His panegyric and his satire preserve the same religious impartiality; award their most lavish praise or their bitterest invective on Christian or Pagan; he insults the fall of Eugenius, and glories in the victories of Theodosius.

Under the child,--and Honorius never became more than a child,--Christianity continued to inflict wounds more and more deadly on expiring Paganism.

Are the gods of Olympus agitated with apprehension at the birth of this new enemy?
They are introduced as rejoicing at his appearance, and promising long years of glory.

The whole prophetic choir of Paganism, all the oracles throughout the world, are summoned to predict the felicity of his reign.

His birth is compared to that of Apollo, but the narrow limits of an island must not confine the new deity-- ...