The name of Dominica occurs only in one authentic connexion during the reign of Valens. The Emperor passed the winter of 372–3 at Cæsarea in Cappadocia, where he encountered the stern and uncompromising champion of orthodoxy, St. Basil. Strong no less in his personal haughtiness--St. Jerome calls it pride--than in his glowing zeal for his Church, Basil emphatically refused to obey him, and was threatened with banishment. At once Dominica and her boy fell ill. Besides two daughters, she had had a son in 366, and this boy fell into a dangerous illness. It is said that Dominica learned in a dream that the illness was a divine punishment, but it is not impossible that her waking intelligence could arrive at that conclusion. Basil was summoned to the palace once more. Theodoret would have it that the bishop courteously breathed on the boy, and declared that he would recover if he received Trinitarian baptism. The earlier ecclesiastical writers, however, ascribe to him a firmer attitude. He asked Valens if the boy would receive orthodox baptism, and was told that he would not. “Let him meet whatever fate God wills then,” said the bishop, quitting the palace. The boy was baptized by the Arians, and died during the following night. A power even greater than that of eunuchs, and more imperious than that of Emperors, was rapidly growing. When, some days later, one of the favourites of Valens, who had risen from the kitchen, attempted to intervene in a discussion between the bishop and the Emperor, Basil curtly told him to confine himself to sauces and not interfere in Church matters. Five or six years later Valens perished in the war with the Goths, and Dominica passed to the fitting obscurity of private life. The one indication of spirit that is recorded of her is that, when the victorious Goths pressed on to Constantinople and invested it, she paid the citizens out of the public treasury to arm themselves against the barbarians. We turn from her vague and retiring personality to the more interesting figure of Justina, who had some years before begun to share the throne of Valentinian.