T() Xi^autiJTov. No such law, however, has come down to us. ■ The word pagani (from pagus), properly villagers, peasantry, then equivalent to rude, simple, ignorant, iSiwttjs, drppav, first occurs in the rehgious sense in a law of Yalentinian, of 368 (Cod. Theodos. 1. xvi. tit. 2, 1. 18), and came into general use under Theodosius, instead of the earlier terms : gentes, gentiles, nationes, Graeci, '■ultores iimulacrorum, etc. The English heathen and heathenism (from heath), and tlie German Heiden and Heidenthum (from ^eic?e),have a similar meaning, and are prob- iibly imitations of the Latin paganisnius in its later usage. ' According to the Descriptiones Urbis of Publicus Victor and Sextus Rufus Festus, which cannot have been composed before, nor long after, the reign of Va- lentinian. Comp. Beugnot, 1. c. i. 266, and Robertson, 1. c. p. 260. J 62 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. successor of Yalentinian (375-383). After a tinie^ liowever, under the influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, this emperor went a step further. He laid aside the title and dignity of Pont'ifex 2Iaxi7nus, confiscated the temple property, abolished most of the privileges of the priests and vestal virgins, and withdrew, at least in part, the appropriation from the public treasury for theii' support.* By this step heathenism became, like Christianity before Constantine and now in the American republic, dependent on the voluntary system, while, unlike Christianity, it had no spirit of self-sacrifice, no energy of self- presei-vation. The withdrawal of the public support cut its lifestring, and left it still to exist for a time by vis inertiae alone. Gratian also, in spite of the protest of the heathen l^arty, removed in 382 the statue and the altar of Yictoria, the goddess of victory, in the senate building at Eome, where once the senators used to take their oath, scatter incense, and offer sacrifice ; though he was obliged still to tolerate there the elsewhere forbidden sacrifices and the public support of some heathen festivities. Inspired by Ambrose with great zeal for the Catholic faith, he refused freedom to heretics, and prohib- ited the public assemblies of the Eunomians, Photinians, and Manichffians. His brother, YALENTnoAJS' 11. (383-392), rejected the re- newed petition of the Romans for the restoration of the altar of Yictoria (384). The eloquent and truly venerable prefect Symmachus, who, as jprinceps senatus and first jpontifex in Eome, was now the spokesman of the heathen party, prayed the emperor in a dignified and elegant address, but in the tone of apologetic diffidence, to make a distinction between his private religion and the religio urbis, to respect the authority of antiquity and the rights of the venerable city, which had at- tained the dominion of the world under the worship of the gods. But Ambrose of Milan represented to the emperor, in the firm tone of episcopal dignity and conscious success, that the granting of the petition would be a sanctioning of heathen- ism and a renunciation of his Christian convictions; denied, ' Cod. Theos.