Trade and industry were checked by the unsettled state of the country,

and misery and famine were spreading over the land. The African tribes

of Mazices and Auxoriani, leaving the desert in hope of plunder, overran

the province of Libya, and laid waste a large part of the Delta. The

barbarians and the sands of the desert were alike encroaching on the

cultivated fields. Nature seemed changed. The valley of the Nile was

growing narrower. Even within the valley the retreating wraters left

behind them harvests less rich, and fever more putrid. The quarries were

no longer worth working for their building stone. The mines yielded no

more gold.

On the death of Arcadius, his son Theodosius was only eight years old,

but he was quietly acknowledged as Emperor of the East in 408, and he

left the government of Egypt, as heretofore, very much in the hands of

the patriarch. In the fifth year of his reign Theophilus died; and, as

might be supposed, a successor was not appointed without a struggle for

the double honour of Bishop of Alexandria and Governor of Egypt.

[Illustration: 257.jpg QUARRIES AT TOORAH ON THE NILE]

The remains of the Greek and Arian party proposed Timotheus, an

archdeacon in the church; but the Egyptian party were united in favour

of Cyril, a young man of learning and talent, who had the advantage of

being the nephew of the late bishop. Whatever were the forms by which

the election should have been governed, it was in reality settled by a

battle between the two parties in the streets; and though Abundantius,

the military prefect, gave the weight of his name, if not the strength

of his cohort, to the party of Timotheus, yet his rival conquered,

-and Cyril was carried into the cathedral with a pomp more like a pagan

triumph than the modest ordination of a bishop.

Cyril was not less tyrannical in his bishopric than his uncle had

been before him. His first care was to put a stop to all heresy in

Alexandria, and his second to banish the Jews. The theatre was the spot

in which the riots between Jews and Christians usually began, and the

Sabbath was the time, as being the day on which the Jews chiefly crowded

in to see the dancing. On one occasion the quarrel in the theatre ran

so high that the prefect with his cohort was scarcely able to keep them

from blows; and the Christians reproached the Jews with plotting to burn

down the churches. But the Christians were themselves guilty of the very

crimes of which they accused their enemies. The next morning, as soon

as it was light, Cyril headed the mob in their attacks upon the Jewish

synagogues; they broke them open and plundered them, and in one day

drove every Jew out of the city. No Jew had been allowed to live in

Alexandria or any other city without paying a poll-tax, for leave

to worship his God according to the manner of his forefathers; but

religious zeal is stronger than the love of money; the Jews were driven

out, and the tax lost to the city.

[Illustration: 258b.jpg Street and Mosque of Mahdjiar]

Orestes, the prefect of Alexandria, had before wished to check the power

of the bishop; and he in vain tried to save the Jews from oppression,

and the state from the loss of so many good citizens. But it was useless

to quarrel with the patriarch, who was supported by the religious

zeal of the whole population. The monks of Mount Nitria and of the

neighbourhood burned with a holy zeal to fight for Cyril, as they had

before fought for Theophilus; and when they heard that a jealousy had

sprung up between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, more than

five hundred of them marched into Alexandria to avenge the affronted

bishop. They met the prefect Orestes as he was passing through the

streets in his open chariot, and began reproaching him with being a

pagan and a Greek. Orestes answered that he was a Christian, and he had

been baptised at Constantinople. But this only cleared him of the lesser

charge, he was certainly a Greek; and one of these Egyptian monks taking

up a stone threw it at his head, and the blow covered his face with

blood. They then fled from the guards and people who came up to help the

wounded prefect; but Ammonius, who threw the stone, was taken and put

to death with torture. The grateful bishop buried him in the church with

much pomp; he declared him to be a martyr and a saint, and gave him

the name of St. Thaumasius. But the Christians were ashamed of the

new martyr: and the bishop, who could not withstand the ridicule, soon

afterwards withdrew from him the title.

Bad as was this behaviour of the bishop and his friends, the most

disgraceful tale still remains to be told. The beautiful and learned

Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, was at that time

the ornament of Alexandria and the pride of the pagans. She taught

philosophy publicly in the platonic school which had been founded by

Ammonius, and which boasted of Plotinus as its pupil. She was as modest

as she wras graceful, eloquent, and learned; and though, being a pagan,

she belonged to neither of the rival Christian parties, yet, as she

had more hearers among the Greek friends of the prefect than among the

ignorant followers of the bishop, she became an object of jealousy with

the Homoousian party. A body of these Christians, says the orthodox

historian, attacked this admirable woman in the street; they dragged

her from her chariot, and hurried her off into the church named Cæsar’s

temple, and there stripped her and murdered her with some broken tiles.

She had written commentaries on the mathematical works of Diophantus,

and on the conic sections of Apollonius. The story of her life has been

related in the nineteenth century by Charles Kingsley in the novel which

bears her name.

Arianism took refuge from the Egyptians within the camps of the Greek

soldiers. One church was dedicated to the honour of St. George, the late

bishop, within the lofty towers of the citadel of Babylon, which was

the strongest fortress in Egypt; and a second in the city of Ptolemais,

where a garrison was stationed to collect the toll of the Thebaid. St.

George became a favourite saint with the Greeks in Egypt, and in those

spots where the Greek soldiers were masters of the churches this Arian

and unpopular bishop was often painted on the walls riding triumphantly

on horseback and slaying the dragon of Athanasian error. On the other

hand, in Alexandria, where his rival’s politics and opinions held the

upper hand, the monastery of St. Athanasius was built in the most public

spot in the city, probably that formerly held by the Soma or royal

burial-place; and in Thebes a cathedral church was dedicated to St.

Athanasius within the great courtyard of Medinet-Abu, where the

small and paltry Greek columns are in strange contrast to the grand

architecture of Ramses III. which surrounds them.

In former reigns the Alexandrians had been in the habit of sending

embassies to Constantinople to complain of tyranny or misgovernment, and

to beg for a redress of grievances, when they thought that justice could

be there obtained when it was refused in Alexandria. But this practice

was stopped by Theodosius, who made a law that the Alexandrians should

never send an embassy to Constantinople, unless it were agreed to by a

decree of the town council, and had the approbation of the prefect. The

weak and idle emperor would allow no appeal from the tyranny of his own

governor.

We may pass over the banishment of John Chrysostom, Bishop of

Constantinople, as having less to do with the history of Egypt, though,

as in the cases of Arius and Nestorius, the chief mover of the attack

upon him was a bishop of Alexandria, who accused him of heresy, because

he did not come up to the Egyptian standard of orthodoxy. But among the

bishops who were deposed with Chrysostom was Palladius of Galatia, who

was sent a prisoner to Syênê. As soon as he was released from his bonds,

instead of being cast down by his misfortunes, he proposed to take

advantage of the place of his banishment, and he set forward on his

travels through Ethiopia for India, in search of the wisdom of the

Brahmins. He arrived in safety at Adule, the port on the Red Sea in

latitude 15°, now known as Zula, where he made acquaintance with Moses,

the bishop of that city, and persuaded him to join him in his distant

and difficult voyage.

From Adule the two set sail in one of the vessels employed in the Indian

trade; but they were unable to accomplish their purpose, and Palladius

returned to Egypt worn out with heat and fatigue, having scarcely

touched the shores of India. On his return through Thebes he met with

a traveller who had lately returned from the same journey, and who

consoled him under his disappointment by recounting his own failure in

the same undertaking. His new friend had himself been a merchant in the

Indian trade, but had given up business because he was not successful in

it; and, having taken a priest as his companion, had set out on the

same voyage in search of Eastern wisdom. They had sailed to Adule on

the Abyssinian shore, and then travelled to Auxum, the capital of that

country. From that coast they set sail for the Indian ocean, and reached

a coast which they thought was Taprobane or Ceylon. But there they were

taken prisoners, and, after spending six years in slavery, and learning

but little of the philosophy that they were in search of, were glad to

take the first opportunity of escaping and returning to Egypt. Palladius

had travelled in Egypt before he was sent there into banishment, and

he had spent many years in examining the monasteries of the Thebaid and

their rules, and he has left a history of the lives of many of those

holy men and woman, addressed to his friend Lausus.

When Nestorius was deposed from the bishopric of Constantinople for

refusing to use the words “Mother of God” as the title of Jesus’

mother, and for falling short in other points of what was then thought

orthodoxy, he was banished to Hibe in the Great Oasis. While he was

living there, the Great Oasis was overrun by the Blemmyes, the Roman

garrison was defeated, and those that resisted were put to the sword.

The Blemmyes pillaged the place and then withdrew; and, being themselves

at war with the Mazices, another tribe of Arabs, they kindly sent their

prisoners to the Thebaid, lest they should fall into the hands of

the latter. Nestorius then went to Panopolis to show himself to the

governor, lest he should be accused of running away from his place of

banishment, and soon afterwards he died of the sufferings brought on by

these forced and painful journeys through the desert.

About the same time Egypt was visited by Cassianus, a monk of Gaul, in

order to study the monastic institutions of the Thebaid. In his work on

that subject he has described at length the way of life and the severe

rules of the Egyptian monks, and has recommended them to the imitation

of his countrymen. But the natives of Italy and the West do not seem

to have been contented with copying the Theban monks at a distance. Such

was the fame of the Egyptian monasteries that many zealots from Italy

flocked there, to place themselves under the severe discipline of those

holy men. As these Latin monks did not understand either Koptic or

Greek, they found some difficulty in regulating their lives with the

wished-for exactness; and the rules of Pachomius, of Theodorus, and of

Oresiesis, the most celebrated of the founders, were actually sent to

Jerome at Rome, to be by him translated into Latin for the use of these

settlers in the Thebaid. These Latin monks made St. Peter a popular

saint in some parts of Egypt; and in the temple of Asseboua, in Nubia,

when the Christians plastered over the figure of one of the old gods,

they painted in its place the Apostle Peter holding the key in his hand.

[Illustration: 264.jpg RAMSES II. AND ST. PETER]

They did not alter the rest of the sculpture; so that Ramses II. is

there now seen presenting his offering to the Christian saint. The mixed

group gives us proof of the nation’s decline in art rather than of its

improvement in religion.

Among the monks of Egypt there were also some men of learning and

industry, who in their cells in the desert had made at least three

translations of the New Testament into the three dialects of the Koptic

language; namely, the Sahidic of Upper Egypt, the Bashmuric of the

Bashmour province of the eastern half of the Delta, and the Koptic

proper of Memphis and the western half of the Delta. To these were

afterwards added the Acts of the council of Nicæa, the lives of the

saints and martyrs, the writings of many of the Christian fathers, the

rituals of the Koptic church, and various treatises on religion.

Other monks were as busy in making copies of the Greek manuscripts

of the Old and New Testament; and, as each copy must have needed the

painful labour of months, and often years, their industry and zeal must

have been great. Most of these manuscripts were on papyrus, or on a

manufactured papyrus which might be called paper, and have long since

been lost; but the three most ancient copies on parchment which are the

pride of the Vatican, the Paris library, and the British Museum, are the

work of the Alexandrian penmen.

Copies of the Bible were also made in Alexandria for sale in western

Europe; and all our oldest manuscripts show their origin by the Egyptian

form of spelling in some of the words. The Beza manuscript at Cambridge,

and the Clermont manuscript at Paris, which have Greek on one side of

the page and Latin on the other, were written in Alexandria. The Latin

is that more ancient version which was in use before the time of Jerome,

and which he corrected, to form what is now called the Latin Vulgate.

This old version was made by changing each Greek word into its

corresponding Latin word, with very little regard to the different

characters of the two languages. It was no doubt made by an Alexandrian

Greek, who had a very slight knowledge of Latin.

Already the papyrus on which books were written was, for the most part,

a manufactured article and might claim the name of paper. In the time of

Pliny in the first century the sheets had been made in the old way; the

slips of the plant laid one across the other had been held together by

their own sticky sap without the help of glue. In the reign of Aurelian,

in the third century, if not earlier, glue had been largely used in the

manufacture; and it is probable that at this time, in the fifth century,

the manufactured article almost deserved the name of paper. But this

manufactured papyrus was much weaker and less lasting than that made

after the old and more simple fashion. No books written upon it remain

to us. At a later period, the stronger fibre of flax was used in the

manufacture, but the date of this improvement is also unknown, because

at first the paper so made, like that made from the papyrus fibre, was

also too weak to last. It was doubtless an Alexandrian improvement.

Flax was an Egyptian plant; paper-making was an Egyptian trade; and

Theophilus, a Roman writer on manufactures, when speaking of paper made

from flax, clearly points to its Alexandrian origin, by giving it the

name of Greek parchment. Between the papyrus of the third century, and

the strong paper of the eleventh century, no books remain to us but

those written on parchment.

The monks of Mount Sinai suffered much during these reigns of weakness

from the marauding attacks of the Arabs. These men had no strong

monastery; but hundreds of them lived apart in single cells in the

side of the mountains round the valley of Feiran, at the foot of Mount

Serbal, and they had nothing to protect them but their poverty.

They were not protected by Egypt, and they made treaties with the

neighbouring Arabs, like an independent republic, of which the town of

Feiran was the capital. The Arabs, from the Jordan to the Red Sea,

made robbery the employment of their lives, and they added much to the

voluntary sufferings of the monks.

[Illustration: 267.jpg THE PAPYRUS PLANT]

Nilus, a monk who had left his family in Egypt, to spend his life in

prayer and study on the spot where Moses was appointed the legislator

of Israel, describes these attacks upon his brethren, and he boasts over

the Israelites that, notwithstanding their sufferings, the monks spent

their whole lives cheerfully in those very deserts which God’s chosen

people could not even pass through without murmuring. Nilus has left

some letters and exhortations. It was then, probably, that the numerous

inscriptions were made on the rocks at the foot of Mount Serbal, and on

the path towards its sacred peak, which have given to one spot the name

of Mokatteb, or the valley of writing. A few of these inscriptions are

in the Greek language.

The Egyptian physicians had of old always formed a part of the

priesthood, and they seem to have done much the same after the spread

of Christianity. We find some monks named _Parabalani_, who owned

the Bishop of Alexandria as their head, and who united the offices of

physician and nurse in waiting on the sick and dying. As they professed

poverty they were maintained by the state and had other privileges; and

hence it was a place much sought after, and even by the wealthy. But to

lessen this abuse it was ordered by an imperial rescript that none but

poor people who had been rate-payers should be _Parabalani_; and their

number was limited, first to five hundred, but afterwards, at the

request of the bishop, to six hundred. A second charitable institution

in Alexandria had the care of strangers and the poor, and was also

managed by one of the priests.

Alexandria was fast sinking in wealth and population, and several new

laws were now made to lessen its difficulties. One was to add a hundred

and ten bushels of grain to the daily alimony of the city, the supply on

which the riotous citizens were fed in idleness. By a second and a third

law the five chief men in the corporation, and every man that had filled

a civic office for thirty years, were freed from all bodily punishment,

and only to be fined when convicted of a crime. Theodosius built a

large church in Alexandria, which was called after his name; and the

provincial judges were told in a letter to the prefect that, if they

wished to earn the emperor’s praise, they must not only restore those

buildings which were falling through age and neglect but must also build

new ones.

Though the pagan philosophy had been much discouraged at Alexandria by

the destruction of the temples and the cessation of the sacrifices, yet

the philosophers were still allowed to teach in the schools. Syrianus

was at the head of the Platonists, and he wrote largely on the Orphic,

Pythagorean, and Platonic doctrines. In his Commentary on Aristotle’s

Metaphysics he aims at showing how a Pythagorean or a Platonist would

successfully answer Aristotle’s objections. He seems to look upon the

writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus as the true fountains of

Platonic wisdom, quite as much as the works of the great philosopher

who gave his name to the sect. Syrianus afterwards removed to Athens, to

take charge of the Platonic school in that city, and Athens became the

chief seat of Alexandrian Platonism.

Olympiodorus was at the same time undertaking the task of forming a

Peripatetic school in Alexandria, in opposition to the new Platonism,

and he has left some of the fruits of his labour in his Commentaries on

Aristotle. But the Peripatetic philosophy was no longer attractive to

the pagans, though after the fall of the catechetical school it had

a strong following of Christian disciples. Olympiodorus also wrote

a history, but it has long since been lost, with other works of a

second-rate merit. He was a native of the Thebaid, and travelled over

his country. He described the Great Oasis as still a highly cultivated

spot, where the husbandman watered his fields every third day in summer,

and every fifth day in winter, from wells of two and three hundred feet

in depth, and thereby raised two crops of barley, and often three of

millet, in a year. Olympiodorus also travelled beyond Syênê into Nubia,

with some danger from the Blemmyes, but he was not able to see the

emerald mines, which were worked on Mount Smaragdus in the Arabian

desert between Koptos and Berenice, and which seem to have been the

chief object of his journey.

Proclus came to Alexandria about the end of this reign, and studied

many years under Olympiodorus, but not to the neglect of the platonic

philosophy, of which he afterwards became such a distinguished ornament

and support. The other Alexandrians under whom Proclus studied were

Hero, the mathematician, a devout and religious pagan, Leonas, the

rhetorician, who introduced him to all the chief men of learning, and

Orion, the grammarian, who boasted of his descent from the race of

Theban priests. Thus the pagans still held up their heads in the

schools. Nor were the ceremonies of their religion, though unlawful,

wholly stopped. In the twenty-eighth year of this reign, when the people

were assembled in a theatre at Alexandria to celebrate the midnight

festival of the Nile, a sacrifice which had been forbidden by

Constantine and the council of Nicsea, the building fell beneath the

weight of the crowd, and upwards of five hundred persons were killed by

the fall.

[Illustration: 271.jpg ARABS RESTING IN THE DESERT]

It will be of some interest to review here the machinery of officers and

deputies, civil as well as military, by which Egypt was governed under

the successors of Constantine. The whole of the Eastern empire was

placed under two prefects, the pretorian prefect of the East and the

pretorian prefect of Illyricum, who, living at Constantinople, like

modern secretaries of state, made edicts for the government of the

provinces and heard the appeals. Under the prefect of the East were

fifteen consular provinces, together with Egypt, which was not any

longer under one prefect. There was no consular governor in Egypt

between the prefect at Constantinople and the six prefects of the

smaller provinces. These provinces were Upper Libya or Cyrene, Lower

Libya or the Oasis, the Thebaid, Ægyptiaca or the western part of the

Delta, Augustanica or the eastern part of the Delta, and the Heptanomis,

now named Arcadia, after the late emperor. Each of these was under

an Augustal prefect, attended by a _Princeps, a Cornicula-rius,

an Adjutor_, and others, and was assisted in civil matters by a

_Commentariensis_, a corresponding secretary, a secretary _ab actis_,

with a crowd of _numerarii_ or clerks.

The military government was under a count with two dukes, with a number

of legions, cohorts, troops, and wedges of cavalry, stationed in about

fifty cities, which, if they had looked as well in the field as they do

upon paper, would have made Theodosius II. as powerful as Augustus. But

the number of Greek and Roman troops was small. The rest were barbarians

who held their own lives at small price, and the lives of the unhappy

Egyptians at still less. The Greeks were only a part of the fifth

Macedonian legion, and Trajan’s second legion, which were stationed at

Memphis, at Parembole, and at Apollinopolis; while from the names of

the other cohorts we learn that they were Franks, Portuguese, Germans,

Quadri, Spaniards, Britons, Moors, Vandals, Gauls, Sarmati, Assyrians,

Galatians, Africans, Numid-ians, and others of less known and more

remote places. Egypt itself furnished the Egyptian legion, part of which

was in Mesopotamia, Diocletian’s third legion of Thebans, the first

Maximinian legion of Thebans which was stationed in Thrace, Constantine’s

second Flavian legion of Thebans, Valens’ second Felix legion of

Thebans, and the Julian Alexandrian legion, stationed in Thrace. Beside

these, there were several bodies of native militia, from Abydos, Syênê,

and other cities, which were not formed into legions. The Egyptian

cavalry were a first and second Egyptian troop, several bodies of native

archers mounted, three troops on dromedaries, and a body of Diocletian’s

third legion promoted to the cavalry. These Egyptian troops were chiefly

Arab settlers in the Thebaid, for the Kopts had long since lost the use

of arms. The Kopts were weak enough to be trampled on; but the Arabs

were worth bribing by admission into the legions. The taxes of the

province were collected by a number of counts of the sacred largesses,

who wrere under the orders of an officer of the same title at

Constantinople, and were helped by a body of counts of the exports and

imports, prefects of the treasury and of the mints, with an army

of clerks of all titles and all ranks. From this government the

Alexandrians were exempt, living under their own military prefect and

corporation, and, instead of paying any taxes beyond the custom-house

duties at the port, they received a bounty in grain out of the taxes of

Egypt.

Soon after this we find the political division of Egypt slightly

altered. It is then divided into eight governments; the Upper Thebaid

with eleven cities under a duke; the Lower Thebaid with ten cities,

including the Great Oasis and part of the Heptanomis, under a general;

Upper Libya or Cyrene under a general; Lower Libya or Parastonium under

a general; Arcadia, or the remainder of the Heptanomis, under a general;

Ægyptiaca, or the western half of the Delta, under an Augustalian

prefect; the first Augustan government, or the rest of the Delta, under

a _Corrector_; and the second Augustan government, from Bubastis to the

Red Sea, under a general. We also meet with several military stations

named after the late emperors: a Maximianopolis and a Dioclesianopolis

in the Upper Thebaid; a Theodosianopolis in the Lower Thebaid, and a

second Theodosianopolis in Arcadia. But it is not easy to determine what

villages were meant by these high-sounding names, which were perhaps

only used in official documents.

The empire of the East was gradually sinking in power during this long

and quiet reign of Theodosius II.; but the empire of the West was being

hurried to its fall by the revolt of the barbarians in every one of its

widespread provinces. Henceforth in the weakness of the two countries

Egypt and Rome are wholly separated. After having influenced one another

in politics, in literature, and in religion for seven centuries, they

were now as little known to one another as they were before the day when

Fabius arrived at Alexandria on an embassy from the senate to Ptolemy

Philadelphus.

Theological and political quarrels, under the name of the Homoousian

and Arian controversy, had nearly separated Egypt from the rest of the

empire during the reigns of Constantius and Valens, but they had been

healed by the wisdom of the first Theodosius, who governed Egypt by

means of a popular bishop; and the policy which he so wisely began

was continued by his successors through weakness. But in the reign of

Marcian (450--457) the old quarrel again broke out, and, though it was

under a new name, it again took the form of a religious controversy.

Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, died in the last reign; and as he had

succeeded his uncle, so on his death the bishopric fell to Dioscorus,

a relation of his own, a man of equal religious violence and of less

learning, who differed from him only in the points of doctrine about

which he should quarrel with his fellow-Christians. About the same

time Eutyches, a priest of Constantinople, had been condemned by his

superiors and expelled from the Church for denying the two natures of

Christ, and for maintaining that he was truly God, and in no respect

a man. This was the opinion of the Egyptian church, and therefore

Dioscorus, the Bishop of Alexandria, who had no right whatever to meddle

in the quarrels at Constantinople, yet, acting on the forgotten rule

that each bishop’s power extended over all Christendom, undertook of

his own authority to absolve Eutyches from his excommunication, and in

return to excommunicate the Bishop of Constantinople who had condemned

him. To settle this quarrel, a general council was summoned at

Chalcedon; and there six hundred and thirty-two bishops met and

condemned the faith of Eutyches, and further explained the Nicene creed,

to which Eutyches and the Egyptians always appealed. They excommunicated

Eutyches and his patron Dioscorus, who were banished by the emperor; and

they elected Proterius to the then vacant bishopric of Alexandria.

In thus condemning the faith of Eutyches, the Greeks were

excommunicating the whole of Egypt. The Egyptian belief in the one

nature of Christ, which soon afterwards took the name of the Jacobite

faith from one of its popular supporters, might perhaps be distinguished

by the microscopic eye of the controversialist from the faith of

Eutyches; but they equally fell under the condemnation of the council of

Chalcedon. Egypt was no longer divided in its religious opinions. There

had been a party who, though Egyptian in blood, held the Arian and

half-Arian opinions of the Greeks, but that party had ceased to exist.

Their religion had pulled one way and their political feelings another;

the latter were found the stronger, as being more closely rooted to the

soil; and their religious opinions had by this time fitted themselves

to the geographical boundaries of the country. Hence the decrees of

the council of Chalcedon were rejected by the whole of Egypt; and the

quarrel between the Chalcedonian and Jacobite party, like the former

quarrel between the Athanasians and the Arians, was little more than

another name for the unwillingness of the Egyptians to be governed by

Constantinople.

Proterius, the new bishop, entered Alexandria supported by the prefect

Floras at the head of the troops.

But this was the signal for a revolt of the Egyptians, who overpowered

the cohort with darts and stones; and the magistrates were driven to

save their lives in the celebrated temple of Serapis. But they found no

safety there; the mob surrounded the building and set fire to it, and

burned alive the Greek magistrates and friends of the new bishop; and

the city remained in the power of the rebellious Egyptians. When the

news of this rising reached Constantinople the emperor sent to Egypt a

further force of two thousand men, who stormed Alexandria and sacked it

like a conquered city, and established Proterius in the bishopric. As a

punishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for some

time the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens, and

only restored them after the return to peace and good order.

In the weak state of the empire, the Blemmyes, and Nubades, or Nobatæ,

had latterly been renewing their inroads upon Upper Egypt; they

had overpowered the Romans, as the Greek and barbarian troops of

Constantinople were always called, and had carried off a large booty

and a number of prisoners. Maximinus, the imperial general, then led his

forces against them; he defeated them, and made them beg for peace.

The barbarians then proposed, as the terms of their surrender, never to

enter Egypt while Maximinus commanded the troops in the Thebaid; but the

conqueror was not contented with such an unsatisfactory submission,

and would make no treaty with them till they had released the Roman

prisoners without ransom, paid for the booty that they had taken, and

given a number of the nobles as hostages. On this Maximums agreed to a

truce of a hundred years.

The people now called the Nubians, living on both sides of the cataract

of Syênê, declared themselves of the true Egyptian race by their

religious practices. They had an old custom of going each year to the

temple of Isis on the isle of Elephantine, and of carrying away one

of the statues with them and returning it to the temple when they had

consulted it. But as they were now being driven out of the province,

they bargained with Maximums for permission to visit the temple each

year without hindrance from the Roman guards. The treaty was written on

papyrus and nailed up in this temple. But friendship in the desert, says

the proverb, is as weak and wavering as the shade of the acacia tree;

this truce was no sooner agreed upon than Maximinus fell ill and died;

and the Nubades at once broke the treaty, regained by force their

hostages, who had not yet been carried out of the Thebaid, and overran

the province as they had done before their defeat.

[Illustration: 279.jpg ISIS AS THE DOG-STAR]

By this success of the Nubians, Christianity was largely driven out of

Upper Egypt; and about seventy years after the law of Thedosius L, by

which paganism was supposed to be crushed, the religion of Isis and

Serapis was again openly professed in the Thebaid, where it had perhaps

always been cultivated in secret. A certain master of the robes in one

of the Egyptian temple came at this time to the temple of Isis in the

island of Philæ, and his votive inscription there declares that he was

the son of Pachomius, a prophet, and successor by direct descent from a

yet more famous Pachomius, a prophet, who we may easily believe was the

Christian prophet who gathered together so many followers in the island

of Tabenna, near Thebes, and there founded an order of Christian monks.

These Christians now all returned to their paganism. Nearly all the

remains of Christian architecture which we meet with in the The-baid

were built during the hundred and sixty years between the defeat of the

Nubians by Diocletian, and their victories in the reign of Marcian.

The Nubians were far more civilised than their neighbours, the Blemmyes,

whom they were usually able to drive back into their native deserts. We

find an inscription in bad Greek, in the great temple at Talmis, now

the village of Kalabshe, which was probably written about this time.

A conqueror of the name of Silco there declares that he is king of the

Nubians and all the Ethiopians; that in the upper part of his kingdom he

is called Mars, and in the lower part Lion; that he is as great as any

king of his day; that he has defeated the Blemmyes in battle again and

again; and that he has made himself master of the country between

Talmis and Primis. While such were the neighbours and inhabitants of

the Thebaid, the fields were only half-tilled, and the desert was

encroaching on the paths of man. The sand was filling up the temples,

covering the overthrown statues, and blocking up the doors to the tombs;

but it was at the same time saving, to be dug out in after ages, those

records which the living no longer valued.

On the death of the Emperor Marcian, the Alexandrians, taking advantage

of the absence of the military prefect Dionysius, who was then fighting

against the Nubades in Upper Egypt, renewed their attack upon the Bishop

Proterius, and deposed him from his office. To fill his place they made

choice of a monk named Timotheus Ælurus, who held the Jacobite faith,

and, having among them two deposed bishops, they got them to ordain him

Bishop of Alexandria, and then led him by force of arms into the great

church which had formerly been called Caesar’s temple. Upon hearing

of the rebellion, the prefect returned in haste to Alexandria; but

his approach was only the signal for greater violence, and the enraged

people murdered Proterius in the baptistery, and hung up his body at the

Tetrapylon in mockery. This was not a rebellion of the mob. Timotheus

was supported by the men of chief rank in the city; the _Honorati_ who

had borne state offices, the _Politici_ who had borne civic offices,

and the _Navicularii_, or contractors for the freight of the Egyptian

tribute, were all opposed to the emperor’s claim to appoint the officer

whose duties were much more those of prefect of the city than patriarch

of Egypt. With such an opposition as this, the emperor would do nothing

without the greatest caution, for he was in danger of losing Egypt

altogether. But so much were the minds of all men then engrossed in

ecclesiastical matters that this political struggle wholly took the form

of a dispute in controversial divinity, and the emperor wrote a

letter to the chief bishops in Christendom to ask their advice in

his difficulty. These theologians were too busily engaged in their

controversies to take any notice of the danger of Egypt’s revolting from

the empire and joining the Persians; so they strongly advised Leo not to

depart from the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, or to acknowledge

as Bishop of Alexandria a man who denied the two natures of Christ.

Accordingly, the emperor again risked breaking the slender ties by

which he held Egypt; he banished the popular bishop, and forced the

Alexandrians to receive in his place one who held the Chalcedonian

faith.

On the death of Leo, he was succeeded by his grandson, Leo the Younger,

who died in 473, after a reign of one year, and was succeeded by his

father Zeno, the son-in-law of the elder Leo. Zeno gave himself up at

once to debauchery and vice, while the empire was harassed on all sides

by the barbarians, and the provinces were roused into rebellion by the

cruelty of the prefects. The rebels at last found a head in Basilicus,

the brother-in-law of Leo. He declared himself of the Jacobite faith,

which was the faith of the barbarian enemies, of the barbarian troops,

and of the barbarian allies of the empire, and, proclaiming himself

emperor, made himself master of Constantinople without a battle, and

drove Zeno into banishment in the third year of his reign.

The first step of Basilicus was to recall from banishment Timotheus

Ælurus, the late Bishop of Alexandria, and to restore him to the

bishopric (A.D. 477). He then addressed to him and the other recalled

bishops a circular letter, in which he repeals the decrees of the

council of Chalcedon, and re-establishes the Nicene creed, declaring

that Jesus was of one substance with the Father, and that Mary was the

mother of God. The march of Timotheus to the seat of his own government,

from Constantinople whither he had been summoned, was more like that

of a conqueror than of a preacher of peace. He deposed some bishops and

restored others, and, as the decrees of the council of Chalcedon were

the particular objects of his hatred, he restored to the city of Ephesus

the patriarchal power which that synod had taken away from it. Basilicus

reigned for about two years, when he was defeated and put to death by

Zeno, who regained the throne.

As soon as Zeno was again master of the empire, he re-established the

creed of the council of Chalcedon, and drove away the Jacobite bishops

from their bishoprics. Death, however, removed Timotheus Ælurus before

the emperor’s orders were put in force in Alexandria, and the Egyptians

then chose Peter Mongus as his successor, in direct opposition to the

orders from Constantinople. But the emperor was resolved not to be

beaten; the bishopric of Alexandria was so much a civil office that to

have given up the appointment to the Egyptians would have been to allow

the people to govern themselves; so he banished Peter, and recalled to

the head of the Church Timotheus Salophaciolus, who had been living at

Canopus ever since his loss of the bishopric.

But, as the patriarch of Alexandria enjoyed the ecclesiastical revenues,

and was still in appearance a teacher of religion, the Alexandrians,

in recollection of the former rights of the Church, still claimed the

appointment. They sent John, a priest of their own faith and dean of the

church of John the Baptist, as their ambassador to Constantinople, not

to remonstrate against the late acts of the emperor, but to beg that on

future occasions the Alexandrians might be allowed the old privilege of

choosing their own bishop. The Emperor Zeno seems to have seen through

the ambassador’s earnestness, and he first bound him by an oath not to

accept the bishopric if he should even be himself chosen to it, and

he then sent him back with the promise that the Alexandrians should

be allowed to choose their own patriarch on the next vacancy. But

unfortunately John’s ambition was too strong for his oath, and on the

death of Timotheus, which happened soon afterwards, he spent a large

sum of money in bribes among the clergy and chief men of the city, and

thereby got himself chosen patriarch. On this, the emperor seems to have

thought only of punishing John, and he at once gave up the struggle with

the Egyptians. Believing that, of the two patriarchs who had been chosen

by the people, Peter Mongus, who was living in banishment, would be

found more dutiful than John, who was on the episcopal throne, he

banished John and recalled Peter; and the latter agreed to the terms of

an imperial edict which Zeno then put forth, to heal the disputes in

the Egyptian church, and to recall the province to obedience. This

celebrated peace-making edict, usually called the Henoticon, is

addressed to the clergy and laity of Alexandria, Egypt, Libya, and the

Pentapolis, and is an agreement between the emperor and the bishops who

countersigned it, that neither party should ever mention the decrees of

the council of Chalcedon, which were the great stumbling-block with the

Egyptians.

[Illustration: 285.jpg STREET SPRINKLER AT ALEXANDRIA]

But in all other points the Henoticon is little short of a surrender to

the people of the right to choose their own creed; it styles Mary the

mother of God, and allows that the decrees of the council of Nicæa and

Constantinople contain all that is important of the true faith. John,

when banished by Zeno, like many of the former deposed bishops, fled to

Rome for comfort and for help. There he met with the usual support; and

Felix, Bishop of Rome, wrote to Constantinople, remonstrating with Zeno

for dismissing the patriarch. But this was only a small part of the

emperor’s want of success in his attempt at peace-making; for the crafty

Peter, who had gained the bishopric by subscribing to the peace-making

edict, was no sooner safely seated on his episcopal throne than he

denounced the council of Chalcedon and its decrees as heretical, and

drove out of their monasteries all those who still adhered to that

faith. Nephalius, one of these monks, wrote to the emperor at

Constantinople in complaint, and Zeno sent Cosmas to the bishop to

threaten him with his imperial displeasure, and to try to re-establish

peace in the Church. But the arguments of Cosmas were wholly

unsuccessful; and Zeno then sent an increase of force to Arsenius, the

military prefect, who settled the quarrel for the time by sending back

the most rebellious of the Alexandrians as prisoners to Constantinople.

Soon after this dispute Peter Mongus died, and fortunately he was

succeeded in the bishopric by a peacemaker. Athanasius, the new bishop,

very unlike his great predecessor of the same name, did his best to heal

the angry disputes in the Church, and to reconcile the Egyptians to the

imperial government.

Hierocles, the Alexandrian, was at this time teaching philosophy in his

native city, where his zeal and eloquence in favour of Platonism drew

upon him the anger of the Christians and the notice of the government.

He was sent to Constantinople to be punished for not believing in

Christianity, for it does not appear that, like the former Hierocles,

he ever wrote against it. There he bore a public scourging from his

Christian torturers, with a courage equal to that formerly shown by

their forefathers when tortured by his. When some of the blood from

his shoulders flew into his hand, he held it out in scorn to the judge,

saying with Ulysses, “Cyclops, since human flesh has been thy food, now

taste this wine.” After his punishment he was banished, but was soon

allowed to return to Alexandria, and there he again taught openly as

before. Paganism never wears so fair a dress as in the writings of

Hierocles; his commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans is

full of the loftiest and purest morality, and not less agreeable are the

fragments that remain of his writings on our duties, and his beautiful

chapter on the pleasures of a married life. In the Facetiæ of Hierocles

we have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from the

wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning;

the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone will

not make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer is

always called a man of learning.

Ætius, the Alexandrian physician, has left a large work containing

a full account of the state of Egyptian medicine at this time. He

describes the diseases and their remedies, quoting the recipes of

numerous authors, from the King Nechepsus, Galen, Hippocrates, and

Hioscorides, down to Archbishop Cyril. He is not wholly free from

superstition, as when making use of a green jasper set in a ring; but he

observes that the patients recovered as soon when the stone was plain

as when a dragon was engraved upon it according to the recommendation of

Nechepsus. In Nile water he finds every virtue, and does not forget dark

paint for the ladies’ eyebrows, and Cleopatra-wash for the face.

Anastasius, the next emperor, succeeding in 491, followed the wise

policy which Zeno had entered upon in the latter years of his reign,

and he strictly adhered to the terms of the peace-making edict. The

four patriarchs of Alexandria who were chosen during this reign, John,

a second John, Dioscorus, and Timotheus, were all of the Jacobite faith;

and the Egyptians readily believed that the emperor was of the same

opinion. When called upon by the quarrelling theologians, he would

neither reject nor receive the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and

by this wise conduct he governed Egypt without any religious rebellion

during a long reign.

The election of Dioscorus, however, the third patriarch of this

reign, was not brought about peaceably. He was the cousin of a former

patriarch, Timotheus Ælurus, which, if we view the bishopric as a civil

office, might be a reason for the emperor’s wishing him to have the

appointment. But it was no good reason with the Alexandrians, who

declared that he had not been chosen according to the canons of the

apostles; and the magistrates of the city were forced to employ the

troops to lead him in safety to his throne. After the first ceremony, he

went, as was usual at an installation, to St. Mark’s Church, and

there the clergy robed him in the patriarchal state robes. The grand

procession then moved through the streets to the church of St. John,

where the new bishop went through the communion service. But the city

was much disturbed during the whole day, and in the riot Theodosius, the

son of Calliopus, a man of Augustalian rank, was killed by the mob. The

Alexandrians treated the affair as murder, and punished with death those

who were thought guilty; but the emperor looked upon it as a rebellion

of the citizens, and the bishop was obliged to go on an embassy to

Constantinople to appease his just anger.

Anastasius, who had deserved the obedience of the Egyptians by his

moderation, pardoned their ingratitude when they offended; but he was

the last Byzantine emperor who governed Egypt with wisdom, and the last

who failed to enforce the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. It may

well be doubted whether any wise conduct on the part of the rulers

could have healed the quarrel between the two countries, and made the

Egyptians forget the wrongs that they had suffered from the Greeks.

In the tenth year of the reign of Anastasius, A.D. 501, the Persians,

after overrunning a large part of Syria and defeating the Roman

generals, passed Pelusium and entered Egypt. The army of Kobades

laid waste the whole of the Delta up to the very walls of Alexandria.

Eustatius, the military prefect, led out his forces against the invaders

and fought many battles with doubtful success; but as the capital was

safe the Persians were at last obliged to retire, leaving the people

ruined as much by the loss of a harvest as by the sword. Alexandria

suffered severely from famine and the diseases which followed in

its train; and history has gratefully recorded the name of Urbib, a

Christian Jew of great wealth, who relieved the starving poor of that

city with his bounty. Three hundred persons were crushed to death in the

church of Arcadius on Easter Sunday in the press of the crowd to receive

his alms. As war brought on disease and famine, they also brought on

rebellion. The people of Alexandria, in want of grain and oil, rose

against the magistrates, and many lives were lost in the attempt to

quell the riots.

In the early part of this history we have seen ambitious bishops quickly

disposed of by banishment to the Great Oasis; and again, as the country

became more desolate, criminals were sufficiently separated from the

rest of the empire by being sent to Thebes. Alexandria was then the last

place in the world in which a pretender to the throne would be allowed

to live. But Egypt was now ruined; and Anastasius began his reign by

banishing, to the fallen Alexandria, Longinus, the brother of the late

king, and he had him ordained a presbyter, to mark him as unfit for the

throne.

Julianus, who was during a part of this reign the prefect of Egypt, was

also a poet, and he has left us a number of short epigrams that

form part of the volume of Greek Anthology which was published at

Constantinople soon after this time. Christodorus of Thebes was another

poet who joined with Julianus in praising the Emperor Anastasius. He

also removed to Constantinople, the seat of patronage; and the fifth

book of the Greek Anthology contains his epigrams on the winners in the

horse-race in that city and on the statues which stood around the public

gymnasium.

[Illustration: 291.jpg ILLUSTRATIONS FROM COPY OF DIOSCORIDE]

The poet’s song, like the traveller’s tale, often related the wonders

of the river Nile. The overflowing waters first manured the fields, and

then watered the crops, and lastly carried the grain to market; and one

writer in the Anthology, to describe the country life in Egypt, tells

the story of a sailor, who, to avoid the dangers of the ocean, turned

husbandman, and was then shipwrecked in his own meadows.

The book-writers at this time sometimes illuminated their more valuable

parchments with gold and silver letters and sometimes employed painters

to ornament them with small paintings. The beautiful copy of the work

of Dioscorides on Plants in the library at Vienna was made in this reign

for the Princess Juliana of Constantinople. In one painting the figure

of science or invention is holding up a plant, while on one side of her

is the painter drawing it on his canvas, and on the other side is the

author describing it in his book. Other paintings are of the plants and

animals mentioned in the book. A copy of the Book of Genesis, also in

the library at Vienna, is of the same class and date. A large part of it

is written in gold and silver; and it has eighty-eight small paintings

of various historical subjects. In these the story is well told, though

the drawing and perspective are bad and the figures crowded. But

these Alexandrian paintings are better than those made in Rome or

Constantinople at this time.

With the spread of Christianity theatrical representations had been

gradually going out of use. The Greek tragedies, as we see in the works

of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, those models of pure taste in

poetry, are founded on the pagan mythology; and in many of them the gods

are made to walk and talk upon the stage. Hence they of necessity fell

under the ban of the clergy. As the Christians became more powerful the

several cities of the empire had one by one discontinued these

popular spectacles, and horse-races usually took their place. But the

Alexandrians were the last people to give up a favourite amusement;

and by the end of this reign Alexandria was the only city in the empire

where tragic and comic actors and Eastern dancers were to be seen in the

theatre.

The tower or lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the work of days more

prosperous than these, had latterly been sadly neglected with the other

buildings of the country. For more than seven hundred years, the

pilot on approaching this flat shore after dark had pointed out to his

shipmate what seemed a star on the horizon, and comforted him with the

promise of a safe entrance into the haven, and told him of Alexander’s

tower. But the waves breaking against its foot had long since carried

away the outworks, and laid bare the foundations; the wall was

undermined and its fall seemed close at hand. The care of Anastasius,

however, surrounded it again with piles and buttresses; and this

monument of wisdom and science, which deserved to last for ever, was

for a little while longer saved from ruin. An epigram in the Anthology

informs us that Ammonius was the name of the builder who performed this

good work, and to him and to Neptune the grateful sailors then raised

their hands in prayer and praise.

In 518 Justin I. succeeded Anastasius on the throne of Constantinople,

and in the task of defending the empire against the Persians. And this

task became every year more difficult, as the Greek population of his

Egyptian and Asiatic provinces fell off in numbers. For some years after

the division of the empire under the sons of Constantine, Antioch in

Syria had been the capital from which Alexandria received the emperor’s

commands. The two cities became very closely united; and now that the

Greeks were deserting Antioch, a part of the Syrian church began to

adopt the more superstitious creed of Egypt. Severus, Bishop of Antioch,

was successful in persuading a large party in the Syrian church to deny

the humanity of Christ, and to style Mary the mother of God. But the

chief power in Antioch rested with the opposite party. They answered

his arguments by threats of violence, and he had to leave the city for

safety. He fled to Alexandria, and with him began the friendship between

the two churches which lasted for several centuries. In Alexandria he

was received with the honour due to his religious zeal. But though

in Antioch his opinions had been too Egyptian for the Syrians, in

Alexandria they were too Syrian for the Egyptians. The Egyptians, who

said that Jesus had been crucified and died only in appearance, always

denied that his body was liable to corruption. Severus, however, argued

that it was liable to corruption before the resurrection; and this led

him into a new controversy, in which Timotheus, the Alexandrian bishop,

took part against his own more superstitious flock, and sided with

his friend, the Bishop of Antioch. Severus has left us, in the Syriac

language, the baptismal service as performed in Egypt. The priest

breathes three times into the basin to make the water holy, he makes

three crosses on the child’s forehead, he adjures the demons of

wickedness to quit him, he again makes three crosses on his forehead

with oil, he again blows three times into the water in the form of a

cross, he anoints his whole body with oil, and then plunges him in the

water. Many other natives of Syria soon followed Severus to Alexandria;

so many indeed that as Greek literature decayed in that city, Syriac

literature rose. Many Syrians also came to study the religious life in

the monasteries of Egypt, and after some time the books in the library

of the monastery at Mount Nit-ria were found to be half Arabic and half

Syriac.

Justin, the new emperor, again lighted up in Alexandria the flames

of discord which had been allowed to slumber since the publication of

Zeno’s peace-making edict. But in the choice of the bishop he was not

able to command without a struggle. In the second year of his reign, on

the death of Timotheus, the two parties again found themselves nearly

equal in strength; and Alexandria was for several years kept almost in a

state of civil war between those who thought that the body of Jesus had

been liable to corruption, and those who thought it incorruptible. The

former chose Gaianas, whom his adversaries called a Manichean; and the

latter Theodosius, a Jacobite, who had the support of the prefect; and

each of these in his turn was able to drive his rival out of Alexandria.

Those Persian forces which in the last reign overran the Delta were

chiefly Arabs from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. To make an end of

these attacks, and to engage their attention in another quarter, was the

natural wish of the statesmen of Constantinople; and for this purpose

Anastasius had sent an embassy to the Homeritæ on the southern coast

of Arabia, to persuade them to attack their northern neighbours. The

Homeritæ held the strip of coast now called Hadramout. They were

enriched, though hardly civilised, by being the channel along which

much of the Eastern trade passed from India to the Nile, to avoid the

difficult navigation of the ocean. They were Jewish Arabs, who had

little in common with the Arabs of Yemen, but had frequent intercourse

with Abyssinia and the merchants of the Red Sea. Part of the trade of

Solomon and the Tyrians was probably to their coast. To this distant and

little tribe the Emperor of Constantinople now sent a second pressing

embassy. Julianus, the ambassador, went up the Nile from Alexandria,

and then crossed the Red Sea, or Indian Sea as it was also called, to

Arabia. He was favourably received by the Homeritæ. Arethas, the king,

gave him an audience in grand barbaric state. He was standing in a

chariot drawn by four elephants; he wore no clothing but a cloth of gold

around his loins; his arms were laden with costly armlets and bracelets;

he held a shield and two spears in his hands, and his nobles stood

around him armed, and singing to his honour. When the ambassador

delivered the emperor’s letter, Arethas kissed the seal, and then kissed

Julianus himself. He accepted the gifts which Justin had sent, and

promised to move his forces northward against the Persians as requested,

and also to keep the route open for the trade to Alexandria.

Justinian, the successor of Justin in 527, settled the quarrel between

the two Alexandrian bishops by summoning them both to Constantinople,

and then sending them into banishment. But this had no effect in healing

the divisions in the Egyptian church; and for the next half-century the

two parties ranged themselves, in their theological or rather political

quarrel, under the names of their former bishops, and called themselves

Gaianites and Theodosians. Nor did the measures of Justinian tend to

lessen the breach between Egypt and Constantinople. He appointed Paul to

the bishopric, and required the Egyptians to receive the decrees of the

council of Chalcedon.

After two years Paul was displaced either by the emperor or by his

flock; and Zoilus was then seated on the episcopal throne by the help

of the imperial forces. He maintained his dangerous post for about six

years, when the Alexandrians rose in open rebellion, overpowered the

troops, and forced him to seek safety in flight; and the Jacobite party

then turned out all the bishops who held the Greek faith.

When Justinian heard that the Jacobites were masters of Egypt he

appointed Apollinarius to the joint office of prefect and patriarch of

Alexandria, and sent him with a large force to take possession of his

bishopric. Apollinarius marched into Alexandria in full military dress

at the head of his troops; but when he entered the church he laid aside

his arms, and putting on the patriarchal robes began to celebrate the

rites of his religion. The Alexandrians were by no means overawed by the

force with which he had entered the city; they pelted him with a shower

of stones from every corner of the church, and he was forced to withdraw

from the building in order to save his life. But three days afterwards

the bells were rung through the city, and the people were summoned to

meet in the church on the following Sunday, to hear the emperor’s letter

read. When Sunday came the whole city flocked to hear and to disobey

Justinian’s orders. Apollinarius began his address by threatening his

hearers that, if they continued obstinate in their opinions, their

children should be made orphans and their widows given up to the

soldiery; and he was as before stopped with a shower of stones. But this

time he was prepared for the attack; this Christian bishop had placed

his troops in ambush round the church, and on a signal given they

rushed out on his unarmed flock, and by his orders the crowds within and

without the church were put to rout by the sword, the soldiers waded

up to their knees in blood, and the city and whole country yielded its

obedience for the time to bishops who held the Greek faith.

Henceforth the Melchite or royalist patriarchs, who were appointed by

the emperor and had the authority of civil prefects, and were supported

by the power of the military prefect, are scarcely mentioned by the

historian of the Koptic church. They were too much engaged in civil

affairs to act the part of ministers of religion. They collected their

revenues principally in grain, and carried on a large export trade,

transporting their stores to those parts of Europe where they would

bring the best price. On one occasion we hear of a small fleet belonging

to the church of Alexandria, consisting of thirteen ships of about

thirty tons burden each, and bearing ten thousand bushels of grain,

being overtaken by a storm on the coast of Italy. The princely income

of the later patriarchs, raised from the churches of all Egypt under the

name of the offerings of the pious, sometimes amounted to two thousand

pounds of gold, or four hundred thousand dollars. But while these

Melchite or royalist bishops were enjoying the ecclesiastical revenues,

and administering the civil affairs of the diocese and of the great

monasteries, there was a second bishop who held the Jacobite faith, and

who, having been elected by the people according to the ancient forms of

the Church, equally bore the title of patriarch, and administered in

his more humble path to the spiritual wants of his flock. The Jacobite

bishop was always a monk. At his ordination he was declared to be

elected by the popular voice, by the bishops, priests, deacons, monks,

and all the people of Lower Egypt; and prayers were offered up through

the intercession of the Mother of God, and of the glorious Apostle

Mark. The two churches no longer used the same prayer-book. The Melchite

church continued to use the old liturgy, which, as it had been read in

Alexandria from time immemorial, was called the liturgy of St. Mark,

altered however to declare that the Son was of the same substance with

the Father. But the Koptic church made use of the newer liturgies

by their own champions, Bishop Cyril, Basil of Cæsaræ, and Gregory

Nazianzen. These three liturgies were all in the Koptic language, and

more clearly denied the two natures of Christ. Of the two churches the

Koptic had less learning, more bigotry, and opinions more removed from

the teachings of the New Testament; but then the Koptic bishop alone

had any moral power to lead the minds of his flock towards piety and

religion. Had the emperors been at all times either humane or politic

enough to employ bishops of the same religion as the people, they would

perhaps have kept the good-will of their subjects; but as it was, the

Koptic church, smarting under its insults, and forgetting the greater

evils of a foreign conquest, would sometimes look with longing eyes to

the condition of their neighbours, their brethren in faith, the Arabic

subjects of Persia.

The Christianity of the Egyptians was mostly superstition; and as it

spread over the land it embraced the whole nation within its pale, not

so much by purifying the pagan opinions as by lowering itself to their

level, and fitting itself to their corporeal notions of the Creator.

This was in a large measure induced by the custom of using the old

temples for Christian churches; the form of worship was in part guided

by the form of the building, and even the old traditions were engrafted

on the new religion. Thus the traveller Antonius, after visiting the

remarkable places in the Holy Land, came to Egypt to search for the

chariots of the Egyptians who pursued Moses, petrified into rocks at the

bottom of the Red Sea, and for the footsteps left in the sands by the

infant Jesus while he dwelt in Egypt with his parents. At Memphis he

enquired why one of the doors in the great temple of Phtah, then used

as a church, was always closed, and he was told that it had been rudely

shut against the infant Jesus five hundred years before, and mortal

strength had never since been able to open it.

The records of the empire declared that the first Cæsars had kept six

hundred and forty-five thousand men under arms to guard Italy, Africa,

Spain, and Egypt, a number perhaps much larger than the truth; but

Justinian could with difficulty maintain one hundred and fifty thousand

ill-disciplined troops, a force far from large enough to hold even those

provinces that remained to him. During the latter half of his reign

the eastern frontier of this falling empire was sorely harassed by the

Persians under their king Chosroes. They overran Syria, defeated the

army of the empire in a pitched battle, and then took Antioch. By these

defeats the military roads were stopped; Egypt was cut off from the rest

of the empire and could be reached from the capital only by sea. Hence

the emperor was driven to a change in his religious policy. He gave over

the persecution of the Jacobite opinions, and even went so far in one

of his decrees as to call the body of Jesus incorruptible, as he thought

that these were the only means of keeping the allegiance of his subjects

or the friendship of his Arab neighbours, all of whom, as far as they

were Christians, held the Jacobite view of the Nicene creed, and denied

the two natures of Christ.

As the forces of Constantinople were driven back by the victorious

armies of the Persians, the emperors had lost, among other fortresses,

the capital of Arabia Nabataæ, that curious rocky fastness that well

deserved the name of Petra, and which had been garrisoned by Romans

from the reign of Trajan till that of Valens. On this loss it became

necessary to fortify a new frontier post on the Egyptian side of the

Elanitic Gulf. Justinian then built the fortified monastery near Mount

Sinai, to guard the only pass by which Egypt could be entered without

the help of a fleet; and when it was found to be commanded by one of the

higher points of the mountain he beheaded the engineer who built it, and

remedied the fault, as far as it could be done, by a small fortress

on the higher ground. This monastery was held by the Egyptians, and

maintained out of the Egyptian taxes. When the Egyptians were formerly

masters of their own country, before the Persian and Greek conquests,

they were governed by a race of priests, and the temples were their only

fortresses.

[Illustration: 302.jpg FORTRESS NEAR MOUNT SINAI]

The temples of Thebes were the citadels of the capital, and the temples

of Elephantine guarded the frontier. So now, when the military prefect

is too weak to make himself obeyed, the emperor tries to govern through

means of the Christian priesthood; and when it is necessary for the

Egyptians to defend their own frontier, he builds a monastery and

garrisons it with monks.

Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through the

islands of Ceylon and Socotra; but it was chiefly in the hands of

uneducated Arabs of Ethiopia, who were little able to communicate to

the world much knowledge of the countries from which they brought their

highly valued goods. At Ceylon they met with traders from beyond the

Ganges and from China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans had

formerly thought a product of Arabia. At Ceylon was a Christian church,

with a priest and a deacon, frequented by the Christians from Persia,

while the natives of the place were pagans. The coins there used were

Roman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so many

centuries carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was lately

turned more strongly into this channel because a war had sprung up

between the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumitæ of Abyssinia

on the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritæ who dwelt in

Arabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. The

Homeritæ had quarrelled with the Alexandrian merchants in the Indian

trade, and had killed some of them as they were passing their mountains

from India to the country of the Hexumitae.

Immediately after these murders the Hexumitæ found the trade injured,

and they took up arms to keep the passage open for the merchants. Hadad

their king crossed the Red Sea and conquered his enemies; he put to

death Damianus, the King of the Homeritse, and made a new treaty

with the Emperor of Constantinople. The Hexumitæ promised to become

Christians. They sent to Alexandria to beg for a priest to baptise them,

and to ordain their preachers; and Justinian sent John, a man of piety

and high character, the dean of the church of St. John, who returned

with the ambassadors and became bishop of the Hexumitae.

It was possibly this conquest of the Homeritae by Hadad, King of the

Hexumitae, which was recorded on the monument of Adule, at the foot of

the inscription set up eight centuries earlier by Ptolemy Euergetes. The

monument is a throne of white marble. The conqueror, whose name had

been broken away before the inscription was copied, there boasts that

he crossed over the Red Sea and made the Arabians and Sabaaans pay him

tribute. On his own continent he defeated the tribes to the north of

him, and opened the passage from his own country to Egypt; he also

marched eastward, and conquered the tribes on the African incense coast;

and lastly, he crossed the Astaborus to the snowy mountains in which

that branch of the Nile rises, and conquered the tribes between that

stream and the Astapus. This valuable inscription, which tells us of

snowy mountains within the tropics, was copied by Cosmas, a merchant of

Alexandria, who passed through Adule on his way to India.

Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies to

these nations at the southern end of the Red Sea; to the Homeritae,

to persuade them to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to the

Hexumitae, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent an

embassy to the Homeritae under Abram; and, as he was successful in his

object, he entrusted a second embassy to Abram’s son. Nonnosus landed

at Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteen

days to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; it

had gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nile

between Egypt and Meroë. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wild

elephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand. After

delivering his message to Elesbaas, then King of Auxum, he crossed the

Red Sea to Caisus, King of the Homeritæ, a grandson of that Arethas

to whom Justin had sent his embassy. Notwithstanding the natural

difficulties of the journey, and those arising from the tribes through

which he had to pass, Nonnosus performed his task successfully, and on

his return home wrote a history of his embassies.

The advantage gained to the Hexumitæ by their invasion of the Homeritæ

was soon lost, probably as soon as their forces were withdrawn. The

trade through the country of the Homeritae was again stopped; and such

was the difficulty of navigation from the incense coast of Africa to the

mouths of the Indus, that the loss was severely felt at Auxum. Elesbæs

therefore undertook to repeat the punishment which had been before

inflicted on his less civilised neighbours, and again to open the trade

to the merchants from the Nile. It was while he was preparing his forces

for this invasion that Cosmas, the Alexandrian traveller, passed through

Adule; and he copied for the King of Auxum the inscription above spoken

of, which recorded the victories of his predecessor over the enemies he

was himself preparing to attack.

The invasion by Elesbæs, or Elesthæus as he is also named, was

immediately successful. The Homeritæ were conquered, their ruler was

overthrown; and, to secure their future obedience, the conqueror

set over these Jewish Arabs an Abyssinian Christian for their king.

Esimaphæus was chosen for that post; and his first duty was to convert

his new subjects to Christianity. Political reasons as well as religious

zeal would urge him to this undertaking, to make the conquered bear the

badge of the conqueror. For this purpose he engaged the assistance of

Gregentius, a bishop, who was to employ his learning and eloquence in

the cause. Accordingly, in the palace of Threlletum, in the presence of

their new king, a public dispute was held between the Christian bishop

and Herban, a learned Jew. Gregentius has left us an account of the

controversy, in which he was wholly successful, being helped, perhaps,

by the threats and promises of the king. The arguments used were not

quite the same as they would be now. The bishop explained the Trinity as

the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Mind or Father, and resting on

the Word or Son, which was then the orthodox view of this mysterious

doctrine. On the other hand, the Jew quoted the Old Testament to show

that the Lord their God was one Lord. It is related that suddenly the

Jews present were struck blind. Their sight, however, was restored to

them on the bishop’s praying for them; and they were then all thereby

converted and baptised on the spot. The king stood godfather to Herban,

and rewarded him with a high office under his government.

[Illustration: 307.jpg PYRAMID OF MEDUM]

Esimaphasus did not long remain King of the Homeritæ. A rebellion

soon broke out against him, and he was deposed. Elesbaas, King of Auxum,

again sent an army to recall the Homeritæ to their obedience, but this

time the army joined in the revolt; and Elesbæ then made peace with

the enemy, in hopes of thus gaining the advantages which he was unable

to grasp by force of arms. From a Greek inscription on a monument at

Auxum we learn the name of Æizanas, another king of that country, who

also called himself, either truly or boastfully, king of the opposite

coast. He set up the monument to record his victories over the Bougoto,

a people who dwelt between Auxum and Egypt, and he styles himself the

invincible Mars, king of kings, King of the Hexumito, of the Ethiopians,

of the Saboans, and of the Homerito. These kings of the Hexumito

ornamented the city of Auxum with several beautiful and lofty obelisks,

each made of a single block of granite like those in Egypt.

Egypt in its mismanaged state seemed to be of little value to the empire

save as a means of enriching the prefect and the tax-gatherers; it

yielded very little tribute to Constantinople beyond the supply of

grain, and that by no means regularly. To remedy these abuses Justinian

made a new law for the government of the province, with a view of

bringing about a thorough reform. By this edict the districts of

Menelaites and Mareotis, to the west of Alexandria, were separated from

the rest of Egypt, and they were given to the prefect of Libya, whose

seat of government was at Parotonium, because his province was too poor

to pay the troops required to guard it. The several governments of Upper

Egypt, of Lower Egypt, of Alexandria, and of the troops were then given

to one prefect. The two cohorts, the Augustalian and the Ducal, into

which the two Boman legions had gradually dwindled, were henceforth to

be united under the name of the Augustalian Cohort, which was to contain

six hundred men, who were to secure the obedience and put down any

rebellion of the Egyptian and barbarian soldiers. The somewhat high

pay and privileges of this favoured troop were to be increased; and, to

secure its loyalty and to keep out Egyptians, nobody was to be admitted

into it till his fitness had been inquired into by the emperor’s

examiners. The first duty of the cohort was to collect the supply of

grain for Constantinople and to see it put on board the ships; and as

for the supply which was promised to the Alexandrians, the magistrates

were to collect it at their own risk, and by means of their own cohort.

The grain for Constantinople was required to be in that city before the

end of August, or within four months after the harvest, and the supply

for Alexandria not more than a month later. The prefect was made

answerable for the full collection, and whatever was wanting of that

quantity was to be levied on his property and his heirs, at the rate

of one solidus for three artabo of grain, or about three dollars for

fifteen bushels; while in order to help the collection, the export of

grain from Egypt was forbidden from every port but Alexandria, except in

small quantities. The grain required for Alexandria and Constantinople,

to be distributed as a free gift among the idle citizens, was eight

hundred thousand artabo, or four millions of bushels, and the cost

of collecting it was fixed at eighty thousand solidi, or about three

hundred thousand dollars. The prefect was ordered to assist the

collectors at the head of his cohort, and if he gave credit for the

taxes which he was to collect he was to bear the loss himself. If the

archbishop interfered, to give credit and screen an unhappy Egyptian,

then he was to bear the loss, and if his property was not enough the

property of the Church was to make it good; but if any other bishop gave

credit, not only was his property to bear the loss, but he was himself

to be deposed from his bishopric; and lastly, if any riot or rebellion

should arise to cause the loss of the Egyptian tribute, the tribunes

of the Augustalian Cohort were to be punished with forfeiture of all

property, and the cohort was to be removed to a station beyond the

Danube.

Such was the new law which Justinian, the great Roman lawgiver, proposed

for the future government of Egypt. The Egyptians were treated as

slaves, whose duty was to raise grain for the use of their masters at

Constantinople, and their taskmasters at Alexandria. They did not even

receive from the government the usual benefit of protection from their

enemies, and they felt bound to the emperor by no tie either of love

or interest. The imperial orders wrere very little obeyed beyond those

places where the troops were encamped; the Arabs were each year pressing

closer upon the valley of the Nile, and helping the sands of the desert

to defeat the labours of the disheartened husbandmen; and the Greek

language, which had hitherto followed and marked the route of commerce

from Alexandria to Syênê, and to the island of Socotra, was now but

seldom heard in Upper Egypt. The Alexandrians were sorely harassed by

Haephasstus, a lawyer, who had risen by court favour to the chief post

in the city. He made monopolies in his own favour of all the necessaries

of life, and secured his ill-gotten gains by ready loans of part of

it to Justinian. His zeal for the emperor was at the cost of the

Alexandrians, and to save the public granaries he lessened the supply

of grain which the citizens looked for as a right. The city was sinking

fast; and the citizens could ill bear this loss, for its population,

though lessened, was still too large for the fallen state of Egypt.

The grain of the merchants was shipped from Alexandria to the chief

ports of Europe, between Constantinople in the east and Cornwall in the

west. Britain had been left by the Romans, as too remote for them to

hold in their weakened condition; and the native Britons were then

struggling against their Saxon invaders, as in a distant corner of the

world, beyond the knowledge of the historian. But to that remote country

the Alexandrian merchants sailed every year with grain to purchase tin,

enlightening the natives, while they only meant to enrich themselves.

Under the most favourable circumstances they sometimes performed the

voyage in twenty days. The wheat was sold in Cornwall at the price of a

bushel for a piece of silver, perhaps worth about twenty cents, or for

the same weight of tin, as the tin and the silver were nearly of equal

worth. This was the longest of the ancient voyages, being longer than

that from the Red Sea to the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean; and

it had been regularly performed for at least eight centuries without

ever teaching the British to venture so far from their native shores.

The suffering and riotous citizens made Alexandria a very unpleasant

place of abode for the prefect and magistrates. They therefore built

palaces and baths for their own use, at the public cost, at Taposiris,

about a day’s journey to the west of the city, at a spot yet marked

by the remains of thirty-six marble columns, and a lofty tower, once

perhaps a lighthouse. At the same time it became necessary to fortify

the public granaries against the rebellious mob. The grain was brought

from the Nile by barges on a canal to the village of Chaereum, and

thence to a part of Alexandria named Phialæ, or _The Basins_, where the

public granaries stood. In all riots and rebellions this place had been

a natural point of attack; and often had the starving mob broken

open these buildings, and seized the grain that was on its way to

Constantinople. But Justinian surrounded them with a strong wall

against such attacks for the future, and at the same time he rebuilt the

aqueduct that had been destroyed in one of the sieges of the city.

In civil suits at law an appeal had always been allowed from the prefect

of the province to the emperor, or rather to the prefect of the East

at Constantinople; but as this was of course expensive, it was found

necessary to forbid it when the sum of money in dispute was small.

Justinian forbade all Egyptian appeals for sums less than ten pounds

weight of gold, or about two thousand five hundred dollars; for smaller

sums the judgment of the prefect was to be final, lest the expense

should swallow up the amount in dispute.

In this reign the Alexandrians, for the first time within the records

of history, felt the shock of an earthquake. Their naturalists had very

fairly supposed that the loose alluvial nature of the soil of the Delta

was the reason why earthquakes were unknown in Lower Egypt, and believed

that it would always save them from a misfortune which often overthrew

cities in other countries. Pliny thought that Egypt had been always free

from earthquakes. But this shock was felt by everybody in the city;

and Agathias, the Byzantine historian, who, after reading law in the

university of Beirut, was finishing his studies at Alexandria, says that

it was strong enough to make the inhabitants all run into the street for

fear the houses should fall upon them.

The reign of Justinian is remarkable for another blow then given to

paganism throughout the empire, or at least through those parts of the

empire where the emperor’s laws were obeyed.

[Illustration: 313.jpg A MODERN HOUSE IN THE DELTA AT ROSETTA]

Under Justinian the pagan schools were again and from that time forward

closed. Isidorus the platonist and Salustius the Cynic were among the

learned men of greatest note who then withdrew from Alexandria. Isidorus

had been chosen by Marinus as his successor in the platonic chair at

Athens, to fill the high post of the platonic successor; but he had left

the Athenian school to Zenodotus, a pupil of Proclus, and had removed

to Alexandria. Salustius the Cynic was a Syrian, who had removed with

Isidorus from Athens to Alexandria. He was virtuous in his morals though

jocular in his manners, and as ready in his witty attacks upon the

speculative opinions of his brother philosophers as upon the vices of

the Alexandrians. These learned men, with Damascius and others from

Athens, were kindly received by the Persians, who soon afterwards, when

they made a treaty of peace with Justinian, generously bargained that

these men, the last teachers of paganism, should be allowed to return

home, and pass the rest of their days in quiet.

After the flight of the pagan philosophers, but little learning was left

in Alexandria. One of the most remarkable men in this age of ignorance

was Cosmas, an Alexandrian merchant, who wished that the world should

not only be enriched but enlightened by his travels. After making many

voyages through Ethiopia to India for the sake of gain, he gave up trade

and became a monk and an author. When he writes as a traveller about the

Christian churches of India and Ceylon, and the inscriptions which he

copied at Adule in Abyssinia, everything that he tells us is valuable;

but when he reasons as a monk, the case is sadly changed. He is of the

dogmatical school which forbids all inquiry as heretical. He fights

the battle which has been so often fought before and since, and is even

still fought so resolutely, the battle of religious ignorance against

scientific knowledge. He sets the words of the Bible against the results

of science; he denies that the world is a sphere, and quotes the Old

Testament against the pagan astronomers, to show that it is a plane,

covered by the firmament as by a roof, above which he places the kingdom

of heaven. His work is named _Christian Topography_, and he is himself

usually called Cosmas Indicopleustes, from the country which he visited.

During the latter years of the government of Apollinarius, such was

his unpopularity as a spiritual bishop that both the rival parties, the

Gaianites and the Theodosians, had been building places of worship for

themselves, and the more zealous Jacobites had quietly left the churches

to Apollinarius and the Royalists. But on the death of an archdeacon

they again came to blows with the bishop; and a monk had his beard torn

off his chin by the Gaianites in the streets of Alexandria. The emperor

was obliged to interfere, and he sent the Abbot Photinus to Egypt to put

down this rebellion, and heal the quarrel in the Church. Apollinarius

died soon afterwards, and Justinian then appointed John to the joint

office of prefect of the city and patriarch of the Church. The new

archbishop was accused of being a Manichean; but this seems to mean

nothing but that he was too much of the Egyptian party, and that,

though he was the imperial patriarch, and not acknowledged by the Koptic

church, yet his opinions were disliked by the Greeks. On his death,

which happened in about three years, they chose Peter, who held the

Jacobite or Egyptian opinions, and whose name is not mentioned in the

Greek lists of the patriarchs. Peter’s death occurred in the same year

as that of the emperor.

Under Justinian we again find some small traces of a national coinage in

Egypt. Ever since the reign of Diocletian, the old Egyptian coinage had

been stopped, and the Alexandrians had used money of the same weight,

and with the same Latin inscriptions, as the rest of the empire. But

under Justinian, though the inscriptions on the coins are still Latin,

they have the name of the city in Greek letters. Like the coins of

Constantinople, they have a cross, the emblem of Christianity; but while

the other coins of the empire have the Greek numeral letters, E, I, K,

A, or M, to denote the value, meaning 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40, the coins

of Alexandria have the letters 1 B for 12, showing that they were on a

different system of weights from those of Constantinople. On these the

head of the emperor is in profile. But later in his reign the style was

changed, the coins were made larger, and the head of the emperor had a

front face. On these larger coins the numeral letters are [A r] for 33.

We thus learn that the Alexandrians at this time paid and received

money rather by weight than by tale, and avoided all depreciation of the

currency. As the early coins marked 12 had become lighter by wear, those

which were meant to be of about three times their value were marked 33.

During the period from 566 to 602 Justin II. reigned twelve years,

Tiberius reigned four years, and Mauricius, his son-in-law, twenty; and

under these sovereigns the empire gained a little rest from its enemies

by a rebellion among the Persians, which at last overthrew their king

Chosroes. He fled to Mauricius for help, and was by him restored to his

throne, after which the two kingdoms remained at peace to the end of his

reign.

[Illustration: 316.jpg COINS OF JUSTINIAN]

The Emperor Mauricius was murdered by Phocas, who, in 602, succeeded

him on the throne of Constantinople. No sooner did the news of his death

reach Persia than Chosroes, the son of Hormuz, who had married Maria,

the daughter of Mauricius, declared the treaty with the Romans at an

end, and moved his forces against the new emperor, the murderer of his

father-in-law. During the whole of his reign Constantinople was kept in

a state of alarm and almost of siege by the Persians; and the crimes and

misfortunes of Phocas alike prepared his subjects for a revolt. In the

seventh year Alexandria rebelled in favour of the young Heraclius, son

of the late prefect of Cyrene; and the patriarch of Egypt was slain

in the struggle. Soon afterwards Heraclius entered the port of

Constantinople with his fleet, and Phocas was put to death after an

unfortunate reign of eight years, in which he had lost every province of

the empire.

During the first three years of the reign of Heraclius, Theodoras was

Bishop of Alexandria; but upon his death the wishes of the Alexandrians

so strongly pointed to John, the son of the prefect of Cyprus, that

the emperor, yielding to their request, appointed him to the bishopric.

Alexandria was not a place in which a good man could enjoy the pleasures

of power without feeling the weight of its duties. It was then suffering

under all those evils which usually befall the capital of a sinking

state. It had lost much of its trade, and its poorer citizens no longer

received a free supply of grain. The unsettled state of the country

was starving the larger cities, and the population of Alexandria was

suffering from want of employment. The civil magistrates had removed

their palace to a distance. But the new bishop seemed formed for these

unfortunate times, and, though appointed by the emperor, he was in every

respect worthy of the free choice of the citizens. He was foremost in

every work of benevolence and charity. The five years of his government

were spent in lightening the sufferings of the people, and he gained the

truly Christian name of John the Almsgiver. Beside his private acts of

kindness he established throughout the city hospitals for the sick and

almshouses for the poor and for strangers, and as many as seven lying-in

hospitals for poor women. John was not less active in outrooting all

that he thought heresy.

The first years of the reign of Heraclius are chiefly marked by the

successes of the Persians. While Chosroes, their king, was himself

attacking Constantinople, one general was besieging Jerusalem and a

second overrunning Lower Egypt. Crowds fled before the invading army

to Alexandria as a place of safety, and the famine increased as the

province of the prefect grew narrower and the population more crowded.

To add to the distress the Nile rose to a less height than usual; the

seasons seemed to assist the enemy in the destruction of Egypt. The

patriarch John, who had been sending money, grain, and Egyptian workmen

to assist in the pious work of rebuilding the church of Jerusalem which

the Persians had destroyed, immediately found all his means needed, and

far from enough, for the poor of Alexandria. On his appointment to the

bishopric he found in its treasury eight thousand pounds of gold; he

had in the course of five years received ten thousand more from the

offerings of the pious, as his princely ecclesiastical revenue was

named; but this large sum of four million dollars had all been spent

in deeds of generosity or charity, and the bishop had no resource but

borrowing to relieve the misery with which he was surrounded. In the

fifth year the unbelievers were masters of Jerusalem, and in the eighth

they entered Alexandria, and soon held all the Delta; and in that

year the grain which had hitherto been given to the citizens of

Constantinople was sold to them at a small price, and before the end of

the year the supply from Egypt was wholly stopped.

When the Persians entered Egypt, the patrician Nicetas, having no

forces with which he could withstand their advance, and knowing that no

succour was to be looked for from Constantinople, and finding that the

Alexandrians were unwilling to support him, fled with the patriarch John

the Almsgiver to Cyprus, and left the province to the enemy. As John

denied that the Son of God had suffered on the cross, his opinions would

seem not to have been very unlike those of the Egyptians; but as he was

appointed to the bishopric by the emperor, though at the request of the

people, he is not counted among the patriarchs of the Koptic church;

and one of the first acts of the Persians was to appoint Benjamin, a

Jacobite priest, who already performed the spiritual office of Bishop of

Alexandria, to the public exercise of that duty, and to the enjoyment of

the civil dignity and revenues.

The troops with which Chosroes conquered and held Egypt were no doubt in

part Syrians and Arabs, people with whom the fellahs or labouring class

of Egyptians were closely allied in blood and feelings. Hence arose the

readiness with which the whole country yielded when the Roman forces

were defeated. But hence also arose the weakness of the Persians, and

their speedy loss of this conquest when the Arabs rebelled. Their rule,

however, in Egypt was not quite unmarked in the history of these dark

ages.

At this time Thomas, a Syrian bishop, came to Alexandria to correct the

Syriac version of the New Testament, which had been made about a century

before by Philoxenus. He compared the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles with

the Greek manuscripts in the monastery of St. Anthony in the capital;

and we still possess the fruits of his learned labour, in which he

altered the ancient text to make it agree with the newer Alexandrian

manuscripts. From his copy the Philoxenian version is now printed. A

Syriac manuscript of the New Testament written by Alexandrian penmen

in the sixth year of Heraclius, is now to be seen in the library of the

Augustan friars in Rome. At the same time another Syrian scholar, Paul

of Tela, in Mesopotamia, was busy in the Alexandrian monastery of

St. Zacchæus in translating the Old Testament into Syriac, from the

Septuagint Greek; and he closes his labours with begging the reader to

pray for the soul of his friend Thomas. Such was now the reputation of

the Alexandrian edition of the Bible, that these scholars preferred it

both to the original Hebrew of the Old and to the earlier manuscripts

of the New Testament. Among other works of this time were the medical

writings of Aaron the physician of Alexandria, formerly written in

Syriac, and afterwards much valued by the Arabs. The Syrian monks in

numbers settled in the monastery of Mount Nitria; and in that secluded

spot there remained a colony of these monks for several centuries,

kept up by the occasional arrival of newcomers from the churches on the

eastern side of the Euphrates.

For ten years the Egyptians were governed by the Persians, and had

a patriarch of their own religion and of their own choice; and the

building of the Persian palace in Alexandria proves how quietly they

lived under their new masters. But Heraclius was not idle under his

misfortunes. The Persians had been weakened by the great revolt of the

Arabs, who had formed their chief strength on the side of Constantinople

and Egypt; and Heraclius, leading his forces bravely against Chosroes,

drove him back from Syria and became in his turn the invader, and he

then recovered Egypt. The Jacobite patriarch Benjamin fled with the

Persians; and Heraclius appointed George to the bishopric, which was

declared to have been empty since John the Almsgiver fled to Cyprus.

The revolt of the Arabs, which overthrew the power of the Persians in

their western provinces and for a time restored Egypt to Constantinople,

was the foundation of the mighty empire of the caliphs; and the Hegira,

or flight of Muhammed, from which the Arabic historians count their

lunar years, took place in 622, the twelfth year of Heraclius. The

vigour of the Arab arms rapidly broke the Persian yoke, and the Moslems

then overran every province in the neighbourhood. This was soon felt

by the Romans, who found the Arabs, even in the third year of their

freedom, a more formidable enemy than the Persians whom they had

overthrown; and, after a short struggle of only two years, Heraclius

was forced to pay a tribute to the Moslems for their forbearance in

not conquering Egypt. For eight years he was willing to purchase an

inglorious peace by paying tribute to the caliph; but when his treasure

failed him and the payment was discontinued, the Arabs marched against

the nearest provinces of the empire, offering to the inhabitants their

choice of either paying tribute or receiving the Muhammedan religion;

and they then began on their western frontier that rapid career of

conquest which they had already begun on the eastern frontier against

their late masters, the Persians.

[Illustration: 322.jpg TAILPIECE]