Theodosius, another emperor to adorn the Hippodrome,…

Theodosius, another emperor to adorn the Hippodrome, brings an obelisk from Egypt in 390 and erects it inside the racing track.

Carved from pink granite, it had originally been erected at the Temple of Karnak in Luxor during the reign of Tuthmosis III in about 1490 BCE.

Theodosius has had the obelisk cut into three pieces and brought to Constantinople.

(Only the top section survives, and it stands today where Theodosius placed it, on a marble pedestal.

The obelisk has survived nearly thirty-five hundred years in astonishingly good condition.)

The year 390 also sees the death of the Paphlagonian-born diplomat, rhetorician and philosopher Themistius, a teacher at Constantinople, where, apart from a short sojourn in Rome, he has resided all his life.

Though a pagan, he had been admitted to the senate by Constantius II in 355, and had been prefect of Constantinople in 384 on the nomination of Theodosius.

Themistius's paraphrases of Aristotle's chief cosmological treatise On the Heavens ("De Caelo") and of book twelve of the Metaphysics have reached us only through Hebrew versions.

In philosophy, Themistius is an eclectic, maintaining that Plato and Aristotle are in substantial agreement, that God has made men free to adopt the mode of worship they prefer, and that Christianity and Hellenism are merely two forms of the one universal religion.