Arcadius, lazily riding in his gold-plated chariot, studded with large gems, in robes of silk embroidered with golden dragons, or playing the monarch on a throne of solid gold, with a crowd of adoring eunuchs before him, had no more appreciation than a peasant of a Cappadocian village of the true situation of the Empire. Eudoxia, beautiful, haughty, spoiled, revelling in the luxury of the palace, generous to the Church and the poor, floated soothingly with the stream. She lived the languid life of an Oriental princess, within the confines of the palace, and was rarely seen even by the greater part of the palace servants. The only occasion when the populace saw her quit the marble city, which the palace of Constantine had become, was when, in 398, she walked humbly, with downcast eyes, but clothed in purple silk, with a glittering diadem on her head, by the side of St. Chrysostom, as he transferred certain relics of the saints. Chrysostom would find her in a different temper in a few years. The arrogance of Eutropius at last passed all bounds, and he ventured in the year 400 to threaten to expel Eudoxia from the palace. Whether she knew it or no, the time was ripe for the destruction of the repulsive minister. The people groaned under his terrible exactions, his infamous legislation, and his bloody tyranny; the leaders of the troops were prepared to sacrifice him. Eudoxia took her baby girls, Pulcheria and Arcadia, in her arms, and fled in tears to the Emperor. Arcadius, “becoming an Emperor for a moment,” says Philostorgius, signed the sentence of his favourite, and the eunuch soon found people and soldiers pressing, like wolves, for his destruction. He took refuge in a church, where Chrysostom protected him from the fiery crowd, but quitted it after a time, apparently on the oath of either Eudoxia or Arcadius that his life would be spared. He was exiled, recalled, tried, and--oath or no oath--put to death by the public executioner. Eudoxia’s title of _nobilissima_ (“most noble”) had been elevated to that of _Augusta_ at the beginning of the year 400, and her second daughter was born in April of the same year.[33] She was now complete mistress of Arcadius and the Empire, and she published her dignity with such extravagance that the Western court sent an angry protest that, in causing her statues to be borne through the provinces, she had exceeded the privileges of her sex. In the following year she completed her ascendancy by giving birth to a boy, Theodosius II, and seemed to have a prospect of a long and luxurious, if useless, reign. But she had meantime quarrelled with Chrysostom, and she was to pass through a period of humiliation to a premature grave.