But the poverty of the Egyptians was not the only cause why they built

no more temples. Though the colossal statue of Amenhôthes uttered

its musical notes every morning at sunrise, still tuneful amid the

desolation with which it was surrounded, and the Nile was still

worshipped at midsummer by the husbandman to secure its fertilising

overflow; nevertheless, the religion itself for which the temples had

been built was fast giving way before the silent spread of Christianity.

The religion of the Egyptians, unlike that of the Greeks, was no

longer upheld by the magistrate; it rested solely on the belief of its

followers, and it may have merged into Christianity the faster for the

greater number of truths which were contained in it than in the paganism

of other nations. The scanty hieroglyphical records tell us little

of thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Indeed that cumbersome mode of

writing, which alone was used in religious matters, was little fitted

for anything beyond the most material parts of their mythology. Hence

we must not believe that the Egyptian polytheism was quite so gross as

would appear from the sculptures; and indeed we there learn that they

believed, even at the earliest times, in a resurrection from the tomb, a

day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments.

The priests made a great boast of their learning and philosophy, and

could each repeat by heart those books of Thot which belonged to his own

order. The singer, who walked first in the sacred processions, bearing

the symbols of music, could repeat the books of hymns and the rules for

the king’s life. The soothsayer, who followed, carrying a clock and a

palm-branch, the emblem of the year, could repeat the four astrological

books; one on the moon’s phases, one on the fixed stars, and two on

their heliacal risings. The scribe, who walked next, carrying a book

and the flat rule which held the ink and pen, was acquainted with the

geography of the world and of the Nile, and with those books which

describe the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and the furniture

of the temple and consecrated places. The master of the robes understood

the ten books relating to education, to the marks on the sacred

heifers, and to the worship of the gods, embracing the sacrifices, the

first-fruits, the hymns, the prayers, the processions, and festivals.

The prophet or preacher, who walked last, carrying in his arms the

great water-pot, was the president of the temple, and learned in the ten

books, called hieratic, relating to the laws, the gods, the management

of the temples, and the revenue. Thus, of the forty-two chief books of

Thot, thirty-six were learned by these priests, while the remaining

six on the body, its diseases, and medicines, were learned by the

Pastophori, priests who carried the image of the god in a small shrine.

These books had been written at various times: some may have been very

old, but some were undoubtedly new; they together formed the Egyptian

bible. Apollonius, or Apollonides Horapis, an Egyptian priest, had

lately published a work on these matters in his own language, named

Shomenuthi, _the book of the gods_.

[Illustration: 130.jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION]

But the priests were no longer the earnest, sincere teachers as of

old; they had invented a system of secondary meanings, by which they

explained away the coarse religion of their statues and sacred animals.

They had two religions, one for the many and one for the few; one,

material and visible, for the crowds in the outer courtyards, in which

the hero was made a god and every attribute of deity was made a person;

and another, spiritual and intellectual, for the learned in the schools

and sacred colleges. Even if we were not told, we could have no doubt

but the main point of secret knowledge among the learned was a disbelief

in those very doctrines which they were teaching to the vulgar, and

which they now explained among themselves by saying that they had a

second meaning. This, perhaps, was part of the great secret of the

goddess Isis, the secret of Abydos, the betrayer of which was more

guilty than he who should try to stop the _baris_ or sacred barge in the

procession on the Nile. The worship of gods, before whose statues the

nation had bowed with unchanging devotion for at least two thousand

years was now drawing to a close. Hitherto the priests had been able to

resist all new opinions.

[Illustration: 131.jpg SHRINE]

The name of Amon-Ra had at one time been cut out from the Theban

monuments to make way for a god from Lower Egypt; but it had been cut in

again when the storm passed by. The Jewish monotheism had left the

crowd of gods unlessened. The Persian efforts had overthrown statues and

broken open temples, but had not been able to introduce their worship of

the sun. The Greek conquerors had yielded to the Egyptian mind without

a struggle; and Alexander had humbly begged at the door of the temple

to be acknowledged as a son of Amon. But in the fulness of time

these opinions, which seemed as firmly based as the monuments which

represented them, sunk before a religion which set up no new statues,

and could command no force to break open temples.

The Egyptian priests, who had been proud of the superiority of their own

doctrines over the paganism of their neighbours, mourned the overthrow

of their national religion. “Our land,” says the author of Hermes

Trismegistus, “is the temple of the world; but, as wise men should

foresee all things, you should know that a time is coming when it will

seem that the Egyptians have by an unfailing piety served God in

vain. For when strangers shall possess this kingdom religion will

be neglected, and laws made against piety and divine worship, with

punishment on those who favour it. Then this holy seat will be full of

idolatry, idols’ temples, and dead men’s tombs. O Egypt, Egypt, there

shall remain of thy religion but vague stories which posterity will

refuse to believe, and words graven in stone recounting thy piety. The

Scythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous neighbour shall dwell in

Egypt. The Divinity shall reascend into the heaven; and Egypt shall be a

desert, widowed of men and gods.”

The spread of Christianity among the Egyptians was such that their

teachers found it necessary to supply them with a life of Jesus, written

in their own language, that they might the more readily explain to

them his claim to be obeyed, and the nature of his commands. The Gospel

according to the Egyptians, for such was the name this work bore, has

long since been lost, and was little quoted by the Alexandrians. It was

most likely a translation from one of the four gospels, though it had

some different readings suited to its own church, and contained some

praise of celibacy not found in the New Testament; but it was not valued

by the Greeks, and was lost on the spread of the Koptic translation of

the whole New Testament.

The grave, serious Christians of Upper Egypt were very unlike the lively

Alexandrians. But though the difference arose from peculiarities of

national character, it was only spoken of as a difference of opinion.

The Egyptians formed an ascetic sect in the church, who were called

heretics by the Alexandrians, and named Docetas, because they taught

that the Saviour was a god, and did not really suffer on the cross, but

was crucified only _in appearance_. They of necessity used the Gospel

according to the Egyptians, which is quoted by Cassianus, one of their

writers; many of them renounced marriage with, the other pleasures

and duties of social life, and placed their chief virtue in painful

self-denial; and out of them sprang that remarkable class of hermits,

monks, and fathers of the desert who in a few centuries covered Europe

with monasteries.

It is remarkable that the translation of a gospel into Koptic introduced

a Greek alphabet into the Koptic language. Though for all religious

purposes the scribes continued to use the ancient hieroglyphics, in

which we trace the first steps by which pictures are made to represent

words and syllables rather than letters, yet for the common purposes of

writing they had long since made use of the _enchorial_ or common hand,

in which the earlier system of writing is improved by the characters

representing only letters, though sadly too numerous for each to have a

fixed and well-known force. But, as the hieroglyphics were also always

used for carved writing on all subjects, and the common hand only used

on papyrus with a reed pen, the latter became wholly an indistinct

running hand; it lost that beauty and regularity which the

hieroglyphics, like the Greek and Roman characters, kept by being carved

on stone, and hence it would seem arose the want of a new alphabet for

the New Testament. This was made by merely adding to the Greek alphabet

six new letters borrowed from the hieroglyphics for those sounds which

the Greeks did not use; and the writing was then written from left to

right like a European language instead of in either direction according

to the skill or fancy of the scribe.

It was only upon the ancient hieroglyphics thus falling into disuse that

the Greeks of Alexandria, almost for the first time, had the

curiosity to study the principles on which they were written. Clemens

Alexandrinus, who thought no branch of knowledge unworthy of his

attention, gives a slight account of them, nearly agreeing with the

results of our modern discoveries. He mentions the three kinds of

writing; first, the _hieroglyphic_; secondly, the _hieratic_, which is

nearly the same, but written with a pen, and less ornamental than

the carved figures; and thirdly, the _demotic_, or common alphabetic

writing. He then divides the hieroglyphic into the alphabetic and

the symbolic; and lastly, he divides the symbolic characters into the

imitative, the figurative, and those formed like riddles. As instances

of these last we may quote, for the first, the three zigzag lines which

by simple imitation mean “water;” for the second, the oval which mean

“a name,” because kings’ names were written within ovals; and for the

third, a cup with three anvils, which mean “Lord of Battles,” because

“cup” and “lord” have nearly the same sound _neb_, and “anvils” and

“battles” have nearly the same sound _meshe_.

In this reign Pantonus of Athens, a Stoic philosopher, held the first

place among the Christians of Alexandria. He is celebrated for uniting

the study of heathen learning with a religious zeal which led him to

preach Christianity in Abyssinia.

[Illustration: 135.jpg HIEROGLYPHIC, HIERATIC, AND DEMOTIC WRITING]

He introduced a taste for philosophy among the Christians; and, though

Athenagoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founder

of the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learned

Christian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century. To

have been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learning

among the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no great

praise. Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness over

the world? But we must remember that a new religion cannot be introduced

without some danger that learning and science may get forbidden,

together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in the

same schools; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagans

and Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians,

learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion;

and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have founded

a school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearly

two centuries. Pantænus has left no writings of his own, and is best

known through his pupil or fellow-student, Clemens. He is said to have

brought with him to Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he met

with on his travels, a copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel in the original

Hebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which, if we possessed it, would

settle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all that

now bears that Apostle’s name in the Greek translation.

The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish him

from Clemens of Rome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeeded

Pantænus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time a

voluminous writer. He was in his philosophy a platonist, though

sometimes called of the Eclectic school. He has left an Address to the

Gentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eight

books of Stromata, or _collections_, which he wrote to describe the

perfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model for

his imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects of

Gnostics “falsely so called.” By his advice, and by the imitation of

Christ, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, to

knowledge; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant and

then a son; he is to become at last a god walking in the flesh.

Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief mark

of the Gnostic sect. He thought much of the sacred power of numbers.

Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot,

which, when written in Greek numerals thus, IHT formed the sacred sign

for the name of Jesus. Ten was a perfect number, and is that of the

commandments given to Moses. Seven was a glorious number, and there

are seven Pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week; and the

two fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude were

miraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egypt

under Joseph. Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventh

day, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus; but here

there is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud of

some zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found in

the pagan poets.

During the reign of Pertinax, which lasted only three months (194 A.D.),

we find no trace of his power in Egypt, except the money which the

Alexandrians coined in his name. It seems to have been the duty of the

prefect of the mint, as soon as he heard of an emperor’s death, to lose

no time in issuing coins in the name of his successor. It was one of the

means to proclaim and secure the allegiance of the province for the new

emperor.

During the reign of Commodus, Pescennius Niger had been at the head of

the legion that was employed in Upper Egypt in stopping the inroads of

their troublesome neighbours, who already sometimes bore the name of

Saracens. He was a hardy soldier, and strict in his discipline, while he

shared the labours of the field and of the camp with the men under him.

He would not allow them the use of wine; and once, when the troops that

guarded the frontier at Syênê (Aswan) sent to ask for it, he bluntly

answered, “You have got the Nile to drink, and cannot possibly want

more.” Once, when a cohort had been routed by the Saracens, the men

complained that they could not fight without wine; but he would not

relax in his discipline. “Those who have just now beaten you,” said

Niger, “drink nothing but water.” He gained the love and thanks of the

people of Upper Egypt by thus bridling the lawlessness of the troops;

and they gave him his statue cut in black basalt, in allusion to his

name Niger. This statue was placed in his Roman villa.

[Illustration: 138b.jpg A NATIVE OF ASWAN]

But on the death of Pertinax, when Septimus Severus declared himself

emperor in Pannonia, Niger, who was then in the province of Syria, did

the same. Egypt and the Egyptian legions readily and heartily joined

his party, which made it unnecessary for him to stay in that part of

the empire; so he marched upon Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia. But there,

after a few months, he was met by the army of his rival, who also sent

a second army into Egypt; and he was defeated and slain at Cyzicus in

Mysia, after having been acknowledged as emperor in Egypt and Syria for

perhaps a year and a few months.

[Illustration: 139b.jpg PAINTING AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTH TOMB]

We find no Alexandrian coins of Niger, although we cannot allow a

shorter space of time to his reign than one whole year, together with

a few months of the preceding and following years. Within that time

Severus had to march upon Rome against his first rival, Julian, to

punish the praetorian guards, and afterwards to conquer Niger.

After the death of his rival, when Severus was the undisputed master of

the empire, and was no longer wanted in the other provinces, he found

leisure, in A.D. 196, to visit Egypt; and, like other active-minded

travellers, he examined the pyramids of Memphis and the temples at

Thebes, and laughed at the worship of Serapis and the Egyptian animals.

His visit to Alexandria wras marked by many new laws. Now that the

Greeks of that city, crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, had

lost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared by

their Roman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus. He

gave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege that

had hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freely

granted in other provinces where rebellion was less dreaded. He also

ornamented the city with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, which

was named after himself the Bath of Severus.

Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, forbidding anybody, under

a severe punishment, from becoming Jew or Christian. But he who gives

the blow is likely to speak of it more lightly than he who smarts under

it; and we learn from the historian of the Church that, in the tenth

year of this reign, the Christians suffered persecution from their

governors and their fellow-citizens. Among others who then lost their

lives for their religion was Leonides, the father of Origen. He left

seven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly celebrated

writer, was only sixteen years old, but was already deeply read in

the Scriptures, and in the great writers of Greece. As the property of

Leonides was forfeited, his children were left in poverty; but the young

Origen was adopted by a wealthy lady, zealous for the new religion,

by whose help he was enabled to continue his studies under Clemens. In

order to read the Old Testament in the original, he made himself master

of Hebrew, which was a study then very unusual among the Greeks, whether

Jews or Christians.

In this persecution of the Church all public worship was forbidden to

the Christians; and Tertullian of Carthage eloquently complains that,

while the emperor allowed the Egyptians to worship cows, goats, or

crocodiles, or indeed any animal they chose, he only punished those that

bowed down before the Creator and Governor of the world. Of course,

at this time of trouble the catechetical school was broken up and

scattered, so that there was no public teaching of Christianity in

Alexandria. But Origen ventured to do that privately which was forbidden

to be done openly; and, when the storm had blown over, Demetrius, the

bishop, appointed him to that office at the head of the school which he

had already so bravely taken upon himself in the hour of danger. Origen

could boast of several pupils who added their names to the noble list of

martyrs who lost their lives for Christianity, among whom the best known

was Plutarch, the brother of Heraclas. Origen afterwards removed for a

time to Palestine, and fell under the displeasure of his own bishop for

being there ordained a presbyter.

In Egypt Severus seems to have dated the years of his reign from the

death of Niger, though he had reigned in Rome since the deaths of

Pertinax and Julian. His Egyptian coins are either copper, or brass

plated with a little silver; and after a few reigns even those last

traces of a silver coinage are lost in this falling country. In tracing

the history of a word’s meaning we often throw a light upon the customs

of a nation. Thus, in Rome, gold was so far common that avarice was

called the love of gold; while in Greece, where silver was the metal

most in use, money was called _argurion_. In the same way it is

curiously shown that silver was no longer used in Egypt by our finding

that the brass coin of one hundred and ten grains weight, as being the

only piece of money seen in circulation, was named an _argurion_.

The latter years of the reign of Caracalla were spent in visiting the

provinces of his wide empire; and, after he had passed through Thrace

and Asia Minor, Egypt had the misfortune to be honoured by a visit from

its emperor. The satirical Alexandrians, who in the midst of their own

follies and vices were always clever in lashing those of their rulers,

had latterly been turning their unseemly jokes against Caracalla. They

had laughed at his dressing like Achilles and Alexander the Great, while

in his person he was below the usual height; and they had not forgotten

his murder of his brother, and his talking of marrying his own mother.

Some of these dangerous witticisms had reached his ears at Rome, and

they were not forgotten. But Caracalla never showed his displeasure;

and, as he passed through Antioch, he gave out that he was going to

visit the city founded by Alexander the Great, and to consult the oracle

in the temple of Serapis.

The Alexandrians in their joy got ready the hecatombs for his

sacrifices; and the emperor entered their city through rows of torches

to the sound of soft music, while the air was sweetened with costly

scents, and the road scattered with flowers. After a few days he

sacrificed in the temple of Serapis, and then visited the tomb of

Alexander, where he took off his scarlet cloak, his rings, and his

girdle covered with precious stones, and dutifully laid them on the

sarcophagus of the hero. The Alexandrians were delighted with their

visitor; and crowds flocked into the city to witness the daily and

nightly shows, little aware of the unforgiving malice that was lurking

in his mind.

The emperor then issued a decree that all the youths of Alexandria of an

age to enter the army should meet him in a plain on the outside of the

city; they had already a Macedonian and a Spartan phalanx, and he was

going to make an Alexandrian phalanx. Accordingly the plain was filled

with thousands of young men, who were ranged in bodies according to

their height, their age, and their fitness for bearing arms, while their

friends and relations came in equal numbers to be witnesses of their

honour.

The emperor moved through their ranks, and was loudly greeted with their

cheers, while the army which encircled the whole plain was gradually

closing round the crowd and lessening the circle. When the ring was

formed, Caracalla withdrew with his guards and gave the looked-for

signal. The soldiers then lowered their spears and charged on the

unarmed crowd, of whom a part were butchered and part driven headlong

into the ditches and canals; and such was the slaughter that the waters

of the Nile, which at midsummer are always red with the mud from the

upper country, were said to have flowed coloured to the sea with

the blood of the sufferers. Caracalla then returned to Antioch,

congratulating himself on the revenge that he had taken on the

Alexandrians for their jokes; not however till he had consecrated in the

temple of Serapis the sword with which he boasted that he had slain his

brother Geta.

Caracalla also punished the Alexandrians by stopping the public games

and the allowance of grain to the citizens; and, to lessen the danger of

their rebelling, he had the fortifications carried between the rest

of the city and the great palace-quarter, the Bruchium, thus dividing

Alexandria into two fortified cities, with towers on the walls

between them. Hitherto, under the Romans as under the Ptolemies, the

Alexandrians had been the trusted favourites of their rulers, who made

use of them to keep the Egyptians in bondage. But under Caracalla that

policy was changed; the Alexandrians were treated as enemies; and we see

for the first time Egyptians taking their seat in the Roman senate, and

the Egyptian religion openly cultivated by the emperor, who then built a

temple in Rome to the goddess Isis.

On the murder of Caracalla in A.D. 217, Macrinus, who was thought to be

the author of his death, was acknowledged as emperor; and though he only

reigned for about two months, yet, as the Egyptian new year’s day fell

within that time, we find Alexandrian coins for the first and second

years of his reign. The Egyptians pretended that the death of Caracalla

had been foretold by signs from heaven; that a ball of fire had fallen

on the temple of Serapis, which destroyed nothing but the sword with

which Caracalla had slain his brother; and that an Egyptian named

Serapion, who had been thrown into a lion’s den for naming Macrinus as

the future emperor, had escaped unhurt by the wild beasts.

Macrinus recalled from Alexandria Julian, the prefect of Egypt, and

appointed to that post his friend Basilianus, with Marius Secundus, a

senator, as second in command, who was the first senator that had ever

held command in Egypt. He was himself at Antioch when Bassianus, a

Syrian, pretending to be the son of Caracalla, offered himself to the

legions as that emperor’s successor. When the news reached Alexandria

that the Syrian troops had joined the pretended Antoninus, the prefect

Basilianus at once put to death the public couriers that brought the

unwelcome tidings. But when, a few days afterwards, it was known that

Macrinus had been defeated and killed, the doubts about his successor

led to serious struggles between the troops and the Alexandrians. The

Alexandrians could have had no love for a son of Caracalla; Basilianus

and Secundus had before declared against him; but, on the other hand,

the choice of the soldiers was guided by their brethren in Syria. The

citizens flew to arms, and day after day was the battle fought in the

streets of Alexandria between two parties, neither of whom was strong

enough, even if successful, to have any weight in settling the fate of

the Roman empire. Marius Secundus lost his life in the struggle. The

prefect Basilianus fled to Italy to escape from his own soldiers; and

the province of Egypt then followed the example of the rest of the East

in acknowledging the new emperor.

For four years Rome was disgraced by the sovereignty of Elagabalus,

the pretended son of Caracalla, and we find his coins each year in

Alexandria. He was succeeded by the young Alexander, whose amiable

virtues, however, could not gain for him the respect which he lost

by the weakness of his government. The Alexandrians, always ready to

lampoon their rulers, laughed at his wish to be thought a Roman; they

called him the Syrian, the high priest, and the ruler of the synagogue.

And well might they think slightly of his government, when a prefect of

Egypt owed his appointment to the emperor’s want of power to punish him.

Epagathus had headed a mutiny of the prætorian guards in Rome, in which

their general Ulpian was killed; and Alexander, afraid to punish the

murderers, made the ringleader of the rebels prefect of Egypt in order

to send him out of the way; so little did it then seem necessary to

follow the cautious policy of Augustus, or to fear a rebellion in that

province. But after a short time, when Epagathus had been forgotten by

the Roman legion, he was removed to the government of Crete, and then at

last punished with death.

In this reign Ammonius Saccas became the founder of a new and most

important school of philosophy, that of the Alexandrian platonists. He

is only known to us through his pupils, in whose writings we trace the

mind and system of the teacher. The most celebrated of these pupils were

Plotinus, Herennius, and Origen, a pagan writer, together with Longinus,

the great master of the “sublime,” who owns him his teacher in elegant

literature. Ammonius was unequalled in the variety and depth of his

knowledge, and was by his followers called heaven-taught. He aimed at

putting an end to the triflings and quarrels of the philosophers by

showing that all the great truths were the same in each system, and

by pointing out where Plato and Aristotle agreed instead of where

they differed; or rather by culling opinions out of both schools of

philosophy, and by gathering together the scattered limbs of Truth,

whose lovely form had been hewn to pieces and thrown to the four winds

like the mangled body of Osiris.

Origen in the tenth year of this reign (A.D. 231) withdrew to Cæsarea,

on finding himself made uncomfortable at Alexandria by the displeasure

of Demetrius the bishop; and he left the care of the Christian school to

Heraclas, who had been one of his pupils. Origen’s opinions met with no

blame in Cæsarea, where Christianity was not yet so far removed from its

early simplicity as in Egypt.

The Christians of Syria and Palestine highly prized his teaching when

it was no longer valued in Alexandria. He died at Tyre in the reign of

Gallus.

[Illustration: 149.jpg A MODERN SCRIBE]

On the death of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had just before succeeded

Origen in the charge of the Christian school, was chosen Bishop of

Alexandria; and Christianity had by that time so far spread through the

cities of Upper and Lower Egypt that he found it necessary to ordain

twenty bishops under him, while three had been found enough by his

predecessor. From his being the head of the bishops, who were all styled

fathers, Heraclas received the title of _Papa_, pope or grandfather, the

title afterwards used by the bishops of Rome.

Among the presbyters ordained by Heraclas was Ammonius Saccas, the

founder of the platonic school; but he afterwards forsook the religion

of Jesus; and we must not mistake him for a second Alexandrian Christian

of the name of Ammonius, who can hardly have been the same person as

the former, for he never changed his religion, and was the author of

the _Evangelical Canons_, a work afterwards continued by Eusebius of

Cæsarea.

On the death of the Emperor Alexander, in A.D. 235, while Italy was

torn to pieces by civil wars and by its generals’ rival claims for the

purple, the Alexandrians seem to have taken no part in the struggles,

but to have acknowledged each emperor as soon as the news reached them

that he had taken the title. In one year we find Alexandrian coins of

Maximin and his son Maximus, with those of the two Gordians, who for a

few weeks reigned in Carthage, and in the next year we again have coins

of Maximin and Maximus, with those of Balbinus and Pupienus, and of

Gordianus Pius.

The Persians, taking advantage of the weakness in the empire caused by

these civil wars, had latterly been harassing the eastern frontier; and

it soon became the duty of the young Gordian to march against them

in person. Hitherto the Roman armies had usually been successful; but

unfortunately the Persians, or, rather, their Syrian and Arab allies,

had latterly risen as much as the Romans had fallen off in courage and

warlike skill. The army of Gordian was routed, and the emperor himself

slain, either by traitors or by the enemy. Hereafter we shall see the

Romans paying the just penalty for the example that they had set to

the surrounding nations. They had taught them that conquest should be

a people’s chief aim, that the great use of strength was to crush

a neighbour; and it was not long before Egypt and the other Eastern

provinces suffered under the same treatment. So little had defeat

been expected that the philosopher Plotinus had left his studies in

Alexandria to join the army, in hopes of gaining for himself an insight

into the Eastern philosophy that was so much talked of in Egypt. After

the rout of the army he with difficulty escaped to Antioch, and thence

he removed to Rome, where he taught the new platonism to scholars of all

nations, including Serapion, the celebrated rhetorician, and Eustochius,

the physician, from Alexandria.

[Illustration: 151.jpg SYMBOL OF EGYPT]

Philip, who is accused by the historians of being the author of

Gordian’s death, succeeded him on the throne in 244; but he is only

known in the history of Egypt by his Alexandrian coins, which we find

with the dates of each of the seven years of his reign, and these seem

to prove that for one year he had been associated with Gordian in the

purple. In the reign of Decius, which began in 249, the Christians of

Egypt were again harassed by the zeal with which the laws against

their religion were put in force. The persecution began by their

fellow-citizens informing against them; but in the next year it was

followed up by the prefect Æmilianus; and several Christians were

summoned before the magistrate and put to death. Many fled for safety

to the desert and to Mount Sinai, where they fell into a danger of a

different kind; they were taken prisoners by the Saracens and carried

away as slaves. Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, himself fled from

the storm, and was then banished to the village of Cephro in the desert.

But his flight was not without some scandal to the Church, as there were

not a few who thought that he was called upon by his rank at least to

await, if not to court, the pains of martyrdom. Indeed, the persecution

was less remarkable for the sufferings of the Christians than for the

numbers who failed in their courage, and renounced Christianity under

the threats of the magistrate. Dionysius, the bishop, who had shown no

courage himself, was willing to pardon their weakness, and after fit

proof of sorrow again to receive them as brethren. But his humanity

offended the zeal of many whose distance from the danger had saved them

from temptation; and it was found necessary to summon a council at Rome

to settle the dispute. In this assembly the moderate party prevailed;

and some who refused to receive back those who had once fallen away from

the faith were themselves turned out of the Church.

Dionysius had succeeded Heraclas in the bishopric, having before

succeeded him as head of the catechetical school. He was the author of

several works, written in defence of the trinitarian opinions, on the

one hand against the Egyptian Gnostics, who said that there were eight,

and even thirty, persons in the Godhead, and, on the other hand, against

the Syrian bishop, Paul of Samosata, on the Euphrates, who said that

Jesus was a man, and that the Word and Holy Spirit were not persons, but

attributes, of God.

But while Dionysius was thus engaged in a controversy with such opposite

opinions, Egypt and Libya were giving birth to a new view of the

trinity. Sabellius, Bishop of Ptolemais, near Cyrene, was putting forth

the opinion that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were only three names

for the one God, and that the creator of the world had himself appeared

upon earth in the form of Jesus. Against this opinion Dionysius again

engaged in controversy, arguing against Sabellius that Jesus was not the

creator, but the first of created beings.

The Christians were thus each generation changing more and more,

sometimes leaning towards Greek polytheism and sometimes towards

Egyptian mysticism. As in each quarrel the most mysterious opinions

were thought the most sacred, each generation added new mysteries to

its religion; and the progress was rapid, from a practical piety, to a

profession of opinions which they did not pretend to understand.

During the reigns of Gallus, of Æmilius Æmilianus, and of Valerian (A.D.

251-260), the Alexandrians coined money in the name of each emperor as

soon as the news reached Egypt that he had made Italy acknowledge his

title. Gallus and his son reigned two years and four months; Æmilianus,

who rebelled in Pannonia, reigned three months; and Valerian reigned

about six years.

Egypt, as a trading country, now suffered severely from the want

of order and quiet government; and in particular since the reign

of Alexander Severus it had been kept in a fever by rebellions,

persecutions, and this unceasing change of rulers. Change brings the

fear of change; and this fear checks trade, throws the labourer out of

employment, and leaves the poor of the cities without wages and without

food. Famine is followed by disease; and Egypt and Alexandria were

visited in the reign of Gallus by a dreadful plague, one of those

scourges that force themselves on the notice of the historian. It was

probably the same disease that in a less frightful form had been not

uncommon in that country and in the lower parts of Syria. The physician

Aretæus describes it under the name of ulcers on the tonsils. It seems

by the letters of Bishop Dionysius that in Alexandria the population had

so much fallen off that the inhabitants between the ages of fourteen

and eighty were not more than those between forty and seventy had been

formerly, as appeared by old records then existing. The misery that the

city had suffered may be measured by its lessened numbers.

During these latter years the eastern half of the empire was chiefly

guarded by Odenathus of Palmyra, the brave and faithful ally of Rome,

under whose wise rule his country for a short time held a rank among the

empires of the world, which it never could have gained but for an union

of many favourable circumstances. The city and little state of Palmyra

is situated about midway between the cities of Damascus and Babylon.

Separated from the rest of the world, between the Roman and the Parthian

empires, Palmyra had long kept its freedom, while each of those great

rival powers rather courted its friendship than aimed at conquering it.

But, as the cause of Rome grew weaker, Odenathus wisely threw his weight

into the lighter scale; and latterly, without aiming at conquest, he

found himself almost the sovereign of those provinces of the Roman

empire which were in danger of being overrun by the Persians. Valerian

himself was conquered, taken prisoner, and put to death by Sapor, King

of Persia; and Gallienus, his son, who was idling away his life in

disgraceful pleasures in the West, wisely gave the title of emperor to

Odenathus, and declared him his colleague on the throne.

[Illustration: 155.jpg A HAREM WINDOW]

No sooner was Valerian taken prisoner than every province of the Roman

empire, feeling the sword powerless in the weak hands of Gallienus,

declared its own general emperor; and when Macrianus, who had been

left in command in Syria, gathered together the scattered forces of the

Eastern army, and made himself emperor of the East, the Egyptians owned

him as their sovereign. As Macrianus found his age too great for the

activity required of a rebel emperor, he made his two sons, Macrianus,

junior, and Quietus, his colleagues; and we find their names on the

coins of Alexandria, dated the first and second years of their reign.

But Macrianus was defeated by Dominitianus at the head of a part of the

army of Aureolus, who had made himself emperor in Illyricum, and he lost

his life, together with one of his sons, while the other soon afterwards

met with the same fate from Odenathus.

After this, Egypt was governed for a short time in the name of

Gallienus; but the fickle Alexandrians soon made a rebel emperor for

themselves. The Roman republic, says the historian, was often in

danger from the headstrong giddiness of the Alexandrians. Any civility

forgotten, a place in the baths not yielded, a heap of rubbish, or even

a pair of old shoes in the streets, was often enough to throw the state

into the greatest danger, and make it necessary to call out the troops

to put down the riots. Thus, one day, one of the prefect’s slaves was

beaten by the soldiers, for saying that his shoes were better than

theirs. On this a riotous crowd gathered round the house of Æmilianus to

complain of the conduct of his soldiers. He was attacked with stones and

such weapons as are usually within the reach of a mob. He had no choice

but to call out the troops, who, when they had quieted the city and were

intoxicated with their success, saluted him with the title of emperor;

and hatred of Gallienus made the rest of the Egyptian army agree to

their choice.

This was in the year 265. The new emperor called himself Alexander, and

was even thought to deserve the name. He governed Egypt during his short

reign with great vigour. He led his army through the Thebaid, and drove

back the barbarians with a courage and activity which had latterly been

uncommon in the Egyptian army. Alexandria then sent no tribute to Rome.

“Well! cannot we live without Egyptian linen?” was the forced joke of

Gallienus, when the Romans were in alarm at the loss of the usual supply

of grain. But Æmilianus was soon beaten by Theodotus, the general of

Gallienus, who besieged him in the strong quarter of Alexandria called

the Bruchium, and then took him prisoner and strangled him.

During this siege the ministers of Christianity were able to lessen some

of the horrors of war by persuading the besiegers to allow the useless

mouths to quit the blockaded fortress. Eusebius, afterwards Bishop of

Laodicea, was without the trenches trying to lessen the cruelties of the

siege; and Anatolius, the Christian peripatetic, was within the walls,

endeavouring to persuade the rebels to surrender. Gallienus in gratitude

to his general would have granted him the honour of a proconsular

triumph, to dazzle the eyes of the Alexandrians; but the policy of

Augustus was not wholly forgotten, and the emperor was reminded by

the priests that it was unlawful for the consular fasces to enter

Alexandria.

The late Emperor Valerian had begun his reign with mild treatment of

the Christians; but he was overpersuaded by the Alexandrians. He then

allowed the power of the magistrate to be used, in order to check the

Christian religion. But in this weakness of the empire Gallienus could

no longer with safety allow the Christians to be persecuted for their

religion. Both their numbers and their station made it dangerous to

treat them as enemies; and the emperor ordered all persecution to be

stopped. The imperial rescript for that purpose was even addressed to

“Dionysius, Pinna, Demetrius, and the other bishops;” it grants them

full indulgence in the exercise of their religion, and by its very

address almost acknowledges their rank in the state. By this edict of

Gallienus the Christians were put on a better footing than at any time

since their numbers brought them under the notice of the magistrate.

[Illustration: 158b.jpg EGYPTIAN SLAVE]

From the painting by Siefèrt

When the bishop Dionysius returned to Alexandria, he found the place

sadly ruined by the late siege. The middle of the city was a vast waste.

It was easier, he says, to go from one end of Egypt to the other than to

cross the main street which divided the Bruchium from the western end

of Alexandria. The place was still marked with all the horrors of last

week’s battle. Then, as usual, disease and famine followed upon war. Not

a house was without a funeral. Death was everywhere to be seen in its

most ghastly form. Bodies were left un-buried in the streets to be eaten

by the dogs. Men ran away from their sickening friends in fear. As the

sun set they felt in doubt whether they should be alive to see it

rise in the morning. Cowards hid their alarms in noisy amusements and

laughter. Not a few in very despair rushed into riot and vice. But the

Christians clung to one another in brotherly love; they visited the

sick; they laid out and buried their dead; and many of them thereby

caught the disease themselves, and died as martyrs to the strength of

their faith and love.

As long as Odenathus lived, the victories of the Palmyrenes were always

over the enemies of Rome; but on his assassination, together with his

son Herodes, though the armies of Palmyra were still led to battle

with equal courage, its counsels were no longer guided with the same

moderation.

[Illustraton: 159.jpg COINS OF ZENOBIA]

Zenobia, the widow of Odenathus, seized the command of the army for

herself and her infant sons, Herennius and Timolaus; and her masculine

courage and stern virtues well qualified her for the bold task that she

had undertaken. She threw off the friendship of Rome, and routed the

armies which Gallienus sent against her; and, claiming to be descended

from Cleopatra, she marched upon Egypt, in 268 A.D., to seize the throne

of her ancestors, and to add that kingdom to Syria and Asia Minor, which

she already possessed.

Zenobia’s army was led by her general, Zabda, who was joined by an

Egyptian named Timogenes; and, with seventy thousand Palmyrenes,

Syrians, and other barbarians, they routed the Roman army of fifty

thousand Egyptians under Probatus. The unfortunate Roman general put an

end to his own life; but nevertheless the Palmyrenes were unsuccessful,

and Egypt followed the example of Rome, and took the oaths to Claudius.

For three years the coins of Alexandria bear the name of that emperor.

On the death of Claudius, his brother Quintillus assumed the purple in

Europe (A.D. 270); and though he only reigned for seventeen days the

Alexandrian mint found time to engrave new dies and to issue coined

money in his name.

On the death of Claudius, also, the Palmyrenes renewed their attacks

upon Egypt, and this second time with success. The whole kingdom

acknowledged Zenobia as their queen; and in the fourth and fifth years

of her reign in Palmyra we find her name on the Alexandrian coins. The

Greeks, who had been masters of Egypt for six hundred years, either in

their own name or in that of the Roman emperors, were then for the first

time governed by an Asiatic. Palmyra in the desert was then ornamented

with the spoils of Egypt; and travellers yet admire the remains of eight

large columns of red porphyry, each thirty feet high, which stood in

front of the two gates to the great temple. They speak for themselves,

and tell their own history. From their material and form and size we

must suppose that these columns were quarried between Thebes and the Red

Sea, were cut into shape by Egyptian workmen under the guidance of Greek

artists in the service of the Roman emperors; and were thence carried

away by the Syrian queen to the oasis-city in the desert between

Damascus and Babylon.

[Illustration: 161.jpg COIN OF ATHENODORUS]

Zenobia was a handsome woman of a dark complexion, with an aquiline

nose, quick, piercing eyes, and a masculine voice. She had the

commanding qualities of Cleopatra, from whom her flatterers traced her

descent, and she was without her vices. While Syriac was her native

tongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to have

taught to her children; she carried on her government in Greek, and

could speak Koptic with the Egyptians, whose history she had studied

and written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of the

Persian court to the self-denial and military virtues of a camp. With

these qualities, followed by a success in arms which they seemed to

deserve, the world could not help remarking, that while Gallienus was

wasting his time with fiddlers and players, in idleness that would have

disgraced a woman, Zenobia was governing her half of the empire like a

man.

Zenobia made Antioch and Palmyra the capitals of her empire, and Egypt

became for the time a province of Syria. Her religion like her language

was Syriac. The name of her husband, Odenathus, means sacred to the

goddess Adoneth, and that of her son, Vaballathus, means sacred to the

goddess Baaleth. But as her troops were many of them Saracens or Arabs,

a people nearly the same as the Blemmyes, who already formed part of the

people of Upper Egypt, this conquest gave a new rank to that part of

the population; and had the further result, important in after years,

of causing them to be less quiet in their slavery to the Greeks of

Alexandria.

But the sceptre of Rome had lately been grasped by the firmer hand of

Aurelian, and the reign of Zenobia drew to a close. Aurelian at first

granted her the title of his colleague in the empire, and we find

Alexandrian coins with her head on one side and his on the other. But

he lost no time in leading his forces into Syria, and, after routing

Zenobia’s army in one or two battles, he took her prisoner at Emessa.

He then led her to Rome, where, after being made the ornament of his

triumph, she was allowed to spend the rest of her days in quiet, having

reigned for four years in Palmyra, though only for a few months in

Egypt.

On the defeat of Zenobia it would seem that Egypt and Syria were

still left under the government of one of her sons, with the title of

colleague of Aurelian. The Alexandrian coins are then dated in the first

year of Aurelian and the fourth of Vaballathus, or, according to the

Greek translation of this name, of Athenodorus, who counted his years

from the death of Odenathus.

The young Herodes, who had been killed with his father Odenathus, was

not the son of Zenobia, but of a former wife, and Zenobia always

acted towards him with the unkindness unfortunately too common in a

stepmother. She had claimed the throne for her infant sons, Herennius

and Timolaus; and we are left in doubt by the historians about

Vaballathus; Vopiscus, who calls him the son of Zenobia, does not tell

us who was his father. We know but little of him beyond his coins; but

from these we learn that, after reigning one year with Aurelian, he

aimed at reigning alone, took the title of Augustus, and dropped the

name of Aurelian from his coins. This step was very likely the cause of

his overthrow and death, which happened in the year 271.

On the overthrow of Zenobia’s family, Egypt, which had been so fruitful

in rebels, submitted to the Emperor Aurelian, but it was only for a few

months. The Greeks of Alexandria, now lessened in numbers, were found to

be no longer masters of the kingdom. Former rebellions in Egypt had

been caused by the two Roman legions and the Greek mercenaries sometimes

claiming the right to appoint an emperor to the Roman world; but

Zenobia’s conquest had raised the Egyptian and Arab population in

their own opinion, and they were no longer willing to be governed by an

Alexandrian or European master. In 272 A.D. they set up Firmus, a native

of Seleucia, who took the title of emperor; and, resting his power

on that part of the population that had been treated as slaves

or barbarians for six hundred years, he aimed at the conquest of

Alexandria.

Firmus was a man of great size and bodily strength, and, of course,

barbarian manners. He had gained great riches by trade with India; and

had a paper trade so profitable that he used to boast that he could feed

an army on papyrus and glue. His house was furnished with glass windows,

a luxury then but little known, and the squares of glass were fastened

into the frames by means of bitumen. His chief strength was in the Arabs

or Blemmyes of Upper Egypt, and in the Saracens who had lately been

fighting against Rome under the standard of Zenobia. Firmus fixed his

government at Koptos and Ptolemais, and held all Upper Egypt; but he

either never conquered Alexandria, or did not hold it for many months,

as for every year that he reigned in the Thebaid we find Alexandrian

coins bearing the name of Aurelian. Firmus was at last conquered by

Aurelian in person, who took him prisoner, and had him tortured and then

put to death. During these troubles Rome had been thrown into alarm at

the thoughts of losing the usual supply of Egyptian grain, as since the

reign of Elagabalus the Roman granaries had never held more than was

wanted for the year; but Aurelian hastened to send word to the Roman

people that the country was again quiet, and that the yearly supplies,

which had been delayed by the wickedness of Firmus, would soon arrive.

Had Firmus raised the Roman legions in rebellion, he would have been

honoured with the title of a rebel emperor; but, as his power rested on

the Egyptians and Arabs, Aurelian only boasted that he had rid the world

of a robber.

[Illustration: 164.jpg STREET VENDORS IN METAL WARE]

Another rebel emperor about this time was Domitius Domitiamis; but we

have no certain knowledge of the year in which he rebelled, nor, indeed,

without the help of the coins should we know in what province of the

whole Roman empire he had assumed the purple. The historian only tells

us that in the reign of Aurelian the general Domitianus was put to

death for aiming at a change. We learn, however, from the coins that he

reigned for part of a first and a second year in Egypt; but the subject

of his reign is not without its difficulties, as we find Alexandrian

coins of Domitianus with Latin inscriptions, and dated in the third year

of his reign. The Latin language had not at this time been used on the

coins of Alexandria; and he could not have held Alexandria for any

one whole year, as the series of Aurelian’s coins is not broken. It is

possible that the Latin coins of Domitianus may belong to a second and

later usurper of the same name.

Aurelian had reigned in Rome from the death of Claudius; and,

notwithstanding the four rebels to whom we have given the title of

sovereigns of Egypt, money was coined in Alexandria in his name during

each of those years. His coinage, however, reminds us of the troubled

and fallen state of the country; and from this time forward copper, or,

rather, brass, is the only metal used.

Aurelian left Probus in the command of the Egyptian army, and that

general’s skill and activity found full employment in driving back the

barbarians who pressed upon the province on each of the three sides on

which it was open to attack.

[Illustration: 165.jpg COIN OF DOMITIANUS WITH LATIN INSCRIPTION]

His first battles were against the Africans and Marmaridæ, who were

in arms on the side of Cyrene, and he next took the field against the

Palmyrenes and Saracens, who still claimed Egypt in the name of the

family of Zenobia. He employed the leisure of his soldiers in many

useful works; in repairing bridges, temples, and porticoes, and more

particularly in widening the trenches and keeping open the canals, and

in such other works as were of use in raising and forwarding the yearly

supply of grain to Rome. Aurelian increased the amount of the Egyptian

tribute, which was paid in glass, paper, linen, hemp, and grain; the

latter he increased by one-twelfth part, and he placed a larger number

of ships on the voyage to make the supply certain.

The Christians were well treated during this reign, and their patriarch

Nero so far took courage as to build the Church of St. Mary in

Alexandria. This was probably the first church that was built in Egypt

for the public service of Christianity, which for two hundred years had

been preached in private rooms, and very often in secret. The service

was in Greek, as, indeed, it was in all parts of Egypt: for it does

not appear that Christian prayers were publicly read in the Egyptian

language before the quarrel between the two churches made the Kopts

unwilling to use Greek prayers. The liturgy there read was probably very

nearly the same as that afterwards known as the _Liturgy of St. Mark_.

This is among the oldest of the Christian liturgies, and it shows its

country by the prayer that the waters of the river may rise to their

just measure, and that rain may be sent from heaven to the countries

that need it.

We learn from the historians that eight months were allowed to pass

between the death of Aurelian and the choice of a successor; and during

this time the power rested in the hands of his widow. The sway of a

woman was never openly acknowledged in Rome, but the Alexandrians and

Egyptians were used to female rule, and from contemporary coins we learn

that in Egypt the government was carried on in the name of the Empress

Severina. The last coins of Aurelian bear the date of the sixth year of

his reign, and the coins of Severina are dated in the sixth and seventh

years. But after Tacitus was chosen emperor by his colleagues of the

Roman senate, and during his short reign of six months (A.D. 276), his

authority was obeyed by the Egyptian legions under Probus, as is fully

proved by the Alexandrian coins bearing his name, all dated in the first

year of his reign.

[Illustration: 167.jpg COIN OF SEVERINA]

On the death of Tacitus, his brother Florian hoped to succeed to the

imperial power, and was acknowledged in the same year by the senate and

troops of Rome. But when the news reached Egypt it was at once felt by

the legions that Probus, both by his own personal qualities and by the

high state of discipline of the army under his command, and by his

success against the Egyptian rebels, had a better claim to the purple

than any other general. At first the opinion ran round the camp in a

whisper, and at last the army spoke the general wish aloud; they

snatched a purple cloak from a statue in one of the temples to throw

over him, they placed him on an earthen mound as a tribunal, and against

his will saluted him with the title of emperor. The choice of the

Egyptian legions was soon approved of by Asia Minor, Syria, and Italy;

Florian was put to death, and Probus shortly afterwards marched into

Gaul and Germany, to quiet those provinces.

After a year or two, Probus was recalled into Egypt by hearing that the

Blemmyes had risen in arms, and that Upper Egypt was again independent

of the Roman power. Not only Koptos, which had for centuries been an

Arab city, but even Ptolemais, the Greek capital of the Thebaid, was now

peopled by those barbarians, and they had to be reconquered by Probus

as foreign cities, and kept in obedience by Roman garrisons; and on his

return to Rome he thought his victories over the Blemmyes of Upper Egypt

not unworthy of a triumph.

By these unceasing wars, the Egyptian legions had lately been brought

into a high state of discipline, and, confident in their strength, and

in the success with which they had made their late general emperor of

the Roman world, they now attempted to raise up a rival to him in the

person of their present general Saturninus. Saturninus had been made

general of the Eastern frontier by Aurelian, who had given him strict

orders never to enter Egypt. “The Egyptians,” says the historian,

meaning, however, the Alexandrians, “are boastful, vain, spiteful,

licentious, fond of change, clever in making songs and epigrams against

their rulers, and much given to soothsaying and augury.” Aurelian well

knew that the loyalty of a successful general was not to be trusted in

Egypt, and during his lifetime Saturninus never entered that province.

But after his death, when Probus was called away to the other parts of

the empire, the government of Egypt was added to the other duties of

Saturninus; and no sooner was he seen there, at the head of an army that

seemed strong enough to enforce his wishes, than the fickle Alexandrians

saluted him with the title of emperor and Augustus. But Saturninus was

a wise man, and shunned the dangerous honour; he had hitherto fought

always for his country; he had saved the provinces of Spain, Gaul, and

Africa from the enemy or from rebellion; and he knew the value of his

rank and character too well to fling it away for a bauble. To escape

from further difficulties he withdrew from Egypt, and moved his

headquarters into Palestine. But the treasonable cheers of the

Alexandrians could neither be forgotten by himself nor by his troops;

he had withstood the calls of ambition, but he yielded at last to his

fears; he became a rebel for fear of being thought one, and he declared

himself emperor as the safest mode of escaping punishment. But he

was soon afterwards defeated and strangled, against the will of the

forgiving Probus.

On the death of Probus, in A.D. 283, the empire fell to Carus and his

sons, Numerianus and Carinus, whose names are found on the Alexandrian

coins, but whose short reigns have left no other trace in Egypt.

[Illustration: 169.jpg COIN OF TRAJAN’S SECOND LEGION]

At this time also we find upon the coins the name of Trajan’s second

Egyptian legion, which was at all times stationed in Egypt, and which,

acting upon an authority that was usually granted to the Roman legions

in the various provinces, coined money of several kinds for their own

pay.

The reign of Diocletian, beginning in A.D. 285, was one of suffering to

the Egyptians; and in the fourth year the people rose against the Roman

government, and gave the title of emperor to Achilleus, their leader

in the rebellion. Galerius, the Roman general, led an army against the

rebels, and marched through the whole of the Thebaid; but, though the

Egyptians were routed whenever they were bold enough to meet the legions

in battle, yet the rebellion was not very easily crushed. The Romans

were scarcely obeyed beyond the spot on which their army was encamped.

In the fourth year of the rebellion, A.D. 292, Diocletian came to Egypt,

and the cities of Koptos and Busiris were besieged by the emperor in

person, and wholly destroyed after a regular siege.

When Diocletian reached the southern limits of Egypt he was able to

judge of the difficulty, and indeed the uselessness, of trying to hold

any part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there was

less than the cost of the troops required to collect it. He therefore

made a new treaty with the Nobatæ, as the people between the first and

second cataracts were now called. He gave up to them the whole of Lower

Ethiopia, or the province called Nubia. The valley for seventy miles

above Syênê, which bore the name of the Dodecaschonos, had been held by

Augustus and his successors, and this was now given up to the original

inhabitants. Diocletian strengthened the fortifications on the isle

of Elephantine, to guard what was thenceforth the uttermost point of

defence, and agreed to pay to the Nobatae and Blemmyes a yearly sum of

gold on the latter promising no longer to harass Upper Egypt with their

marauding inroads, and on the former promising to forbid the Blemmyes

from doing so. What remains of the Roman wall built against the inroads

of these troublesome neighbours runs along the edge of the cultivated

land on the east side of the river for some distance to the north of the

cataract. But so much was the strength of the Greek party lessened, and

so deeply rooted among the Egyptians was their hatred of their rulers

and the belief that they should then be able to throw off the yoke,

that soon afterwards Alexandria declared in favour of Achilleus, and

Diocletian was again called to Egypt to regain the capital. Such was

the strength of the rebels that the city could not be taken without

a regular siege. Diocletian surrounded it with a ditch and wall, and

turned aside the canals that supplied the citizens with water. After a

tedious siege of eight months, Alexandria was at last taken by storm in

297, and Achilleus was put to death. A large part of the city was burnt

at the storming, nor would the punishment of the citizens have there

ended, but for Diocletian’s humane interpretation of an accident. The

horse on which he sat stumbled as he entered the city with his troops,

and he had the humanity to understand it as a command from heaven that

he should stop the pillage of the city; and the citizens in gratitude

erected near the spot a bronze statue of the horse to which they owed so

much. This statue has long since been lost, but we cannot be mistaken in

the place where it stood. The lofty column in the centre of the temple

of Serapis, now well known by the name of Pompey’s Pillar,* once held a

statue on the top, and on the base it still bears the inscription of

the grateful citizens, “To the most honoured emperor, the saviour of

Alexandria, the unconquerable Diocletian.”

* See Volume X., page 317.

This rebellion had lasted more than nine years, and the Egyptians seemed

never in want of money for the purposes of the war. Diocletian was

struck with their riches, and he ordered a careful search to be made

through Egypt for all writings on alchemy, an art which the Egyptians

studied together with magic and astrology. These books he ordered to be

burnt, under a belief that they were the great sources of the riches by

which his own power had been resisted. Want and misery no doubt caused

this rebellion, but the rebellion certainly caused more want and misery.

The navigation of the Nile was stopped, the canals were no longer kept

cleared, the fields were badly tilled, trade and manufactures were

ruined. Since the rebellions against the Persians, Egypt had never

suffered so much. It had been sadly changed by the troubles of the last

sixty years, during which it had been six times in arms against Rome;

and when the rebellion was put down by Diocletian, it was no longer

the same country that it had been under the Antonines. The framework of

society had been shaken, the Greeks had lessened in numbers, and still

more in weight. The fall of the Ptolemies, and the conquest by Rome, did

not make so great a change. The bright days of Egypt as a Greek

kingdom began with the building of Alexandria, and they ended with

the rebellions against Gallienus, Aurelian and Diocletian. The native

Egyptians, both Kopts and Arabs, now rise into more notice, as the Greek

civilisation sinks around them. And soon the upper classes among the

Kopts, to avoid the duty of maintaining a family of children in such

troubled times, rush by thousands into monasteries and convents, and

further lessen the population by their religious vows of celibacy. In

the twelfth year of the reign, that in which Alexandria rebelled and

the siege was begun, the Egyptian coinage for the most part ceased.

Henceforth, though money was often coined in Alexandria as in every

other great city of the empire, the inscriptions were usually in Latin,

and the designs the same as those on the coins of Rome. In taking leave

of this long and valuable series of coins with dates, which has been

our guide in the chronology of these reigns, we must not forget to

acknowledge how much we owe to the labours of the learned Zoega. In

his _Numi Ægypti Imperatorii_, the mere descriptions, almost without a

remark, speak the very words of history.

The reign of Diocletian is chiefly remarkable for the new law which was

then made against the Christians, and for the cruel severity with which

it was put into force. The issuing of this edict in 304 A.D., which was

to root out Christianity from the world, took place in the twentieth

year of the reign, according to the Alexandrians, or in the nineteenth

year after the emperor’s first installation as consul, as years were

reckoned in the other parts of the empire. The churches, which since

the reign of Gallienus had been everywhere rising, were ordered to be

destroyed and the Bibles to be burnt, while banishment, slavery, and

death were the punishments threatened against those who obstinately

clung to their religion. In no province of the empire was the

persecution more severe than in Egypt; and many Christians fled to

Syria, where the law, though the same, was more mildly carried into

execution. But the Christians were too numerous to fly and too few

to resist. The ecclesiastical writers present us with a sad tale of

tortures and of death borne by those who refused to renounce their

faith,--a tale which is only made less sad by the doubt how far

the writers’ feelings may have misled their judgment, and made them

overstate the numbers.

But we may safely rely upon the account which Eusebius gives us of what

he himself saw in Egypt. Many were put to death on the same day, some

beheaded and some burnt. The executioners were tired, and the hearts of

the pagan judges melted by the unflinching firmness of the Christians.

Many who were eminent for wealth, rank, and learning chose to lay down

their lives rather than throw a few grains of wheat upon the altar, or

comply with any ceremony that was required of them as a religious test.

The judges begged them to think of their wives and children, and pointed

out that they were the cause of their own death; but the Christians were

usually firm, and were beheaded for the refusal to take the test.

Among the most celebrated of the Egyptian martyrs were Peter, Bishop of

Alexandria, with Faustus, Dius, and Ammonius, presbyters under him;

the learned Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, Hesychius, the editor of the

Septuagint, and the Bishops Pachomius and Theodorus; though the pagans

must have been still more surprised at Philoromus, the receiver-general

of the taxes at Alexandria. This man, after the prefect of Egypt and

the general of the troops, was perhaps the highest Roman officer in the

province. He sat in public as a judge in Alexandria, surrounded by a

guard of soldiers, daily deciding all causes relating to the taxes of

Egypt. He was accused of no crime but that of being a Christian, which

he was earnestly entreated to deny, and was at liberty indirectly to

disprove by joining in some pagan sacrifice. The Bishops of Alexandria

and Thmuis may have been strengthened under their trials by their rank

in the church, by having themselves urged others to do their duty in the

same case, but the receiver-general of the taxes could have had nothing

to encourage him but the strength of his faith and a noble scorn of

falsehood; he was reproached or ridiculed by all around him, but he

refused to deny his religion, and was beheaded as a common criminal.

The ready ministers of this persecution were Culeianus, the prefect of

the Thebaid, and Hierocles, the prefect of Alexandria. The latter

was peculiarly well chosen for the task; he added the zeal of the

theologian to the ready obedience of the soldier. He had written against

the Christians a work named _Philalethes_ (the lover of truth), which we

now know only in the answer by Eusebius of Cæsarea. In this he denounced

the apostles as impostors, and the Christian miracles as trifling; and,

comparing them with the pretended miracles of Apollonius of Tyana,

he pronounced the latter more numerous, more important, and better

authenticated than the former by the evangelists; and he ridiculed

the Christians for calling Jesus a god, while the pagans did not raise

Apollonius higher than a man beloved by the gods.

This persecution under Diocletian was one of the most severe that the

Christians ever underwent from the Romans. It did not, however, wholly

stop the religious services, nor break up the regular government of the

Church. In the catechetical school, Pierius, whom we have before spoken

of as a man of learning, was succeeded by Theognostus and then by

Serapion, whose name reminds us that the Egyptian party was gaining

weight in the Alexandrian church. It can hardly have been for his

superior learning, it may have been because his opinions were becoming

more popular than those of the Greeks, that a professor with an Egyptian

name was placed at the head of the catechetical school. Serapion was

succeeded by Peter, who afterwards gained the bishopric of Alexandria

and a martyr’s crown. But these men were little known beyond their

lecture-room. In the twentieth year of the reign, on the death of Peter,

the Bishop of Alexandria, who lost his life as a martyr, the presbyters

of the church met to choose a successor. Among their number was Arius,

whose name afterwards became so famous in ecclesiastical history, and

who had already, even before he was ordained a priest, offended many by

the bold manner in which he stated his religious opinions. But upon him,

if we may believe a partial historian, the majority of votes fell in

the choice of a patriarch of Alexandria, and had he not himself modestly

given way to the more ambitious Alexander, he might perhaps have been

saved from the treatment which he afterwards suffered from his rival.

When, in the year 305, Diocletian and his colleague, Valerius Maximian,

resigned the purple, Egypt with the rest of the East was given to

Galerius, who had also as Cæsar been named Maximian on his Egyptian

coins, while Constantius Chlorus ruled the West. Galerius in 307 granted

some slight indulgence to the Christians without wholly stopping

the persecution. But all favour was again withdrawn from them by his

successor Maximin, who had indeed misgoverned Egypt for some years,

under the title of Cæsar, before the rank of Augustus was granted to

him. He encouraged private informers, he set townsman against townsman;

and, as the wishes of the emperor are quickly understood by all under

him, those who wished for his favour courted it by giving him an excuse

for his cruelties. The cities sent up petitions to him, begging that the

Christians might not be allowed to have churches within their walls. The

history of these reigns indeed is little more than the history of the

persecutions; and when the Alexandrian astronomers, dropping the era of

Augustus, began to date from the first year of Diocletian, the Christian

writers in the same way dated from the Era of the Martyrs.

It can be no matter of surprise to us that, in a persecution which

threatened all classes of society, there should have been many who, when

they were accused of being Christians, wanted the courage to undergo

the pains of martyrdom, and escaped the punishment by joining in a pagan

sacrifice. When the storm was blown over, these men again asked to be

received into the Church, and their conduct gave rise to the very

same quarrel that had divided the Christians in the reign of Decius.

Meletius, a bishop of the Thebaid, was at the head of the party who

would make no allowance for the weakness of their brethren, and who

refused to grant to the repentant the forgiveness that they asked for.

He had himself borne the same trials without bending, he had been

sent as a criminal to work in the Egyptian mines, and had returned to

Alexandria from his banishment, proud of his sufferings and furious

against those who had escaped through cowardice. But the larger part of

the bishops were of a more forgiving nature; they could not all boast of

the same constancy, and the repentant Christians were re-admitted

into communion with the faithful, while the followers of Meletius were

branded with the name of heretics.

In Alexandria, Meletius soon found another and, as it proved, a more

memorable occasion for the display of his zeal. He has the unenviable

honour of being the author of the great Arian quarrel, by accusing of

heresy Arius, at that time a presbyter of the church of Baucala near

Alexandria, and by calling upon Alexander, the bishop, to inquire into

his belief, and to condemn it if found unsound. Arius frankly and openly

acknowledged his opinions: he thought Jesus a created being, and would

speak of him in no higher terms than those used in the New Testament

and Apostles’ Creed, and defended his opinions by an appeal to the

Scriptures. But he soon found that his defence was thought weak,

and, without waiting to be condemned, he withdrew before the storm to

Palestine, where he remained till summoned before the council of Nicæa

in the coming reign.

It was during these reigns of trouble, about which history is sadly

silent, when Greek learning was sinking, and after the country had

been for a year or two in the power of the Syrians, that the worship of

Mithra was brought into Alexandria, where superstitious ceremonies and

philosophical subtleties were equally welcome. Mithra was the Persian

god of the sun; and in the system of two gods, one good and the other

wicked, he was the god of goodness.

[Illustration: 179.jpg SYMBOL OF MITHRA]

The chief symbol in his worship was the figure of a young hero in

Phrygian cap and trousers, mounted on a sinking bull, and stabbing it

in sacrifice to the god. In a deserted part of Alexandria, called the

Mithrium, his rites were celebrated among ruins and rubbish; and his

ignorant followers were as ignorantly accused of there slaying their

fellow-citizens on his altars.

It was about the same time that the eastern doctrine of Manicheism was

said to have been brought into Egypt by Papus, and Thomas or Hernias.

This sect, if sect it may be called, owed its origin to a certain

Majus Mani, banished from Persia under the Sassanides; this Mani was

a talented man, highly civilised through his studies and voyages in

distant lands. In his exile he conceived the idea of putting himself

forward as the reformer of the religions of all the peoples he had

visited, and of reducing them all to one universal religion. Banished by

the Christians, to whom he represented himself as the divinely inspired

apostle of Jesus, in whom the Comforter had appeared, he returned to

Persia, taking with him a book of the Gospels adorned by extraordinary

paintings. Here he obtained at first the favour of the king and the

people, till finally, after many changes of fortune, he was pursued by

the magi, and convicted in a solemn disputation of falsifying religion;

he was condemned to the terrible punishment of being flayed alive, after

which his skin was to be stuffed and hung up over the gates of the

royal city. His teaching consisted in a mixture of Persian and

Christian-Gnostic views; its middle final point was the dualism of good

and evil which rules in the world and in the human breast.

According to Mani’s creed, there were originally two principles, God in

His kingdom of light, and the demon with his kingdom of darkness, and

these two principles existed independently of each other. The powers

of evil fell into strife with each other, until, hurled away by their

inward confusion, they reached the outermost edge of their own kingdom,

and from there beheld the kingdom of light in all its glory. Now they

ceased their strife among themselves and united to do battle to the

kingdom of light. To meet them, God created the “original man” who,

armed with the five pure elements, light, fire, air, water, and earth,

advanced to meet the hostile powers. He was defeated, though finally

saved; but a part of his light had thus made its way into the realm of

darkness. In order gradually to regain this light, God caused the mother

of life to create the visible world, in which that light lies hidden as

a living power or world-soul awaiting its deliverance from the bonds of

matter. In order to accomplish this redemption, two new beings of light

proceed from God, viz.: Christ and the Holy Ghost, of whom the former,

Christus Mithras, has his abode in the sun and moon, the latter in the

ether diffused around the entire world. Both attract the powers of light

which have sunk into the material world in order to lead them back,

finally, into the everlasting realm of light. To oppose them, however,

the demons created a new being, viz.: man, after the example of the

“original man,” and united in him the clearest light and the darkness

peculiar to themselves, in order that the great strife might be renewed

in his breast, and so man became the point of union of all the forces in

the universe, the microcosm in which two principles ever strive for the

mastery. Through the enticements of the material and the illusions

of the demon, the soul of light was held in bondage in spite of its

indwelling capacity for freedom, so that in heathenism and Judaism the

“son of everlasting light,” as the soul of the universe, was chained

to matter. In order to accomplish this work of redemption more quickly,

Christ finally leaves his throne at God’s right hand, and appears

on earth, truly in human form, but only with an apparent body; his

suffering and death on the cross are but illusions for the multitude,

although historical facts, and they serve at the same time as a symbol

of the light imprisoned in matter, and as a typical expression of

the suffering, poured out over the whole of nature (especially in the

plant-world), of the great physical _weltschmerz_. Christ, through his

teaching and power of attraction, began the deliverance of the light,

so that one can truly say that the salvation of the world proceeds

from rays which stream from the Cross; as, however, his teachings

were conceived by the apostles in a Jewish sense, and the Gospels

were disfigured, Mani appeared as the comforter promised by Christ

to accomplish the victory. In his writings only is the pure truth

preserved. Finally there will be a complete separation of the light from

the darkness, and then the powers of darkness will fall upon each other

again.

The ignorant in all ages of Christianity seem to have held nearly the

same opinion in one form or other, thinking that sin has arisen either

from a wicked being or from the wickedness of the flesh itself. The Jews

alone proclaimed that God created good and God created evil. But we know

of few writers who have ever owned themselves Manicheans, though many

have been reproached as such; their doctrine is now known only in the

works written against it. Of all heresies among the Christians this is

the one most denounced by the ecclesiastical writers, and most severely

threatened by the laws when the law makers became Christian; and of

all the accusations of the angry controversialists this was the most

reproachful. We might almost think that the numerous fathers who have

written against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory when the

enemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcely

answered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view would

lead us to remark how much the writers, as well as the readers, must

have felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, since men

have run into such wild opinions to explain it.

Another heresy, which for a time made even as much noise as the last,

was that of Hieracas of Leontopolis. Even in Egypt, where for two

thousand years it had been the custom to make the bodies of the dead

into mummies, to embalm them against the day of resurrection, a custom

which had been usually practised by the Christians, this native Egyptian

ventured to teach that nothing but the soul would rise from the dead,

and that we must look forward to only a spiritual resurrection. Hieracas

was a man of some learning, and, much to the vexation of those who

opposed his arguments, he could repeat nearly the whole Bible by heart.

The Bishop Hesychius, the martyr in the late persecution, was one of

the learned men of the time. He had published a new edition of the

Septuagint Old Testament, and also of the New Testament. This edition

was valued and chiefly used in Egypt, while that by Lucianus,

who suffered in the same persecution, was read in Asia Minor from

Constantinople to Antioch, and the older edition by Origen remained in

use in Palestine. But such was the credit of Alexandria, as the chief

seat of Christian learning, that distant churches sent there for

copies of the Scriptures, foreign translations were mostly made from

Alexandrian copies, and the greater number of Christians even now read

the Bible according to the edition by Hesychius. We must, however, fear

that these editors were by no means judicious in their labours.

[Illustration: 184.jpg DOME PALM OF UPPER EGYPT]

From the text itself we can learn that the early copiers of the Bible

thought those manuscripts most valuable which were most full. Many a

gloss and marginal note got written into the text. Their devotional

feelings blinded their critical judgment; and they never ventured to put

aside a modern addition as spurious. This mistaken view of their

duty had of old guided the Hebrew copiers in Jerusalem; and though in

Alexandria a juster criticism had been applied to the copies of Homer,

it was not thought proper to use the same good sense when making copies

of the Bible. So strong was the habit of grafting the additions into

the text that the Greek translation became more copious than the Hebrew

original, as the Latin soon afterwards became more copious than the

Greek.

It was about this time, at least after Theodotion’s translation of

Daniel had received the sanction of the Alexandrian church, and when the

teachers of Christianity found willing hearers in every city of Egypt,

that the Bible was translated into the language of the country. We have

now parts of several Koptic versions. They are translated closely, and

nearly word by word from the Greek; and, being meant for a people among

whom that language had been spoken for centuries, about one word in five

is Greek. The Thebaic and Bashmuric versions may have been translated

from the edition by Hesychius; but the Koptic version seems older, and

its value to the Biblical critic is very great, as it helps us, with

the quotations in Origen and Clemens, to distinguish the edition of

the sacred text which was then used in Alexandria, and is shown in the

celebrated Vatican manuscript, from the later editions used afterwards

in Constantinople and Italy, when Christian literature flourished in

those countries.

The Emperor Maximin died at Tarsus in A.D. 313, after being defeated by

Licinius, who like himself had been raised to the rank of Augustus by

Galerius, and to whom the empire of Egypt and the East then fell,

while Constantine, the son of Constantius, governed Italy and the West.

Licinius held his empire for ten years against the growing strength of

his colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with

his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army

in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of

one hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three

hundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was

defeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should

be spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise

was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more

governed by a single emperor. The growing strength of his colleague and

rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and

Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to

defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred and

fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and

fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated near

Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he

surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten

and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a

single emperor.