When Maximus revolted against the feeble Gratian (emperor of the West), subdued his forces, took his life, and established himself in Gaul, Spain, and Britain, the Emperor Valentinian sent Ambrose to the barbarian's court to demand the body of his murdered brother. Arriving at Treves, the seat of the prefecture, where his father had been governor, he repaired at once to the palace of the usurper, and demanded an interview with Maximus. The lord chamberlain informed him he could only be heard before council. Led to the council chamber, the usurper arose to give him the accustomed kiss of salutation among the Teutonic kings. But Ambrose refused it, and upbraided the potentate for compelling him to appear in the council chamber. "But," replied Maximus, "on a former mission you came to this chamber." "True," replied the prelate, "but then I came to sue for peace, as a suppliant; now I come to demand, as an equal, the body of Gratian." "An equal, are you?" replied the usurper; "from whom have you received this rank?" "From God Almighty," replied the prelate, "who preserves to Valentinian the empire he has given him." On this, the angry Maximus threatened the life of the ambassador, who, rising in wrath, in his turn thus addressed him, before all his councillors: "Since you have robbed an anointed prince of his throne, at least restore his ashes to his kindred. Do _you_ fear a tumult when the soldiers shall see the dead body of their murdered emperor? What have you to fear from a corpse whose death you ordered? Do you say you only destroyed your enemy? Alas! he was not _your_ enemy, but you were _his_. If some one had possessed himself of your provinces, as you seized those of Gratian, would not he--instead of you--be the enemy? Can you call him an enemy who only sought to preserve what was his own? Who is the lawful sovereign,--he who seeks to keep together his legitimate provinces, or he who has succeeded in wresting them away? Oh, thou successful usurper! God himself shall smite thee. Thou shalt be delivered into the hands of Theodosius. Thou shalt lose thy kingdom and thy life." How the prelate reminds us of a Jewish prophet giving to kings unwelcome messages,--of Daniel pointing out to Belshazzar the handwriting on the wall! He was not a Priam begging the dead body of his son, or hurling impotent weapons amid the crackling ruins of Troy, but an Elijah at the court of Ahab. But this fearlessness was surpassed by the boldness of rebuke which later he dared to give to Theodosius, when this great general had defeated the Goths, and postponed for a time the ruin of the Empire, of which he became the supreme and only emperor. Theodosius was in fact one of the greatest of the emperors, and the last great man who swayed the sceptre of Trajan, his ancestor. On him the vulgar and the high-born equally gazed with admiration,--and yet he was not great enough to be free from vices, patron as he was of the Church and her institutions.