3.

Dismissing the narrative of Sozomen and Theodoret, according to whose account, this sedition, and the delivery of these discourses, must have been after the war against Maximus, learned men, and Tillemont especially (at length in note 27 appended to his Life of the Emperor Theodosius) have proved from far more certain notes of time, that these events took place before the war against Maximus. In opposition to that former opinion, he produces a most convincing argument from Chrysostom's own words, who in the sixteenth Homily (No. 2.), testifies that this was the second year since he had begun to preach; but he began when he was first ordained presbyter at the end of the year 385, or at the beginning of 386. Wherefore these discourses ought to be attributed either to the year 388, or rather 387. For the former opinion Baronius contends, and after him, Petavius and Henry Valesius, who assign them to the year 388, for this reason, that the tenth year of the reign of Theodosius then commenced, for the celebration of which the tax before mentioned was imposed. But what is adduced from Libanius for the defence of this opinion is full of perplexity, ¹ and is capable of being twisted to support either opinion. A still more certain indication than any of these is gathered from the circumstance, that the Emperor Theodosius was certainly at Constantinople during the winter and Lent of the year 387, in which year also the sedition must necessarily have occurred; for at the time of the sedition he was most certainly staying at Constantinople, ² but on the other hand at the same season in the year immediately following, he was living at Thessalonica. But what is alleged to the contrary from the celebration of the tenth year of Theodosius, which commenced in the year 388, amounts, as I said, to nothing; since it is evident from the Fasti of Idatius and of Marcellinus, that he anticipated by one year the celebration of the tenth year of his reign, in order that he might celebrate his tenth together with his son Arcadius, who entered upon the fifth year of his reign in 387; just in the same manner as Maximianus Herculius did, when he celebrated the twentieth, though it was only the eighteenth, year of his reign, along with Diocletion, whose twentieth year of empire it was. ³