Soon idolatry persisted only in the rural districts where it escaped detection; the idolaters were peasants who continued to adore sacred trees and fountains and to assemble in proscribed sanctuaries.[179] The Christians commenced to call “pagans” (the peasants) those whom up to this time they had called Gentiles.  And this name has still clung to them.  Paganism thus led an obscure existence in Italy, in Gaul, and in Spain down to the end of the sixth century.

=Theodosius.=—­The incursions of the Germanic peoples into the empire continued for two centuries until the Huns, a people of Tartar horsemen, came from the steppes of Asia, and threw themselves on the Germans, who occupied the country to the north of the Danube.  In that country there was already a great German kingdom, that of the Goths, who had been converted to Christianity by Ulfilas, an Arian.  To escape the Huns, a part of this people, the West Goths (Visigoths), fled into Roman territory, defeated the Roman armies, and overspread the country even to Greece.  Valens, the emperor of the East, had perished in the defeat of Adrianople (378); Gratian, the emperor of the West, took as colleague a noble Spaniard, Theodosius by name, and gave him the title of Augustus of the East (379).  Theodosius was able to rehabilitate his army by avoiding a great battle with the Visigoths and by making a war of skirmishes against them; this decided them to conclude a treaty.  They accepted service under the empire, land was given them in the country to the south of the Danube, and they were charged with preventing the enemies of the empire from crossing the river.

Theodosius, having reestablished peace in the East, came to the West where Gratian had been killed by order of the usurper Maximus (383).  This Maximus was the commander of the Roman army of Britain; he had crossed into Gaul with his army, abandoning the Roman provinces of Britain to the ravages of the highland Scotch, had defeated Gratian, and invaded Italy.  He was master of the West, Theodosius of the East.  The contest between them was not only one between persons; it was a battle between two religions:  Theodosius was Catholic and had assembled a council at Constantinople to condemn the heresy of Arius (381); Maximus was ill-disposed toward the church.  The engagement occurred on the banks of the Save; Maximus was defeated, taken, and executed.

Theodosius established Valentinian II, the son of Gratian, in the West and then returned to the East.  But Arbogast, a barbarian Frank, the general of the troops of Valentinian, had the latter killed, and without venturing to proclaim himself emperor since he was not a Roman, had his Roman secretary Eugenius made emperor.  This was a religious war:  Arbogast had taken the side of the pagans; Theodosius, the victor, had Eugenius executed and himself remained the sole emperor.  His victory was that of the Catholic church.

In 391 the emperor Theodosius promulgated the Edict of Milan.  It prohibited the practice of the ancient religion; whoever offered a sacrifice, adored an idol, or entered a temple should be condemned to death as a state criminal, and his goods should be confiscated to the profit of the informer.  All the pagan temples were razed to the ground or converted into Christian churches.  And so Theodosius was extolled by ecclesiastical writers as the model for emperors.