Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Fall of Rome.

As always, I'm your host Patrick Weiman.

Thanks for joining me today.

When Theodosius the Great, the last emperor to rule both the eastern and the western

halves of the empire, if only briefly, died at Milan in 395 following a crushing victory

over the use of the Eugenius, there was good reason to think that things would turn out

alright.

Theodosius' two sons were young and inexperienced, Arcadius, who took over in the east, was 17,

and Anorius, who would rule the west, was 10.

But there was still no reason to think that the empire was in real trouble.

There hadn't been a major border incursion in years, and Theodosius had signed a long,

lasting peace with the Sassanid King Shopur III a decade earlier.

The frontiers were strong and well defended.

The army, while weakened by the inter-Nesine slaughter of the Battle of the Frigidus and

the Civil War of 394, was at the peak of its effectiveness in the late period.

The economy was booming, with Transmediterranean trade reaching a peak of scale and integration

in the years around 400.

The imperial court and bureaucracy were effective, if ponderous, institutions that kept an increasingly

tight grip on the society and finances of the empire.

Still, there were signs of a few cracks.

Northern Gaul and especially Britain were slipping from the empire's grasp, and while

these were, and always had been somewhat marginal areas, it certainly wasn't a good sign.

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