Theodosius Defeats Eugenius

When he had finished his preparations for war, Theodosius declared his younger son Honorius emperor and left him to reign at Constantinople together with Arcadius, who had been made emperor earlier. Then he set out from the East for the West at the head of his troops. His army was made up not only of Roman soldiers but also of bands of barbarians from the banks of the Danube. It is said that when he left Constantinople and came to the seventh milestone, he went to pray to God in the church he had built in honor of John the Baptist. In the Baptist’s name he prayed that the Roman arms might succeed, and he begged the Baptist himself to help him. After offering these prayers he went on toward Italy, crossed the Alps, and took the first guard posts. Coming down from the heights of these mountains, he saw a plain before him covered with infantry and cavalry, and at the same time he learned that some of the enemy’s troops were lying in ambush behind him, in the hollows of the mountains. [a]

The advance guard of his army attacked the infantry posted in the plain, and a desperate and very doubtful battle followed. Then the army surrounded him. Since the men posted behind him were seizing the heights, he judged that he had fallen into the hands of men and could not be saved even by any who might wish to save him. He threw himself face down on the ground and prayed with tears, and God answered him at once. For the officers of the troops lying in ambush on the heights sent to offer him their services as allies, on condition that he would give them honorable posts in his army. Since he had neither paper nor ink at hand, he took up some writing tablets and wrote on them the high and fitting appointments he would give them, provided they kept their promise to him. On these terms they came over to the emperor.

The outcome still leaned to neither side, and the battle in the plain was still evenly balanced, when a tremendous wind came down full in the face of the enemy. It was such a wind as we have never recorded before, and it broke up the enemy’s ranks. The arrows and darts they shot at the Romans were turned back onto the bodies of those who had thrown them, as if the opposing ranks had hurled them. Their shields were wrenched from their hands and whirled back against them, along with filth and dust. Left standing like this, defenseless before the weapons of the Romans, many of them died, and the few who tried to escape were soon captured. Eugenius threw himself at the emperor’s feet and begged him to spare his life, but even as he was pleading, a soldier struck off his head. Arbogast fled after the battle and died by his own hand.

It is said that while the battle was being fought, a man possessed by a demon came into the house of God at the Hebdomon, where the emperor had prayed as he set out. He insulted John the Baptist, taunting him with having had his head cut off, and shouted these words: “You conquer me, and you lay snares for my army.” The people who happened to be there, waiting impatiently for some news of the war, were amazed. They wrote down an account of it on the day it happened, and afterward they found that it was the very day on which the battle had been fought. That is the history of these events.