He was a soldier like Jovian, and held much the same rank at his election.  He was a decided Christian like Jovian, and, like him, free from the stain of persecution.  Jovian’s rough good-humour was replaced in Valentinian by a violent and sometimes cruel temper, but he had a sense of duty and was free from Jovian’s vices.  His reign was a laborious and honourable struggle with the enemies of the republic on the Rhine and the Danube.  An uncultivated man himself, he still could honour learning, and in religion his policy was one of comprehensive toleration.  If he refused to displace the few Arians whom he found in possession of Western sees like Auxentius at Milan, he left the churches free to choose Nicene successors.  Under his wise rule the West soon recovered from the strife Constantius had introduced.

[Sidenote:  Character of Valens.]

Valens was a weaker character, timid, suspicious, and slow, yet not ungentle in private life.  He was as uncultivated as his brother, but not inferior to him in scrupulous care for his subjects.  Only as Valens was no soldier, he preferred remitting taxation to fighting at the head of the legions.  In both ways he is entitled to head the series of financial rather than unwarlike sovereigns whose cautious policy brought the Eastern Empire safely through the great barbarian invasions of the fifth century.

[Sidenote:  Breach between church and state.]

The contest entered on a new stage in the reign of Valens.  The friendly league of church and state at Nicaea had become a struggle for supremacy.  Constantius endeavoured to dictate the faith of Christendom according to the pleasure of his eunuchs, while Athanasius reigned in Egypt almost like a rival for the Empire.  And if Julian’s reign had sobered party spirit, it had also shown that an emperor could sit again in Satan’s seat.  Valens had an obedient Homoean clergy, but no trappings of official splendour could enable Eudoxius or Demophilus to rival the imposing personality of Athanasius or Basil.  Thus the Empire lost the moral support it looked for, and the church became embittered with its wrongs.

[Sidenote:  Rise of monasticism.]

The breach involved a deeper evil.  The ancient world of heathenism was near its dissolution.  Vice and war, and latterly taxation, had dried up the springs of prosperity, and even of population, till Rome was perishing for lack of men.  Cities had dwindled into villages, and of villages the very names had often disappeared.  The stout Italian yeomen had been replaced by gangs of slaves, and these again by thinly scattered barbarian serfs.  And if Rome grew weaker every day, her power for oppression seemed only to increase.  Her fiscal system filled the provinces with ruined men.  The Alps, the Taurus, and the Balkan swarmed with outlaws.  But in the East men looked for refuge to the desert, where many a legend told of a people of brethren dwelling together in unity and serving God in peace beyond