The gradual downfall of gladiatorial games in…

Yao Xing is described by historians as diligent and willing to listen to different opinions, ruling the empire efficiently during this period.

He engages in a number of campaigns on the various borders, enlarging Later Qin's territories and influence.

In response to astrological signs that are considered signs of disaster, he stops claiming the title of emperor in 399, instead using the title "Heavenly Prince" (Tian Wang), to show humility to the gods.

He also accordingly demotes his officials and nobles by one rank.

Yao Xing is an avid Buddhist, and it is during his reign that Buddhism first receives official state support in China.

The Jin Dynasty had developed an alliance with the Tuoba against the Xiongnu state Han Zhao.

In 315 the Tuoba chief had been granted the title of the Prince of Dai.

After the death of its founding prince, Tuoba Yilu, however, the Dai state had stagnated and largely remained a partial ally and a partial tributary state to Later Zhao and Former Yan, finally falling to Former Qin in 376.

The Former Qin state had begun to break apart as well after the defeat of its emperor Fu Jiān by Jin forces at the Battle of Fei River in his failed bid to unify China.

By 386, Tuoba Gui, the grandson (or son) of the final Prince of Dai, Tuoba Shiyijian, had reasserted independence, initially with the title of Prince of Dai, and then as the Prince of Wei, and his state is therefore known in history as Northern Wei.

Northern Wei was initially a vassal of Later Yan, but by 395 had rebelled against Later Yan, and by 398 had conquered most of Later Yan territory, establishing itself over the territory north of the Yellow River.

In 399, Tuoba Gui declares himself emperor, and that title will be used by Northern Wei's rulers for the rest of the state's history.

Silla submits to Goguryeo in 399 for protection from raids from Baekjae.

Many consider this loose unification under Goguryeo to have been the first and only true unification of the Three Kingdoms.

Yao Xing, also in 399, sends his brother Yao Chóng the Duke of Qi and the general Yang Foxong to attack the important Jin city of Luoyang, and in winter 399 captures Luoyang and the surrounding cities.

Many peasants are said to have fled to Silla during another round of conscription by Asin of Baekje for the battles against Goguryeo in 399.

Arcadius's prime minister, the eunuch Eutropius, having repelled an invasion of Asia Minor by the Huns in 398, is nominated consul for 399; he is the first eunuch to hold this office.

Tribigild, the leader of a colony of Ostrogoths in Phrygia and a military confederate of the Roman state (with the rank of comes or count) during a period when his people live under the dominance of the Huns, had had his honor wounded by an insufficiently extravagant reception at the imperial court in Constantinople, broken with Arcadius, and begun to sack the interior of Asia Minor.

The resulting population upheavals and rumors of Tribigild's increasing power force Eutropius to send an expeditionary force across the Hellespont.

In fact, Tribigild has met with increasing difficulty in fending off peasant militias, but when the imperial legions arrive he is easily able to subvert the loyalty of the fellow barbarians that are the fighting core of the force and scatter the rest.

Eutropius replaces the magister militum Leo with Gainas, but Gainas too fails to put down the invasions, returning to report that the rebel—who may be a kinsman—is insurmountable and that negotiation would be the safest tactic.

A demand for the lifeblood of Eutropius, perhaps negotiated in advance by Gainas and Tribigild, is met.

In collusion with the emperor's Frankish wife, Eudoxia, who has come to resent being dominated by Eutropius, Gainas has Eutropius banished to Cyprus.

The pleas of John Chrysostom keep him alive for a time, but he is eventually beheaded before the year ends.

(After the division of the Roman Empire in 395, Cyprus had remained subject to the Eastern Empire at Constantinople, being part of the Diocese of the Orient governed from Antioch.)

Persian records describe Bahram IV as a harsh man who entirely neglects his duties, and whose conduct had grown so unbearable that he is ultimately assassinated by his own troops, who in 399 surround him and shoot him with arrows.

His successor is his younger brother, Yazdegerd.

Southern Arabia is again independent at the end of the fourth century, under a Himyarite “king of Saba' and the Dhu Raydan and Hadramawt and Yamanat”.

Neoplatonism has transformed the position of the six-centuries-old Platonic Academy in Athens from one of skepticism into a new religious view.

Plotinus's doctrines, which reject the Empire's materialism and compulsive consumerism, become the official position of the Platonic Academy at the end of the fourth century.

In addition to this essentially Roman school, various other schools of Neoplatonism (such as the Syrian, Alexandrine, Pergamene) also have emerged.

Some of them, for example, the Pergamene, engage in theurgy, or magical practices.

Pope Siricius dies in November 399 and is succeeded by Anastasius, who numbers among his friends Augustine, Jerome, and Paulinus.

Jerome speaks of him as a man of great holiness who was rich in his poverty.