EUGENIUS, USURPER. - When the powerful «magister militum» Arbogast freed himself by the murder of the young emperor Valentinian II, he did not dare himself assume the purple, for it still did not seem conceivable that a barbarian such as Arbogast was could command the Romans. He deemed it wiser to rule through an intermediary, and had Flavius E. proclaimed emperor, a teacher of rhetoric who had risen through the administrative career to the rank of «magister officiorum» and whose temperament and habits of life made him believe him incapable of escaping his dominion. However much, moreover, the version of a natural death of Valentinian II was invented, it was not possible to obtain the invoked recognition of the elder emperor who resided at Constantinople, Theodosius I, which was meant to signify a declaration of war.
In preparing for hostilities E., although a Christian, sought the support of the pagans, arranging that the expenses for the old idolatrous cults be assumed on the State budget, and in other ways favoring the pagans. The war thus became almost a war of religion, nor was this character left unemphasized, images of Jupiter Latiaris being erected on the part of E. at the passes of the Julian Alps, where the army of Constantinople would have passed, and Theodosius having recourse to prophecies of certain victory, which were said to come from a holy anchorite of Egypt.
The battle that took place in the Friulian plain, along the course of the Vipacco, was long and hard, and only on the second day of fighting (Sept. 6, 394), a furious wind having arisen that struck the soldiers of E. in the face, were these defeated. The intervention of natural elements appeared prodigious, and this last battle in which the pagan gods seemed to clash with the God of the Christians marked the definitive defeat of paganism. E., taken prisoner, was condemned to death, Arbogast killed himself (395).
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Roberto Paribeni