, and he had the reputation of having invited the Huns into Roman territory. They are a barbarian nation that had already laid Armenia waste and was then making plundering raids into other provinces of the East. On the very day Rufinus was killed, Marcian, bishop of the Novatians, died, and Sisinnius, whom we have mentioned already, succeeded him as bishop.