God, and allows that the decrees of the council of Nicea and Constantinople contain all that is important of the true faith.

(15) 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 his 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 ar 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.

(16) Soon after this dispute Peter Mongus died, and fortunately he was succeeded in the bishopric by a peace-maker. 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.

Suidas, ap.

Photium.

(17) 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 Odyss. lib. flesh has been thy food, now taste this wine." After his punishment he was banished, but was soon

ix. 347.

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 his essay on Providence and Free-will he shows himself a worthy member of the school of Alexandrian, Platonists; he maintains the agreement between the doctrines of Plato and those of Aristotle, and quotes the opinions of his great master, the heaventaught Ammonius, as of little less or perhaps of not less weight than those of Plato himself. In the Facetiæ of

Hierocles we have the earliest jest-book 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.

Suidas.

Odyss.

De

(18) At what time Tryphiodorus the Alexandrian grammarian lived is not certainly known, but most likely about this reign. He has left a short heroic poem, the Taking of Troy, in continuation of the Iliad; but it is a Eustathius, poor work, of little note. Tryphiodorus, however, Proem. is better known for his foolish attempt to rewrite the Odyssey without once using the letter S. lightful employment for a scholar! Grammarians and critics have often been accused of overlooking the beauties of an author and wasting their time upon trifles, but it is not easy to believe that this childishness of the Alexandrian was anything but an idle boast. His work was probably nothing more than a summary of the contents of the poem. Suidas Nor was Tryphiodorus original in his task; for Nestor, a former grammarian, was said to have been the author of an Iliad in which each book was written without the help of the letter by which it was named; thus, there was not a single A in the book Alpha, nor a B in the book Beta.

(19) Coluthus of Lycopolis in the Thebaid was then writing his heroic poem named the Rape of Helen. It is a short, simple, but tame account of the three goddesses quar

relling about their beauty; of the judgment of Paris, and of Helen's leaving her husband and sailing away with Paris to Troy. But it has no poetical beauties to make up for its unclassical style. The new philosophy of the pagans had taken away the reality from Jupiter and Juno, and all enthusiasm from their followers; though at the same time it had made the goddesses more modest. In the poem of Coluthus they only quarrel about the beauty of their faces, and the utmost boldness that Venus is guilty of is to uncover her bosom before the judge.

(20) In the absence of other Christian authors we may mention Euthalius, at this time bishop of Sulca in the Thebaid. He has left some notes on Paul's epistles, dedicated to his superior, Bishop Athanasius.

(21) A little later, the grammarian Hesychius wrote his valuable Greek Lexicon, which was the first that really deserved that name. Many centuries earlier Apion and Apollonius the son of Archibius, had each written a lexicon of the words peculiar to Homer; and Theon and Didymus had done the same service for the tragic and comic poets. After these a certain Diogenianus had begun to make a general lexicon, which he proposed to call a Help to the Poor, because there were so few books for the learner that he usually had to gain his knowledge from the professors at too great a cost for a poor man easily to become learned. Accordingly, following the plan of Diogenianus, and copying from the works of Aristarchus, Apion, Heliodorus, and others, and taking care, as he tells us, to write straight and form his letters neatly, Hesychius has left us a general lexicon of the less common words in the Greek language. He was a Christian, as appears from his quoting several books of the Old and New Testament as well as some of the Fathers; he was a native of Alexandria; but at what time he lived is not certainly known.

(22) Aetius 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 Dioscorides, down to Archbishop Cyril. He is not wholly free from superstition, as when making use of a green jasper set in a ring; but

VOL. II.

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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.

lib. iii.

(23) ANASTASIUS, the next emperor, followed the wise A.D. 491. policy which Zeno had entered upon in the latter Eutychii years of his reign, and he strictly adhered to the Annales. terms of the peace-making edict. The four patriarchs of Alexandria who were chosen during this reign, John, a second John, Dioscorus, and Timotheus, Evagrius, Eccl. Hist. 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. But the bishops of the rest of the empire were by no means pleased with this policy, which instead of dividing the laity into parties broke up much of the power of the clergy; and the ecclesiastical historian tells us that the churches of the whole world were filled with doubt and disturbance. Victor, ap. The orthodox bishop of Tunis adds that an unclean Scaliger. spirit seized everybody in Egypt; men, children, slaves, monks, and clergymen lost the use of speech and ran about barking like dogs, while strangers were free from the disease. Nobody knew the cause of their madness, till an angel in the form of a man told them that it all came from their wickedness in rejecting the decrees of the council of Chalcedon.

(24) The election of Dioscorus, however, the third pa triarch of this reign, did not go off altogether Theophanes, quietly. He was the cousin of a former patriarch, Chronogr. Timotheus Elurus, 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 far from quiet 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 had to go on an embassy to Constantinople to appease his just anger. (25) Anastasius, who had deserved the obedience of the Egyptians by his moderation, pardoned their ingratitude when they offended; but he was the last Orientale. Byzantine emperor who governed Egypt with wisdom, he was 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; but at any rate it was never again tried.

Chronicon

(26) By the tenth year of the reign of Anastasius, the Persians, after overrunning a large part of Syria Eutychil and defeating the Roman generals, passed Pelusium Annales. and entered Egypt. The army of Kobades laid A.D. 501. 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 squeezed 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, so these brought on rebellion. The people of Alexandria, in want of corn and oil, rose against the magistrates, and many lives were lost in the attempt to quell the riots.

J. Malala.