Arbogast (died 8 September 394) was a Frankish general in the Roman Empire who, in 392, attempted to start a pagan revival in the empire by installing Eugenius as a puppet emperor. Arbogast was defeated by the army of Theodosius I at the Battle of the Frigidus in 394, after which he committed suicide, while Eugenius was executed.
Biography[]
Flavius Arbogastes was the son of Flavius Bauto, a Roman statesman of Frankish extraction, and he lived in Galatia until his expulsion in the 370s. He entered the Roman Army under Gratian, and he became known as an extremely efficient and loyal field commander of the Roman Empire. In 380, Grantian sent Arbogast to aid Theodosius I against Fritigern's Goths in Macedonia. After Magnus Maximus seized power in 383, Arbogast refused to serve the usurper, instead serving Theodosius. In 388, Maximus was defeated and executed by Theodosius, and Arbogast was promoted to magister militum in 391. He made the young emperor Valentinian II his puppet, and Arbogast - who was in command of all of the Western Roman Empire's armies - answered only to Theodosius himself. In 392, Valentinian ousted Arbogast from his positions, and Arbogast had Valentinian hanged in his sleeping quarters after they had an argument; Arbogast claimed that the cause of death was suicide. Arbogast went on to install Eugenius as puppet emperor, and Arbogast sought to revive Hellenistic paganism in the empire through Eugenius, who appointed pagan senators to key positions in the Empire. In 393, his campaign to recapture Cologne from the Franks was the last time that the Romans would hold lands to the east of the Rhine River, and he also obtained fresh Frankish recruits as foederati during the campaign. In 394, however, Emperor Theodosius declared a holy war to defeat the pagan restoration in the West, and the two armies met at the Battle of the Frigidus in Slovenia. After the defeat, Arbogast wandered through the Alps hopelessly before committing suicide.