sirous that the imperial crown should be given to Theocritus, one of his creatures. He, therefore, sends for Justin, and gives him a large sum of money, with orders to distribute it amongst the persons most fit for this purpose, and able to invest Theocritus with the purple. But with the money he either bought over the people, or purchased the good-will of what are termed the Excubitores-for both accounts are given -and so obtained the empire. Soon afterwards he took off

Amantius and Theocritus, with some others.

CHAP. III.-ASSASSINATION OF VITALIAN.

JUSTIN sends for Vitalian, who was living in Thrace and who had entertained designs of dethroning Anastasius, to Constantinople: for he dreaded his power, his military experience, his universal renown, and his great desire to possess the sovereignty: and rightly conjecturing that he should not be able to overcome him otherwise than by pretending to be a friend, by way of concealing his guile under a plausible mask, he appoints him commander of one of the bodies called Præsentes,' and, as a more effectual persuasive, with a view to a still greater deception, he raises him to the consulship. He, being consul elect, was assassinated on visiting the palace, at an inner door,2 and thus met with a punishment for his insolence towards the Roman sovereignty. But these events

happened subsequently.

1 There were two armies in the court of the Roman emperor, who were called Præsentes, in Greek, rò πраíσενтоν. These were commanded by two Magistri Militum, who were termed in Præsenti, or Præsentales. And in the Eastern empire, one of these commanders was a master of foot, the other of horse. But in the Western empire, each of them was a master of horse and foot.

? The Greeks had two gates in their larger edifices. The first of these, which looked towards the street, was termed avλεog Oúpa, the porch gate, as Harpocration informs us in the word avλog: the second gate was called μέσαυλος, οι μεσαύλειος, because it was in the midst between the porch and the atrium or court; or else because it was in the middle between the men's apartment and those of the women. Lysias mentions both these gates in his Oration pro Eratosthene de Cæde. The word is also applied to the atrium of a church: thus the Constantinopolitan synod under Menas is said to have been held ἐν τῷ μεσαύλω τῷ δυτικῷ; that is, in the Western atrium of the venerable church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

CHAP. IV. DEPOSITION OF SEVERUS, BISHOP OF ANTIOCH.

SUCCESSION OF PAUL AND EUPHRASIUS.

SEVERUS, who had been ordained president of Antioch, as stated above,1 ceased not daily to anathematize the synod at Chalcedon, and chiefly by means of those epistles called Enthronistic,2 and in the responses which he sent to all the patriarchs, though they were received only at Alexandria, by John, the successor of the former John, and by Dioscorus and Timotheus:3 which epistles have come down to our time.

Many contentions having thus arisen in the church, whereby the most faithful people were split into factions, Justin, in the first year of his reign, ordered him to be arrested, and to be punished, as some say, by having his tongue cut out; the execution of which sentence was committed to Irenæus, who, at Antioch, held the government of the Eastern provinces.

Severus himself confirms the account of Irenæus being appointed to arrest him, in a letter to some of the Antiochenes, describing the manner of his escape; wherein he casts the strongest invectives on Irenæus, and states that he is under the strictest surveillance lest he should escape from Antioch. Some say that Vitalian, who still appeared to be in the highest favour with Justin, demanded the tongue of Severus, because he had reproached him in his discourses.

Accordingly, he flies from his see, in the month Gorpiæus, which in the Latin language is called September, in the five hundred and sixty-seventh year of the Era of Antioch. Paul succeeds to the see, with orders to proclaim openly the synod

'See above, book iii. chap. 33.

2 This was the name given to the letters which the patriarchs sent one to another at their instalment, in the beginning of their episcopate. There were also enthronistic homilies, or sermons, which the bishops preached to the people at their entrance upon their episcopate. Vales.

3 Evagrius means Timotheus bishop of Alexandria, who had succeeded Dioscorus junior in that bishopric, as Liberatus relates, chap. 19. Timotheus bishop of Constantinople cannot be meant here, for Evagrius has said above that Severus' Synodical Letters were embraced and admitted only at Alexandria. Vales.

4 The emperor Justin, at the beginning of his empire, made a law, that all the bishops should embrace the Chalcedon synod; and that if any one would not embrace it, he should be driven from his see. See Baronius, A. D. 519. Nicephorus is mistaken in thinking that this Paulus was in secret an Eutychian, for the contrary is asserted by the legates

He is suc

at Chalcedon. Afterwards, retiring voluntarily from Antioch,1 he went the way of all flesh by a natural death. ceeded in his see by Euphrasius from Jerusalem.

CHAP. V.-FIRES AND EARTHQUAKES AT ANTIOCH.

EUPHRASIUS.

DEATH OF

ABOUT the same period of Justin's reign there happened at Antioch numerous and dreadful fires, as if harbingers of the terrible shocks which afterwards took place, and serving as a prelude for the coming calamities. For, a short time after, in the tenth month of the seventh year of Justin's reign, being Artemisius or May, on the twenty-ninth day of the month, precisely at noon, on the sixth day of the week, the city was visited with the shock of an earthquake, which very nearly destroyed the whole of it. This was followed by a fire, to share, as it were, in the calamity: for what escaped the earthquake, the fire in its spread reduced to ashes. The damage that the city sustained, how many persons according to probable estimate became the victims of the fire and earthquake, what strange occurrences surpassing the power of words took place, have been feelingly related by John the Rhetorician, who concludes his history with the relation.

Euphrasius also perished in the ruins, to add another misfortune to the city, by leaving no one to provide for its exigencies.

CHAP. VI.--ELEVATION OF EPHRAEMIUS, COUNT OF THE EAST,

TO THE PATRIARCHATE OF ANTIOCH.

BUT the saving care of God for man, which prepares the remedy before the stroke, and the compassion which, while of the apostolic see in their relation to Pope Hormisda, which Baronius records, A. D. 519.

Paul was accused by his own clergy, and by some of the people of Antioch, before the legates of the apostolic see, who as yet resided at Constantinople, and after their departure, before the emperor Justinus; but not able to clear himself of the crimes objected against him, and being vanquished by the testimony of his own conscience, he presented recusatory libels, requesting that he might have leave to retire from the episcopal office which he had undertaken. He was permitted to do so, and then spontaneously withdrew from the sacerdotal function. See Baronius, A. D. 521. Vales.

2 Evagrius (who is followed by Baronius) is mistaken here; he should have said the 8th year, as Valesius satisfactorily shows.

sharpening the sword of wrath, at the moment of the deepest despair displays its sympathy, raised up Ephraemius, at that time governor of the Eastern provinces, to take upon himself all the care of the city; so that it lacked not anything that its exigency required. On this account the sons of the Antiochenes so admired him, that they elected him their priest: and he thus attains the apostolic see as a reward and prize of his singular care for the place. Thirty months after, the city suffered again from an earthquake.

At this time also, what had been hitherto called the city of Antiochus was entitled the City of God, and received additional care at the hands of the emperor.

CHAP. VII.-MIRACLES OF ZOSIMAS AND JOHN.

Now that I have recorded the above-mentioned calamities, let me also add to the present narrative some other circumstances worthy of record, and which have been transmitted to us from those who have made them a subject of notice.

Zosimas was a native of Sinde, a village of Phoenicia Maritima, distant from Tyre about twenty stadia, and pursued the monastic discipline. He, by means both of abstinence and use of food, having attained to such a union with God as not only to discern forthcoming events, but also to possess the grace of perfect freedom from passion, was in company with a distinguished person from Cæsarea, the capital of one of the Palestines. This was Arcesilaus, a man of good family, accomplished, and high in dignities and whatever gives lustre to life. Zosimas, at the very moment of the overthrow of Antioch, suddenly became troubled, uttered lamentations and deep sighs, and then shedding such a profusion of tears as to bedew the ground, called for a censer, and having fumed the whole place where they were standing, throws himself upon the ground, propitiating God with prayers and supplications. Upon Arcesilaus asking the reason of all this trouble, he distinctly replied, that the sound of the overthrow of Antioch was at that instant ringing in his ears. This led Arcesilaus and the rest of the astonished company to note down the hour; and they afterwards found that it was as Zosimas had said.

By his hand many other miracles were performed: but

omitting the greater part of them, since they are too numerous to detail, I shall mention a few.

Contemporary with Zosimas, and endued with equal virtues, was a man named John, who had practised the endurance of the solitary and immaterial life in the cloister 1 called Chuzibas, situated at the extremity of the glen at the northern part of the highway leading from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was now bishop of the before-named Cæsarea. This John, the Chuzibite, having heard that the wife of Arcesilaus had lost one of her eyes by a stroke of a spindle, runs immediately to her to see the accident; and when he finds that the pupil is gone and the eye altogether lacerated, he commands one of the physicians in attendance to bring a sponge, and having replaced as well as he could the lacerated parts, to apply and secure the sponge with bandages. Arcesilaus was absent, for he happened to be with Zosimas in his monastery at Sinde, distant from Cæsarea full five hundred stadia. Accordingly, messengers proceeded with all haste to Arcesilaus, whom they found sitting in conversation with Zosimas. When informed of the circumstance, he uttered a piercing cry, tore his hair and cast it towards heaven. Upon Zosimas asking him the reason, he told him what had happened, interrupting his account with frequent wailings and tears. Whereupon Zosimas, leaving him alone, goes to his chamber, where he used to make his addresses to God according to the rule of such persons, and after some interval he approaches Arcesilaus with a solemnly joyous countenance, and gently pressing his hand, said, "Depart with joy, depart. Grace is given to the Chuzibite. cured, and is in possession of both her eyes; for has had no power to deprive her of them, since desire of the Chuzibite." This was brought about by the united wonder-working of both the just men.

Your wife is the accident such was the

Again, as the same Zosimas was going to Cæsarea, and leading an ass laden with certain necessaries, a lion encountered him and carried off the ass. Zosimas follows into the wood, reaches the place where the lion was, satiated with his meal upon the beast, and smiling, says, "Come, my friend; my journey is interrupted, since I am heavy and far advanced in

1A laura was nothing else but cells of monks dispersed here and there : see above, b. i. ch. 21, note. This Johannes was first abbot and presbyter of the monastery at Chuziba. He was afterwards made bishop of Cæsarea.