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.)