He received a fine education, studying rhetoric and philosophy, and mastered the Latin and Greek languages.

[3] After his parents died, his sister Afrositty was admitted to a community of virgins, and he gave all their riches to the poor, and lived an ascetic life.

He reached Constantinople in 383, and continued as tutor in the imperial family for eleven years, during the last three of which he also had charge of his original pupil Arcadius's brother, Honorius.

[4] Coming one day to see his sons at their studies, Theodosius found them sitting while Arsenius talked to them standing.

On his arrival at court Arsenius had been given a splendid establishment, and probably because the Emperor so desired, he lived in great pomp.

John the Dwarf, to whose cell he was conducted, though previously warned of the quality of his visitor, took no notice of him and left him standing by himself while he invited the rest to sit down at table.

When, after long search, his place of retreat was discovered, he not only refused to return to court and act as adviser to his former pupil, now Roman Emperor, Arcadius, but he would not even be his almoner to the poor and the monasteries of the neighbourhood.