Battle of the Frigidus

Battle of the Frigidus
Battle of the Frigidus by Johann Weikhard von Valvasor (1689)
Date September 5 (0394-09-05)–6 394 (0394-09-07) Location near the Frigidus river (probably Vipava) (now western Slovenia) Result Theodosius gains Western Empire
Belligerents
Eastern Roman Empire Visigoths	Western Roman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Theodosius I, Timasius Stilicho, Alaric	Eugenius † Arbogast †
Strength
20,000-30,000 Romans 20,000 Goths	35,000-50,000/ About the same as Eastern Romans
Casualties and losses
Unknown 10,000 Goths	Unknown (Heavy)

The Battle of the Frigidus, also called the Battle of the Frigid River, was fought between 5–6 September 394, between the army of the Eastern Emperor Theodosius I and the army of Western Roman ruler Eugenius.

Because the Western Emperor Eugenius (though nominally Christian) had pagan sympathies, the war assumed religious overtones, with Christianity pitted against the last attempt at a pagan revival. The battle was the last serious attempt to contest the Christianization of the empire; its outcome decided the outcome of Christianity in the western Empire, and the final decline of Greco-Roman polytheism in favour of Christianity over the following century.

The defeat of Eugenius and his commander, the Frankish magister militum Arbogast, put the whole empire back in the hands of a single emperor for the last time until the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire (not considering the purely nominal claim of Zeno in 480). Theodosius passed the rule of the Western Empire to his younger son Honorius in the following year (with general Stilicho as regent while Honorius was underage).

In 313 Constantine I and Licinius I had legalized the Christian faith with the Edict of Milan. Theodosius I had made it the official religion of the State with the 380 Edict of Thessalonica. Conflict simmered between the Roman Senate, many of whom were not Christian, and the emperors in Constantinople and Milan who officially subscribed to Christian teachings. The senators wrote letters and argued for a return to traditional Roman beliefs, often stressing the protection and good fortune the old Roman gods had bestowed Rome since her beginnings as a small city-state. For their part, the Christian emperors emphasized the primacy of Christianity, although not all did so to the same extent. This clash between the Roman world's two main religions was for the most part merely an academic debate, without threats of armed uprisings, although small-scale violence was widespread.

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