Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/historyofegyptfr02shar THE HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TILL THE CONQUEST BY THE ARABS A.D. G40. By SAMUEL SHARPK IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. IL THE FOURTH EDITION. LONDON: EDWARD MOXON & CO., DOVER STREET. 1859. LONDON: BRACBURY AND EVANS> PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. DESCRIPTION^ OF THE WOODCUTS IN YOL. II. Fig. 1. — The name of Ptolemy Soter II. Worshipper' of the god Euergetes and of the god Philopator, son of the goddess Soter, approved by Pthah, like lia, an image of Amun. Fig. 2. — A second, nearly the same. Fig. 3. — The name of Cleopatra. Fig. 4. — The name of Ptolemy immoi'tal, Alexander immortal, beloved by Pthah. Fig. 5. — View of the temple of Contra-Latopolis. (Denon, pi. 53.) Fig. 6. — A coin of Cleopatra Cocce. (Visconti, Iconographie Grecque.) Fig. 7. — A coin of Cleopatra and her son, with two eagles. Fig. 8. — A bas-relief of Ptolemy Alexander worshipping the god Horus. The spirit, in the form of a bird, is holding a sceptre over his head. (Lepsius.) Fig. 9. — A view of the ruins of the Memnonium. (Owen Jones.) Fig. 10. — A viev/ of the portico of the temple of Quorneh in Thebes, (Hector Horeau.) Fig. 11. — A coin of queen Selene. (Visconti, Iconographie Grecque.) Fig. 12, — The names The Great Queen Berenice and Ptolemy immortal exalted, Alexander immortal beloved by Pthah. Fig. 13. — The name of Ptolemy Neus Dionysus. Fig. 14. — The statues of the gods carried out in barges on the Nile, in sacred procession. From the sarcophagus of Amyrtseus in the British Museum. Fig. 15. — A statue of the cat-headed goddess Pasht seated. From the British Museum. Fig. 16. — The goddesses Isis and Nephthys laying out a dead body, and the god Anubis making a mummy. (Young's Hieroglyphics, pi. 68.) Fig. 17. — A mummy with its three cases, all made of wood. In the Museum of Dr. Lee at Hartwell. From its style it would seem to have been made at Memphis under the rule of the Persians. Fig. 18. — A drawing from a papyrus in the British Museum, of a lion playing at chess or draughts with a hoi-ned ass or unicorn. By the side of it, for comparison's sake, is placed a copy from one of the ancient sculptures, representing Rameses II. and his queen playing at the same game. Fig. 19. — The name of Cleopatra immortal Tryphcena, followed by a sitting figure, and having after the first word the letters T, S, the feminine termination. Fig. 20. — A bas-relief of Rameses II. conquering his Ethiopian enemies. From the walls of the temple at Abou Simbel. (J. Bonomi.) Fig. 21. — The head of Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. From a coin in the British Museum. Fig. 22. — Elevation of one of the arched water-cisterns under Alexandria. (Norden'b Travels.) a 2 t iv DESCRIPTION OF THE WOODCUTS IN VOL. II. Fig. 23. — An Alexandrian galley or sbip of war, having the roof of the steersman's hut shaped like the queen's lielmet. From a coin of Cleopatra in the Pembroke Collection. Fig. 24. — The names of Cleopatra and her son Csesarion, spelt Cleopairas and Caisaros in the Greek genitive, as is usual upon their coins. Fig. 25. — The ruins of the Temple of Mandoo at Hermonthis. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 2o. — An alabaster jar for ointment. (J. Bunomi.) Fig. 27. — A coin of Cleopatra and Antony. Fig. 28. — Another of the same. Fig. 29. — Another of the same. From the British Museum, Fig. 30. — View of the interior of a Roman fortress at Alexandria, called by Antony the Timonium. (Description de TEgypte, vol. v. pi. 35.) Fig. 31. — Capital of a column formed of Lotus flowers, out of which rise four full- faced heads of a goddess, and upon these rests the model of a temple. From the temple of Dendera. (J. Bonomi.) Fig. 32. — Rameses II. as a young man, suckled by the goddess Athor. From the temple of Kalabsche. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 33, — The name of Augustus Csesar, written Autocrator Caisaros immortal, beloved by Pthah and Isis. The second name is in the genitive case, while the first is in the nominative. Fig. 34. — Statue of an Egyptian playing upon the back of a crocodile. It is of Roman workmanship. In the British Museum, Fig. 35. — View of the Nilometer in the island of Elephantine, being a flight of steps with a scale of cubits on the wall. (Young's Hieroglyphics, pi. 62.) Fig. 36. — Ground plan of ancient Alexandria. D is the palace of the Ptolemies, joined by an underground passage to Q the theatre. R is the CiJesarium or new palace, in front of which stood the two obelisks. K is the Museum, S is the Soma, afterwards perhaps the monastery of St. Athanasius. Fig. 37. — Plan of a circular room in the Catacombs under Alexandria. (Norden's Travels.) Fig. 38. — View of a part of the same. (Hector Horeau.) F'ig. 39. — A coin of Augustus, with the title Autocrator Ccesar the son of God. Fig. 40. — The name of Tiberius Csesar. F'ig. 41, — A marble sun-dial in the British Museum. The notch at the top would receive the horizontal gnomon, and then the lines would divide the time of daylight from sunrise to sunset into twelve hours. Fig. 42. — Elevation of the portico of the temple of Tentyra. (Denon, pi. 39.) Fig. 43. — View in the interior of the same. (Owen Jones.) Fig. 44. — A stone pillow for a priest's head. From a model of the same size. Fig. 45. — The name of Caligula, written The Icing of Icings autocrator, beloved by Pthah and Isis, Caius Caisaros Germanicus immortal. Fig. 46. — The name of Claudius, written The king of lings autocrator, Tiberius Claudius. Fig. 47. — The papyrus plant in flower. Fig. 48. — A wine jar in which the Greek and Sicilian wines were imported into Alexandria. Fig. 49. — View in the interior of the temple of Latopolis. (Wilkinson's Thebes.) Fig. 50. — The hieroglyphical word Year. Fig. 51. — The name of Nero, written ap'proved by four emperors, beloved by Ra and Amun, autocrator Neroni. Fig. 52. — A ship of burden for the voyage between Alexandria and Italy. It has two masts each carrying a sail, a rudder on each side near the stern, the horse's head of the Phoenicians at the prow, and a shelter for the steersman at the helm. (From the Roman Coins.) Fig. 53. — A coin of Malta, bearing Osiris between two winged goddesses. British Museum. DESCRIPTION OF THE WOODCUTS IN VOL. II. V Fig. 54. — Plan of the temple of Chem on the island of Malta. It is not unlike the plan of the church of St. Vitali at Ravenna, and that of a temple at Canusium, and that of the temple of Minerva Medica in Rome. (Bartlett's Overland Journey. ) Fig. 55. — coin of the island of Coss>Ta. The female head upon it is ornamented with the sacred snake of the Egyptians fastened to the forehead. British Museum. Fig. 56. — A coin of Nero, bearing the ship in which he sailed. British Museum. Fig. 57. — A coin of Galba, dated Lukabantos, B, in the second year ; with the head of Serapis, being a Jupiter with a basket on his head. Fig. 58 — The name of Vespasian. Fig. 59. — The goddess of the sacred tree pouring wisdom into the mouth of a philosopher, and into the mouth of his soul. (Egypt. Inscript. 2nd Series, pi. 81.) Fig. 60. — The name of Titus, written Autocrator Titus Caisaros. Fig. 61. — The name of Domitian, written Autocrator Caisaros Domitianus blessed Germanicus. The word Blessed is written with NT, for NOUTE, followed by a whip, the sceptre of Osiris, as the demonstrative sign to explain these two letters, which in other places would have another meaning. Fig. 62. — The side and back of the mummy of a fish. In Dr. Lee's Museum. It is not impossible that this mummy, though not a modern forgery, may contain no fish, but be a false mummy forged by the ancients. (J. Bonomi.) Fig. 63. — A triangle representing the trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, as described by Plutarch. From a small stone of the same size. Fig. 64. — The infant Horus with a finger to his mouth, and the large lock of hair over his right ear. From a porcelain figure of the same size. At the back is a hole through it, so that it might be w^orn upon a string like a charm. Fig. 65. — Isis nursing the infant Horus on her lap. From a porcelain group of the same size. Fig. 66. — A Roman engraved gem with the bust of Harpocrates. Fig. 67. — Coins of Domitian, one the front with his head, and three reverses : 1st. Of the year eleven ; figure of Hope. 2nd. Of the year nine ; a god in form of winged sphinx, holding with one paw the wheel of eternity. 3rd. Of the year eleven ; a horse at full gallop, carrying a snake as its rider. Fig. 68. — The trinity of Horus, between the two goddesses Isis and Nephthys. From a porcelain group of the same size. Fig. 69. — A coin of Nerva with a palm tree, and the words Fisci Judaici Calumnia Sublata ; and the letters S C, meaning By the decree of the Senate. In the British Museum. Fig. 70. — The name of Trajan, written Autocrator Ccesar Nerva Trajanus blessed Germanicus Dacicus. The D in Dacicus is written with Nt, as it is in the name of Darius in Fig.. 158, Vol. 1. The R in Nerva is here a hawk, a character which is more usually an A, but sometimes the syllable Hor, for the name of the god Horus, and hence an R. Fig. 71. — Six coins of Trajan. In the British Museum : 1st. Of the year seven ; the triune god under the form of a winged sphinx, with three faces, holding with one paw the wheel of eternity. 2nd. Of the year fifteen ; a sphinx in the form of a crocodile's body, with the upper half of a woman. 3rd. Of the year fifteen ; two jars each with the head of a god, representing the good and evil principle of the Gnostics. 4th. Of the year sixteen ; Plenty, under the form of a woman holding a cornucopia, standing between two sphinxes. 5th. Of the year one ; the Nile with its rise of sixteen cubits, represented vi DESCRIPTION OF THE WOODCUTS IN VOL. II. by a bearded old man leaning on his left elbow, and holding in his right hand a cornucopia, on the top of which sits a little Cupid, who points to the figure 16, to say that that year the river had sixteen such cupids, cubits, or measures of increase. 6th. Of the year twelve ; a charioteer driving two snakes in place of horses. Fig. 7"2. — A temple in the city of Petra, carved out of the rock, having Corinthian columns of the second century of our era. (Bartlett's Forty Days in the Desert.) Fig. 73. — The name of Hadrian, written Autocrator Caisaros, Tmjanus Adrianus blessed. Fig, 74. — The restoration of a triumphal arch at Antinoopolis. (Description de I'Egypte, vol. iv. pi. 58.) Fig. 75. — A coin of the year twenty-one of Hadrian, having on one side the head of the hero Antinoiis, with a lotus flower on his forehead ; on the other side Antinoiis on horseback in the character of Mercury. Fig. 76. — The rose-coloured lotus, the Nymphcea Indica of Linnieus. Fig. 77. — The two colossal statues of Amunothph III., with the sun rising over the plain of Thebes. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 78. — A god with the characteristics of Ra, Horus, and Osiris. Fig. 79. — A Gnostic gem, with a god having a human body and ass's head. In the British Museum. Fig. 80. — A scarabaeus and sun, meaning Horus Ra. Fig. 81. — A Gnostic gem, having a god in the form of a sphinx riding on horseback and trampling down the serpent of wickedness. The figure of Victory is offering him a crown. This is the white horse mentioned in Rev. vi. 2, its tail ends with a serpent, like the horses described in Rev. ix. 10. In the British Museum. Fig, 82. — A Gnostic gem, with a serpent having a glory round its head. The inscription seems to say to the spirit of death ; Hurt me not. In the British ]\Iuseum. Fig. 83. — A Gnostic gem, bearing an armed man with two serpents for his legs and a cock's head. On his shield is written I, A, 0, for Jehovah, and around him Abrasax, or Hurt iae not. Fig. 84. — Six coins of Hadrian's reign. In the British Museum : 1st. Of the year ten, a jar with human head. 2nd. Of the year sixteen. Good Fortune, as a woman lying on a couch in a boat, floating down the stream. Near her feet is the rudder. 3rd , Of the year ten, two crowned serpents ; one of Goodness with the swollen chest, and the other of Evil, with the tongue out ready to bite. 4th. Of the year eighteen, Horus standing upon an eagle, between the heads of Isis and Serapis. 5th. Of the year eighteen, the busts of Isis and Serapis. 6th. Of the year eighteen, two jars with human heads, probably repre- senting the good and evil principle, like the third and fifth. Fig. 85. — The name of Antoninus, Autocrator Caisaros Antoninus Sebastos. The T, S, with which the last word ends, are those with which the feminine names ended in earlier times. Fig. 86. — A coin of Antoninus dated in his sixth year, with the bird phoenix wearing a glory, and the word Aiou to mark the beginning of a new age. In the British Museum. Fig. 87.— Six coins of Antoninus. In the British Museum : 1st. Of the year seven ; the serpent of evil with the head of Serapis. 2nd, Of the year eight ; the planet Jupiter in Sagittarius. 3rd. Of the year eight ; the moon in Cancer. 4th. Of the year two ; the planet Mercury in Gemini. DESCRIPTION OF THE WOODCUTS IN VOL. 11. vii 5tli. Of the year eight ; the sun, as Apollo, in Leo. 6th. Of the year two ; a bust of Mercury. Fig. 88. — Claudius Ptolemy's Astrolabe, drawn from his description of the instrument in the fifth book of his Constructio Magna. Its purpose is to measure the longitude and latitude of the stars and planets. The latitude is measured directly, by the angular distance of the body from the ecliptic circle ; and the longitude indirectly, by the difference of longitude bet-ween these bodies and the sun. The largest circle but one in the drawing, is the meridian which passes through the pole of the equator and the pole of the ecliptic. To this meridian the ecliptic circle is fixed at right angles, and the intersection of these two circles is the first point of Aries. This meridian is mounted, and revolves on a broken axis which is the pole of the equator, and it carries a second broken axis which is the pole of the ecliptic. To this latter axis an outer and an inner circle are attached, which revolve, and thus mark on the ecliptic their distance in longitude from the meridian circle. To use the astrolabe, the outer circle is moved and clamped to the ecliptic at the degree of the sun's known longitude, and then the instrument is moved on the pole of the equator, till that circle throws no shadow. The inner circle is then moved till the eye, looking along its plane, decides that it hides the centre of the moon. The degree it touches on the ecliptic is then the moon's longi- tude. Again this inner circle is double, or it carries a second which revolves round their common centre in their common plane, and carries two points to guide the sight. These points are then turned towards the moon, and they thus measure its latitude above or below the ecliptic. In the same way the difference of longitude between any other two bodies is measured, and the latitude of one of them. Fig. 89. — The name of Aurellus, written Autocrat07' Caisaros Antoninics, Haroias blessed. Fig. 90. — A statue of the god of the Nile, leaning on a sphinx, and holding the horn of plenty in his left arm. Around him are playing sixteen little cupids to mark the sixteen cubits which the river rises. The sphinx has the bust of a woman instead of that of a man, as in earlier days. (Visconti, Museo Pio- Clementino.) Fig. 91. — Three coins of Aurelius. In the British Museum : 1st. The full-faced head of Serapis. 2nd. Of the year eighteen ; a woman seated holding in her right hand the scales of justice, and in her left the horn of plenty. 3rd. Of the year twelve ; the Pharos lighthouse, by the side of which the goddess Isis is holding up a sail, which is blown towards the lighthouse, and perhaps marks the voyage of the emperor to Alex- andria in that year. Fig. 92. — Three kinds of Alexandrian handwriting : — 1st. Quick writing from a papyrus, written a.d. 138. " In the year one " of Antoninus Caesar our Lord." (Young's Hieroglyphics, pi. 52.) 2nd. Book writing from the Ephraem ]\IS. of the Bible, written about a.d. 450. ** And confessedly great." — 1 Tim. iii. 16. 3rd. Book writing in Latin from the Beza MS. of the Bible, written about A.D. 450. "All ; and they honoured God, saying." Fig. 93. — A young man clothed with leopard's skin, and wearing the single lock of hair at his right ear. From a tablet of the reign of Cleopatra. (Egyptian Inscriptions, pi. 72.) Fig. 94. — An ornament formed of stalks of the lotus and lily plants. It is common on the sides of the stone seats belonging to the statues of kings and gods. Fig, 95. — The name of Commodus, written A utocrator Commodus, living for ever. Fig. 96. — A bald-headed priest, carrying an Anubis-staflf. From a small bronze. viii DESCRIPTION OF THE WOODCUTS IN VOL. II. Fig. 97. — Four jars, in wliicli were placed those less solid parts of the body which could not be preserved in the mummy. They have as lids the heads of the four lesser gods of the dead. Amset, the carpenter, has a man's head ; Hepi, the digger, an ape's head ; Smotef, the cutter, a jackal's head ; Snouf, the bleeder, a hawk's head. (J. Bonomi.) Fig, 98. — A procession of a priestess, the scribe, the prophet, and the singer. From a bas-relief of Greek work. (Bartoli's Admiranda, pi. 16.) Fig. 99. — The statue of a Pastophorus, or shrine- bearer, of the reign of Hophra, B.C. 590. In the British j\[useum. Fig. 100. — Six Coptic letters, with the hierogljrphics from which they were copied. These were added to the Greek alphabet to form the new Coptic alphabet. Fig. 101. — Hieroglyphics from the Rosetta stone. "For this to him the immortal "gods gave victory, life, and power, and the other blessings of a kingdom." (Egyptian Inscriptions, pi. 50.) Fig. 102. — Hieratic writing from a mummy case. "Honour to the deified lady of "the house (her figure), Taioua (her figure), deceased." (Egyptian Inscriptions, pi. 52.) Fig. 10:3. — Enchorial writing from the Rosetta stone. "Ptolemy and Arsinoe, gods." (Young's Hieroglyphics, pi. 16.) Fig. 104. — The hieroglyphical words "Water, Name, and Lord of Battles. Fig. 105. — Egypt nursing crocodiles. From a porcelain figure the same size. Fig. 106. — A coin of Septimia Zenobia, dated in her fifth year. Fig. 107. — A coin of Yaballathus Athenodorus, dated in his fifth year, having on the other side the head of Aurelian with the date of his second year. Fig. lOS. — A coin of Domitius Domitianus, having on the other side the figure of a young man holding a cornucopia and an eagle standing beside him ; with the inscription, Genio Populi Romani, and at foot A. L. E, for Alexandria. British Museum. Fig. 109. — A coin of Severina, dated in the seventh year of Aurelian. Fig. 110. — A coin of Numerianus, of his third year, struck by Trajan's second legion. Fig, 111, — Diocletian's Column in Alexandria, formerly known by the name of Pompey's Pillar. (Denon, pi. 9.) Fig, 112. — A hero in a Phrygian dress stabbing a bull in honour of Mithra. A dog and a snake are lapping up the blood. In the British !Museum. Fig. 113. — The Doum palm of Upper Egypt, with a branching stem. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 114. — A coin of Constantius, having the phcenix with a glory round its head standing upon the globe. Around is written, Fel. Temp. Reparatio. On the other side is the head of the emperor with his name, Flavius Julius Con- stantius Pius Felix Augustus. Fig. 115, — Isis, as the Dog-star, rising heliacally from the zodiac of the Memnonium. (Burton's Excerpta.) Fig. 116. — The courtyard of the temi)le of Medinet Abou, showing the smaU Greek columns, the remains of the Christian church which was built within the area. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 117. — The interior of a rock temple near Ferras, above Abou Sunbel, having the figure of Our Saviour with a glory round his head painted on the ceiling. The temple was built by king Anemneb, about b,c. 1200, (H, Horeau.) Fig. 118. — Sculpture at Asseboua, where the pagan god has been removed and the figure of St. Peter painted in his place to receive the ofierings of Rameses II, (Nubie, par Gau, pi. 45.) Fig. 119. — Writing from Wady Mokatteb, near Mount Sinai, beginning * * * * * * ^^^T^. Ill memory of * * * memory of * * * ; using the Chaldee form, for the Hebrew The third line ends with "Cl^, name. Fig. 120. — A gateway at Karnak, from a photograph. DESCRIPTION OF THE WOODCUTS IN VOL. II. iz Fig. 121. — A picture of Science holding up a plant of mandrake to be painted by the artist and described by the author. From a MS. of Dioscorides, written A.D. 507. (Agincoiirt, vol. iii. 26) Fig. 122. — A view of the Monastery of St. Catharine, at the foot of Mount Sinai. (Bartlett's Forty Days. ) Fig. 123. — An obelisk standing at Auxum in Abyssinia. (Salt's Travels.) Fig. 124. — Ruined tower at Taposiris. (Description de TEgypte, vol. v. pi. 43.) Fig. 125. — A coin of Justinian, with the head in profile, and the value marked I.B. for 12. British Museum. Fig. 126. — A coin of Justinian. The head has a full face. The value is marked A.r. for 33. British Museum. These both have the cross, the emblem of Christi- anity, and the letters Alex, for Alexandria, where they were struck. Fig. 127. — View of the end of the Roman castle at Babylon or old Cairo. (Pocock's Travels.) Fig. 128. — Map of the country round Cairo, Memphis, and the pyramids. (Description de TEgypte.) Fig. 129 . — Diocletian's Column. Fig. 130. — The obelisk called Cleopatra's Needle. Fig. 131. — A fallen colossal statue of Rameses II. on the plain of Memphis, probably that mentioned by Herodotus, being forty cubits high when perfect. (J. Bonomi.) Fig, 132. — Arabs on camels. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 133. — Bufialoes crossing the inundation, with the pyramids in the distance. Fig. 134.' — Head of an Egyptian Fellah, or labourer. (H. Horeau.) Fig. 13.">. — Date palm of Lower Egypt. (H. Horeau.) On the Title-Page. — The figure of Neith, the goddess of the heavens. Her name is spelt NT, followed by the arch of heaven as the demonstrative sign. CONTENTS OF. THE SECOND VOLUME. CHAPTER XI. THE REIGNS OF CLEOPATEA COCCE AND PTOLEMY SOTER II. ; CLEOPATRA COCCE AND PTOLEMY ALEXANDER ; PTOLEMY SOTER II. ; CLEOPATRA BERENICE j PTOLEMY ALEXANDER II. ; PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 116 51. B.C. PAGE 116 Cleopatra CoccE and Ptolemy SoTER II I Wicked marriages of the young princes ...... ib. Wars in Syria ........... 2 The voyages of Eudoxus to Eastern and Western Africa ... 3 The Jews rise in power in Alexandria ....... 4 Soter expelled to Cyprus ......... ib. 106 Cleopatra CoccE and Ptolemy Alexander 1 5 Wars in Syria ........... 6 Ptolemy Apion leaves Cyrene to the Romans by will . . . . 8 Cleopatra murdered by Alexander ; Alexander expelled ... 9 The coins 10 87 Ptolemy Soter II 11 Thebes rebels and is conquered . . . . . . . . ib. Lucullus the Roman ambassador ; the philosophers of the Academy . 1 4 81 Cleopatra Berenice ; her marriage and murder . . . .56 80 Ptolemy Alexander II. ; is killed by his guards . . . .17 80 Ptolemy Neus Dionysus ; his vices . . . . . . .18 Diodorus Siculus travels in Egypt ; describes the country . . . 19 The temples ; theory of the world's origin ...... '21 The respect paid to the cat . . . . . . . . . 24 The trial of the dead at the funeral ; mummies ..... 2.5 The revenue and population . ... . . . . . . 29 The Roman coins with Egyptian emblems ...... 30 Secret treaty with Mithridates against the Romans . . . . . 31 63 The Jews lose rank in Egypt ib. 58 Auletes driven out of Egypt, goes to Rome for help 32 67 Cleopatra Tryphjena and Berenice made queens . . . . :^3 Roman intrigues and Egyptian bribes 34 55 Ptolemy Auletes restored by Gabinius 36 The Romans in Egypt 37 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTEIl XII. THE REIGN OF CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS ; JULIUS CiESAR, AND MARK ANTONY. B.C. 51 30. B.C. PAGE 51 Cleopatra; she flies to Syria and returns with an army ... 40 Pompey's death . . 41 Csesar's wars in Alexandria ........ 42 The library burnt 43 Wells dug by the Romans . . 45 The Egyptian fleet defeated 46 Ptolemy allowed to depart ; Cjesar's fleet defeated . . . .47 The Egyptian army defeated, and Ptolemy drowned . . . . 48 Cfesarion born ; Caesar's triumph . . . . . , .49 Cleopatra visits Rome . . . . 50 The younger Ptolemy murdered . . . . . . .51 The state of literature ; Dydimus, his Scholia on Homer ; the buildings 52 Antony sends for Cleopatra ; her costly attire . . . . . . 54 Tarsus described .55 Cleopatra's earrings . . . . . . . . . . 5Q He murders Arsinoe ; their vices and luxuries ; scents . . .57 41 The famine ; the Jews .......... 58 Her children ; her fishing ......... 59 Her new provinces . . . . . . . . ..61 The new library from Pergamus 62 Antony's power ........... ib. The coins 64 31 The battle of Actium 65 30 Antony and Cleopatra kill themselves . . . . . .68 Octavianus master of Egypt ; Ctesarion killed . . . . . . 69 Review of the reigns of the Ptolemies ...... .71 Table of the family of the Lagidee . . . . . * . . 78 CHAPTER XIII. EGYPT A ROMAN PROVINCE. THE EMPERORS OF THE JULIAN AND CLAUDIAN FAMILIES. B.C. 30 A.D. 68. 30 Augustus ; his new laws 79 25 The Julian year brought into use 81 The survey of Egypt . . . 82 Augustus visits Alexander's tomb ........ ib. The Egyptian triumph at Rome ........ 83 New city of Nicopolis . . . 84 Two obelisks removed to Rome ........ 85 The prefect Cornelius Gallus recalled . ib. Fighting-cocks .......... . ib. The prefect Petronius clears the canals . 86 Strabo visits Egypt .......... 87 The prefect iElius Gallus invades Arabia . . . . . . 90 The Ethiopian Arabs ; Queen Candace ...... 91 They invade Egypt 92 The coinage ........... 93 Temples built in Upper Egypt and Nubia . . . . . . 94 Egyptian superstitions forbidden in Rome ; the authors . . . ib. CONTENTS. xiii A, D. PAGE 14 The Sebaste of Alexandria, its obelisks and sun-dial . . ib. Temples built ; tbe portico and zodiac of Tentyra 97 Jewish monks ; the Therapeutse ..... . 101 19 Egyptian religion again forbidden in Rome . . . . . 104 23 37 King Agrippa ridiculed by the Alexandrians . . . 107 The Jews declared to be foreigners in Alexandria . . 108 King Agrippa informs the emperor .... . . ib. Philo's embassy to Rome ; his character and writings . . 109 mi J „i •11 ^„ _ r» ryy x A 1 A decree to stop travelling at the expense of the people . • 114 The trade to India described by Pliny .... . . ib. 4/ The phoenix retui'ns at the Roman secular games . . 122 00 JNero. The iigyptian Jews march to Judffia . . . 123 I he philosophers oi the Museum ..... Christianity first preached in Egypt . . . . . . 129 The first bishop of Alexandria a J ew .... . . ib. The Arab inroads ; Nubia a desert . . . . . . 131 CHAPTER Xiy. THE REIGNS OF GALEA, OTHO, VITELLIUS, VESPASIAN, TITUS, AND DOMITIAN. A.D. 68 97. 68 Galea redresses grievances ; the prefect's decree . . 133 69 Otho acknowledged as emperor ..... 69 ViTELLius J cknowledged as emperor .... . ib. 69 Vespasian" acknowledged as emperor .... . . ib. The philosophers ; the miracles of Apollonius . 136 The J ews' sufferings ; their temple at Onion closed . 140 The historian Josephus ; his writings . * . . . . 142 Vespasian ridiculed by the Alexandrians. 79 Titus ....... 82 DoMiTiAN. Juvenal's account of Egypt . ib. civ CONTENTS. A.D. PAGE The quarrel between Ombos and Tentyra . . . . . . 146 Plutarch's account of the religion . . - . . . .147 Egyptian superstitions in Rome * . . . . . . . 149 92 Coins of the eleventh year ......... 150 CHAPTER XY. THE KEIGNS OF NERVA, TRAJAX, HADRIAN, AND THE TWO AXTOXINES. A.D. 97 181. 97 Nerya. The Jews' tribute remitted . . . . . . . 151 98 TfvAJax ib. 108 His coins of the eleventh year . . . . . . . . ib. Egyptian physicians 153 Famine in Egypt relieved by Rome . . . . , . . ib. Dion Chrysostome's account of Alexandria ...... 154 The city of Petra taken 156 The new canal dug .......... 157 The Testaments of the twelve patriarchs . ib. Ezekiel's tragedy of the Departure from Egypt . . . . .159 116 The Jews rebel and lose their privileges ib. 117 Hadrian 160 Quarrel between Memphis and Heliopolis about the bull Apis . . . ib, 122 Hadrian visits Egypt .......... ib. Antinoiis drowns himself and is deified ....... 161 December named the month Hadrian . . . . . . .162 The philosophers pensioned on the ^luseum . . . . . . ib. 130 The Jews again rebel ......... ib. The inscriptions on the foot of the musical statue .... 165 131 Hadrian's second visit to Egypt 166 134 His account of the Egyptians and their religion ..... 167 The philosophy of the Gnostic Christians ; their doctrine of election ; their ^ons ; the Ogdoad ; gems, amulets, and abraxas ; portraits of Jesus 169 Justin Martyr ; his studies and conversion ...... 174 Athenagoras ; his defence of Christianity . . . . . . 175 The coins of each Egyptian nome . . . . . . . . 176 138 Anto>-inus Pius ; the end of the Sothic period, and the return of the phojnix ; the coins . . . . . . . . .177 Astrology ; a horoscope . . . . . . . . . . 180 Ptolemy the astronomer ; his writings and instruments . . . ib. The Itinerary of Antoninus . . . . . . . . . 182 Arrian's Periplus of the Red Sea ; the trade of India and Arabia ; sugar 183 New buildings in Alexandria . . . . . . . .184 1G2 Marcus Aurelius ; his coins ib. The rebellion of Avidius Cassius . . . . . . .185 The library ; its contents ; the book trade 186 Atheuseus and the grammarians ....... 188 Homeric poets ........... ib. Cheiron's history of Egypt . . . . . . . .190 Lucian's satires on the Egyptians . . . . . . . . ib. The bishop of Alexandi-ia appoints other bishops ..... 191 Celsus writes against Christianity ; Origen's answer . . . . ib. CONTENTS. XV A.D. J'AUK Dialogue between Jason and Papiscus . . . . . . .192 The Sybilline verses of the Christians ib. The Recognitions of Clemens ; literary forgeries 193 CHAPTER XYI. THE REIGXS OF C0M3I0DUS, PERTIXAX, NIGER, SEVERUS, CARACALLA, MACRINUS, ELAGABALUS, ALEXANDER, MAXIMINUS, BALBINUS, THE GORDIANS, AND PHILIP. A.D. 181 249. 181 CoMMODUS. The falling state of the country ..*... 195 Egypt described by Aristides . . 196 The decline of Egyptian Architecture . . . . . * . 198 The Books of Thoth 199 Decline of the Egyptian religion ; Hermes Trismegistus . . . . 200 The Gospel according to the Egyptians 202 The Docetae, or ascetic Christians 203 The new Coptic alphabet ......... ib. Hieroglyphics described by Clemens . . ..... 204 The catechetical school of christian learning founded by Pantaenus. Clemens Alexandrinus ; his writings . . . . . . 205 194 Pertinax. Pescennius Niger 207 196 Septimius Severus, visits Egypt 208 Proclus removes his school from Naucratis ..... 209 Persecution of the Christians . . . . . . . . ib. Origen teaches in the catechetical school 210 Heraclas teaches in the school . . . . . . . . ib. Julius Africanus writes his chronology by the help of Manetho's history . 211 The coinage ........... ib. 211 Caracalla [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus] . , . . . . ib. He is laughed at by the Alexandrians . . . . . .212 He visits Egypt ; he massacres the youths . . . . . . ib. He divides Alexandria into two fortifications . . . . .213 217 Macrinus 214 The doubt about acknowledging Bassianus ..... ib 218 Elagabaltjs [Bassianus, or Marcus Aurelius Antoninus] . . . ib. 222 Alexander Severus ib. The rebel Epagathus made prefect of Egypt . . . . . . 215 Ammonius Saccas the founder of the school of Alexandrian Platonists, his lectures on style ib. His pupil Plotinus ; his works and opinions . . . . . . 216 Origen ; his works . . . . . . . . . 218 Heraclas appoints twenty Egyptian bishops 219 235 Maximinus and Maximu3 • . 220 237 GoRDiANUS Senior and Gordianus Junior ib, 238 Balbixus and Pcpienus Maximus. Gordianus Pius • . , ib. Plotinus marches with the army in search of the Eastern philosophy . 221 244 PuiLip ib. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XYII. THE REIGNS OF DECIUS, GALLUS, VALERIAN, GALLIENUS (REBELLION), CLAUDIUS, AURELIAN (REBELLION), TACITUS, PROBUS (REBELLION), CARUS, DIOCLETIAN (tHE GREAT REBELLION), GALERIUS, AND LICI- NIUS. A.D. 249 323. A.D. PAGE 249 Decius. The Christians persecuted 222 Dionysius the bishop flies from danger . . . . . . . ib. He writes against the Gnostics, the Unitarians and the Sabellians . . 223 251 (xALLUS. The jjlague ; the population falls oflf 224 253 ^MILIUS ^MILIANUS ib. Valerian and Gtallienus. The rise of Palmyra ib. 260 Macrianus and his sons 225 Alexander iEMiLiANUS. Egypt independent of Rome . . . . 226 Conquered by Gallienus 227 The Christians tolerated ......... ib. A school of Christian Peripatetics ....... 228 Controversy on the millennium. Porphyry ...... 229 268 Zenobia attacks Egypt unsuccessfully ...... 230 Claudius Gothious ib. 270 Quintillus ib. Zenobia queen of Egypt . . . . . . . . . 231 Aurelian. Zenobia defeated ........ 232 271 Vaballathus Athenodorus reigns with Aurelian . . . . 233 272 FiRMUS makes Upper Egypt independent ...... 234 273 L. DoMiTius DoMiTiANUS rebels . . . . . . . . ib. 276 Severina widow of Aurelian 236 Tacitus. Probus. Invasion of the Blemmyes . .... 237 Saturninus at first refuses the purple, but is made emperor by his fears 238 283 Carus and his sons ......... 239 285 Diocletian and the great rebellion . . . . . . . ib. 288 Upper Egypt rebels under Achilleus . . . ... • . ib. 292 Coptos and Busiris besieged ib. Nubia given up to the native inhabitants . . . . . .240 297 Alexandria rebels and is besieged . . ib. Diocletian's column. Books on Alchemy ...... 241 The changed state of the country . ib. The Egyptian coinage ceases . ....... 243 304 The Christians persecuted . . . . . . . . . ib. Hierocles the prefect ; his writings ....... 245 Arius proposed as bishop of Alexandria 246 305 Galerius ib. 307 Maximin ib. The schism about those whose courage had failed in the persecution . 247 The opinions of Arius blamed ........ ib. The worship of Mithra in Alexandria 248 Manicheism taugbt in Egypt ........ ib. Mummies blamed by Hieracas ........ 249 Ilesychius ; his edition of the Septuagint ...... 250 The Christian critics less judicious than the pagan grammarians . . ib. The Coptic translations of the Bible ....... 251 313 LioiNius ib. CONTENTS. xvii CHAPTER XVIII. THE REIGNS OF CONSTANTINE, CONSTANTIUS, JULIAN, JOVIAN, AND VALENS. A.D. 323 — 378. A.D. PAGE 323 CoNSTANTiNE. Christianity established by law ..... 253 The Ariau controversy . . . . . . . . . 254 The Council of Nice ; and Arius banished ..... 257 Arius restored and Athanasius banished . . . . . . 258 The Nazarenes only known in Abyssinia ...... 259 Alexandria becomes more Egyptian on the rise of Constantinople . . 260 The pagan philosophers, Alypius and lamblichus .... 261 Achilles Tatius. Sopater the Platonist put to death . . . . 262 337 CoNSTANTius ; the empire divided ib. Athanasius recalled, and then deposed . 263 Gregory made bishop of Alexandria, and the creed altered . . .264 Gregory enters Alexandria by force of arms, and Athanasius banished \ second time ........... i Athanasius restored by order of Constans, and he makes a treaty with his sovereign .......... 266 The Meletians oppose the high claims of the patriarch . . . . 267 Athanasius banished a third time . . . . . - .268 George chosen bishop ; his character ....... 270 Frumentius visits Auxum ........ 271 Theophilus visits the Homeritae and Hexumitae ... . ib. Ethiopic translation of the Bible . . . . . . . . 272 The history of monastic institutions ....... ib. The life of Ammon ; temptations of St. Anthony 274 Belief in miraculous powers ........ 275 The blind Didymus ; Jerom ; Aphthonius . , . ... 276 Julius Finnicus describes the Egyptian religion ..... 277 Astrology and prophecy forbidden ........ 278 The crime of patronage forbidden ....... 279 361 Julian ; he restores paganism ........ 280 The pagans murder George ........ ib. The emperor claims his library . . . . . . . . 281 Lucius chosen bishop ; but Athanasius returns and is a fourth time banished 282 The pagan philosophers and paganism 283 The temple of Serapis 285 363 Jovian ; he re-establishes Christianity ib. He recalls Athanasius • 286 The religious quarrel is in reality political . . . . . . ib. 364 Valens ; the empire is divided ........ 287 Athanasius is a fifth time banished ; is allowed to return ; his character ib. The Homoousian party persecuted . . . . . . . . 288 The monks seized to recruit the army ...... 289 The austerities of the monks of Tabenna, of Nitria, and of Scetis . . ib. They were of the Homoousian or Nicene opinions . . . . .291 Macarius the Egyptian ; his writings ....... 292 Rufinus visits the monasteries ........ 293 Some advantages of monastic vows ....... 294 The three orders of monks . . . ib. The Arabs attack the frontiers ; the city of Petra lost . . . . 295 VOL. IT. h xviii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. THE REIGNS OF THEODOSIUS I., ARCADIUS, AND THEODOSTUS Tl. A.D. 379 450. ^•J>- PAGE 379 Theodosius; he forbids pagan worship 297 The pagans persecuted ; their temples destroyed ib. The library of the Serapeura scattered 298 The character of the suflFerers 299 Christianity corrupted by paganism ....... 301 The Arians persecuted 303 The pagan mathematicians ; and Horapollo ..... 304 The catechetical school closed . . . . . . . . 305 John the monk foretells Theodosius's victory 306 394 Arcadius ; the empire divided ib. The patriarch Theophilus ; his character . . . . . .307 The anthropomorphite opinions of the monks . . . . . . ib. Origen's writings condemned ........ ib. The monasteries of the Origenists burnt . ...... 308 Egyptian relics removed to Constantinople ...... ib. The peach-tree made sacred by the Christians . ■ . . . . 309 Claudian the Roman poet 310 Synesius the Christian Platonist ib. 408 TnEODOSius II. Cyril gains the bishoprick 312 He drives the Jews out of Alexandria . . . . . . . 313 The monks attack the prefect ........ ib. Hypatia murdered by the Christians . . . . . . . 314 Bishop George the saint of the Arians ...... ib. The voyage of Palladius to India . . . . . . . . 315 The Oasis overrun by the Blemmyes . . . . . . .316 Cassianus describes the orders of monks . . . . . . 317 Latin monks in the Thebaid ........ ib. Coptic translation and manuscripts ; the Pistis-Sophia . . . . 318 The Alexandrian MS. in the British Museum 319 The Beza MS. with a Latin translation 320 Moses of Chorene and other Armenian scholars come to Alexandria . 321 Armenian version of the Bible, and new alphabet . . . . . ib. The writings of Nilus, Isidorus, Nonnus, and Cyril .... 322 The writing in Wady Mocatteb 323 Parabalani or physicians for the poor ..... . ib. Syrianus the Platonist . . . . . . . . . . 324 Olympiodorus the Peripatetic . . . . . . . .325 Proclus the Platonist, Pampretius, and Orion . . . . . . ib. The government and army of Egypt . 320 Constantinople sinking, Italy conquered, and Eome piUaged by the Bar- barians 328 CHAPTER XX. THE REIGNS OF MARCIAN, LEO, LEO II., ZENO, BASILICUS, AND ANASTASIUS. A.D. 450 — 518. 450 Marcian renews the religious quarrel . . . . . .330 The council of Chalcedon condemns the patriarch of Alexandria and the opinions of the Egyptians ........ ib. CONTENTS. A.D. , PAGE Proterius the new patriarcli supported by military force . . . . 331 The Nubades overnin Upper Egypt 332 They worship the Egyptian statues, no longer Christians . . . . ib. King Sileo 333 457 Leo. The Alexandrians rebel and murder the patriarch . . . . 334 The bishops advise Leo not to yield 335 Libya rebels ........... ib. 473 Leo II ib. 474 Zend ib. 477 Basilious rebels and supports the Egyptian opinions . . . . ib. Zeno restored, and the decrees of the council of Chalcedon re-established 336 He yields to the Egyptians and issues his Henoticon . . . . 337 Hierocles the Platonist punished for teaching 338 Tryphiodorus the grammarian. Coluthus ; his poem . . . . 39 Hesychius writes his Lexicon. Aetius on medicine . . . .340 Paintings in manuscripts . . . . . . . ..341 491 Anastasitjs 342 Four patriarchs of the Jacobite faith . . . . . . . ib. 501 The Persians overrun Lower Egypt ....... 343 TJrbib relieves the poor in the famine . . . . . . . 344 Julianus and Christodorus, poets of the Anthology . . . .344 The Pharos lighthouse repaired . . 345 CHAPTER XXI. THE REIGNS OF JUSTIN I., JUSTINIAN, JUSTIN II., TIBERIUS, MAURICIUS, PHOCAS, AND HERACLIUS. A.D. 518 640. 518 Justin, the Syrian bishop, comes to Alexandria; Syi-iac literature . 346 The emperor renews the religious quarrel . . . . , . 347 Embassy of Julianus to the Homeritse 348 527 Justinian banishes the Jacobite bishops . . . . . ib. Bishop Apollinarius massacres the citizens . . . . . .349 The imperial patriarchs not recognized by the Coptic church . . . 350 The Coptic or Jacobite bishop and the Liturgies ..... ib. The Persians defeat the emperor 352 The monastery on Mount Sinai built ....... 353 The Homeritae of Arabia conquered by the Abyssinian , . , . 354 John sent to baptize the Abyssinians ....... ib. The monument of Adule ......... ib. The embassy of Nonnosus to the Homeritse ...... 355 The dispute between Gregentius and Herban the Jew ; the Homeritse converted 356 The Book of Enoch found in Abyssinia 357 The new law for the government of Egypt . . . . . . 358 Corn trade with Britain ...... ... 360 The prefect of Alexandria removes to Taposiris . . . . . 361 The public granaries fortified ........ ib. Earthquake at Alexandria ......... ib. Pagan philosophy forbidden, and the philosophers fly to Persia . . 362 Cosmas Indicopleustes ; his writings 363 The fall of learning in Alexandria 364 The coinage 366 XX CONTENTS. A.D. PA.GK 666 Justin" II 366 578 Tiberius ib. 682 Mauricius makes peace with Persia ib. Eulogius ; Theophylactus ; John Climacus ; John Philoponus, his com- mentaries on Aristotle . . . . . . . . . 367 602 Phocas. The Persians attack Constantinople ..... 368 Alexandria rebels in favour of Heraclius . . . . . . ib. 610 Heraclius. The patriarch John the Almsgiver ; his zeal against heresy and his works of charity . . . . . . . .369 618 The Persians conquer Egypt and Alexandria . . . . . ib. Benjamin a Jacobite made bishop . . . . . . . 370 Thomas corrects the Syriac New Testament ; Syriac literature . . . 371 The Persian palace built in Alexandria. The Arabs revolt against Persia, and Heraclius regains Egypt ...... 372 The Arabs march upon Egypt ; Cyrus made bishop . . . . 373 Amrou takes Pelusium ......... 374 He besieges Babylon on the Nile . . . . . . . . 375 The treachery of the Egyptians and the retreat of the Greek garrison . 377 Amrou besieges Alexandria . . . . . . . .378 640 All Egypt is conquered by the Arabs . . . . . . . 379 A description of Alexandria ........ 380 The Library burnt 382 The Conclusion 383 The races of men .......... 387 First Index : Names of Persons 391 Second Index : Quotations from the Bible ....... 400 Third Index : of Subjects 403 THE HISTORY OF EGYPT. CHAPTER XL CLEOPATRA COCCE AND PTOLEMY SOTER 11. ; CLEOPATRA COCCE AND PTOLEMY ALEXANDER ; PTOLEMY SOTER II. ; CLEO- PATRA BERENICE ; PTOLEMY ALEXANDER II. ; PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 116 — 51. (1) On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II., his widow Cleo- patra Cocce would have chosen her younger son, justinus, Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for her partner on the ^g^^-^^^- throne, most likely because it would have been longer in ^1^- the course of years before he would have claimed his share of power ; but she was forced, by a threatened rising of tlie Alexandrians, to make her elder son king. Before, however, she would do this, she made a treaty with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put her away,, and marry his younger sister Selene ; because the mother hoped that Selene would be false to her husband's cause, and weaken his party in the state by her treachery : she planned the unhappiness of two children and the guilt of a third. Perhaps history can hardly show another marriage so wicked and unnatural, or a reign so little likely to end without a civil war. (2) Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form VOL. ir. B 2 CLEOPATRA AND SOTER II. B.C. IIG— 106. [ciiAr. xi. Fk. 1. Fig. 2. of a leaf, pricked into liis skin in honour of Osiris. (See Pausauias ^ ^^^^ ^' forms of liis name.) He was lib. i. 9. .^iso called Pliilometor : and we Inscnpt. Letroune, learn from an inscription on a Recheiches. ^gj-^p^g Apollinopolis Parva, tliat both these names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran in this reign; it is dedicated by 'the queen Cleo- patra and king Ptolemj^ gods Philometores, Soteres, and his children,' without mention- ing his wife. Here, as in Persia and Judgea, the king's mother often held rank above his wife. The name of Pliilometor w^as given to him by his mother, because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to act as his guardian ; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that historians have thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the son were jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in distrust of one another, each surrounded by his own friends; while Cleopatra's stronger mind and greater skill in kingcraft gained for her the larger share of power. Can we wonder that under such heads the monarchy was tottering to its fall ? (3) Cleopatra the daughter, who gained our pity for being Justinus 1^^^ away by her husband at the command of her lib. xxxix. mother, soon forfeited it by the steps wdiich she then took. She made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the friend of her late husband, who Avas struggling in unnatural warfare for the throne of Syria with his brother Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphsena ; and in her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large army and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband against his brother and her sister. (4) With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal to those of his brother ; he marched against him and gave him battle. But he was beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut themselves up in the city of CHAP. XI.] VOYAGE TO INDIA. 3 Antioch. Grypus and Tryphsena then laid siege to the city, and Tryphssna soon took her revenge on her sister for coming into Syria to marry the brother and rival of her husband. The city was taken ; and Tryphsena ordered her sister to be torn from the temple into which she had fled, and to be put to death. In vain Grypus urged that he did not wish his victory to be stained by the death of a sister ; that Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers ; that she was the aunt of their children ; and that the gods would punish them if they dragged her from the altar. But Tryphsena was merci- less and unmoved; she gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was killed as she clung with her arms to the statue of the goddess. This unnatural cruelty, however, was soon overtaken by punishment : in the next battle Cyzicenus was the conqueror, and he put Tryphcena to death, to quiet the ghost of her murdered sister. (5) In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprus to her younger son Alex- ap. Sccalig. ' ander, as an independent kingdom, thinking that he would be of more use to her there, in upholding her Pausanias, power against his brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria. (6) In the last reign Eudoxus had been intrusted by Euer- getes with a vessel and a cargo for a trading voyage of strabo, discovery towards India ; and in this reign he was again sent by Cleopatra down the Eed Sea to trade with the unknown countries in the east. How far he went may be doubted, but he brought back with him from the coast of Africa the prow of a ship ornamented with a horse's head, the usual figure-head of the Carthaginian ships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who knew it as belonging to one of the Phenician ships of Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxus justly argued that this prow proved that it was possible to sail round Africa and to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The government, however, would not fit him out for a third voyage ; but his reasons were strong enough to lead many to join him, B 2 4 CLEOPATRA AXD SOTER II. B.C. IIG-IOG. [chap. xi. and others to help him with monej^, and he thereby fitted out three vessels on this attempt to sail romid Africa by the westward voyage. He passed the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar, and then turned southward. He even reached that part of Africa where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped by his ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that he brought back for us is, that the natives of that western coast were of nearly the same race as the Ethiopians on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only part of the way back, and he reached Mamitania with difficulty by land. He thence retimied home, where he met with the fate not unusual to early travellers. His whole story was doubted ; and the geographers at home did not believe that he had ever visited the countries that he attempted to describe. (7) The people of Lower Egypt were, as we have seen, of several races ; and, as each of the surrounding nations was in its turn powerful, that race of men was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Cojpts ruled in the Delta ; when the free states of Greece held the first rank in the world, even before the time of Alexander's conquests, the Greeks of Lower Egypt were masters of their fellow country- men; and noAV that •Judc'ea, under the braveiy of the Maccabees, had gained among nations a rank far higher than what its size entitled it to, the Egvptian Jews found that they had in the same way gained weight in Alexandria. Cleopatra had given T . the command of her armv to two Jews, Chelcias and Josephiis, " ' A-ntiq.^ Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Hehopolis ; and hence, when the civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra helped tlie Jews, and perhaps for that same reason Lathyrus helped the Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to be led against the Jews, but this force was beaten by the two sons of H3Tcanus the high priest. (8) By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower Eg\-pt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on the throne. She raised a riot ClUP. XI.] HE IS DErOSED. ill Alexandria against liim, in the tenth 3'ear of their rorphyiins, reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or ^p- ^^^^'S- more likely, as Pausanias saj^s, by showing to the people some of her eunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she forced him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife Selene, whom j^^^ mi istinus, she had before thrust upon him, li^- xxxix. 4. and who had borne him two children ; and allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cj^prus, from which she recalled her favourite son Alexander to Fig. 3. Fig. 4. reign with her in Egypt. (See Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, Cleopatra and Alexander.) (9) During these years the building was going forward of the beautiful temple at the city, afterwards named b}^ Wilkinson, the Komans Contra-Latopolis, on the other side of pg^Jj^^* the Nile from Latopohs or Esne. (See Fig. 5.) Little P^- Fig. 5. now remains of it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each, having the sun with outstretched wings carved on the overhanging eaves. The earliest names found among the hieroglyphics with which its walls are covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son Ptolemy Soter, while the latest name is that of the emperor Commodus. Even under Cleopatra Cocce, who was nearly the worst of the family, the building of these great temples did not cease. 6 CLEOPATHA AND ALEXANDER. B.C. lOG— ST. [ciiAr. XI. (10) The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of their clever but wicked mother, that on the recall of Alex- B.C. lOG. ander no change was seen in the government bej^ond that of tlie names which were placed at the head of the public rorphjTius, ^cts. The former year was called the tenth of Cleo- ap. Scahg. -pr^iyr^ r^nrl Ptolcmy Sotcr, and this year w^as called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth of Ptolemy Alexander ; as Alexander counted his years from the time when he was sent with the title of king to Cyprus. As he was, like his brother, under the guidance of his mother, he was lil^e him in the hieroglyphical inscriptions called mother-loving. (11) While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil wars and by the vices of their kings, Judaea, as we have seen, had risen under the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent state; and Josepnus, Antiq. latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyrcanus, and xiii. 20. afterwards Alexander JannaBUS, his second son, had made themselves kings. But Gaza, Ptolemais, and some other cities, bravely refused to part with their liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then king of Cyprus, for help. This w^as not, however, done vdthout many misgivings; for some were wise enough to see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, on the other hand, help their king Jannaeus ; and when Lathyrus landed at Sicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemais refused even to listen to a message from him. (12) The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which the city of Ptolemais refused. Lathyrus drove back Jann^eus, and marched upon Asochis, a city of Galilee, where he scaled the v;alls on the sabbath-day, and took ten thousand prisoners T , and a larp'e booty. He then sat down before the city 4°^^!^ t)f Saphoris, but left it on hearing that Jann^eus was marching against him on the other side of the Jordan, at the head of a force larger than his own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewish army, and routed it with great slaughter. The Jewish historian adds, that between thirty and CIIAI'. XI ] WARS IN SYIUA. 7 fifty thousand men were slain upon the field of battle, and that the women and children of the neighbouring villages were cruelly put to death. (13) Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus would soon make himself too powerful, if not checked in his career of success, and that he might be able to march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces, and put them under the command of Chelcias and Ananias, her Jewish generals. She sent her treasure, her will, and the children of Alexander, to the island of Cos, as a place of safet}^, and then marched with the army into Palestine, having sent forward her son Alexander with the fleet. By this movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground in Coele- Syria, and he took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But he was quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, though Chelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemais, sent part of her army to help that which had been led by Chelcias; and Lathyrus was forced to shut himself up in Gaza. Soon after this the campaign ended, by Lathyrus returning to his own kingdom of Cyprus, and Cleopatra to Egypt. (14) On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon the throne of Jannseus, and again to add to Egypt the pro- vinces of Palestine and Coele -Syria, which had so long made part of the Idngdom of her forefathers. We may be quite sure that this cruel overbearing w^oman, who had never yet been guided by any feeling of right or dislike for war, did not yield to the reasons of her general Ananias through any kind feeling towards his countrymen ; but the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be treated with slight ; it was by the help of the Jews that Cleopatra had driven her son Lathyrus out of Egypt; they formed a large part of the Egyptian armies, which were no longer even commanded by Greeks ; and it must have been by these clear and unanswerable reasons that Ananias was able to turn the queen from the thoughts of this conquest, and to renew the league between Egypt and Judiea. 8 CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER. 15. C. lOo— 87. [chai-. xi. (15) Cleopatra however was still afraid that Lathyrus would , . be helped by his friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to Justmus, 1 J ^ lib. xxxix. conquer Egypt, and she therefore kept up the quarrel between the brothers by again sending troops to help Antiochus Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage her daughter Selene, whom she had before forced upon Lathyrus. She then sent an army against Cyprus ; and Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from the island. Cleopatra then put to death the general because he had allowed her sou to escape ahve. (IG) In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion Idng of Cvrene. He was the half-brother of Lathyrus and Epit. ixx. Alexander, and having been made king of Cyrene by B.C. w. j^^^ father Euergetes 11. he had there reigned quietly for twenty years. Being between Egypt and Carthage, then called the Eoman province of Africa, and having no army which he could lead against the Eoman legions, he had placed himself under the guardianship of Eome ; he had bought a truce during his lifetime, by making the Eoman people his heirs in his will, so that on his death they were to have his kingdom. Cyrene had been part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and was usually governed by a younger son or brother of the Idng. But on the death of Ptolemy Apion, the Eoman senate, who had latterly been grasping at everything within their reach, claimed his kingdom as theu' inheritance, and in the flattering language of theii* decree by which the country was enslaved, they declared Cyrene free ; and from that time forward it was little better than a province of Eome. (17) Ptolemy Alexander, who had been a mere tool in the ^ . hands of his mother, was at last tired of his gilded Jiistmus, _ lib. xxxix. chains ; but he saw no means of throwing them ofl", or of gaining that power in the state which his birth and title, and the age which he had then reached, ought to have given him. The army was in favour of his mother, and an unsuccessful effort would certainly have been punished with death; so he took perhaps the only path open to him, he left ■CHAP. XI.] -HER DEATJl. 9 Egypt by stealth, and cliose rather to quit his throne and palace than to live surrounded by the creatures of his mother and in daily fear for his life. (18) Cleopatra might well doubt whether she could keep her throne against both her sons, and she therefore sent messengers with fair promises to Alexander, to ask him to return to Egj'pt. But he knew his mother too well ever again to trust himself in her hands ; and while she was taking steps to have him put to death on his return, he formed a plot against her life by letters. In this double game Alexander had the advantage of his mother ; her character was so well known that he needed not to be told of what was going on ; while she perhaps thought that the son whom she had so long ruled as a child would not dare to act as a man. Alexander's plot was of the two porphjo-ius, the bestlaid, and on his reaching Egypt his mother was put to death. Thus died by the orders of her favourite son, after a reign of twenty-eight years, this wicked woman, who had married the husband of her mother, who had made her daugh- ters marry and leave their husbands at her pleasure, who had made war upon one son and had plotted the death of the other. (19) But Alexander did not lon<^ enjoy the fruits of his murder. The next year the Alexandrians rose lib. xxxix. against him in a fury. He was hated not so much perhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he had been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame porphyrius, of, while he reigned with her. His own soldiers ^P* ^^'^^s- turned against him, and he was forced to seek his safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Eg3'pt with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the command of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myras, a city of Lycia, in safety ; and afterwards in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet under b.c. 87. Chsereas, and killed in battle. (20) Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagida3. During his idle reign of twenty years, in 10 PTOLEMY ALEXANDER. B.C. 87. [chap. XI. Avhicli the crimes ought in fairness to be laid chiefly to his Atlienajus, mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and worst Lb. xii. 12. q£ pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He was so bloated with vice and disease that he seldom w^alked without crutches ; but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance with naked feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He was blinded by flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people. (21) His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which also bore the name of ' Ptolemy the king,' round the eagle. Some of the coins of his mother have the same Visconti words rouud the eagle on the one side, while on the Icon. Grec. qH^q^ is lier head, with a helmet formed like the head of an elephant, or her head with the name of ' Queen Cleopatra. (See Fig. G.) British Museum. Fig. 6. There are other coins with the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out the joint sovereignty of herself and son. (See Fig. 7.) (22) Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign of Ptolemy Alexander; but his name is not wholly unknown among the sculptures of Upper Egypt. On the walls of the temple of Apollinopolis Magna he is represented as making an CJIAP. XI.] THEBES REBELS. 11 offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist has carved a portrait of this Greek king, whom he perhaps had never seen, clothed in a dress him in his flight to Lycia. His second wife was Cleopatra Berenice, the daughter Porphyiius, of his brother LathjTus, by whom he had no children, (24) On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprus to bring back Soter II., or Lathy- . rus as he is called ; and he entered Egypt without ap. Scalig. opposition. He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and then eighteen years by himself in Cyprus ; and during those years of banishment had shown a wisdom and good behaviour which must have won the esteem of the Alexandrians, when compared with his 3'ounger brother Alexander. He had held his ground against the fleets and armies of his mother, but either through weakness or good feeling had never invaded Egypt. (25) His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin of the once powerful city of Thebes. It had long been falling in trade and in wealth, and had lost its superiorit}^ in arms ; but its temples, like so many citadels, its obelisks, its colossal which he never wore, and wor- shipping a god whom he may have hardly known by name. (See Fig. 8.) (23) History has not told us who was the first wife of Alex- ander, but he left a son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen sent by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress of the family, and a daughter whom he carried with 12 TTOLE^MY SOTEIl II. 13.0. 87—81. [cuAr. xf. statues, and tlic tombs of its great kings, still remained, and Tacitus, '^yith them the memor}^ of its glory then gone by. The Auuai. 11, liieroglyphics on the avails still recounted to its fallen priests and nobles the provinces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they once governed, and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which these provinces sent as a yearly tribute. The paintings and sculptures still showed the men of all nations and of all colours, from the Tartar of the north to the Negro of the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings : and with these proud trophies before their eyes they had been bending under the yoke of Euergetes 11. and Cleopatra Cocce for above fifty years. So small a measure of justice has usually been dealt out to a conquered people by their rulers, that their highest hopes have risen to nothing more than an escape from excess of tyranny. If life, property, female honour, national and religious feelings have not been constantly and wantonly outraged, lesser evils have been patiently endured. Fig. 9. Political servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment and occa- sional cruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries and a-half under their Greek masters, as no less the lot of humanity than poverty, disease, and death. But under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure of their injuries overflowed, CHAP. XI.] THEBES OVERTHROWN. 13 and taking advantage of the revolutions in Alexandria, a large part of Upper Egypt rose in rebellion. (26) We can therefore hardly wonder that when Latliyrus Pausanias, landed in Egypt and tried to recall the troubled cities lib. 1. 9. quiet government and good order, Thebes should have refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors who followed Rameses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite dead. For three years the brave Copts, entrenched within their temples, every one of which was a castle, withstood his armies ; but the bows, the hatchets, and the chariots could do little against Greek arms ; while the overthrow of the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, prove how slowly they jdelded to greater skill and numbers, and mark the conqueror's distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of. (See the rmns of the Memnonium, Fig. 9, and the ruins of Quorneh, Fig. 10.) Perhaps the only time before when Thebes had been I13' 10. stormed after a long siege was when it first fell under the Persians ; and the ruin which marked the footsteps of Cambyses had never been wholly repaired. But the wanton cruelty of the foreigners did little mischief, when compared with the unpity- ing and unforgiving distrust of the native conquerors. The 14 rTOLEMY SOTER II. B.C. 87-81. [chap. XI. temples of Tentyra, Apollinopolis, Latopolis, and Philce show tliat the massive Egyptian buildings, when let alone, can withstand the wear of time for thousands of years ; but the harder hand of man works much faster, and the wide acres of Tlieban ruins prove alike the greatness of the city and the force with which it was overthrown ; and this is the last time that Egyptian Thebes is met vvith in the pages of history. The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed him to reacli a spot wdiich all of us would be delighted to visit, now counts the Arab villages which have been built within the city's bounds, and perhaps pitches his tent in the open space in the middle of them. But the ruined temples still stand to call forth his wonder. They have seen the whole portion of time of which history keeps the reckoning roll before them ; they have seen kingdoms and nations rise and fall; the Babylonians, the Jews, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Eomans. They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient ; and they still seem likely to stand, to tell their tale to those who will Pausanias, hereafter call us the ancients. After this rebellion, lib. 1. 9. Lathj'rus reigned in quiet, and was even able to be of use to his Greek allies ; and the Athenians, in gratitude, set up statues of bronze to him and Berenice his daughter. (27) During this reign, the Eomans were carrying on a war Plutarch., ^'i^^i Mithridates, king of Pontus, in Asia Minor ; and Vit.Lucuil. gyi^r^^ ^yi^Q -^yag iiiQYi the head of the republic, sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and the philosopher, as ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help against the enem}^ The Egyptian fleet moved out of harbour to meet him, a pomp which the kings of Egypt had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrus received him on shore with the greatest respect, lodged him in the palace, and invited him to his own table, an honour which no foreigner had enjoyed since the kings of Egypt had thrown aside the plain manners of the first Cicero, Ptolemies. Lucullus had brought with him the Acad. IV. 4. philosopher Antiochus of Athens, who had been the pupil of Philo, and they found time to enjoy the society of Dion CHAP, xr,] ROMAN EMBASSY. 15 the academic philosopher, who was then teaching at Alexan- dria ; and there they might have heen seen with Heraclitus of Tyre, talking together about the changes which were creeping into the Platonic philosophy, and about the two newest works of Philo, which had just come to Alexandria. Antiochus could not read them without showing his anger : such opinions had never before been li?ard of in the Academy ; but they knew the hand-writing of Philo, they were certainly his. Selins and Tetrilius, who were there, had heard him teach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, and where he was then teaching Cicero. The next day, the matter was again talked over with Lucullus, Heraclitus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston and Dion ; and it ended in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus, against those nevv^ opinions of his old master, against the new Academy, and in behalf of the old Academy. (28) Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of power and his own interest too well to help the piutarch., Romans to crush Mithridates, and he wisely wished Vit.Lucull. not to quarrel with either. He therefore at once made up his mind not to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask for. It had been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay the expenses of the Roman ambassadors while living in Alex- andria ; and Lathyrus offered four times the usual allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver. Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his expenses, and returned the gifts which were meant as a civil refusal of the fleet ; and, having failed in his embass}^, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wonders of Egypt unvisited. LathjTus sent a fleet of honour to accompany him on his voyage, and gave him his portrait cut in an emerald. Mithridates was soon afterwards „ n ^^ ballustius, conquered by the Romans ; and it was only by skilful ^Pj^^^*'^?^ embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep ofl" the punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed the orders of Sylla. Egypt was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia, that had not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke. IG CLEOrATRA BERENICE. B.C. 81— SO. [chap. XI. (29) The coins of Latliyrus are not easily or certainly Visconti, known from tliose of the other Ptolemies ; but those Icon. Grec. j^-g ggcQj-jd ^y^fg ]jQ^y j^g^, \iQr^([ the One side, with the name of ' Queen Selene,' and on the other side the eagle, Porphyiius, ^ith the name of ' King Ptolemy.' (See Fig. 11.) He ap. Scahg. j^^j before reigned ten years with his mother, and Fig. 11. after his brother's death he reigned six years and a-half more ; but, as he counted the years that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh 'year of his reign. He left a daughter named Berenice, and two natural sons, each named Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed Auletes, the _2^?^Jer, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt. (30) On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter IL, his daughter Cleopatra Berenice, the widow of Ptolemy B.C. 80. Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt ; but it was also claimed by her step-son the young Alexander, who was . . then living in Home. Alexander had been sent to the Appianus, " ^' ^^^^^^^ ^ place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed her army into Coele- Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the island w^as soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, king Appianus, of Pontus, wlio had conquered Asia Minor. Among Bell. Mithr. treasures in that island the Alexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys or war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they had kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It then fell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it CHAP, XI.] PTOLEMY ALEXANDER H. B.C. 80. 17 became the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of the Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by the believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command of the world passed to the Romans its new owners. The young Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates ; but he afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sylla, under whose care he lived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the throne of his father, by means of the friendship of one who could make and unmake kings at his pleasure ; and Sylla might have thought that the wealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. To n- ^ J t> Cicero, 11. these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was contr. Rul- then becoming common with the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, lie made a will, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs ; and the senate then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth which was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenice, his stepmother, Porphyrius, had been queen about six ^P* ^^^^^s- 'X ' months, they sent him to Alexandria, ^s-^ orders that he should be received ^1 y 12. J \ b ^ ^^^^S j soften the harshness of ^^■^ ^^mT this command, he was told to marry Fig. 12. Berenice, and reign jointly with her. (See Fig. 12.) (31) The orders of Sylla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed ; and the young Alexander landed at Alexandria, as king of Egypt and the friend of Rome. He married Berenice : and on the nineteenth day of his ■„ , . ' Porphyrius, reign, with a cruelty unfortunately too common in ap Scalig. 1 • 1 • 1 11 mt • 1 Cicero, frag. this history, he put her to death, ihe marriage had derege been forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered ^ppjanus all the political affairs of the kingdom ; but, as they took no part in the civil or criminal affairs, he seems VOL. II. c B.C. 80. 18 PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 80—57. [chap. xi. to have been at liberty to murder bis wife. But Alexander was bated by the people as a king thrust upon them by foreign arms ; and Berenice, whatever they might have before thought of her, was regretted as the queen of their choice. Hence his crime met with its just reward. His own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged hmi from the palace to the gymnasium and there put him to death. (32) Though the Komans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene under the will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves upon the wholesale robbery Cicero ii taking Egypt under the will which Alexander had contr. Rul- made in their favour. They seized, however, a paltry sum of money which he had left at Tyre as a place of safety ; and it was a matter of debate for many years afterwards in Eome, whether they should not claim the kingdom of Egypt. But the nobles of Eome, who sold their patronage to Idngs for sums equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost much by handing the kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian monarchy w^as left standing for two reigns longer. 83) On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have changed their weak and wicked B.C. 80. ^ ^ rulers, and formed a government for themselves, if they had known how. But societ}^, even when already formed, is only held together by everybody believing that his neighbour Avill act fairly and justly, while more than usual self-denial, love of right, and trust in one another are needed to form these bonds anew ; and the whole of the scattered hints, which are all that is left to us of this history, show that those wdiose place in the state had formed them to think, and to be the leaders of their fellow-citizens, w^anted every virtue fitting for the task. (34) The legitimate male line of the Ptolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II. The two natural sons of Soter II., Avere then the next in succession ; and Porphyrius, there vras no other claimant, the crown fell to the ap. Scahg. qI^q^^ jje was young, perhaps even a minor under the age of fourteen* His claims had been wholly overlooked at CHAP. XI.] DIODORUS SICULUS. 19 Fig. 13. the death of his father ; for though by the Egyptian law every son was held to be equally legitimate, it was not so by the Macedonian law. He took the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Egypt. In- Osiris as we find it written in script. pi. 4. the hieroglyphics, though he is usually called Auletes, the jpiper ; a name after- wards given him because he was more proud of his skill in playing on the flute than of his very slender knowledge of the art of governing. (See Fig. 13.) (35) It was in this reign that gjc. the historian Diodorus Siculus ^' travelled in Egypt, and wrote his account of the manners and religion of the people. "What he tells us of the early Egyptian history is of little value, when compared with the history by Manetho, who was a native of the country and could read the hieroglyphical records, or even with that by Herodotus ; but nevertheless he deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, for being nearly the first Greek writer, when Egyptian learning could no longer be thought valuable ; when the religion, thougli looked down upon, might at any rate be studied with ease — for being nearly the first writer who thought the manners of this ancient people, after they had almost passed off the page of history, worth the notice of a philosopher. (36) Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herodotus in making one great hero for the chief actions of Apud antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis or Sesonchosis. ^a^tyr. To him he assigns every great work of which the piod. sic. author was unknown, the canals in the Delta, the li^-i-53,57. statue of Amunothph III., the obelisks of Kameses II., the distant navigation under Neclio, the mounds and trenches dug against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even the great ship of Ptolemy Philopator ; and not knowing that southern Arabia and even Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes 0 2 20 PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 80—57. [chap. XI. called India, lie says that this hero conquered even India Diod. Sic. beyond the Ganges. On the other hand, the fabulous hb. 111. 37. conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of the IiScript. human race, which we see sculptured on the sarco- pl. 02, 63. piiagus of Oimenepthali, he describes as an historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He tells us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was beaten down by ti'oops of archers, slingers, and cavalry, and brought alive in a net to Alexandria, where Eve's old enemy was shown in a cage for the amusement of the curious citizens. (37) Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood the pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world. Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the weather for ages ; and their huge miwieldy stones were a less easy quarry for after builders than the live rock when nearer to the river's side. The priests of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the other, had built a new portico to their great temple of Pthali; but as to the when, the wdiy, or by whom the pj-ramids were built, they had as little to guide their guesses as we have. The temple of Pthah, and every other building of Memphis, is now gone, and near the spot stands the great city of Cairo, whose mosques and minarets have been quarried out of its ruins. But the pyramids still stand unbroken and unchanged, and we still amuse ourselves with guessing by whom, and when, and why they were built. One part of their task they have well fulfilled ; they have outlived any portion of time that their builders could have dreamed of. But in another they seem to have failed ; their worn surface no longer declares to us their builders' names and history. Their sloping sides, formed to withstand attacks, have not saved the inscriptions which they once held; and the builders, in thus overlooking the reed which was growing in their marshes, the papyrus, to which the great minds of Greece afterwards trusted their undying names, have only taught us how much safer it would CHAP, xr.] RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 21 have been, in their wish to be thought of and talked of in after ages, to have leaned upon the poet and historian. (38) The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, which were raised by the untiring industry of ages and finished under the Eoman emperors, w^ere begun about this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt had fallen into decay; and though the throne w^as then tottering to its fall, the priests in Upper Egypt were still building for immortality. The religion of the Copts was still flourishing. (39) The Egyptian's opinion of the creation was the growth of his own river's bank. The thoughtful man, who saw the Nile every year lay a body of solid manure upon his field, was able to measure against the walls of the old temples that the ground was slowly but certainly rising. An increase of the earth was being brought about by the river. Hence he readily 2 Peter, believed that the world itself had of old been formed ^' out of water, and by means of water. The philosophers were nearly of the same opinion. Thev held that matter ^. f ^ Diogenes was itself eternal, like the other gods, and that our Laertius, world, in the beginning, before it took any shape upon itself, was like thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things that were afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When the water had by its divine will separated itself from the earth, then the great Ea, the sun, sent down his ^ . Ovm. quickening heat, and plants and animals came forth Metam. out of the Avet land, as the insects are spawned out of * * ^* the fields, before the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after the Nile's overflow has retreated. The crafty „ . *^ Servius, priests of the Nile declared that they had themselves in Georgic. visited and dwelt in the caverns beneath the river, ' ■^^* where these treasures while yet unshaped, were kept in store and waiting to come into being. And on the days sacred to the Nile, boys, the children of priestly families, were every year dedicated to the blue river-god that they might spend their youth in monastic retirement, and as it was said in these caverns beneath his waves. That these were very early Egyptian 22 riOLE^IY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. S0~57. [chap. xi. opinions we learn from our finding traces of them in the oldest of the Hebrew Scriptures, though the writers there are not so far warped hy them as to rob the Creator of the praise for his own works. The author of the book of Genesis tells us that the Almighty formed our earth and its inhabitants by dividing the land from the water, and then commanding them both to bring forth living creatures ; and again one of the Psalm Psahnists says that his substance, while yet imperfect, cxxxLx. -^y Creator curiously wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The Hebrew writer, however, is never misled, so as to think that any part of the creation was its own creator. But in the Egyptian philosophy sunshine and the river Nile are themselves the divine agents: and hence Chseremon, ^ ^ o ^ ap. Euse- fire and water received divine honom^s, as the two Evl^g^^*^' purest of the elements; and every day when the hb. 111. 4. ^gj-j-^pig q£ Serapis in Alexandria was opened, the singer standing on the steps of the portico sprinkled water over the marble floor while he held forth the fire to tlie people ; and though he and most of his hearers were Greeks, he called upon the god in the Egyptian language. (40) The inner walls of the temples glittered with gold and Clemens silver and amber, and sparkled with gems from Ethi- Peedag. iii. opia and India ; and the recesses were veiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrast with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller, who having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, and asked to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One of the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chanting a hymn, and pulling aside the veil, allowed him to peep in at a snake, a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or cavern than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. Diod. Sic. The funerals of the sacred animals were celebrated lib. 1. 84. ^^^1^ great pomp, particularly that of the bull Apis ; and at a cost, in one case, of one hundred talents, or seventeen thousand pounds; which was double what Ptolemy Soter, in on/iP. XT.] BELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 23 his wish to please his new subjects, spent upon the Apis of his day. After the funeral the priests looked for a calf with the right spots, and when they had found one they fattened it for forty days, and brought it to Memphis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely in the temple. The religious feelings of the Egyptians v/ere much warmer and stronger than those of the Greeks or Eomans ; the}^ have often been accused of eating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a jbsly the people of Memphis celebrated the c. Julius birthday of Apis with gi^eat pomp and expense, and Solmus. one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion was the throwing a Fig. 14. golden dish into the Nile. During the week that pji^y^ these rejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was ^i^-vm. 71 appeased by gifts, the crocodile was thought to lose its fierce- ness, its teeth were harmless, and it never attempted to bite ; and it was not till six o'clock on the eighth day that this animal again became an object of fear to those whose occupa- pations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once Dioj. sic. a year also the statues of the gods vrere removed from ^' their pedestals and placed in barges, and thus carried in solemn procession along the Nile, and only brought back to the temples after some days. (See Fig. l-l.) It was . Iliad, i. 424. supposed that the gods Avere passmg these days on a visit to the righteous Ethiopians, and it seems probable that they were the twelve days at Christmas which we still keep as holidays. 24 PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 80—57. [chap. xi. British (^1) The Cat was at all times one of tlie animals Museum. Yiq\q\ most sacred by the Egyptians. In the earliest and latest times we find the statues of their goddesses with cats' heads. (See Fig. 15.) The cats of Alexandria were looJ^ed upon as so many images of Neith or the Minerva of Sais, a goddess worshipped both by Greeks , and Egyptians : and it passed into a Plutarch., r ^ l Proverbia proverb with the Greeks, when they exan r. g^^j^^ ^£ ^^^^ things being unlike, to sa}^ tliat they were as much like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is to Alexandria also that we trace the story of a cat turned into a lady to please a prince who had fallen in love with it. The lady, how- ever, when dressed in her bridal robes, could not help scampering about the room after a mouse seen upon the floor ; and when Plutarch was in Egypt it had already become a proverb, that any one in too much finery was as awkward as a cat in a crocus-coloured robe. (42) So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was the Diod. Sic. worship of these animals, that when a Eoman soldier lib. 1. 83. ]-^^^| killed a cat unawares, though the Eomans were masters of the country, the people rose against him in a fury. In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them know that the cat was killed by accident ; and, though the fear of Eome would most likely have saved a Roman soldier un- harmed whatever other crime he might have been guilty of, in this case notliing would quiet the people but his death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus the historian. One nation rises above another not so much from its greater strength or skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish for power. The Egyptians, we see, had not lost their com^age, and when the occasion called them out they showed a fearlessness not unworthy of their Theban forefathers ; on seeing a dead cat in the streets they rose against the king's CHAP. XI.] RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 25 orders and the power of Rome ; had they thought their o^^ti freedom or their country's greatness as much worth fighting for, they could perhaps have gained them. But the Egyptians had no civil laws or rights that they cared about, they had nothing left that they valued but their religion, and this the Romans took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war upon the ]oriests and temples as the Persians had done, they would perhaps in the same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the religious feelings of the people, and even after Eg}^t had become a Roman province, when the beautiful temples of Esne, Dendera, and other cities, were dedicated in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldom copied the example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less Roman writing on the portico, but continued to let the walls be covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions. Fig. 16. (43) The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, dj^j gj^^ still had the bodies of their friends embalmed at their ^- death, and made into mummies : though the priests, to 4^^^*°^?.* save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man 262. just dead into a mummy-case which had been made and used in the reign of a Thothmosis or an Amunothph. They thought that every man at his death took upon himself the character of Qsiris, that the nurses who laid out the dead body renrcsented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, while the i^'^.x >vno made the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis. (See Fig. IG.) When the embalming was finished, it was part of tlie penon funeral to bring the dead man to trial for what he had 20 PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. SO— 57. [chap. XI. done wlien living, and thus to determine whether he was entitled to an honourahle hurial. The mnmni}^ was ferried across the lake helonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headed Horus ; and with this the}'' weighed the past life of the deceased. The judge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the solemn verdict, which was written down by the ibis -headed Thoth. But human nature is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatever might have been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the feelings of the friends, always declared Plutarch. ^^^^^ * ^ righteous and a good man : ' and, Prov.Alex. notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, it passed into a proverb to say of a wicked man, that he w^as too bad to be praised even at his funeral. This custom of embalm- ing was thought right by all ; but from examining the mummies that have come down to us, it would seem to have been very mucli confined to the priestly families, and seldom used in the Diod. Sic. case of children. The mummies, however, were highly hb. 1. 93. Y^i^^ed by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was driven to borrow money, the mummies w^ere thought good security by the lender, and taken as such for the loan. The mummj^-cases indeed could be sold for a large sum, as when made of wood thej were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and often three in number, one inclosing the other. (See Fig. 17.) The stone mummy-cases were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with hieroglyphics, and shaped to the body like the inner wooden cases. (44) Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at Ita been left unchanged ; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as in Rome under the Csesars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after the substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man. OHAP, XT.] RELIGIOUS OPINION?;, 27 the thirty judges, from the cities of Thebes, Memphis, Blod. Sic. and Heliopolis, were still guided by the eight books l^ba.73,7y. of the law. The king, the priests, and the soldiers, were the only landholders in the country, while the herdsmen, husband- men, and handicraftsmen, were thought of lower caste. Though the armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries, and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had as little to do with arms as knights and esquires Fig. 17. have in our days, yet they still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country w^orth fighting for. The old purity of manners, without which the nation could never have risen to its former gi*eatness, had long since passed away. The j)[q^^ gi^^ priests alone obeyed the old marriage law, that a man ^- should have only one wife. Other men, when rich enough, for the most part degraded themselves and the women by marrying several. All children were held equally legitimate, whatever woman was the mother. With such a taint upon a nation nothing could save it from decay. (45) It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature t 28 PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 80-57. [chap. XI. and art were alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find drawings made on papjTus to scoff at what tlie nation used to hold sacred. The Britisli sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in Museum, ji^tle ; and cats, dogs and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle scene of Rameses II. fighting against the Ethio- pians. In another the king on his throne as a dog, with a Fig. 18. second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the sacred offerings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are playing at chess or draughts in the form of a lion playing with a unicorn or horned ass. (See Fig. 18). (46) We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in Ap.Strabon. i^s more prosperous times, when we learn from Cicero hb. xvu. ^Yi^i in this reign, when the Eomans had good means of knowing, the revenues of the country amounted to twelve Diod. Sic. thousand five hundred talents, or two millions ster- lib.xvu.52. i^jjg . j^^g^ Qj^g Yislf of Avhich was paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when the foreign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down to its lowest ebb ; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year from CHAP. XI.] WEALTH AND POPULATION. 29 the Ked Sea to India ; when the free population of ^. , Diod. Sic. the kingdom had so far fallen off that it was not more lib. i. 31 ; than three millions, which w^as only half of what it ' ' ' had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandria alone still held three hundred thousand persons. (47) But, though much of the trade of the country was lost, though many of the royal works had ceased, j)[q^^ gjc. though the manufacture of the finer linen had left the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favourite source of wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the mines near the Golden Berenice did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war work without pause, chained together in gangs, and guarded by soldiers, who were carefully chosen for their not being able to speak the language of these unhappy workmen. The rock which held the gold was broken up into small pieces ; when hard it w^as first made brittle in the fire ; the broken stone was then washed to separate the waste from the heavier grains which held the gold ; and, lastly, the valuable parts when separated were kept heated in a furnace for five days, at the end of which time the pm-e gold was found melted into a button at the bottom. But the mines were nearly worn out ; and the value of the gold was a ver}^ small part of the seven millions sterling wdiich they are said to have yielded every year in the reign of Eameses II. (48) As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish w^as to get himself acknowdedged as Dion Cass. king by the Roman senate. For this end he sent to Rome a large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators, and he borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, cicero, pro one of the richest farmers of the Roman taxes, wdiich ^^''^^irio. he spent on the same object. But though the Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not get the wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the Diod. gic, twenty-fourth year of his reign. But we know ^'^•^•■*^>83- nothing of the first years of his reign. A nation must be in a very demoralised state when its history disproves the saying, so PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 80—57. [chap. XI. that the people are happy while their annals are short. There was more virtue and happiness, and perhaps even less blood- shed, with the stir of mind while Ptolemy Soter was at war with Antigonus, than during this dull, unwarlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself up to his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue is uncopied and unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone ; but in this reign sobriety was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour was thought a reproach against his irregularities. Liician Demetrius, the Platonic philosopher, was in danger of De Ca- being put to death because it was told to the king that lumnia. he never drank wine, »and had been seen at the feast of Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was in the dress of a woman. But the philosopher was allowed to dis- prove the charge of sobriety, or at least to make amends for liis fault ; and on the king sending for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly in the sight of all the court, and danced with cymbals in a loose dress of Tarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds worth mentioning in the falling state, that we are pleased even to be told that, in the one Pausanias, lib. V. 21. hundred and seventy-eiglith Ol3^mpiad, Straton of B.C. 68. Alexandria conquered in the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for wrestling, and for pancratium, or wrestling and boxing joined. (49) 111 the thirteenth year of this reign, when the war ^, • against the pirates called for the whole naval force of Florus, ^ lib. iii. 6. Rome, Pompey sent a fleet under Lentulus IMarcel- B.c. 68. j^jj^^^g clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard Eckhel trade ; and Lentulus in his consulship put the vol.v.181. Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, to show B.C. 65. that he had exercised an act of sovereignty. Three years Eckhel, later, we again meet with the eagle and thunderbolt on vol.v.U/. ^j^g consular coins of Aurelius Cotta ; and we learn fi^om Cicero, 1]. Cicero that in that year it was found necessary to send contr. Eulium. a fleet to Alexandria to enforce the orders of the senate. CIIAP. XI.] THE ROMANS. 31 (50) AVe next find the Koman senate debating whether they should not seize the kingdom as their inheritance B.C. 6i. under the will of Ptolemy Alexander II., but, moved by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons which we are not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. In this difficulty Auletes was helped by the great Pompey, to whom he had sent an embassy with a golden crown worth j^g^pj^^g^ four thousand pieces of gold, which met him at Aiitiq. Damascus on his Syrian campaign. He then formed a secret treaty with Mithridates, kmg of Pontus, who Beil.Mitbr. was engaged in warfare with the Eomans, their com- mon enemy. Auletes was now a widower with six young children, and Mithridates had two daughters ; and accordingly it was agreed that one daughter should be married to Auletes, and the other to liis brother, the king of Cyprus. But the ruin and death of Mithridates broke off the marriages; and Auletes was able to conceal from the Romans that he had ever formed an alliance with their enemy. (51) In the year which was made famous by the josephus, consulship of Cicero, Jerusalem was taken by the A^*^^- Roman army under Pompey; and Judsea, which had b-c. 63. enjoyed a short-lived freedom of less than one himdred years imder the Maccabees, was then put under a Roman governor. The fortifications of the temple were destroyed. This was felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavy blow, and from this time their sufferings in that country began. While their brethren had been lords of Judaea, they had held up their heads with the Greeks in xYlexandria, but upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunk down to the rank of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves, and they were thought worse of by others. The Egyptian Jews were very closely allied to the people of the Delta. Though they had been again and again warned by their prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, they seem not to have listened to the warning. They were in many religious points less strict than their brethren in Jud?ea. The living in Egypt, the building a second temple, and the using a Greek 32 PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 80-57. [chap. xi. bible, were all breaches, if not of the law at least of tbe tradition. They surrounded their synagogues with sacred groves, which were clearly forbidden by Moses. Though they were not guilty of worshipping images, yet they did not think it wrong to have portraits and statues of themselves. In their dislike of pork, in their washings, and in other Eastern customs, they were like the Egyptians; and hence the Greeks, who thought them both barbarians, very grudgingly yielded to them the privileges of choosing their own magistrates, of having their own courts of justice, and the other rights of citizenship which the policy of the Ptolemies had granted. The Jews, on the other hand, in whose eyes religion was everything, saw the Greeks and Egj-ptians worshipping the same gods and the same sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above tlie Greeks in those branches of philosophy which arise out of religion, as they were below them in that rank which is gained by success in war. Hence it was ydih. many heart-burnings, and not without struggles which shed blood in the streets of Alexandria, that they found themselves sinking to the level of the Egyptians, and losing one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship. (5 2) During these years Auletes had been losing his friends j^.^^ and weakening his government, and, at last, when he Cassius, refused to quarrel with the senate about the island of lib. xxxix. . . ^ , . . T B.C. 58. ^ypi'^'is, the Egyptians rose against mm m arms, and Plutarch, ^'^'^^ forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship Yit.Caton. f^j, j^ome, and in his way there he met Cato, who was at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. He sent to Cato to let liim know that he was in the city, and that he wished to see him. But the Roman sent word back that he was unwell, and that if the Idng wanted to speak to him he must come himself. This was not a time for Auletes to quarrel with a senator, when he was on his way to Rome to beg for help against his subjects ; so he was forced to go to Cato's lodgings, who did not even rise from his seat when the king entered the room. But this treatment was not quite new to CHAP, XI.] HIS FLIGHT TO ROME. 33 Auletes : in his flidit from Alexandria, in diso'uise and ^. ' f=> 5 o Cicero, without a servant, he had had to eat brown bread in Tuscui. V. 3-1. the cottage of a peasant ; and he now learned how much more irksome it was to wait upon the pleasure of a Roman senator. Cato gave him the best advice ; that, piutarch. instead of going to Rome, where he would find that "^^i^-Caton. all the wealth of Egypt would be thought a bribe too small for the greediness of the senators whose votes he wanted, he would do better to return to Alexandria, and make peace with his rebellious subjects. Auletes, however, went on to ^ Chronicon Italy, and he arrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth Aiexan- year of his reign ; and in the three years that he spent there in courting and bribing the senators, he learned the truth of Cato's advice. (53) His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in j^.^ Cyprus, was not even so well-treated. The Romans Epit. civ. B.C. 57. passed a law making that wealthy island a Roman pro- vince, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. and the king's illegitimacy ; and they sent Cato, rather against his wiU, to turn Ptolemy out of liis kingdom. Ptolemy piutarch., gave up the island without Cato being called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him high-priest in the temple of the Paphian Venus ; but he soon put himself to death by poison. Canidius Crassus, who had been emploj^ed by Cato in this affair, may have had some fighting at sea with the Egj^ptians, as on one of his coins we see on one side Eckhel, a crocodile, and on the other the prow of a ship, as if he '*'oi-^'-i^l- had beaten the Egyptian fleet in the mouth of the Nile. (54) On the flight of their king, the porpLyrius, rebellious Alexandrians set on the throne ^^^^^s- the two eldest of his daughters, Cleopatra Tryphsena (see Fig. 19) and Berenice, and sent an embassy, at the head of which was Dion, the academic philosopher, to plead their cause at Rome against the king. But the gold of Auletes had already gained 34 CLEOrATRA TRYPH^NA AND BERENICE. B.C. 57. [chap. xi. Cicero, frag, the senate ; and Cicero spoke, on his hehalf, one of derege . r y Alexandr. his great speeches, now unfortunately lost, in which he rebutted the charge that Auletes was at all to be blamed for the death of Alexander, whom he thought justly killed by his Suetonius, guards for the murder of his queen and kinswoman. Casar, XI. Crggr^j;^ whose year of consulship was then drawing to an end, took his part warmly ; and Auletes became in debt to Plutarch., him in the sum of seventeen million drachmae, or Vit. J. Cx' ^Q^j,ij ]-^g^|£ million sterling, either for money lent to Cicero, bribe the senators, or for bonds then given to Ctesar proCceho. i^g^ead of money. By these means Auletes got his title acknowledged ; the door of the senate was shut against the Alexandrian ambassadors ; and the j^hilosopher Dion, the head of the embassy, was poisoned in Eome by the slaves of Ids friend Lucceius, in whose house he was dwelling. But nevertheless, Auletes was not able to get an army sent to help him against his rebellious subjects and his daughters ; nor was Csesar able to get from the senate, for the employment of his proconsular year, the task of replacing Auletes on the throne. (55) This high employment was then sought for both by Cicero, Lentulus and by Pompey. The senate at first leaned Q^Fratrem favour of the former ; and he would perhaps have ii. 2. gained it, if the Eoman creditors of Auletes, who were already trembling for their money, had not bribed openly in favour of Pompey, as the more pow^erful of the two. On Pompey therefore the choice of the senate at last fell, p.^^ Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as his Cassius, friend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into his kingdom at the head of a Roman amy, had not the tribunes of the people, fearing any addition to Pompey's great power, had recourse to their usual state- engine the Sibylline books ; and the pontifex, at their bidding, publicly declared that it v\\as written in those sacred pages that the king of Egypt should have the friendship of Eome, but should not be helped with an army. CHAP. XI.] BERENICE. B.C. 57—55. 35 (5G) But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong enough to stop the other from having this high command, Auletes was not without hopes that some Roman general woukl be led, by tlie promise of money, and by the honour, to undertake his cause, though it would be against the laws of Rome to do so without orders from the senate, cicero, Cicero then took him under his protection, and carried Q^pfatrem him in a litter of state to his villa at Bai?e, and wrote ^• to Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, ^p^^*- ^- strongly urging him to snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on the throne, and of being the patron of the king of Egj^pt. But Lentulus seems not to have chosen to run the risk of so far breaking the laws of his country. (57) Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pompey, to Gabinius, the proconsul of Syria, and offered him ^^.^^ ^^^^ the large bribe of ten thousand talents, or fifteen li^- ^xxix. hundred thousand pounds, if he would lead the Plutarcb., -r» • -T-^ 111- i 1 ^i^' Antou. Roman army mto Lgypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the officers were against this undertaking ; but the letters of Pompey, the advice of jMark Antony the master of the horse, and perhaps the gTeatness of the bribe, outweighed those cautious opinions. (58) While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with the army, Cleopatra Tryphcjena, the Porphyrins, elder of the two queens, had died ; and, as no one of the other cliildren of Auletes was old enough to be joined with Berenice on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to strabo, Syria, for Seleucus, the son of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene the sister of LathjTus, to come to Egypt and marry Berenice. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and tastes, and got the niclmame of C3^biosactes, the scullion. He was even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of Alexander was buried ; and was so much disliked by his young wife, that she had him strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenice then married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator king of Pontus ; and she had porphyrius, D 2 3G PTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 55-51. [chap. XI. ap. Scaiig. reigned one year with lier sister and two years with B.C. o4. Yier husbands, when the Eoman army brought back her f^ither, Ptolemy Auletes, into Egypt. (50) Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for Cicero, quitting the province intrusted to him by the senate, proRabino. ^-^^^ ^^^g self-defence ; and that Syria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Ai'chelaus. He 5 Macca- was accompanied by a Jewish army under the com- tees xl 18 Plutarch * ^^^^^ Antipator, sent by Hyrcanus, whom the Vit. Anton. Eomans had just made governor of Judsea. ]\[ark Antony was sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyp- tian army near Pelusium, and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in the cruelty of his revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and was only stopped by Valerius Antony's forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at Max. IX. 1. ^|-^^g ^^j^g -j^ ^Yie lowest state of discipline ; it was the only place where the sovereign was not despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness of their trade even more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their fellow -citizens. When Archelaus led them out against the Eomans, and ordered them to throw up a trench around their camp, they refused to obey ; they said that ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that Strabo, ■ - it ouglit to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, hb. xvii. T^^iiQYi on this first success Gabinius followed with the Cassius body of the army, he easily conquered the rest of the lib..xxxix. country and put to death Berenice and Ai'chelaus. He then led back the army into his province of Syria, but left ^.^ behind him a body of troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and to check the risings of the Alexandrians. (60) Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was Cicero more dangerous because against the laws of Kome, proRabmo. -Q^less the large bribe were first paid down in money. He would take no promises ; and Auletes, who in his banish- ment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some one who would listen to his large promises of after payment. CHAP. XI.] ROMANS IN ALEXANDRIA. 87 He found this person in Eabirius Posthumiis, who had before lent him money, and who saw that it would be all lost unless Auletes regained the throne. Eabirius therefore lent him all he was worth, and borrowed the rest from his friends ; and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, he went to Alexandria to claim his money and his reward. While Auletes still stood in need of Koman help, and saw the advantage of keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Eabirius was allowed to hold the office of royal dioecetes, or paymaster-general, which was one of great state and profit, and one by which he could in time have repaid himself his loan. He wore a royal robe ; the taxes of Alexandria went through his hands ; he was indeed master of the city. But when the king felt safe on his throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor, who returned to Eome with the loss of his money, to stand his trial as a state criminal for having lent it. Eabirius had been for a time mortgagee in possession of the revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had felt more indebted for his crown to a Eoman citizen than to the senate. But in the deahngs of Eome with foreign kings, which were not unlike those of our East India Company with the Indian nabobs, these evils had often before arisen, and at last been made criminal ; and while Gabinius was tried for cicero, treason, de majestate, for leading his army out of his f^^^j^'^^^™' province, Eabirius was tried, under the Lex Jidia de p^.^ -^^^ pecuniis repetundis, for lending money and taking ^i^io. office under Auletes. (61) One of the last acts of Gabinius in Syria was to change the form of the Jewish government into an aristocracy, josephus, leaving Hyrcanus as the high priest. The Jews Warsl.vm. thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, that Warsl.viii had been thrown down by Pompey, four hundred and 2. eighty three years, or after sixty-nine weeks of seven years each, since Cvrus had dven them permission to return . n , . . , Ch. ix. 25. home from captivity, agreeably to the time mentioned in the Book of Daniel. (62) Among the prisoners sent to Eome by Gabinius was 38 rTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS. B.C. 55—51. [CIUP. XI. Tima£(enes, the son of the king's banker, who probably Suidas. . & ' 1 J- lost his liberty as a hostage on Ptolemy's failure to repay the loan. But he was afterwards ransomed from slavery by a son of Sylla, and he remained at Eome teaching Greek eloquence in the schools, and writing his numerous works. (63) The climate of Eg3^pt is hardly suited to Europeans, and perhaps at no time did the births in the Greek families equal the deaths. That part of the population was kept up by new comers ; and latterly the Romans had been coming over to J. CjEsar, share in the plunder that was there scattered among Bell.Civ.iu ^Y^Q ruling class. For some time past Alexandria had been a favourite place of settlement for such Romans as either through their fault or their misfortune were forced to leave their homes. All who were banished for their crimes or who went away to escape from trial, all runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found a place of safety in Alexandria ; and by enrolling themselves in the Egyptian army they joined in bonds of fellowship with thousands like themselves, who made it a point of honour to screen one another from being overtaken by justice or reclaimed by their masters. With such men as these, together with some bands of robbers from Syrm and Cilicia, had the ranks of the Egyptian army latterly been recruited. These were now joined by a number of soldiers and officers from the army of Gabinius, who hked the Egyptian high pay and lawlessness better than the strict discipline of the Romans. As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courage and greater skill in war was found among the Romans, they were chiefly chosen as officers, and the whole had some- thing of the form of a Roman arm}^ These soldiers in Alex- andria were above all law and discipline. (64) The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes passed Diod. Sic. unpunished, and property became unsafe. Robberies hb. 1. 80. carried on openly, and the only hope of recover- ing what was stolen was by buying it back from the thief. In many cases, whole villages lived upon plunder, and for that purpose formed themselves into a society, and put themselves CHAP. XI.] HIS TITLES AND COINS. 89 under tlie orders of a chief; and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he applied to this chief, w4io usually restored to him the stolen property on payment of one fourth of its value. (Go) As the country fell off in wealth, power, and population, the schools of Alexandria fell off in learning, and we meet with few authors whose names can brighten the pages of this reign. Apollonius of Citium, indeed, who had studied surgery Ant. Coc- and anatomy at Alexandria under Zopja'us, when he c|j\ryi,g returned to Cyprus, wrote a treatise on the joints of ^^'^c. the body, and dedicated his work to Ptolemy, king of that island. The work is still remaining in manuscript, though unpublished. (66) Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphics sometimes called Philopator and Pliila- Hierogi. delphus ; and in a Greek inscription on a statue at inscri'pt. Philse he is called by the three names, Neus Diony- Letronne, . . Eecherchcs, sus, Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are lU. usually thought to be his are in a worse style of art yisconti, . . Icon. Grec. than those of the kings before him He died in the Porphyrias, twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving four children ; ^P- Scalig. namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoe, and two Ptolemies. Fig. 20. — Rameses II. on tlie avails of Abousimbel. Fig. 21.— 'Queen Cleopatra. CHAPTER XIL CLEOPATEA, AND HER BROTHERS ; JULIUS C/ESAR, AND MARK ANTONY. B.C. 5] -30. (1) Ptolemy Neus Dionysus liad by his will left his kingdom J Ccesar Cleopatra and Ptolemy, his elder daughter and elder Bell. Civ. iii. son, who, agreeably to the custom of the country, were to marry one another and reign with equal power. He had sent one copy of his will to Rome, to be lodged in the public treasuiy, and in it he called upon the Eoman people, by all the gods and by the treaties by which Eutropius, they were bound, to see that it was obeyed. He had lib. VI. 21. ^igQ begged them to undertake the guardianship of his son. The senate voted Pompey tutor to the young king, or Appianus, governor of Egypt ; and the Alexandrians in the Bell.Civ.u. year of his reign sent sixty ships of war to help the great Pompey in his struggle against Julius Caesar for the chief power in Piome. But Pompey's power was by that time J. C:x}sar, drawing to an end, and the votes of the senate could Beii.Civ.m. g-^g strength to the weak : hence the eunuch Pothinus, who had the care of the elder Ptolemy, was governor of Egypt, and his first act was to declare his young pupil king, and to set at nought the will of Auletes, by which Cleopatra was joined with him on the throne. CHAP. XII.J rOMPEY PUT TO DEATH. 41 (2) Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed what she was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the borders of Egypt, to claim her B.C. 48. rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth year of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium to meet her, and the two armies were within a few leagues of one another, that Pompey, who had been the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a friend, landed on the shores j. Csesar, of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. His army had ^^ll-Ci^.m. just been beaten at Pharsalia, and he was Ajing from Csesar, and he hoped to receive from the son the kindness which he had shown to the father. But gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, and Ptolemy had been cradled in princely selfish- ness. In this civil war between Pompey and Ciesar, the Alexandrians would have been glad to be the friends of both, but that was now out of the question ; Pompey's coming made it necessary for them to choose which they should join, and Ptolemy's council, like cow^ards, only wished to side piutarcL, with the strong. Pothinus the eunuch, Achillas the -^^^i^' general, who was an Egyptian, and Theodotus of Chios who was the prince's tutor in rhetoric, were the men by whom the fate of this great Koman was decided. * By putting him to death,' said Theodotus, 'you will oblige Caesar, and have nothing to fear from Pompey ; ' and he added with a smile, * Dead men do not bite.' So Achillas and Lucius Septimius the head of the Koman troops in the Egyptian army were sent down to the sea-side to welcome hun, to receive him as a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of his galley into their boat, and put him to death on his landing. They then cut off from his lifeless trunk the head which had been three times crowned with laurels in the capitol ; and in that disfi- gured state the young Ptolemy saw for the first time, and without regret, the face of his father's best friend. (3) Shortly after this, Caesar landed at Alexandria in pui'suit of [Pompey, and there learned that Ptolemy had saved him from the crime of murdering his wife's father. He had i'2 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. XII. brought with him only the small force of three thousand two hundred foot and eight hundred horse, trusting that the news of his victory at Pharsalia would make a larger force unne- cessary, and that he should be joined by Lucius Septimius and the Roman cohorts in Egypt. In this he was not disap- pointed. He found the citizens in a state of disorder, which was not a little increased by his entering the city as a master, with the lictors marching before him, carrying the fasces as the mark of his rank. It was not till after some days that the city was quieted ; and he would even have withdrawn for safety if the winds had not made it difficult to quit the harbour. He sent, however, a message for the legions which he had left in Asia to come to him as soon as they could. (4) In the meanwhile he claimed the right, as Roman consul, of settling the dispute between Cleopatra and her brother, and though he had only a few thousand men himself, he ordered them both to disband their armies. Ptolemy, who was at Alexandria, seemed willing to obey ; but Pothinus his guardian would not agree to it, and secretly sent orders to Achillas the general at Pelusium, to bring the army to Alexandria, that they might be able to give orders rather than to receive them from Caesar and his small force. On the other hand Ptolemy, at the command of Cgesar, sent Dioscorides and Serapion to order Achillas to remain at Pelusium ; but these messengers were not even allowed to return, one was killed and the other badly wounded, and Achillas marched towards Alexandria at the head of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse. (5) Ceesar, during the short time that he had been in Plutarch., Alexandria, had made many enemies by claiming Vit. J. Cjes. ^]^Q people the large debt which was due to him from Auletes the late king. Pothinus, who as treasurer collected the tribute and paid it to him, carefully made the demands appear as harassing as he could. He caused only wooden and earthen vessels to be served up at the king's table, on the pretence that Caesar had taken all the gold and silver for his debt. He supplied Caesar's soldiers with musty corn, CIUP. XII.] THE LIBRARY BURNT. 43 and when they complained, said they ought to he satisfied with it, as they lived at other people's cost. (6) Cleopatra was at this time with her army beyond Pelusium ; but believing her charms would have more weight with Csesar, while he was judging between herself and her brother, than anything that she could say by letter, she sailed privately for Alexandria. She entered the harbour in a small boat, with one friend, Apollodorus the Sicilian, in the dusk of the evening, and made for the palace. As she saw it would be difficult to enter undiscovered, she rolled herself in a carpet ; and Apollodorus tied her up at full length like a bale of goods, and carried her in at the gates to Caesar. She was not mistaken in the strength that her cause would gain from her youth and beauty. Though Caesar had before ordered her to obey her father's will, and reign jointly with her brother, she now found herself mistress of his heart, and of the Eoman legions. (7) About this time Achillas entered Alexandria at the head of his large army. Caesar had no party in the city, and only his own little body of troops to trust to. He took Csesar, with him the two young Ptolemies, their sister ^eil.Civ.m. Arsinoe, and the minister Pothinus, as hostages for his own safety, and shut himself up in the quarter of the city called the Bruchium, with the harbour on one side and the palace as a chief fortress. The strong walls of the palace easily withstood the attacks of Achillas ; and Caesar's brave and well-trained little band drove back the larger forces which crowded one another in the narrow streets. The greatest struggle was near the harbour, and if Caesar had lost his gallies he would have been beaten. But the Eomans fought in despair, and he was able to burn all the gallies which he could not guard, as well as those in the docks ; and by these means he kept the harbour. But unfortunately the fire did not stop at the gallies ; from the docks it caught the neighbouring buildings, ceiiinus, and the Museum which was close upon the harbour was soon wrapt in flames. It was to the Museum with its CLEOrATRA. B.C. Sl-^GO. [chap. xh. seven liundrecl tlionsand volumes that Alexandria owed much of its renown, and it is for the men of letters wiio had studied there that the history of the Ptolemies is chiefly valuahle. It had been begun by the first of the Lagida?, and had grown not only with his son and grandson ; but, when the love of learning and of virtue had left the latter princes of the family, they still added to the library, and Alexandria was still the first school of science, and next to Athens the point to which all men of learning looked. Caesar, the historian of his own great deeds, could have told us of the i^ain with which he saw the flames rise from the rolls of dry papyrus, and of the trouble which he took to quench the fire ; but his guilty silence leads us to believe that he found the burning pile an useful flank to the line of walls that liis little body of troops had to guard, and we must fear that the feelings of the scholar were for the time lost in those of the soldier. (8) Caesar must have known that, in keeping the young J Cc^sar, princes and their guardian, he was keeping traitors in I3ell.Civ.iii. camp. This was first shown by Arsinoe making her escape from the palace, and reaching the quarters of Achillas in safet}^; and then by Pothinus being found out in sending word to Achillas of Caesar's want of stores, and in urging him not to give over his attacks upon the palace. Upon this Ctesar put Pothinus to death. (9) The Alexandrians were not slow in preparing to make A. Hii-tius, another attack on Caesar s quarter of the city. They Bell. Alex, j^^ought up troops from the other parts of Egypt ; they drew a triple trench across the streets to stop a sally ; the}^ armed the slaves, w4iile the richer citizens served out daily supplies of food to the soldiers. But in the midst of this zeal a serious quarrel broke out between the general Achillas and the princess Arsinoe, who had escaped from Caesai-'s quarters. This ended in Arsinoe having Achillas murdered, and thus she became mistress of the Egyptian army. Indeed she was for the time sovereign of Egypt, as her elder sister Cleopatra, and her two brothers, were prisoners in Caesar's CHAP. XII.] WATER IN ALEXANDRIA. 45 camp. Arsinoe made her eunuch Ganimedes general, and, though not eighteen years of age, she urged forward the war with the energy of an okl soldier. The city of Alexandria had no wells or springs, but was supplied with fresh water by a canal from the Nile, from which the poorer citizens fetched it, while it was led by pipes into large cisterns under the palace and principal houses. One of these is so large that two stories of columns, each eighteen in number, with twenty-two half columns against the walls, uphold the arches wdth which it is roofed. (See Fig. 23.) From some of these cisterns Caesar's Fig. 22. troops were supplied ; and Ganimedes proposed to deprive them of their supply by pumping sea-water into those pipes which led into the Bruchium. The Koman soldiers were at first surprised to find the water brackish; and day by day cistern after cistern became unfit for use. The cause was then no longer doubtful ; as water became scarce they began to learn its value, and the alarm through the legions was extreme. Csesar gave orders to the centurions that they should put aside all other work, and turn their whole energy to digging wells ; and notwithstanding the belief which had been entertained for three centuries, that the place contained no springs, in one night they found water enough for the whole city. (10) The next plan of the Alexandrians was to attack Ca3sar's ships in the harbour. As they had no fleet at sea they 46 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51-30. [chap. xit. brought round tlie guard-ships which had been anchored in the mouths of the Nile to collect the customs duty ; they refitted the old ships in the docks ; they took beams out of their houses to make oars ; and in a short time a fleet of twenty-seven large gallies, of four and five banks of oars each, with several smaller vessels, appeared off the island of Pharos. The Alexandrian ships of war were the same in build as Caesar's. They differed in little but the ornaments. They had the same sharp beak in front to strike against the enemy, and the same two rudders near the stern. In both the steersman stood on deck, under shelter of a small hut, open in front ; and in Cleopatra's vessels this was roofed with a covering in the shape of an elephant's head in imitation of the elephant-shaped helmet peculiar to the Egj^ptian queens, and shown upon their coins. (See Fig. 23.) From this helmet- shaped covering for the steersman, that part of the vessel has been called the helm ; and from its Latin name Galea the vessel itself has been called a galley. Caesar had only fifteen large gallies and a few of smaller size ; but, A. Hirtius, trusting to the skill and courage of his Ehodian Bell. Alex. gr^i^Qpg^ ordered them to row out and give battle to the Egyptian fleet. It was not easy to get out of the harbour in the face of the enemy, as only four ships at a time could cross the shallows formed by the sand-banks at the mouth ; and these were immediately attacked on all sides by the Alexandrian ships. But the skill of the Ehodians overcame the difficulty. To every attacking prow, a Ehodian prow^ w^as quickly turned ; not a side w^as struck ; not an oar was broken ; and under cover of the first four the rest of Caesar's gallies rowed out of the great port. At this time the house-tops of the city and island, from the promontory of Lochias to the lighthouse, were covered with anxious spectators, shouting to those who were near, making signs to those who were at a distance, giving their wishes and their prayers where they were too far off to give auj other help. The fate of Caesar's army was to be settled by the CHAP. XII.] C^SAR DEFEATED. 47 skill and courage of his sailors, and fortunately these did not fail him. In this battle two Egyptian ships were taken, three were sunk, and the rest fled for safety to the shore and to the island, where they were guarded by the troops which held that side of the harbour. (11) In order to avoid this disadvantage in his future naval battles, Cfesar determined to attack the island of Pharos. For this purpose he placed his cohorts in his boats, and crossing over the harbour carried the island by storm, and seized the castle at that end of the Heptastadium, the mole which joined the island to the city. The Alexandrians still held the larger castle at the city end of the mole ; and Ciesar's next attack was against this. But here he was beaten. His soldiers were driven back into the boats ; his own boat was sunk by the crowds that rushed into it, while he himself escaped only because he had a few minutes before thrown himself into the water, and swum to a more distant vessel. He had piutarch. with him at the time some papers which he saved ^ with difficulty ; and this gave rise to the story that he swam through the waves with one hand w^hile with the other he held over head the Commentaries of his wars. In this defeat the Eomans lost four hundred soldiers and as many Appian., sailors; and Caesar lost his scarlet chlamys, his cloak ^eii.Civ.n. the mark of his rank as general ; which the Alexandrians in their joy hung upon a pole, and fixed up in the middle of the city as a trophy. (12) After this struggle the two parties agreed to a truce. The Alexandrians w6re tired of the cruel government a. Hirtius, of Arsinoe and her slave Ganimedes, and they wanted their king, who was Caesar's prisoner. And Caesar, notwith- standing the false and fickle character of the people, so far trusted the young Ptolemy's seeming good-will towards him and promises of friendship, as to send him to the Alexandiian army to take possession of the throne of his forefathers, and to heal the troubles of the kingdom. The crafty Ptolemy seemed unwilling to depart ; he begged to be allowed to stay in the 4S CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. xir. Bruclilum with his friend Caesar ; lie even shed tears on going. But lie was no sooner out of reach of his Roman guards than he showed himself a true Alexandrian. He wiped his tears, forgot his jn'omises, and turned all his energies to strengthen the army and dislodge Caesar from the Bruchium. (18) The Alexandrians had stationed a small fleet of light vessels at the Canobic mouth of the Nile, to cut off Csesar's supplies of food, which were sent by sea from Syria; and, as reports had lately reached the camps that an army was on its march from that country to Caesar's help, it became important for him to disperse those vessels. He sent against them a fleet of his own, under the command of Euphranor the Rhodian, who had inanoeuYred the ships so successfully in the former battle, and he placed on board of it a body of troops Tinder the command of Tiberius Nero. Euphranor was badly supported by the other captains ; he led his own ship bravely and perhaps rashly against the Egyptians ; but, as he was not followed by the rest, its sides were crushed by the enemy's prows, it sunk in deep water, and he was drowned with all his crew. The rest of Csesar's fleet retiu'ned to Alexandria. (1 4) About this time Mithridates of Pergamus arrived before Pelusium with the troops which he brought from Cilicia and Syria to help Csesar. He stormed the walls of that city on the day of his arrival, and took the place ; and his soldiers rested after their march within the Egyptian fortified to\^-n. He then marched towai'ds ^Memphis, meaning to cross the Nile near Heliopolis. At first the Jews of that neighbourhood Joseplms. . 1 • -T-. 1 Antiq. xiv. took amis against him. But they gave way to the letters which he had brought from theii' countrymen at Jerusalem; and he was soon followed by a body of three thousand SjTian Jews imder Antipater, who were hastening to A. Hirtius, support Caesar. In the meantime Ptolemy sent a Bell. Alex. -^^^^^ ^^^QQpg f^.Q^^ Alexandria to oppose Mithridates at his passage of the river, and on these receiving a check he followed with his whole army. Cpesar also at the same time CHAP. XII.] C^SAR IN ALEXANDRIA. 49 inarched to the assistance of IMithridates ; and they were able to unite their forces before they fought with the Alexandrians. Ptolemy was then defeated in several battles near the head of the Delta, and was forced to keep his troops within his fortified camp behind one of the deep canals. But Caesar and Mithridates stormed the camp, and routed the Alexandrians, who fled in disorder to their ships on the Nile ; and in one of these, which was sunk by the weight of the flying crowds, the young Ptolemy was drowned. (15) Immediately after this victory Caesar hastened with his cavaby to Alexandria. The citizens had given over all thoughts of further resistance to his arms ; they came out to meet him in the dress of suppliants, carrying out the statues of their gods; and he then marched into that part of the city which had before been held by his enemies. He was then master of Egypt ; and it was his business to settle the government for the future. He ordered that the will of Ptolemy Auletes should be obeyed ; and, as the elder son was dead, he appointed the younger Ptolemj^, a boy of eleven years of age, to be Cleopatra's colleague on the throne. Caesar's love for Cleopatra, who had just borne him a son named Ca3sarion, was not so strong as his ambition ; and after having been above a year in Egypt he left her to govern the kingdom in her own name, but on his behalf ; and sailed for Italy, taking with him the sixth legion and the princess Arsinoe as his prisoner. While engaged in this petty warfare in Alexandria, . . . Cicero, Csesar had been appomted dictator in Eome, where ad Att. xl. his power Avas exercised by Mark Antony his master of the horse ; and for above six months he had not written one letter home, as though ashamed to write about the foolish difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got out of it. (10) On reaching Eome Ciesar amused the people and himself with a grand triumphal show, in which, j)Iq^ Q^gg. among the other prisoners of war, the princess Ai'si- noe followed his car in chains ; and, among the works of art and nature which were got together to prove to the gazing 50 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. CHAP. XII. crowd the greatness of his conquests, was that remarkable Fiorus, African animal the camelopard, then for the first time lib. IV. 2. gggj-^ Rome. In one chariot was a statue of the Nile god ; and in another the Pharos hghthouse on fire, with painted flames. Nor was this the last of Caesar's triumphs, for soon afterwards Cleopatra, and her brother Ptolemy then twelve years old, wiio was called her husband, came to Eome as his guests, and dwelt for some time with him in his house. (17) Although the history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in that of Rome, we must not be led too far out of our path. It is enough to say that within five years of C£esar's landing in Alexandria, and finding that by the death of Pompey he was master of the world, he paid his own life as the forfeit for Cicero, Crushing his country's liberty. The queen of Eg}^t, xi^*8°20^' ^^^^ infant son Csesarion about four years old, XV. 15. -^T^g then in Rome, living with Caesar in his villa on the further side of the Tiber. On Caesar's death her first wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Roman senate as her colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a friend of the Roman people. With tliis view she applied to Cicero for help, making him an offer of some books or works of art; but he was offended at her haughtiness and refused her gifts. Besides, she was more likely to thwart than to help the cause for which he was struggling. He was alarmed at hearing that she was soon to give birth to another child. He did not want any more Caesars. He hoped she would miscarry, as he wished she had before miscarried. So he bluntly refused to undertake her cause. On this she thought herself unsafe in Rome, she fled privately, and reached Egypt in safety with Caesarion ; but we hear of no second child by Julius. (18) The Romans were now masters of Egypt, and Cleopatra Plutarch, could hardly hope to reign but by the help of one of Vit. Anton. great generals who were struggling for the sove- reignty of the republic. Among these was the young Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet made him for a time master of Sicily and of the sea ; and he w^as said to have been admitted CHAP. XII.] CESAR'S SON MADE KING. 51 by the queen of Egypt as a lover. But he was able to be of but little use to her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon defeated by Octavianus. (19) Caesar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a large body of Roman troops, in the pay Valerius and nominally under the orders of Cleopatra, but in ^' reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived as if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vices of that luxurious capital. When some of them B.C. 45. in a riot killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra w^as either afraid or unable to punish the murderers ; the most she could do was to get them sent in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who with true greatness of mind sent them back to the Egj^tian legions, saying that it was for the senate to punish them, not for liim. (20) While Ptolemy her second husband was a boy and could claim no share of the government, he was porphyrias, allowed to live with all the outward show of royalty, ^P' ^^^^s- but as soon as he reached the age of fifteen, at which he might call himself her equal and would soon be her master, B.C. 44. Cleopatra had him put to death. She had then reigned four years with her elder brother and four years with her younger brother, and from that time for- ward she reigned alone, calling her child by Caesar her colleague on the throne. (See Fig. 24.) (21) At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts of all who were not busy in the civil wars, we cannot hope to find the fruits of genius in Alexandria ; but the mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and are not choked so pii^y, easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was then the ii^-^^iiJ-ST. first astronomer in Egypt, and Julius Caesar was guided by his advice in setting right the Roman Calendar. He was a careful and painstaking mathematician, and, after fixing the length of the year at three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, he B 2 52 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. XII. three times changed the beginning of the year, in his doubts as to the day on which the equinox fell ; for the astronomer could then only make two observations in a year with a view to learn the time of the equinox, by seeing when the sun shone in the plane of the equator. (22) Photinus the mathematician wrote both on arithmetic Abul-Pha- '^^^^ geometry, and was usually thought the author of ragius. ^ mathematical work published in the name of the queen, called the Canon of Cleopatra. (23) Did3mius was another of the writers that we hear of at ^ . , that time. He was a man of creat industry, both in Suidaa. . . . ° reading and writing ; but when we are told that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it rather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to make a modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writings were mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished except some notes or Scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey which bear his name, and are still printed at the foot of the page in some editions of Homer. (24) Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and minerals, and on their uses in medicine ; also on poisons and poisonous bites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His works have been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the discoveries of the last few centmies. (25) Serapion, another physician, was perhaps of this reign. Celsus, He followed medicine rather than surgery ; and, while lib. I. trusting chiefly to his experience gained in cHnical or bed-side practice, was laughed at by the surgeons as an empii'ic. (26) The small temple at Hermontliis, near Thebes, seems Wilkinson, ^o have been built in this reign, and it is dedicated to Thebes. Mandoo, or the sun, in the name of Cleopatra and Csesarion. (See Fig. 25.) It is unlike the older Egyptian Denon, temples in being much less of a fortress ; for what in pi. 51. them is a strongly walled court-yard, with towers to CHAP. XII.] THE WRITERS. 53 guard the narrow doorway, is here a small space between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls, wliile the roofed building is the same as in the older temples. Near it is a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used in tlie funerals and other religious rites. (27) The murder of Csesar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make them more fit for self-government. It was 54 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. XII. followed by the well-known civil war ; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus and Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Bomans willingly bowed tlieir necks to ]iis adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony. (28) It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in the war between Antony and the murderers of . . C£esar: she did not openly declare herself, and she Appianus, ' ^ ... Bell Civ. probably waited to join that which fortune favoured. AUienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for Cicero, Epist. xii. such troops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army of four Koman legions out of Egypt into Syria ; but when there he added them to the force which Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether he acted through treachery to the queen or by her orders is doubtful, for Cassius felt more gratitude to Allienus than to Cleopatra. Serapion also, the Egyptian governor of Cyprus, joined what was then the stronger side, and sent all the ships that he had in his ports to the assistance of Cassius. Cleopatra herself was getting ready another large fleet, but as the war was over, and Brutus and Cassius dead before it sailed, she said it was meant to help Octavianus and Antony. Thus, by the acts of her generals and her own hesitation, Cleopatra fairly laid herself open to the reproach of ingratitude to her late friend Csesar, or at least of thinking that the interests of his son C£esarion were opposed to those of his nephew Octavianus; Plutarch accordingly, as Antony was passing through Vit. Anton. Cilicia with his army, he sent orders to her to come from Egypt and meet him at Tarsus, to answer the charge of having helped Brutus and Cassius in the late war. (29) Dellius, the bearer of the message, showed that he understood the meaning of it, by beginning himself to pay court to her as his queen. He advised her to go, like Juno in the Iliad, ' tricked in her best attire,' and told her that she had nothing to fear from the kind and gallant Antony. On this she sailed for Cilicia laden with money and treasures for presents, full of trust in her beauty and pow^r of i^leasing. CUAP. XII.] HER LUXURY. 55 She had won the heart of Csesar when, though younger, she was less skilled in the arts of love, and she was still only twenty -five years old ; and, carrying with her such gifts and treasures as became her rank, she entered the river Cydnus with the Egyptian fleet in a magnificent galley. The stern was covered with gold ; the sails were of scarlet cloth : and the silver oars beat time to the music of flutes and harps. The queen, dressed like Yenus, lay under an awning embroidered with gold, while pretty dimpled boys, like Cupids, stood on each side of the sofa fanning her. Her maidens, dressed like sea-nymphs and graces, handled the silken tackle and steered the vessel. As she approached the town of Tarsus the winds wafted the perfumes and the scent of the burning incense to the shores, which were lined with crowds who had come out to see her land ; and Antony, who was seated on the tribunal waiting to receive her, found himself left alone. (30) Tarsus on the river Cydnus was situated at the foot of the wooded slopes of Mount Taurus, and it guarded the great pass in that range between the Phrygian tribes and the Phenician tribes. It was a city half Greek and half Asiatic, and had from the earliest days been famed for ship-building and commerce. Mount Taurus supplied it with timber, and around the mouth of its river, as it widens into a quiet lake, were the ancient dockyards which had made the ships strabo, of Tarsliish proverbial with the Hebrew writers. Its merchants, enriched by industry and enlightened by foreign trade, had ornamented their city with public buildings, and established a school of Greek learning. Its philosophers, however, were more known as travelling teachers than as scholars. No learned men came to Tarsus ; but it sent forth its rhetoricians in its own ships, who spread themselves as teachers over the neighbouring coasts. In Home there were more professors of rhetoric, oratory, and poetry from Tarsus than from Alexandria or Athens. Athenodorus Cordylion, the stoic, taught Cato ; Athenodorus, the son of Sandon, taught Cffisar; Nestor a little later taught tlio young Marcellus ; 56 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 61-80. [OIIAP. XII. Plutarch., wHle Demetrius was one of the first men of learning Deoracuiis. ^^^^^ g^^-j^^i ^j^g distant island of Britain. This school, in the next generation, sent forth the apostle Paul, who taught Christianity throughout the same coasts ; but Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies of Cleopatra. (81) On her landing, she invited Antony and his generals to Atheiif^us, ^ dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed lib. IV. 11. i^efore them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising the splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift from her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a costliness which made that of the day before seem nothing ; and she again gave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to each of his friends the couch upon which he sat. (32) These costly and delicate dinners were continued every Pliny, I ^i^cl one evening, when Antony playfully blamed lib. IX, 58. wastefulness, and said that it was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand sestertia, or sixty thousand pounds sterling. This he would not believe, and laid her a wager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner was as grand and dainty as those of the former days ; but when Antony called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines she said that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and drink the ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, the largest known in tlie world, which, like the diamonds of European kings, had come to her with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued at that large sum. On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass of vinegar, and she took one of these ear-rings from her ear and dropped it into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one OHAP, XII.] HER EAR-RINGS. 57 of the guests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other from the queen's ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, and then declared that Antony had lost his bet. The pearl which was saved was afterwards cut in two, and made into a pair of ear-rings for the statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Eome ; and the fame of the wager ma}^ be said to have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the two whole ones. (33) The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to her great powers of mind, which were all piutarch., turned to the art of pleasing, had quite overcome -^"^o^- Antony ; he had sent for her as her master, but he w^as now her slave. Her playful wit was delightful ; her voice was as an instrument of many strings ; she spoke readily to every ambassador in liis own language ; and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who could understand the languages of all her subjects-: Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syrir.c. "With these charms, at the age of five- and-twenty, the luxurious Anton}^ could deny her nothing. The first favour which she asked of her lover equals josephus, any cruelty that we have met with in this history : it was, that he would have her sister Arsinoe put to death. C£esar had spared her life, after his triumph, through love of Cleopatra ; but he was mistaken in the heart of his mistress ; she w^ould have been then better pleased at Arsinoe's death ; and Antony, at her bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, at Ephesus. (34) Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together his party at Home against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the triumvirate, and piutarch,, though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready -^nton. to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria ; and there the old warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine of pleasure, one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his time. The lovers visited each other every day, and the w\nste of their entertain- 58 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [CIIAP. XII. ments passed belief. Pliilotas, a physician who was following his studies at Alexandria, told Plutarch's grandfather that he was once invited to see Antony's dinner cooked, and, among other meats were eight wild boars roasting whole ; and the cook explained to him that, though there were only twelve guests, yet as each dish had to be roasted to a single turn of the spit, and Antony did not know at what hour he should dine, it was necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the Piiiiy^ most costly of the luxuries then used in Eg3^pt were lib.xiii.3,4. ^i^p scents and the ointments. Gold, silver, and jewels, as Pliny remarks, will pass to a man's heirs, even clothes will last a few months or weeks, but scents fly off and are lost at the first moment that they are admired ; and yet ointments, like the attar of roses, which melted and gave out their scent, and passed into air when placed upon the back of the hand, as the coolest part of the body, were sold for four hundred denarii the pound. But the ointment was not meant to be used quite so wastefuUy. It was usually sealed up in small alabaster jars, which were made in the town of Alabastron, on the east of the Nile, and thence received their name. These were long in shape, without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They were meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape slowly and sparingly through the porous stone. (See Fig. 2G.) In these Egyptian jars scented ointment was carried by trade to the banks of the Tigris and to the shores of the Mediterranean; and such was the jar broken in pious zeal for the anoint- ment of our Saviour shortly before his crucifixion. (35) The tenth and eleventh years of the queen's . reign were marked by a famine through the land caused by the Nile's not rising to the wished-for height and by the want of the usual overflow ; and an inscription which was written both in the Greek and Egyptian languages declares the gratitude of the Theban priests and elders and citizens to Callimachus, the Mark, cli. xiv Seneca, Nat. Qu£est, iv. 1. B.C. 41. Inscript. 13oecldi. 4717. CHAP. XII.] ANTONY IN ALEXANDRIA. 59 prefect of the Tlieban taxes, who did what he could to lessen the sufferings in that city. The citizens of Alex- josephus, andria on those years received from the government a ^^i-^pion-"- smaller gift of corn than usual, and the Jews then felt their altered rank in the state. They were told that they were not citizens, and accordingly received no portion whatever out of the public granaries, but were left like the Egyptians to take care of themselves. From this time forward there was an unceasing quarrel between Greeks and Jews in Alexandria. Those feelings of humanity which bind the arms of the conquerors, and form a rule of conduct imder the name of the Law of Nations, have seldom embraced more than a small portion of the human race. They favour those only from whom we hope to receive a like favour in. return. The lawyers tell us that the Law of Nations for modern Europe used not to reach beyond the whole of Christendom. With tlie Jews, all except the kindred Arab tribes were beyond the care of the Jewish law ; with the Greeks, all except those who spoke some dialect of Greek might be treated as barbarians and slaves. The first Ptolemy, indeed, while treating the Egyptians as an enslaved race, had wished the Greeks and Jews to live together as fellow citizens. But his wise rules were now no longer obeyed, and thereby Alexandria often became the seat of civil war. (36) Cleopatra, who held her power at the pleasure of the Koman legions, spared no pains to please Antony, piutarch., She had borne him first a son named Ptolemy, and -^^^o^- then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and Cleo- patra Selene, or Sun and Moon. She gamed, she drank, she hunted, she reviewed the troops with liim, and to humour his coarser tastes, she followed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress of a servant ; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could do to throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten by her. The biographer thought it waste of time to mention all piutarch., Cleopatra's arts and Antony's follies, but the story of 60 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. XII. his fishing was not to be forgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he caught but little, and was vexed at her seeing his want of success. So he ordered one of his men to dive into the water and put upon his hook a fish which had been before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being done, and quietly took the hint for a joke of her own. The next day she brought a larger number of friends to see the fishing, and when Antony let down his line, she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a salted fish. The line was then drawn u]} and the fish landed amid no little mirth of their friends : and Cleopatra playfull}- consoled him, saying : ' AVell, ' general, you may leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos ' and Canopus ; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms.' (87) Antony's eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at this time and lived in the same princely style with his father. Philotas the phj^sician lived in his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward the whole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feasting Antony was recalled to Europe, by letters which told him that his wife and brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. Before, however, he reached Piome his wife Fulvia was dead ; and wishing to strengthen his party, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of Marcellus. Josephus, (38) In that year Herod passed through Egypt on Hb^i'^n; ^^^^ ^^'^y Pome to claim Judaea as his kingdom. He B.C. 89. came through Arabia to Pelusium and thence he sailed to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him honourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in order to persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewish prince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services to Antony and Octavianus ; and he went on to Pome. There through the friendship of Antony he was declared kino- of Judsea by the senate. He Jjih i 13 then returned to Syria to collect an army and to win CHAP. XII.] ANTONY'S GIFTS TO HER. 61 the kingdom which had been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony's lieutenant, he had conquered Jerusalem when the w^ar broke out between Antony and Octavianus. (39) In the next year Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the war which ended with the battle of Actium ; and he sent to Alexandria to beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress : he gave her the wide provinces of Phe- nicia, Coele- Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of Juda3a, and part of Arabia Nabatsea. These lars^e gifts only made her , , ^ ^ *^ Josephus, ask for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod Bell. Jud. king of Judgea, and Malichus king of Arabia Nabatsea, the former of whom had advised Antony to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as the only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power of Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judsea given to her. But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these commands ; and he only gave her the balsam country round Jericho, and a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or thirty thousand pounds, a year, on the revenues of Judiea. On receiving this large addition Porphyrins, to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, ^^^^^s- who had then lost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greek provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh: what was really the six- teenth of her reign and had been called the sixteenth of Ptolemy her elder brother she called the first of her own reign, and she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleopatra had accompanied Antony on his expedition josephus, against Armenia, as far as the river Euphrates, and returned through Damascus to Judaea. There she was politely received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear of Antony to take his revenge on her. She farmed out to him the revenues of her parts of Arabia and Judeea, and was accompanied by him on her way towards Egypt. 62 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. XII. (40) But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, in PiuUrch., which pearls and provinces Avere alike trifled with, we Vit. Autou. r^^,Q reminded that even Cleopatra was of the family of the Lagida?, and that she was well aware how much the library of the Museum had added to the glory of Alexandria. It had been burnt by the Eoman troops under Caesar, and, to make amends for this, Antony gave her the large library of the city of Pergamus, by which Eumenes and Attains had hoped to raise a school that should equal the Museum of Alexandria. Cleo- patra placed these two hundred thousand volumes in the temple of Serapis; and Alexandria again held the largest library in the world ; while Pergamus ceased to be a place of learning. By the help of this new library, the city still kept its trade in books and its high rank as a school of letters ; and, when the once proud kingdom of Egypt was a pro- vince of Piome, and when almost every trace of the mon- archy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria asked ' Where are now the ' Ptolemies ? ' the historian could have found an answer by pointing to the mathematical schools and the library of the Serapeum. (41) But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleo- Strabo, patra, he marched against the Parthians, and on his Phitaich^ return he again entered Alexandria in triumph leading Yit. Autou. Artavasdes Idng of Armenia chained behind his chariot as he rode in procession through the city. He soon afterwards made known his plans for the government of Egj^pt and the provmces. He called together the Alexandrians in the Gymnasium, and seating himself and Cleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son Csesarion her colleague, and that they should hold Egypt, Cyprus, Africa, and Coele- Syria. To her sons by himself he gave the title of kiugs the children of kings ; and to Alexander, though still a child, he gave Armenia and Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and to Ptolemy he gave Phenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra wore the sacred robe of Isis, and took the CHAP. XII.] THE NEW LIBRARY. 63 title of the New Isis, while the young Alexander wore a Median dress with turban and tiara, and the little Ptolemy a long cloak and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a diadem, lilve the successors of Alexander. Antony himself ^neasFlor. wore an eastern scimetar by his side, and a royal ^• diadem round liis head, as being not less a sovereign than Cleopatra. To Cleopatra he then gave the whole of Josephus, his Parthian booty, and his prisoner Tigranes, the n^^^i'^is' son of the Parthian king. (42) But notwithstanding Antony's love for Cleopatra, her falsehood and cruelty were such that when his power piiny, in Rome fell he could no longer trust her. He even ^* feared that she might have him poisoned, and would not eat or drink in her palace without having the food first tasted by herself. But she had no such thoughts, and only laughed at him for his distrust. One da}^, to prove her power, and at the same time her good faith, she had the flowers with which he was to be cro^med, as he reclined at her dinner-table, dipped in deadly poison. Antony dined with these round his head, while she wore a crown of fresh flowers. During the dinner Cleopatra playfully took off her garland and dipped it in her cup to flavour the wine, and Antony did the same with his poisoned flowers, steeping them in his oto cup of wine. He even raised it to his lips to drink, when she hastily caught hold of his hand. ' Now,' said she, ' I am the enemy against whom ' you have latterly been so careful. If I could have endured to ' live without you that draught would have given me the oppor- * tunity.' She then ordered the wine to be taken to one of the condemned criminals, and sent Antony out to see that the man died on drinking it. (-IB) On the early coins of Cleopatra we see her head on the one side and the eagle or the cornucopia on the Vaiiiant, other side, with the name of * Queen Cleopatra.' (See Fig. 21.) After she had borne Antony children, we find the words round their heads, ' Of Antony^ on the * conquest of Armenia ; ' * 0/ Cleopatra the queen, and of 64 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap. xir. ' the kings the children of kings.' (See Fig. 27.) On the later coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers. Fig. 27. as king and queen, and he is styled ' the cmiierof and she * the young goddess' (See Fig. 38.) Cleopatra was per- Fig. 28. haps the last Greek sovereign that hore the title of god. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asia and Egypt made that holy name, by giving it to their kings and even to their kings' families and favourites. But the use of the word made no change in their religious opinions ; they never for a moment supposed that the persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation and govern- ment of the world. (44) The death of Julius Ctesar and afterwards of Brutus riutarch., Cassius had left Antony Avith the chief sway in Yit.Anton. ^j^g Roman world ; but his life of pleasure in Egypt had done much to forfeit it ; and Octavianus, afterwards called Augustus, had been for some time rising in power against him. His party however was still strong enough in Rome to choose for consul his friend Sosius, who put the head of Antony on Eckhel, one side of his coins, and the Egyptian eagle and vol. V. 3U. thunderbolt on the other. Soon afterwards Antony CHAP, XII.] THE COINS. 65 was himself chosen as consul elect for the coming year, and he then struck his last coins in Egypt. The rude copper British coins have on one side the name of ' The queen, the ^^^seura. * young goddess,' and on the other side of ' Antony, Consul a 'third time.' (See Fig. ;^9). But he never was consul for the Fig. 29. third time ; before the day of entering on the office he was made an enemy of Rome by the senate. Octavianus, piutarch., however would not declare war against him, but ^i^^-^^^on. declared war against Cleopatra, or rather, as he said, against Mardion her slave. Iris her waiting-woman, and Charmion another favourite woman ; for these had the chief management of Antony's affairs. (45) At the beginning of the year which was to end with the battle of Actium, Octavianus held Italv, Gaul, Spain, B.C. 31. and Carthage, with an army of eighty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships : Antony held Egypt, Ethiopia, and Cyrene, with one hundred thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and five hundred ships ; he Avas followed by the kings of Africa, Upper Cilicia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Commagene, and Thrace ; and he received help from the kings of Pontus, Arabia, Judsea, Lycaonia, Galatia, and Media. Thus Octavianus held Rome, with its western provinces and hardy legions, while Antony held the Greek kingdom of Ptolemy Philadelphus. ^.^^ Cleopatra was confident of success and as boastful as Cassius, she was confident. Her most solemn mode of promis- ing was to add, * as surely as I shall issue my decrees from the ' Roman Capitol.' But the mind of Antony was ruined by his VOL. II, P 66 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [cuAr. XII. life of pleasure. He carried lier with liim into battle, at once Lucauus, liis strength and his weakness, 'the republic's fire- lib. X. 59. i i^yr^Yi^^ Egypt's foul disgrace,' and he w^as beaten at sea by Octavianus, on the coast of Epirus, near Actium. This battle, which sealed the fate of Antony, of Egypt, and of Rome, would never have been spoken of in history if he had then had the courage to join his land forces ; but he sailed away in a fright Avith Cleopatra, leaving an army larger than that of Octavianus, which would not believe that he was gone. They landed at Parjetonium in Libya, wdiere he remained in the desert with Aristocrates the rhetorician and one or two other friends, and sent Cleopatra forward to Alexandria. There she talked of carrying her ships across the isthmus to the head of the Red Sea, along the canal from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and thence flying to some unknown land from the power of the con- queror. Antony soon how- ever followed her, but not to join in society. He locked himself up in his despair in a small fortress by the side of the harbour (see Fig. 30), which he named his Timo- nium, after Timon the Athenian philosopher who forsook the society of men. When the news however arrived that his land forces had joined Octavianus, and his allies had deserted him, he came out of his Timonium and joined the queen. (46) In Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra only so far Plutarch,, regained their courage as to forget their losses, and to Vit. Anton, plunge into the same round of costly feasts and shows that they had amused themselves with before their fall : but, while they w^ere wasting these few weeks in pleasure, Octavi- anus was moving his fleet alid army upon Egypt. CHAP. XII.J CONQUERED BY HOME. 67 (47) When lie landed on the coast, Egypt held three millions of people ; he might have been met by three hundred thousand men able to bear arms. As for money, which has sometimes been called the sinews of war, though there might have been none in the treasury, yet it could not have been wanting in Alexandria. But the Egyptians, like the ass in the fable, had nothing to fear from a change of masters ; they could hardly be kicked and cuffed worse than they had been ; and, though they themselves were the prize struggled for, they looked on with the idle stare of a bystander. Some few of the garrisons made a show of holding out ; but, as Antony had left the whole of his army in Greece when he fled away after the battle of Actium, he had lost all chance of safety. (48) When Pelusium was taken it was by some said that Seleucus the commander had given it up by Cleopatra's orders ; but the queen, to justify herself, put the wife and children of Seleucus into the hands of Antony to be punished if he thought fit. When Octavianus arrived in front of Alexandria he encamped not far from the hippodrome, a few miles from the Canobic or eastern gate. On this Antony made a brisk sally, and routing the Eoman cavalry, returned to the city in triumph. On his way to the palace he met Cleopatra, whom he kissed, armed as he was, and recommended to her favour a brave soldier who had done good service in the battle. She gave the man a cuirass and helmet of gold ; but he saw that Antony's cause was ruined; his new-gotten treasure made him selfish, and he went over to the enemy's camp that very night. The next morning Antony ordered out his forces, both on land and sea, to engage with those of Octavianus ; but he was betrayed by his generals : his fleet and cavalry deserted him without a blow being struck ; and his infantry, easily routed, retreated into the city. (49) Cleopatra had never acted justly towards her Jewish subjects ; andj during a late famine, had denied to josephus, them their share of the wheat distributed out of the ^pi^>ii- public granaries to the citizens of Alexandria. The Jews in F 2 63 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—80. [CilAP. XII." return showed no loyalty to Cleopatra, nor regret at her enemy's success ; and on this defeat of lier troops her rage fell upon them. She made a boast of her cruelty towards them, and thought if she could have killed all the Jews with her own hand she should have been repaid for the loss of the cit3\ On Plutarch., ^he other hand, Antony thought that he had been \it. Antou. i^etrayed by Cleopatra, as she had received many messengers from Octavianus. To avoid his anger therefore she fled to a monument which she had built near the temple of Isis, and in which she had before placed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon, together with a large quantity of flax and a number of torches, as though to burn herself and her wealth in one flame. Here she retired with two of her women, and secured herself with bars and bolts, and sent word to Antony that she was dead. Antony when he heard it, believing that she had killed herself, and wishing not to be outdone in courage by a woman, plunged his sword into his breast. But the wound was not fatal, and when Cleopatra heard of it she sent to beg that he would come to her. Accordingly his servants carried him to the door of her monument. But the queen, in fear of treachery, would not suffer the door to be opened ; but she let a cord down from the window, and she with her two women drew him up. Nothing could be more affecting than the sight to all who were near ; Antony covered with blood, in the agonies of death, stretching out his hands to Cleopatra, and she straining ever}*- nerve and every feature of her face with the effort she was making. He was at last lifted in at the window, but died soon afterwards. By this time the city was in the power of Octavianus ; he had not found it necessary to storm the walls, for Antony's troops had all joined him, and he sent in Gallus to endeavour to take Cleopatra alive. This he succeeded in doing by drawing her into conversation at the door of her monument, while three men scaled the window and snatched out of her hand the dagger with which she would have stabbed herself. CHAP. XII.] HER DEATH. 69 (50) Octavianus, whom we shall henceforth call Augustus, began by promising his soldiers two hundred and fifty pj^^ drachms each as prize money, for not beinft- allowed ^^''^^sjus, , - ^ lib. li. 5. to plunder Alexandria. He soon afterwards entered pi^tarch the city, not on horseback armed at the head of his -A^i^ton. victorious legions, but on foot, leaning on the arm of the philosopher Arius ; and, as he wished to be thought as great a lover of learning as of mercy, he gave out that he spared the place to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend. He called the Greek citizens together in the Gymnasium, and, mounting the tribunal, promised that they should not be hurt. Cleopatra's three children by Antony, who had not the misfortune to be of the same blood with the conqueror, were kindly treated and taken care of; while C£esarion, her son by Julius Csesar, who was betraj'ed by his tutor PJiodon while flying towards Ethiopia, was put to death as a rival. The flatterers of the conqueror would of course say that Csesarion was not the son Lucanus of Julius, but of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys ^- who had been called Cleopatra's husbands. The feelings of humanity might have answered, that if he was not the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owed everything, he was at least helpless and friendless, and that he never could trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, with the heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution which marked his character through life, listening to piutarch., the remark of Arius, that there ought not to be two ^' Caesars, had him at once put to death. (51) Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be carefully guarded, lest she should put an end to her own life ; he wished to carry her with him to Eome as the ornament of his triumph. He paid her a visit of condolence and consolation. He promised her slie should receive honourable treatment. He allowed her to bury Antony. He threatened that her children should be punished if she hurt herself; but she deceived her guards and put herself to death, either by poison, or, as was more commonly thought, by the bite of an asp brought to her 70 CLEOPATRA. B.C. 51—30. [chap, xii, in a basket of fruit. She was thirty-nine years of age, having reignecl twenty-two years, of which the last seven were in conjunction with Antony; and she was buried in his tomb with all regal splendour. (52) Cleopatra had been a favourite name in Greece and with the royal families of Macedonia and Alexandria, for at least four hundred years. "What prettier name could be given to a little girl in her cradle than to call her the Pride of her Father'! But so disgraceful was the conduct of this last queen of Egypt, that the name from her time very much went out of use. (53) The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Eome as a relief from a sad disgrace, by others besides the flatterers of the Lucanus, conqueror. "When governed by Julius Csesar, and hb. X. 65. afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimes fancied they were receiving orders from the barbarian queen to whom Horace, their master was a slave. "When Antony was in arms Od. 1. 37. against his countrymen, they were not without alarm at Cleopatra's boast that she w^ould yet make her power felt in the Capitol ; and many feared that even when Antony was overthrown the conqueror might himself be willing to wear her chains. But the prudent Augustus was in no danger of being dazzled by beauty. He saw clearly all that was within his reach; he did not want her help to the sovereignty of Od • 14 ^S'yP^' ^'^^^ imm the day that he entered the empty ' • ' palace in Alexandria, his reign began as sole master of Eome and its dependent provinces. (54) While we have in this history been looking at the Romans from afar, and only seen their dealings with foreign kings, we have been able to note some of the changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stood in the Forum. When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euergetes II. owed their crowns to Roman help, Rome gained nothing but thanks, and that weight in their councils which is fairly due to usefulness : the senate asked for no tribute, and the citizens took no bribes. But with the growth of power came the love of conquest and of CHAP, xir.] REMARKS. 71 its spoils. Macedonia was conquered in what miglit be called self-defence ; in the reign of Cleopatra Cocce, Cyrene was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seized without a plea. The senators were even more eager for bribes than the senate for provinces. The nobles who governed these wide provinces grew too powerful for the senate, and found that the}^ could heap up ill-gotten wealth faster by patronising kings than b}^ conquering them ; and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand in tlie reigns of Auletes and Cleopatra, because the Eomans were still more gTeedy than when the}^ seized Cyrene and Cyprus. And, lastly, when the Romans were worn out by quarrels and the want of a steady government, and were ready to obey any master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianus autocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized in the name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the Egyptian monarchy. (55) Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done more for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history. Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and historians, they may have misled the talents which they wished to guide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster ; but, in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly successful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim, and the pure taste which mark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind and mend the heart; but it was the school to which the world long looked for knowledge in all those sciences which help the body and improve the arts of life, and which are sometimes called useful knowledge. Though great and good actions may not have been unknown in Alexandria, so few valued them that none took the trouble to record them. The well-paid writers never wrote the lives of the Ptolemies. The muse of history had no seat in the Museum, but it was almost the birth-place of 72 IIE]\1AIIKS. [chap. XII. anatomy, geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and liytlrostatics. (5G) If we retrace the steps by which this Gr^eco-Egyptian monarchy rose and fell, we shall see that virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, care and thoughtlessness were for the most part followed by the rewards w^hich to us seem natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the Greeks into the countr}', and then helped their energies to raise the monarchy, afterwards undermined those same energies, and w^as one of the causes of its overthrow. (57) In Ptolemy Soter we see plain manners, careful plans, untiring activity, and a wise choice of friends. By him talents were highly paid wherever they were found ; no service left imrewarded; the people trusted and taught the use of arms, their love gained by wise laws and even-handed justice ; docks, harbours, and fortresses built, schools opened; and by these means a great monarchy founded. Ptolemy was eager to fill the ranks of his armies wdth soldiers, and his new city with traders. Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, to thwart or overlook their wishes and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them, and to make Alexandria a more agreeable place of settlement than the cities of Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who w^ere then pouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading industry by the overthrow of its freedom. Though every thinking man might have seen that the new government w^hen it gained shape and strength would be a military despotism ; yet his Greek subjects must have felt, while it was weak and resting on their good will rather than on their habits, that they were enjoying many of the blessings of freedom. Had they then claimed a share in the government, they would most likely have gained it, and thereby they w^ould have handed down those blessings to their children. (58) Before the death of Ptolemy Soter the habits of the people had so closely entwined themselves round the throne, that Philadelphus w^as able to take the kingdom and the wdiole CHAP, xir.] REMARKS. 73 of its wide provinces at the hands of his father as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his father's wise plans, which then ripened into fruit-hearing. Trade crowded the harbours and markets, learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded the discipline of the fleets and armies ; power, wealth, and splen- dour followed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the throne would by many kings have been made to stand in the place of justice and mildness, but under Philadelphus it only threw a light upon his good government. He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be the first king of his age ; Greece and its philosophers looked up to him as a friend and patron ; and though as a man he must take rank far below his father, by whose wisdom the eminence on which he stood was raised, yet in all the gold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was the greatest of his family. (59) The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by both of these Greek kings. As far as they had been able or willing to copy the arts of Greece they had been raised to a level with the Macedonians. The Egyptian worship and temples had been upheld, as if in obedience to the oft-repeated answer of the Delphic oracle, that the gods should everywhere xenophon, be worshipped according to the laws of the country. ^• But Euergetes was much more of an Egj^ptian, and while he was bringing back the ancient splendour to the temples, the priests must have regained something of their former rank. But they had no hold on the minds of the soldiers. Had the mercenaries upon whom the power of the king rested, been worshippers in the Egyptian temples, the priests might, as in the earlier times, like a body of nobles, have checked his power when too great, and at other times upheld it. But it was not so ; and upon the whole, little seems to have been gained by the court becoming more Egyptian, while the army must have lost something of its Greek discipline and plainness of manners. (GO) But in the next reign the fruits of this change were seen to be most unfortunate. Pliilopator was an eastern despot, 7i REMAllKS. [chap, XII. surrounded by eunuclis and drowned in pleasures. The country was governed by his women and vicious favourites. The arm}^ which at the beginning of his reign amounted to seventy-three thousand men beside the garrisons, was at first weakened by rebellion, and before the end of his reign it had fallen to pieces like a rope of sand. Nothing however happened to prove his weakness to surrounding nations ; Egypt was still the greatest of kingdoms, though Kome on the conquest of Carthage, and Byvm under Antiochus the Great, were fast gaining ground upon it ; but he left to his infant son a throne shaken to the very foundations. (61) The ministers of Epiphanes the infant autocrat found the government without a head and without an army, the treasury without mone}', and the people without virtue or courage; and they at once threw the kingdom into the hands of the Komans to save it from being shared between the kings of SjTia and jMacedonia. Thus passed the first five reigns, the first one hundred and fifty years, the first half of the three centuries that the kingdom of the Ptolemies lasted. It was then rotten at the core with vice and luxury. Its population was lessening, its trade falling off, its treasur}^ emptj^ its revenue too small for the wasteful expenses of the government; but nevertheless, in the eyes of surrounding nations, its trade and w^ealth seemed boundless. Taste, genius, and poetry had passed away; but mathematics, surgery, and grammar still graced the Museum. The decline of art is shown upon the coins, and even in the shape of the letters upon the coins. On those of Cleopatra the engraver followed the fashion of the penman ; the S is written like our C, the E has a round back, and the long 0 is formed like an M reversed. (62) During the reigns of the later Ptolemies the kingdom was under the shield, but also under the sceptre of Kome. Its kings sent to Rome for help, sometimes against their enemies, and sometimes against their subjects; sometimes they humbl}" asked the senate for advice, and at other times were able respectfully to disobey the Pioman orders. One by one tlie CHAP. XII.] REMARKS, 75 senate seized the provinces; Coele-Cyria, the coast of Asia Elinor, Cyrene, and the island of Cj^prus ; and lastly, though the Ptolemies still reigned, they were counted among the clients of the Roman patrician to whom they looked up for patronage. From this low state Egypt could scarcely be said to fall when it became a part of the great empire of Augustus, (63) During the reigns of the Ptolemies, the sculpture, the style of building, the religion, the writing, and the language of the Copts in the Thebaid were nearly the same as when their own kings were reigning in Thebes, with even fewer changes than usually creep in through time. They had all become less simple ; and though it would be difficult and would want a volume by itself to trace these changes, and to show when they came into use, yet a few of them may be pointed out. The change of fashion must needs be slower in buildings which are only raised by the untiring labour of years, and which when built stand for ages ; but in the later temples we find less strength as fortresses, few obelisks or sphinxes, and no colossal statues; we no longer meet with vast caves or pyramids. The columns in a temple have several new patterns. The capitals which used to be copied from the pap}Tus plant, are now formed of lotus flowers, or palm branches. In some cases with a sad want of taste the weight of the roof rests on the weak head of a woman. (See Fig. 31.) The buildings however, of the Ptolemies are such that, before the hierogij-phics on them had been read by Dr. Young, nobody had ever guessed that they were later than the time of Cambyses, while three or four pillars at Alexandria were almost the only proof that the country had ever been held by Greeks. (G4) In the religion we find many new gods or old gods in new dresses. Hapimou, the Nile, now pours water out of a 76 REMARKS. [chap, XII. jar like a Greek river god. The moon, which before orna- mentecl the heads of gods, is now a goddess under the name of loh. The favomite Isis had appeared in so many characters that she is called the goddess with ten tliousand names. The gods had also changed their rank; Pthah and Serapis now held the chief place. Strange change had also taken place in the names of men and cities. In the place of Pet-isis, Pet-amun, Psammo, and Serapion, we find men named Eudoxus, Hermo- phantus, and Polj^rates ; while of the cities, Oshmoonaj-n is called Hermopolis ; Esne, Latopolis ; Chemmis, Panopolis ; and Thebes, Diospolis ; and Ptolemais, Phylace, Parembole, and others had sprung into being. Many new characters crept into the hierogij^phics, as the camelopard, the mummj'- lying on a couch, the ships with sails, and the chariot with horses ; there were more words spelled with letters, the groups were more crowded, and the titles of the kings within the ovals became much longer. (65) With the papjTus, which was becoming common about the time of the Persian invasion, we find the running hand, the enchorial or common writing, as it was called, coming into use, in which there were few symbols, and most of the words were spelt with letters. Each letter was of the easy sloping form, which came from its being made with a reed or pen, instead of the stiff form of the hieroglyphics, which were mostly cut in stone. But there is a want of neatness, which has thrown a difii-culty over them, and has made these writings less easy to read than the hieroglyphics. Least of all can we trace the change in the language, which is only really known to us through the Bible, which was translated into Coptic, with Greek letters, about three centuries after the fall of the Ptole- mies. The language of the old hieroglyphics seems to have been nearly the same as this, but the characters must be much better understood than they are before we can point out the changes in the language in which they were written. (06) When the country fell into the liands of Augustus, the Copts were in a much lower state than when conquered by CHAP. XII.] REMARKS. 77 Alexander. Of the old moral worth and purity of manners very little remained. All respect for women was lost; and when men degrade those who should be their helps towards excellence, they degrade themselves also. Not a small part of the nation was sunk in vice. They had been slaves for three hundred years, sometimes trusted and w'ell-treated, but more often trampled on and ground down with taxes and cruelty. They had never held up their heads as freemen, or felt them- selves lords of their own soil ; they had fallen off in numbers, in wealth, and in knowledge ; nothing was left to them but their religion, their temples, their hieroglyphics, and the painful remembrance of their faded glories. Fig. 32.— Raraescs U. and Atlior the Mother-Goddess. 78 DESCENDANTS OF LAGUS. [OUAP. XII. FAMILY OF THE LK(}IDM OR PTOLEMIES. B.C. 322. I Ptolemy Soteu. Lasus. Menelaus. Leontiscus. Lasus. B.C. 284. Ptolemy Lysandra. Ptolemy Arsinoe. Arg^us. PMlotera. Ceraun-us. Piiiladelphus. B.C. 246. r Ptolejiy Euergetes I. Lysimachus. Berenice. .c. 221. Ptolemy Philopator. Mai Arsinoe. B.C. 204. Ptolemy Epiphanes. B.C. 180. J r Ptolemy Philometok. Cleopati'a. B.C. 145. Cleopatra, Cleopatra Pupil of Ptolemy Ptolemy Euergetes II. Wife of CocCE. Aristar- Eiipator. j Demetrius. clius. | B.C. 116. B.C. 106. I I 1 \ 1 1 ' Memphites. Ptolemy Cleopatra. Alex- Tryphsena. SoTER II. ANDER I. Selene. Ptolemy I Apion. B.C. 81. .c. 80. ..J P , 1 1 Cleopa- Ptolemy Cleopatra. Ptolemy tra Neus- king of Berenice. Dionysus. Cyprus. B.C. 51. Cleopatra Tryph^na. 1 i Berenice. Cleopatra. .0. SO. Alex- Daughter. ANDER II. Son of Caesar. C^SrRION. Arsinoe. Ptolemy. Children of M. Antony. T— ^tolem^ 1 Seleucus Cybiosactes. Ptolemy. Alexander Helins. Cleopatra Selene. Ptolemy Drusilla. kins of Mauritania. CHAPTER XIII. Fig. THE ROMAN EMPERORS OF THE JULIAN AND CLAUDIAN FAMILIES. B.C. 30 — A.D. 68. (1) Augustus (see Fig. 33) began his reign in Egypt by ordering all the statues of Antony, , Plutaixh., of which there were more than Vit.Antou. hfty ornamenting the various public ^" buildings of the city, to be broken to pieces ; and he had the meanness to receive a bribe of one thousand talents from Archibius, a friend of Cleopatra, that the queen's statues miglit be left standing. As he had only just raised himself above his equals, he might well be careful in the choice of the friends to whom he entrusted the command of the provinces ; and it seems to have been part of his king-craft to give the offices of greatest trust to men of low birth, who, like Mjecenas the prefect of Kome, might be flattered with being called ' tlie ornament of the equestrian * rank,' but who were at the same time well aware that they owed their employments to their seeming want of ambition, strabo, Thus the government of Egypt, the greatest and ™* richest of the provinces, was given to Cornelius Gallus, a man of very little note or talent. Gallus was the friend of Virgil, and himself a poet; he is however better known in ^^^jjojo^jg^ Viroil's tenth eclogue than in the command of his Grrscca, iv. . . . 8. province or in his own Greek epigrams. (2) Before the fall of the republic the senate had given the command of the provinces to members of their own Tacitus, Annal. body only ; and therefore Augustus, not wishing to alter lib. xii. 80 AUGUSTUS. B.C. 30— A.D. 14. [chap. XIII. the law, obtained from tlie senate for liimself all those governments -which he meant to give to men of lower rank. By this legal fiction, these equestrian prefects were answerable for their conduct to nobody but the emperor on a petition, and they could not be sued at law before the senate for their misdeeds. But he made an exception in the case of Egypt. While on the one hand in that province he gave to the prefect's edicts the force of law, on the other he allowed him to be cited before the senate though appointed by himself. This was a wise and well-meant regulation; but as the republic was sinking fast into a despotism it soon became useless. The power thus given to the senate they never ventured to use, and the prefect of Egypt was never punished or removed but by Strabo, the emperor. Under the prefect was the chief justice lib. xvn. q£ ^j^q province, who heard, liimself or by deputy, all causes except those which were reserved for the decision of the emperor in person. These last were decided by a second judge, or in modern language a chancellor, as they were too numerous and too trifling to be taken to Kome. Under these judges were numerous freednien of the emperor, and clerks entrusted with affairs of greater and less weight. Of the native magistrates the chief were the keeper of the records, the police judge, the prefect of the night, and the Exegetes, or interpreter of the Egyptian law, who was allowed to wear a purple robe like a Roman magistrate. But these Egyptian magistrates were never treated as citizens ; they were barbarians, little better than slaves, and only raised to the rank of the emperor's freedmeii. (3) Augustus showed not a little jealousy in the rest of the Dion "^^^^^ which his new province was to be governed. Cassius, While other conquered cities usually had a senate or municipal form of government granted to them by the Ptomans, no city in unhappy Egypt was allowed that privilege, which, by teaching the citizens the art of governing themselves and the advantages of union, might have made them less at the mercy of their masters. He not only gave the command of the khigdom to a man below the rank of a senator, but ordered CHAP. XIII.] THE JULIAN YEAR. 81 that no senator should even be allowed to set foot in Egypt without leave from himself; and centuries later, when the weakness of the country had led the emperors to soften some of the other stern laws of Augustus, this was still strictly enforced. It was before this law was passed, and while Au£vustus was himself in Alexandria, that the poet . ^ " Lib. 1. / . Tibullus, travelling with his consular friend Massala, made a hasty visit to Memphis and learned the city's grief for the death of the bull Apis, and that the Nile began to rise when the dogstar rose with the sun. (4) Among other changes then brought in by the Romans was the use of a fixed year in all civil reckonings. The Egyptians, for all the common purposes of life, called porphyrius, the day of the heliacal rising of the dogstar, about our 18th of July, their new-year's day, and the husbandman marked it with religious ceremonies as the time when the Nile began to overflow ; while for all civil purposes, and dates of kings' reigns, they used a year of three hundred and sixty-five days, which of course had a moveable new-year's day. But by the orders of Augustus all public deeds were henceforth dated by the new year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, which was named, after Julius Csesar, the Julian year. The years were henceforth made to begin on the 29th ^ ^ 24. of August, the day on which the moveable new year's j^.^^^ day then happened to fall, and were numbered from the year following the last of Cleopatra, as from the first year of the reign of Augustus. But notwithstanding the many advantages of the Julian year, which was used throughout Europe for sixteen centuries, till its faultiness was pointed out by Pope Gregory XIII., the Egyptian astronomers and mathe- maticians distrusted it from the first, and chose to stick to their old year, in which there could be no mistake about its length. Thus there were at the same time three years and three new- year's days in use in Egypt : one about the 18th of July, used by the common people ; one on the 29th of August, used by order of the emperor ; and one moveable, used by the astronomers. 82 AUGUSTUS. B.C. 30— A.D. 14. [OIIAP. XIII. (5) By the conquest of Egj-pt, Augustus was also able to .EtliiciCos- extend another of the plans of his late uncle. Julius luogiapbia. (jj^ggj^j.^ wliose powerful mind found all sciences within its grasp, had ordered a survey to be taken of the whole of the Roman provinces, and the length of all the roads to be measured for the use of the tax-gatherers and of the army; and Augustus was now able to add Egypt to the survey. Polyclitus was employed on this southern portion of the empire ; and, after thirty-two years from its beginning by Julius, the measurement of nearly the whole known world was finished and reported to the senate. (G) At Alexandria Augustus was visited by Herod, who Josephus, hastened to beg of him those portions of his kingdom Antiq.xv.7. ^^q^^^i^ Autony had given to Cleopatra. x\ugustus received him as a friend ; gave him back the territory Avhich Antony had taken from him, and added the province of Bell. Jud. Samaria and the free cities on the coast. He also ]. 20, s. ^r^YQ iq iiii^i i\^Q body of four hundred Gauls, who formed part of the Egyptian army and had been Cleopatra's body-guard. He thus removed from Alexandria the last remains of the Gallic mercenaries, of whom the Ptolemies had usually had a troop in their service. (7) Augustus visited the royal burial-place to see the body of Suetouius Alexander, and devoutly added a golden crown and a in "Vila. garland of flowers to the other ornaments on the sarcophagus of the Macedonian. But he would take no pains to please either the Alexandrians or Egyptians ; he despised them both. AVlien asked if he would not like to see the Alexandrian monarclis lying in their mumni3''-cases in the same tomb, he answered ; *No, I came to see the king, not dead men.' His contempt for Cleopatra and her father made him forget the great qualities of Ptolemy Soter. So when he was at Memphis he refused to humour the national prejudice of two thousand years standing^ by visiting the bull Apis. He would not imitate Alexander though he worsliipped him. Of the former con- querors, Cambyses had stabbed the sacred bull, Alexander had cuAP. xiir.] THE JEWS. 83 sacrificed to it ; had Augustus had the violent temper of either he would have copied Cambyses. The Egyptians always found the treatment of the sacred bull a foretaste of what they were themselves to receive from their sovereigns. (8) The Greeks of Alexandria, who had for some time past very unwillingly yielded to the Jews the right of citizenship, josephus, now urged upon Augustus that it should no longer be ^^t^q-^^-^- granted. Augustus however had received great services from the Jews and at once refused the prayer ; and he set up in ContraApi- Alexandria an inscription, granting to the Jews the full privileges of Macedonians, Avhich they claimed and had hitherto enjoyed under the Ptolemies. They were allowed their own magistrates and courts of justice, with the free exercise of their own religion ; and soon afterwards Antiq. xix. when their ethnarch or high priest died, they were ^' allowed as usual to choose his successor. The Greek Jews of Alexandria were indeed very important, both from their numbers and their learning ; they spread over Syria . Acts, VI. 9. and Asia Minor : they had a synagogue in Jerusalem in connnon with the Jews of Cyrene and Libya ; and we find that one of the chief teachers of Christianity after the apostles, in Ephesus, in Corinth, and in Crete, was ApoUos the Alexandrian. (D) On his return to Bome, Augustus carried with him the whole of the royal treasure ; and though perhaps there g^^y^^nius might have been less gold and silver than usual in the Vit.August, palace of the Ptolemies, still it was so large a sum that when, upon the establishment of peace over all the world, the rate of interest upon loans fell in Rome, and the price of land rose, the change was thought to have been caused by the money from Alexandria. At the same time were carried away the valuable jewels, furniture, and ornaments, which had been handed down from father to son, with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. These were as usual drawn in j^.^^ waggons through the streets of Rome in triumph ; and Cassius, with them were shown in chains to the wondering 0 2 84 AUGUSTUS. B.C. 20-A.D. 14. [chap. xiii. crowd Alexander Hclius and Cleopatra Selene, the children of Cleopatra and Anton^^, while for Cleopatra herself the con- queror was forced to be content with a statue, as voluntary Strabo, death had saved the queen from that disgrace. The lib. xvii. Kqiii-iu^ \;qi'c at the same time amused with the sight of crocodiles "walking and swimming about in the theatre, guided and played with by some men from the city of Tentyra, whose citizens were always famous for their skill in catching these dangerous animals, and who had been taken with them to Rome as their keepers. (See Fig. 84.) (10) Augustus threatened a severe punishment to the Alexandrians in the building of a new capital. Only four miles from the Canobic or eastern gate of Alexandria he laid out the plan of his new city of Nicopolis on the spot where he had routed Mark Antony's forces. Here he began several large temples, and removed to them the public sacrifices and the priesthood from the temples of Alexandria. But the w^ork was carried no further, and soon abandoned ; and the only change made by it in Alexandria was that the temple of Serapis and the other temples were for a short- time deserted. Could anything mark more strongly the difference between the first Greek and the first Eoman sovereign of Egypt ! Alexander chose the site of his new city for its harbour, and its convenience for trade ; Augustus chose his to mark the spot of the kingdom's overthrow. The first was meant to be a boon to the nation, and the second to be an insult ; and we are therefore pleased to remark that Alexandria has added to the glory of its founder, while the Nicopolis of Augustus was at once seen to be a failure. (11) The rest of the w^orld had long been used to see their finest works of art carried away by their conquerors ; and the cnAP. XIII.] OBELISKS TAKEX TO VmiE. 85 Egyptians soon learned that if any of the monuments of which they were so justl}" proud were to be left to them, it would only be because they were too heavy to be moved by the Roman engineers. Beside a statue called a Janus, loaded piiny, with gold, which was placed in the temple of that god in Rome, a picture by Nicias of the youth named j^j,^ ^^^^ Hyacinthus, of which the skilful execution was such that it was mentioned among the spoils of a kingdom, and beside many other smaller Egyptian works, two of the Lib. xxxvi. large obelisks which even now ornament Rome were carried away by Augustus, that of Thothmosis IV., which stands in the Piazza del Popolo, and that of Psammetichus on Monte Citorio. And the plundered Egyptians might have found some comfort in their fall by remarking that the Romans, in despair of equalling what they had seen, believed that they did enough for the grandeur of their city in borrowing these monuments of Tlieban glor}-. (12) Cornelius Gallus, the first prefect of Eg3^pt, seems either to have misunderstood or soon foro-otten the Dion terms of his appointment. He was intoxicated with Cassius, power ; he set up statues of himself in the cities of ^^^* Egypt, and, cop3'ing the kings of the countr}^, he carved his name and deeds upon the pyramids. On this Augustus recalled him, and he killed himself to avoid punishment. The emperor's wish to check the tyranny of the prefects piutarcii., and tax-gatherers was strongly marked in the case of -^pop^^^^i^eg. the champion fighting-cock. The Alexandrians bred these birds with great care and eagerly watched their battles in the theatre. A powerful cock that had hitherto slain all its rivals and always strutted over the table unconquered had gained a great name in the city ; and this bird, Eros a tax-gatherer roasted and ate. Augustus on hearing of this insult to the people, sent for the man, and on his owning what he had done ordered him to be crucified. Three legions and nine strabo, cohorts were found force enough to keep this great kingdom in quiet obedience to their new masters ; and when 86 AUGUSTUS. B.C. 30— A. D. U. [chap. XIII. Heroopolis revolted, and afterwards wlien a rebellion broke out in the Tliebaid aqainst the Eoman tax-oatherers, these risings were easily crushed. The spirit of the nation, both of the Greeks and Egj^Dtians, seems to have been wholly broken ; and Petronius, who succeeded Cornelius Gallus, found no difficulty in putting down a rising of the Alexandrians. (18) The canals, through which the overflowing waters of the Nile were carried to the more distant fields, were of course each year more or less blocked up by the same mud which made the fields fruitful ; and the clearing of these canals was one of the greatest boons that the monarch could bestow upon the tillers of the soil. This had often been neglected by the less powerful and less prudent kings of Egypt, in whose reigns the husbandman believed that Heaven in its displeasure with- held part of the wished-for over- flow; but Petronius employed the leisure of his soldiers on this wdse and benevolent w^ork ; and it was then found that a rise of twelve cubits in the waters of the Nile at Memphis overflowed as wide a tract of country as fourteen did before the prefect Petronius cleared the canals. In order better to under- stand the rise of the Nile, to fix the amount of the land-tax, and more fairl}^ to regulate the over- flow through the canals, the nilo- meter on the island of Elephantine was at this time made. (See Fig. 85.) It is a flight of stone steps which runs down into the river, and on the wall by the side is a cut scale to measure Suetonius, Vit.Aug.l8. Strabo, lib. xvii. Inscript. ap. lioekh. 4SG3. Fig. 35. CHAP. XIII.] ALEXANDRIA DESCRIBED. 87 tlie rise of the water. On this wall the record of the river's rise still remains for the ye^vs between Augustus and Severus. The greatest rise marked is of twenty-five cubits and four hand-breadths; and the lowest is of twentj^-one cubits and three hand-breadths. The cubit is not the ordinary one of six hand-breadths, but the royal cubit containing an ordinary cubit and a hand-breadth over, and it is here divided into fourteen parts each part being half a hand-breadth. (14) It was under ^lius Gallus, the third prefect, that Egypt was visited by Strabo, the most careful and judicious of all Fig. 30.— Plan of Alexandria. the ancient travellers. He had come to stud}' mathematics, astronomy, and geography in the Museum under the successors of Euclid, Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus. He accompanied the prefect in a march to Syene, the border town, and he has left us a most valuable account of the state of the country at that time. Alexandria was the chief object that engaged his attention. (See Fig. 86.) Its two harbours held more ships than were to be seen in any other port in the world, and its export trade was thought greater than that of all Italy. The docks on each side of the causeway, and the ship canal from the harbour of Eunostus to the Mareotic lake, were full of bustle and activity. The palace or citadel on the promontory of Lochias on one side of the great harbour was as striking an 88 AUGUSTUS, B.C. 30— A. D. 11 [chap. XIII. object as the liglitliouse ou the other. The temples and pahaces covered a space of ground equal to more than one fourth part of the city, and the suburbs reached even be3^ond the Mareotic lake. Among the chief buildings were the Soma, which held tlie bodies of Alexander and of tlie Ptolemies ; the court of justice; the Museum of philosophy, which had been rebuilt since the burning by Csesar's soldiers ; the Exchange crowded with merchants, the temple of Neptune, and Mark Antony's fortress called the Timonium, on a point of land which jutted into the harbour; the CEcsarium or new palace ; and the great temple of Serapis whicli was on the western side of the Fig. 37. Fig. 38. city, and was the largest and most ornamented of all these buildings. Further off was the beautiful G3'mnasium for WTestlers and boxers, with its porticoes of a stadium in length, where" the citizens used to meet in public assembl}-. From the top of the temple of Pan, which rose like a sugar-loaf in the middle of the cit}-, and was mounted by a winding stair- case, the whole of this remarkable capital might be seen spread out before the eye. On the east of the city was the circus or Hippodrome for chariot races, and on the west lay the public gardens and pale green palm-groves, and the Necropolis ornamenting the road-side with tombs for miles along the sea-shore. Other tombs were in the catacombs under ground on the same side of the city. (See Plan Fig. 87, and Interior Fig. 88.) The banks of tlie ]\rareotic lake were CHAP. XIII.] STRABO'S VISIT. 89 fringed with vineyards, wliicli bore the famed wine of the same name, and which formed a pleasant contrast with the burning whiteness of the desert bej^ond. The canal from the lake to the Nile marked its course through the plain b}^ the greater freshness of the green along its banks. In the distance were the new buildings of Augustus's city of Nicopolis. The arts of Greece and the wealth of Egypt had united to adorn the capital of the Ptolemies. Hehopolis, the ancient seat of Egyptian learning, had never been wholly repaired since its siege b}^ Cambyses, and was then almost a deserted city. Its schools were empty, its teachers silent ; but the houses in which Plato and his friend Eudoxus were said to have dwelt and studied were pointed out to the traveller, to warm his love of knowledge and encourage him in the pursuit of virtue. Memphis was the second city in Egypt, while Thebes and Abydos, the former capitals, had fallen to the size and rank of villages. At Memphis Strabo saw the bull-fights in the circus, and was allowed to look at the bull Apis through a window of his stable. At Crocodilopolis he saw the sacred crocodile caught on the banks of the lake and fed with cakes and wine. Ptolemais, which was at first only an encampment of Greek soldiers, had risen under the sovereigns to whom it owed its name to be the largest city in the Thebaid, and scarcely less than Memphis. It was built whdlly by the Greeks, and, like Alexandria, it was under Greek laws, while the other cities in Egypt were under Egyptian laws and magistrates. It was situated between Panopolis and Abydos ; but, while the temples of Thebes, v/hich were built so many centuries earlier, are still standing in awful grandeur, scarcely a trace of this Greek city can be found in the villages of Mensheeh and Geergeh, which now stand on the spot. Strabo and the Koman generals did not forget to visit the broken colossal statue of Amunothph, near Thebes, which sent forth its musical sounds every morn- ing, as the sun, rising over the Arabian hills, first shone upon its face ; but this inquiring traveller could not make up his mind whether the music came from the statue, or 90 AUGUSTUS, B.C. 30- A. D. 14. [chap. XIII. the base, or the people around it. He ended his tour with watching the sunshine at the bottom of the astronomical well at Syene, which on the longest da}^ is exactl}^ under the sun's northern edge, and with admiring the skill of tlie boatmen who shot down the cataracts in their wicker boats for the str.iho, amusement of the Roman generals. Sj^ene was the last of the Egyptian towns. The next place, the island of Philae, was inhabited b}^ a mixed population, half Egyptian and half Ethiopian. (15) The prefect Julius Gallus spent two years on an un- successful inroad into Arabia Felix, led there by the reports of the boundless wealth which was to be found in the Arab fastnesses. Much of the trade of Arabia was carried on by the Arabs receiving gold and silver in exchange for the spices and other costly and portable articles of the East ; and the Romans, who had little knowledge of w^here those products were brought from, seem to have thought that at least a part of the precious metals which they saw flowing eastward through Arabia would be found in hoards in its cities. Gallus took with him ten thousand men, including five hundred Jews and a thousand Arabs ; and, leaving his ships of war, he had a hundred and thirty ships of burden built to accompany him. With these he coasted the eastern side of the Red Sea towards Arabia Felix ; he landed at Leuce Come in latitude 26° y and marched inwards towards the incense country. He could" find however few enemies and no treasures. The legions were beaten by the want of water and by the other difficulties of the desert, rather than by the Arab forces, and they were at last called back by the news of an Ethiopian inva- sion. Gallus rejoined liis ships at Nera Come in latitude 24°, and returned after a voyage of eleven days to Myos Hormos in Egypt. (16) In the earlier periods of Egyptian history we have seen Ethiopia peopled or at least governed by a race of men, whom, as they spoke the same language and worshipped the same gods as their neighbours of Upper Egypt, we must call Copts. But ciiAi'. xin.] ETHIOPIAN INROAD. 91 tliG Arabs, under the name of Trogloclyt^e, and other tribes, had made an early settlement on the African side of the lied Sea. So numerous were they in Upper Egypt that in p,trabo, the time of Strabo half the population of the city of Coptos were Arabs ; the}^ were the camel-drivers and carriers for the Theban merchants in the trade across the desert. Some of the conquests of Rameses had been over that nation in southern Ethiopia, and the Arab power must have further risen after the defeat of the Ethiopians by Euergetes 1. At any rate pu^y^ as we learn from the history of Africa by the younger Juba, Ethiopia in the time of Augustus was held by Arabs ; a race who thought peace a state of disgraceful idleness, and war the only employment worthy of men ; and who made frequent hasty inroads into Nubia, and sometimes into Egypt. The faces of their chiefs, like the statues of their 35^' gods, were smeared with vermilion. They fought for plunder not for conquest, and usually retreated as quickly as they came, with such booty as they laid their hands on. To use words which were proverbial while the Nile Macrobius swarmed with crocodiles, " they did as the dogs do, Saturii.11.2. they drank and ran away ; " and the Eomans found it necessary to place a body of troops near the cataracts of Syene strabo, to stop their marching northward and laying waste the Thebaid. However, while the larger part of the Roman legions was now withdrawn into Arabia, a bodj?^ of thirty thousand of these men, whom we may call either Arabs from their blood and language, or Ethiopians from their country, marched northward into Hgypt, and overpowered the three Roman cohorts at Elephantine, Syene, and Philse. But they were badly armed and badly trained, some carrying large shields of skins, many with no better weapon than a club, while others had axes, and some few swords. They were led on by the generals of Candace queen of Napata, at the fourth cataract, a woman of masculine mind who had lost one eye- They were however easily driven back when Gallus led against them an arm)^ of ten thousand men, and drove them to Ethiopian 92 AUGUSTUS. B.C. 30-A.D. 14. [chap. XIII. Pselchis, probably Aboii-Simbel. There lie defeated them again and took the city by storm. From Pselchis he marched across the Nubian desert two hundred and fifty miles to Premnis, on the northerly bend of the river, and then made himself master of Napata the capital. A guard was at the moment left in the country to check an}^ future inroads ; but the Komans made no attempts to hold it. Their territory in that direction ended at Hiera Sycaminon, seventy miles, or twelve schoeni, beyond S3'ene ; and that province bore the name Caiiiauds "^^^ Dodecasclioenos. But that the influence of Travels. p^oman art was not lost on the architecture of the country is even shown by the arches in the temple at Xaga in Meroe, upwards of one thousand miles from Alexandria. (17) Of the state of the Ethiopic Arabs under Queen Candace we learn but little from this hasty inroad ; but some of the tribes must have been very far from the barbarians that, from their ignorance of the arts of war, the Romans judged them to be. Those nearest to the Egyptian frontiers, the Troglodyte and Blemmyes, were unsettled, wandering, and plundering; but the inhabitants of Meroe were of a more civilised race. The Jews had settled in southern Ethiopia in large numbers, and for a long time ; Solomon's trade had made them acquainted with Adule and Auxum ; some of them were employed in the highest offices, and must have brought with j^ctg^ them the arts of civilised life. A few years later we vni. 27. meet with a Jewish eunuch, the treasurer of queen Candace, travelling with some pomp from Ethioj^ia to the religious festival at Jerusalem, probably to present offerings to the temple on behalf of those of his countrymen who were unable to travel so far. The religion of Ethiopia under these Arabs was no longer Coptic, but, like the language, was an offset of the Jewish, and most likely nearly tlie same as what we find it, when, being reduced to writing in the Koran six centuries later, it took the name of Mahomedanism. (18) The Egyptian coins of Augustus and his successors are all Greek ; the conquest of the country by the Romans made CHAP, xni,] THE COINS. 93 110 change in its languag-e. Tliougii the chief part of the population spoke Coptic, it was still a Greek province of the Roman empire ; the decrees of the prefects of Alexandria and of the upper provinces were written in Greek ; and eveiy Roman traveller, who like a school-hoy has scratched his name upon the foot of the musical statue of Amimothph, to let the world know the extent of his travels, has helped to prove that the Roman ojovernment of the countrv was carried on ^ ^ ^ " Zoega, in the Greek language. The coins often hear the Numi eagle and thunderholt on one side, while on the other is the emperor's head with his name and titles; and after a few years they are all dated with the year of tlie emperor's reign. In the earliest he is styled a Son of God, in imitation Mionnet, of the Egyptian title of Son of the Sun. (See Fig. Med.Aniiq. 39). After Egypt lost its liberty we no longer find any gold Fig. 39. coinage in the country ; that metal, with everything else that was most costly, was carried away to pay tlie Roman tribute. This was chiefly taken in money, except indeed the tax on corn, Avhicli the Egyptian kings had always received in kind, and which was still gathered in the same wa^, and each year shipped to Rome to be distributed among the idle poor of that great city. a. Victor, At this time it amounted to twenty millions of bushels, ^P^to'J^^- which was four times what was levied in the reign of Philadcl- phus. The trade to the east was increasing but as yet not large. About one hundred and twenty small vessels stialx^, sailed every year to India from Myos Hormos, which was now the chief port on the Red Sea. (19) No change was made in the Egyptian religion by this 94 AUGUSTUS. B.C. 30 -A. D. 14. [cuAr. xiii. change of masters ; and, though the means of the priests were lessened, they still carried forward the buildings which were in Wilkinson pi'ogress, and even began new ones. The small Thebes. temple of Isis at Tent} ra, behind the great temple of Athor, was either built or finished in this' reign, and it was dedicated to the goddess, and to the honour of the emperor as J upiter Liberator, in a Greek inscription on the cornice, in the thirty-first year of the reign, when Publius Octavius was prefect of the province. The large temple at Talmis in Nubia was also then built, though not wholly finished ; and we find the name of Augustus at Phil^e, on some of the additions to the temple of Isis, which had been built in the reign of Philadel- phus. In the hieroglyphical inscriptions on these temples Augus- tus is called Autocrator Csesar, and is st3ded Son of the Sun, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, with the other titles which had always been given by the priests to the Ptolemies and their own native sovereigns for so many centuries. Thus the historians of Eome who are almost deceived by the modest behaviour of Augustus, and are in doubt whether he was sincere in begging the senate every tenth year to allow him to lay aside the weight of empire, may have those doubts cleared up in Egj^pt ; for there he had assumed the style and title of king within ten years of the death of Cleopatra. (20) The Greeks had at all times been forward in owning the Egyptians as their teachers in religion ; and in the dog Cerberus, the judge Minos, the boat of Charon, and the river Styx, of their mythology, we see a clear proof that it was in Egypt that the Greeks gained their faint glimpse of the immortality of the soul, a day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments ; and now that Eome was in close intercourse with Egypt the Romans were equally ready to borrow thence their religious ceremonies. They brought to Home the Egyptian opinions with the statues of the gods. They ran into the new superstition to avoid the painful uneasiness of believing nothing. Men who have no strong faith themselves, are glad to listen to the words of those who CIIAl'. XIII.] THE WRITKllS. 95 have ; and tliougli the Romans ridiculed their own gods they believed in those of Egypt. So fashionable was the .^.^^^ worship of Isis and Serapis becoming in Italy, that Cassius, „ . . lib. liii. Augustus made a law that no Egyptian ceremonies should enter the city or even the suburbs of Rome. His subjects might copy the luxuries, the follies, and the vices of the Alexandrians, but not the gloomy devotion of the Egyptians. But the spread of opinions was not so jjineid. checked; even Virgil the court poet taught the Egyptian millennium, or the resurrection from the dead when tlie thousand years were ended; and the cripple asking for Horace, alms in the streets of Rome would beg in the name of -^p^^*- ^- the holy Osiris. (21) During this reign lived Sotion of Alexandria, under whom the philosopher Seneca studied when young, from whom he gained his habits of stoical abstinence, and of whom Epjst. 49. he speaks in his works with affectionate remembrance. Sotion taught the Pythagorean doctrines of abstinence from animal food, on the ground that animals have souls, and that, as nothing that has been created ever dies, most likely the souls of men, when they quit their own bodies, remove into the bodies of animals. His work was an agreeable Qoliius, miscellany, and he named it 1 he Cornucopia or Horn ^- ^• of Amaltha3a. Archibius edited the Hymns of Callima- Suidas. chus, and his son Apollonius has left a Dictionary to Homer. Tryphon, the son of Ammonius, lived about the same time in Alexandria. He was a poet and a grammarian ; he wrote on the dialects of the Greek poets, on grammar, and on spelling. Another grammarian of Alexandria w^as Aristonicus, who wrote on Hesiod's Tlieogony, on the proper names in Homer, strai o and on the wanderings of Meiielaus. But these writers ^• lessened for themselves the chief sources of lofty thoughts and warm feelings. By living as a class apart from the world's business, from families and children, their writings lost in earnestness, in enthusiasm, and in delicacy of taste ; by living sometimes on the Egyptian coast of the Mediterranean, 90 TIBERIUS. A.D. 14—37. [chap. XIII. cap. IX. A.D. M Pliny, lib. XXX vi. 14. Burton's Excerpt. 51, 52. sometimes on the European coast, and sometimes on the Asijitic coast, they weakened their love of country and of kindred; and, while every place had its own gods, the traveller often dropped his religion when he left his home. Pliilo,Legat. ^'^^^ ^g'jpt felt no change on the death of Augustus ; the province was well governed during tlie whole of the reign of Tiberius (see Fig. 40), and the Alexan- drians completed the beautiful temple to his honour, named the Sebaste or Caesars temple. It stood by the side of the harbour, and was surrounded with a sacred grove. It was ornamented with porticoes, and fitted up with libraries, paintings, and statues ; and was the most lofty building in the city. In front of this temple they set up two ancient obelisks, which had been made by Thothmosis III. and carved by Eameses II., and which, like the other monuments of the Theban kings, have outlived all the temples and palaces of their Greek and Eoman successors. One of these obelisks has fallen to the ground, but the other is still standing, and bears the name of Cleopatra's needle. In front of this temple was also placed a marble sun-dial, made as if Eratosthenes and Hipparchus had never taught the world that the gnomon which throws the shadow ought to be in the line of the earth's pole. By this dial the time be- tween sunrise and sunset was divided into twelve hours, equal among them- selves, but not equal from one day to another. Thus they continued as of old, in summer as in winter, whether the days were longer or shorter, to count twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night. (See Fig. 41.) CHAP. XIII.] TPIE TEMPLES. 97 (23) The harsh justice with which the emperor began his reign was at Rome soon changed into a cruel tyrannj^ ; but in the provinces it was only felt as a check to the injustice of the prefects. On one occasion, when ^Emilius Rectus sent j^.^^ home from Egypt a larger amount of taxes than was Cassius, usual, he hoped that his zeal would be praised by Tiberius. But the emperor's message to the prefect was as stern as it was humane ; ' I should wish my sheep to be * sheared, but not to be flayed.' On the death of one of the prefects, there was found among his property at Rome puny, nb. a statue of JNIenelaus, carved in Ethiopian obsidian, which had been used in the religious ceremonies in the temple Fig. 42. of Heliopolis, and Tiberius returned it to the priests of that city as its rightful owners. Another proof of the equal justice with which this province was governed was to be seen in the buildings then carried on by the priests in Upper Egypt. We find the name of Tiberius carved in hieroglyphics on Wilkinson additions or repairs made to the temples at Thebes, at Thebes. Aphroditopolis, at Berenice on the Red Sea, at Philge, and at the Greek city of Parembole in Nubia. The great portico was at this time added to the temple at Tentyra, with an inscription dedicating it to the goddess in Greek and in hierogl3^phics. (See Elevation, Fig. 42 ; Interior, Fig. 43.) As a building is often the work of j-ears, while sculpture is only the work of weeks, so the fashion of the former is always far less changing VOL. II. while, on the other hand, the building itself has the same grand simiolicity and massive strength that we admire in the CHAP. XIII.] THE ZODIAC OF TENTYRA. 99 older temples of Upper Egj^pt. On the ceiling of the portico is a curious zodiac. In one line are thirty-six men or women standing in boats, thus representing the chief stars rising heliacally, and dividing the year into thirty-six decans ; this was the Egyptian' zodiac. In another line are the twelve signs through which the sun moves, which seem to have been brought from Babylon rather than to be of Egyptian growth. This well-known sculpture our antiquaries once thought was of a great antiquity ; but the sign of the Scales might alone have taught them that it could not be older than the reign of Augustus, who gave that name to the group of stars which before formed the spreading claws of the Scorpion. We cannot but admire the zeal of the Egyptians by whom this work was then finished. They were treated as slaves by their pi^^io^ Greek fellow-countrymen ; their houses were ransacked ^^a^cum. every third year by military authority in search of arms ; tliey could have had no help from their Eoman masters, who only drained the province of its wealth; and the temple had perhaps never been heard of by the emperor, who could have been little aware that the most lasting monument of his reign was being raised in the distant province of Egypt. The priests of the other parts of the country sent gifts out of their Harris's poverty in aid of this pious work; and among the Standards, figures on the walls we see those of forty cities, from Samneh at the second cataract to Memphis and Sais in the Delta, each presenting an offering to the god of the temple. We often find that what is a luxury in one nation or at one time is thought a necessary in another ; and we must admire a people who, while denying themselves all beyond the coarsest food and clothing, as luxuries, thought a noble massive temple for the worship of their gods one of the first necessaries of life. The square low body of the temple is almost hid behind a portico, Denon, pi. which is wider and loftier than the rest, and is itself nearly one -half of the building, and which shows a front of six thick columns, each having the head of a woman rising out of a lotus flower for its capital. There is a sad want of taste in this H 2 100 TIBERIUS. A.D. 14-37. [chap. XIII, capital ; but it was from this that the Greek sculptor took the design for his beautiful bust of the Lady in the Lotus in the British Museum. All the massive walls of the temple slope a little inwards, which adds both to the strength and to the appearance of it. They are covered with hieroglyphics, but are otherwise plain, without window, niche, or any ornament but the deep overshadowing eaves of the roof. On entering the portico, you see that its ceiling is upheld by twenty-four columns, in four roAvs of six each ; you thence enter the body of the temple, through a doorway, into the chief room, where there are six more columns, and, passing straight forward through two other rooms, you reach the fourth and last, leaving several smaller rooms on each side. The larger temples of Thebes were in most part open to the sky; but this seems to have been wholly roofed, except the middle of the chief room. Every part is small after the spacious portico ; and the whole seems planned as much for strength as for beaut}^ as much for a castle as for a temple. In front of the portico there may have been once a walled court -yard ; but its massive doorway is the only part which is now standing. (24) In the third year of this reign Germanicus Caesar, who, -p much against his will, had been sent into the East as Tacitus, ° ' Ann. ii. governor, found time to leave his own province, and to snatch a hasty view of the time-honoured buildings of Egypt. He went up as high as Thebes, and, while gazing on the huge remains of the temples, he asked the priests to read to him the hierogtyphical writmg on the walls. He was told that it recounted the greatness of the country in the time of King Rameses, when there were seven hundred thousand Egyptians of an age to bear arms ; and that with these troops Rameses had conquered the Libyans, Ethiopians, Medes, Per- sians, Bactrians, Scythians, Syrians, Armenians, Cappadocians, Bithpiians, and Lycians. He was also told the tributes laid upon each of those nations ; the weight of gold and silver, the number of chariots and horses, the gifts of ivory and scents for the temples, and the quantity of corn which the conquered CHAP. XIII.] THE JEWS. 101 provinces sent to feed tlie population of Thebes. After listening to the musical statue of Amunothph, Germanicus went on to Elephantine and Syene ; and on his return he turned aside to the pjTamids and the lake of Moeris, which regulated the overflow of the Nile on the neighbouring fields. At Memphis, Germanicus consulted the sacred bull pjiny, ub. Apis as to his future fortune, and met with an unfa- vourable answer. The manner of consulting Apis was for the visitor to hold out some food in his hand, and the answer was imderstood to be favoiu'able if the bull turned his head to eat, but unfavourable if he looked another way. When Germanicus accordingly held out a handful of corn, the well-fed animal turned his head sullenly towards the other side of his stall ; and on the death of this young prince, which shortly followed, the Egyptians did not forget to praise the bull's foresight. This blameless and seemingly praiseworthy visit of Germanicus did not, however, escape the notice of the jealous Tiberius. He had been guilty of gaining the love of the people by w^alking about without guards, in a plain Greek dress, and of lowering the price of corn in a famine by opening the public gi'anaries ; and Tiberius sternly reproached him with breaking the known law of Augustus, by which no Roman citizen of consulai' or even of equestrian rank might enter Alexandria without leave from the emperor. (25) There were at this time about a million of Jews p^ijo^ in Egypt. In Alexandria they seem to have been ^^^^c^™- about one-thii'd of the population, as they formed the majority in two wards out of the five into which the city was divided, and which two were called the Jews' wards. They lived under their own elders and Sanhedrim, going up at their solemn feasts to worship in their own temple at Onion ; but from their mixing with the Greeks they had become less strict than their Hebrew brethren in their observance of the traditions. Some few of them, however, held themselves in obedience pj^.^^ to the Sanhedrim in Jerusalem, and looked upon the ment. torn, ii. 646. temple of Jerusalem as the only Jewish temple ; and 102 TIBERIUS. A.D. 14—37. [chap. XIII. these men were in the habit of sending an embassy on the stated solemn feasts of the nation to offer the appointed sacri- fices and prayers to Jehovah in the holy city on their behalf. Josephus, though the decree by Csesar which declared that m Apion. 11. ^YiQ Jews were Alexandrian citizens, was engraved on a pillar in the city, yet they were by no means treated as such, either by the government or by the Greeks, or by the Egyptians. When, during the famine, the public granaries seemed unable to supply the whole city with food, even the humane Germanicus ordered that the Jews, like the Egyptians, Plutarch, sliould have no share of the gift. They were despised De Iside. ^^^^ -^^ ^-^^ Egyptians themselves, who to insult them said that the wicked god Typhon had two sons, Hierosolymus and Judgeus, and that from these the Jews were descended. (20) In the neighbourhood of Alexandria, on a hill near the Philo De ^^^oi'^s of the lake Mareotis, was a little colony of tempr^" '^^^^O' joining their own religion with the mystical opinions and gloomy habits of the Egyptians, have left us one of the earliest known examples of the monastic life. They bore the name of Therapeutse. They had left, says the historian Philo, their worldly wealth to their families or friends ; they had forsaken wives, children, brethren, parents, and the society of men, to bury themselves in solitude and pass their lives in the contemplation of the divine essence. Seized by this heavenly love they were eager to enter upon the next world as though they were already dead to this. Every one, whether man or woman, lived alone in his cell or monastery, caring for neither food nor raiment, but having his thoughts wholly turned to the Law and the Prophets, or to sacred hymns of their own composing. They had God always in their thoughts, and even the broken sentences which they uttered in their dreams were treasures of religious wisdom. They prayed every morning at sunrise, and then spent the day in turning over the sacred volumes, and the commentaries which explained the allegories or pointed out a secondary meaning as hidden beneath the surface of even the historical books of the Old CHAP. XIII.] THE THERAPEUT^. 103 Testament. At sunset they again prayed, and then tasted their first and only meal. Self-denial indeed was the foundation of all their virtues. Some made only three meals in the week, that their meditations might he more free ; while others even attempted to prolong their fast to the sixth day. During six days of the week they saw nohody, not even one another. On the seventh day they met together in synagogue. Here they sat, each according to his age ; the women separated from the men. Each wore a plain modest robe, which covered the arms and hands, and they sat in silence while one of the elders preached. As they studied the mystic powers of numbers they thought the number seven was a holy number, and that seven times seven made a great week, and hence they kept the fiftieth day as a solemn festival. On that day they dined together, the men lying on one side and the w^omen on the other. The rushy papyrus formed the couches ; bread w^as their only meat, water their drink, salt the seasoning, and cresses the delicacy. They would keep no slaves, saying that all men were born equal. Nobody spoke, unless it was to propose a question out of the Old Testament, or to answer the question of another. The feast ended with a hymn to the praise of God, which they sang, sometimes in full chorus, and sometimes in alternate verses. (27) We owe this beautiful picture of the contemplative life to the pen of the eloquent Philo, who, while painting the virtues of the Therapeutte in such glowing colours, has told us nothing of their liistory. To these men we perhaps owe many manuscript copies of the Old Testament ; and the Greek trans- lation called the Septuagint has been thought to have been made by their predecessors in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. (28) The ascetic Jews of Palestine, the Essenes on pii^y^ banks of the lake Asphaltites, by no means, according ^- to Philo, thus quitted the active duties of life ; and it would seem that the Therapeutse rather borrowed their cus- ni, ^ Chseremon, toms from the country in which they had settled than ap.Porphyr. from any sects of the Jewish nation. Some classes of 104 TIBERIUS. A.D. 14—37. [chap. XIII. the Egyptian priesthood had alwaj^s held the same views of their religious duties. These Egyptian monks slept on a hard bed of palm branches, with a still harder wooden pillow for the head ; they were plain in their dress, slow in walking, spare in diet, and scarcely allowed themselves to smile. They washed thrice a day, and prayed as often ; at sunrise, at noon, and at sunset. They often fasted from animal food, and at all times refused many meats as unclean. They passed their lives alone, either in study or wrapped in religious thought. They never met one another but at set times, and were seldom seen by strangers. Thus, leaving to others the pleasures, wealth, and lesser prizes of this life, they received from them in return, what most men value higher, namely, honour, fame, and power. And the same religious feeling w^hich among the Egyptian Jews formed the sect of Therapeutse afterwards among the Egyptian Christians gave birth to monks and nuns. The hard pillow on which these priests rested the head, sometimes made of wood and sometimes of stone, was used as the symbol of their hard way of living. (See Fig. 44.) We find Pig numerous small models of it of all sizes buried with them in the tombs, together with the models of their gods, their mummies, and their beetles. (29) The Komans, like the Greeks, feeling but little partiality in favour of their own gods, were rarely guilty of intolerance against those of others; and would hardly have checked the introduction of a new religion unless it made its followers worse citizens. But in Rome, where every act of its civil or military authorities w^as accompanied with a religious rite, any slight towards the gods was a slidit towards the Horace, ° . ^ ° Serm. i. 9, magistrate ; many devout Romans had begun to keep holy the seventh day ; and Egypt was now so closely joined to Italy that the Roman senate made a new law against Tacitus, Egyptian and Jewish superstitions, and banished Ann. ii. to Sardinia four thousand men who were found guilty A.D. 19. Qf being Jews. CHAP. XIII.] THE COINS. 105 (30) Eg3^pt had lost with its liberties its gold coinage, and it was now made to feel a further proof of being a Mionnet, conquered country in having its silver much alloyed with copper. But Tiberius, in the tenth year of his reign, altogether stopped the Alexandrian mint, as w^ell as those of the other cities which occasionally coined ; and after this year we find no more Egyptian coins, but the few with the head and name of Augustus Caesar, which seem hardly to have been meant for money, but to commemorate on some pecuHar occasions the emperor's adoption by his step -father. We are left to guess at the reasons for this poHcy, but it was most likely an intention on the part of Tiberius to put down all the provincial mints of the empire, and to have no money coined but by his own authority. The Nubian gold mines were probably by this time wholly deserted ; they had been so far worked out, as to be no longer profitable. For fifteen hundred years, ever since Ethiopia was conquered by Thebes, w^ages and prices had been higher in Egypt than in the neighbouring countries. But this was now no longer the case. Egypt had been getting poorer during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies ; and by this time it is probable that wages and prices were both higher in Eome. (81) It seems to have been usual to change the prefect of Eg3^3t every few years, and the prefect elect w^as often sent to Alexandria to wait till his predecessor's term of years had ended. Thus in this reign of twenty-three years Dion ^milius Eectus was succeeded by Vetrasius Pollio ; i^^^^^ll and on his death Tiberius gave the government to his Lib. Iviii. freedman Iberus. During the last five years Egypt ^^^ilo, in ^ -r-n Flaccum. was mider the able but stern government of Flaccus wnkinson Avillius, Avhose name is carved on the temple of Thebes. Tentyra with that of the emperor. He was a man who united all those qualities of prudent fore-thought with prompt execution and attention to business, which "was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, who were liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justice was lOG CALIGULA. A.D. 37—41. [chap. XIII. administered fairly ; the great were not allowed to tyrannise over the poor, nor the i^eople to meet in tumultuous mobs ; and the legions were regularly paid, so that they had no excuse for plundering the unfortunate Egj^^tians. gat. A.D. 37 (32) On the death of Tiberius the old quarrel again broke Phiio, Le- ^^^^ between Jews and Greeks. The Alexandrians were not slow in learning the feelings of his successor Caius, or Caligula (see Fig. 45), towards the Jews, nor in turning against them the new^ law that ^'CpTx /'^tiiX emperor's statue should be worshipped iMi I 1 in every temple of the empii'e. They had very unwillingly yielded a half obedience to the law of Augustus that the Jews should still be allowed the privileges of citi- zenship ; and as soon as they heard that Caligula was to be worshipped as a god in every temple of the empire, they de- nounced the Jews as traitors and rebels, who refused so to Philo, honour the emperor in their synagogues. It hap- inFiaccum. ^q^q([ unfortunately that their countryman, king Agrippa, at this time came to Alexandria. He had full leave from the emperor to touch there, as being the quickest and most certain way of making the voyage from Rome to the seat of his own government. Indeed the Alexandrian voyage had another Mishna, De i^^ei'it in the eyes of a Jew ; for w^hereas wooden water- vasis. vessels were declared by the Law to be ujiclean, an exception w-as made by their tradition in favour of the larger size of the water-wells in the Alexandrian ships. Philo, in ^ Fiaccum,et Agrippa had seen Egypt before, on his way to Rome, and he meant to make no stay there ; but though he landed purposely after dark, and with no pomp or show, he seems to have raised the anger of the prefect Flaccus, who felt jealous at any man of higher rank than himself coming into his province. The Greeks easily fell into the prefect's humour, and during Agrippa's stay in Alexandria they lampooned him in CHAP. XIII.] THE JEWS. 107 songs and ballads, of which the raillery was not of the most delicate kind. They mocked him by leading about the streets a poor idiot dressed up with a paper crown and a reed for a sceptre, in ridicule of his rather doubtful right to the style of royalty. (33) As these insults towards the emperor's friend passed wholly unchecked by the prefect, the Greeks next assaulted the Jews in the streets and market-place, attacked their houses, rooted up the groves of trees round their synagogues, and tore down the decree by which the privileges of citizenship had been confirmed to them. The Greeks then proceeded to set up by force a statue of the emperor in each Jewish synagogue, as if the new decree had included those places of worship among the temples, and not finding statues enough they made use p^iio, in of the statues of the Ptolemies, which they carried away ^^^ccum. from the Gymnasium for that purpose. During the last reign under the stern government of Tiberius, Flaccus had governed with justice and prudence, but under Caligula he seemed to have lost all judgment in his zeal against the Jews. When the riots in the streets could no longer be overlooked, instead of defending the injured party, he issued a decree in which he styled the Jews foreigners ; thus at one word robbing them of their privileges and condemning them unheard. By this the Greeks were hurried forward into further acts of injustice and the Jews of resistance. But the Jews were the weaker party : they were ovei-powered and all diiven into one ward, and four hundred of their houses in the other wards were plundered, and the spoil divided as if taken in war. They were stoned and even burnt in the streets if they ventured forth to buy food for their families. Flaccus seized and scourged in the theatre thirty-eight of their venerable councillors, and to show them that they were no longer citizens the punishment was inflicted by the hands of Egyptian executioners. While the city was in this state of riot, the Greeks gave out that the Jews were concealing arms ; and Flaccus, to give them a fresh proof that they had lost the rights of citizenship, ordered that their houses 108 CALIGULA. A.D. 37—41. [chap. XIII. should be forcibly entered aud searched by a centurion and a band of soldiers. (34) During their troubles the Jews had not been allowed to complain to the emperor, or to send an embassy to Kome to make known their grievances. But the Jewish king Agrippa, who was on his way from Rome to his kingdom, forwarded to Caligula the complaints of his countrymen the Jews, with an account of the rebellious state of Alexandria. The riots, it is true, had been w^hoUy raised by the prefect's zeal in setting up the emperor's statue in the synagogues to be worshipped by the Jews, and in carrying into effect the emperor's decree; but, as he had not been able to keep his province quiet, it was necessary that he should be recalled, and punished for his want of success. To have found it necessary to call out the troops was of course a fault in a governor ; but doubly so at a time and in a province w^here a successful general might so easily become a formidable rebel. Accordingly a centurion, with a trusty cohort of soldiers, was sent from Rome for the recall of the prefect. On approaching the flat coast of Egypt, they kept the vessel in deep w^ater till sunset, and then entered the harbour of Alexandria in the dark. The centurion on landing met with a freedman of the emperor, from whom he learned that the prefect was then at supper, entertaining a large company of friends. The freedman led the cohort quietly into the palace, into the very room where Flaccus was sitting at table ; and the first tidings that he heard of his government being disapproved of in Rome was his finding himself a prisoner in his own palace. The friends stood motionless with surprise, the centurion produced the emperor's order for what he was doing, and as no resistance w^as attempted all passed off quietly; Flaccus was hurried on board the vessel in the harbour on the same evening and immediately taken to Rome. (35) It so happened that on the night that Flaccus was seized the Jews had met together to celebrate their autumnal feast, the feast of the Tabernacles : not as on former years with joy and pomp, but in fear, in grief, and in prayer. Their chief CHAP. XIII.] THE JEWS' E.AIBASSY TO ROME. 109 men were iu prison, their nation smarting under its wrongs and •in daily fear of fresh cruelties ; and it was not without alarm that they heard the noise of soldiers moving to and fro through the city, and the heavy tread of the guards marching hy torch- light from the camp to the palace. But their fear was soon turned into joy when they heard that Flaccus, the author of all their wrongs, was already a prisoner on board the vessel in the harbour ; and they gave glory to God, not, says Philo, that their enemy was going to be punished, but because their own sufferings were at an end. (36) The Jews then, having had leave given them by the prefect, sent an embassy to Rome, at the head of j^gg^^^g which was Philo, the Platonic philosopher, who was to Antiq. lib. lay their grievances before the emperor, and to beg for redress. The Greeks also at the same time sent their embassy, at the head of which was the learned grammarian Apion, who was to accuse the Jews of not worshipping the statue of the emperor, and to argue that they had no right to the same privileges of citizenship with those who boasted of their Macedonian blood. But as the Jews did not deny the charge that was brought against them, Caligula would hear nothing that they had to say ; and Philo withdrew with the beautiful remark, ' though the emperor is against us, God will be our friend.' (37) We learn the sad tale of the Jews' suffering under Caligula from the pages of their own historian only. But though Philo may have felt and written as one of the sufferers, his truth is undoubted. He was a man of unblemished character, and the writer of greatest learning and of the greatest note at that time in Alexandria ; being also of a great age he well deserved the honour of being sent on the embassy to Caligula. He was in religion a Jew, in his philosophy a Platonist, and by birth an Egyptian : and in his numerous writings we may trace the three sources from which he drew his opinions. He is always devotional and in earnest, full of pure and lofty thoughts, and often eloquent. His fondness for 110 CALIGULA. A.D. 37—41. [chap. XIII. the n\vstical properties of numbers, and for finding an allegory or secondary meaning in the plainest narrative, seems bor- rowed from the Egyptians. According to the Eastern proverb every word in a wise book has seventy-two meanings ; and this mode of interpretation was called into use by the neccessity which the Jews felt of making the Old Testament speak a meaning more agreeable to their modern views of religion. De clicru- Thus Philo says that Abraham's vdfe Sarah is Wis- bim. dom, while Hagar is Instruction, who after being banished is recalled by the Word in the form of an angel ; and De agricul- elsewhere explains the Word to mean God's first- tura. begotten son, by whom he governs the world as a shepherd does his flock. In Philo's speculative theology he seems to have borrowed less from Moses than from the abstractions of Plato, whose shadowy hints he has embodied in DeAbraha- ^ niore solid form. Speaking of the Creator, he says that there are three orders, of which the best is the Being that is, and wdio has two ancient powers near him, one on one side and one on the other, the one on the right hand being called God, and the one on the left Lord ; and that the middle di\inity, accompanied on each side by his powers, presents to the enlightened mind sometimes one image and sometimes three. He was thus the first Jewish writer that applied to the Deity the mystical notion of the Egyptians, that every thing perfect was of three parts. Philo's writings are chiefly religious, each beginning with a text of the Old Testa- ment ; • and they are valuable as showing the steps by which the philosophy of Greece may be traced from the writings of Plato to those of Justin Martjr and Clemens Alexandrinus. The}^ give us the earliest example of how the mystical interpretation of the Scriptures was formed into a system, by which every text was twisted to unfold some important philosophic or religious truth to the learned student, at the same time that to the unlearned reader it conveyed only the simple historic fact. His historical works are on the Therapeutse, the Jews' sufferings under Flaccus, and his own embassy to Rome. Philo's CHAP, xrii.] rniLO. Ill writings raised the school of Alexandria to the rank that it held under the first two Ptolemies. They unite to the religion of Moses all that is most valuable in the mioral philosophy of Plato, and show that the writer was only not a Christian. In the history of philosophy and of religion, the writings of Philo must always claim the student's most careful attention ; they explain how Platonism became united to Judaism, and again show us the point of agreement between the new Platonists and the Platonic Christians. (38) By this time the Hellenistic Jews, while suffering under severe political disabilities, had taken up a high literary position in Alexandria, and had forced their opinions into the notice of the Greeks. The glowing earnestness of their philosophy, now put forward in a Platonic dress, and their improved st3de, approaching even classic elegance, placed their writings on a lofty eminence far above anything which the cold lifeless grammarians of the IMuseum were then producing. The philosophers of the Museum had been beaten with their ovai weapons. For a centurj^ past the Greeks had ceased to think all foreigners barbarians ; they had been cultivating more and more an acquaintance with Eastern opinions, and the}^ were now forced to acknowledge the Jews as the first writers of the Alexandrian school. (39) Apion, who went to Rome to plead against Philo, was a native of the Great Oasis, but as he was born of Greek parents he claimed and received the title and privileges of an Alexan- drian, which he denied to the Jews who were born in ^ the city. He had studied under Didymus and Apol- lonius and Euphranor, and was one of the most laborious of the grammarians and editors of Homer. But we can feel ^, . . . ... Eustathius, little respect for the critic whose opinion is now only in Iliad. A. quoted for the proper place of a Greek accent. In Alexandria philosophy had fled from the museum, and taken shelter in the synagogue. All his writings are now lost. Some of them were attacks upon the Jews and their religion, calling in question the truth of the Jewish history and the 112 CALIGULA. A.D. 37—41. [chap, XIII. justice of that nation's claim to high antiquity ; and to these attacks we owe Josephus's Answer, in which several valu- able fragments of Pagan history are saved by being quoted A. Geliius, against the Pagans in support of the Old Testament. 111). V. 14. j-^-g ^rQj^i^g ^yas his Jilgyptiaca, an account of what he thought most curious in Egypt. But his learned trifling is now lost, and nothing remahis of it but his account of the meeting between Androclus and the lion, which took place in the amphitheatre at Kome, when Apion was there on his embassy. Androclus was a runaway slave, who when retaken was brought to Kome to be thrown before an African lion for the amusement of the citizens, and as a punishment for his flight. But the fierce and hungry beast, instead of tearing him to pieces, wagged his tail at him, and licked his feet. It seems that the slave, when he fled from his master, had gained the friendship of the lion in the Libyan desert, first by pulling a thorn out of his foot, and then by living three years with him in a cave ; and, when both were brought in chains to Rome, Androclus found a grateful friend in the amphitheatre where he thought to have met with a cruel death. (40) We may for a moment leave our history, to -bid a last farewell to the family of the Ptolemies. Augustus, after leading Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra and Antony, through Dion Cassi streets of Rome in his triumph, had given her in us, lib. xlii. marriage to the younger Juba, the historian of Africa; Strabo, ^ud about the same time he gave to the husband the hb. xviu kingdom of Mauritania, the inheritance of his fathers. Suetonius, His SOU Ptolemy succeeded him on the throne, but Vit. Calig. P 1 • 1 • 1 was soon turned out oi his kingdom. We trace this Inscrip!' last of the Ptolemies in his travels through Greece 4269, 360. ^^^^ ^g.^ Minor by the inscriptions remaining to his honour. The citizens of Xanthus in Lycia set up a monu- Pausanias i^^iit to him ; and at Athens his statue was placed lib. i. 17. beside that of Philadelphus in the gymnasium of Ptolemy, near the temple of Theseus, where he was honoured as of founder's kin. He was put to death without cause by OHAP. XIII.] THE LAST OF THE PTOLEMIES. 113 Caligula. Drusilla, another grandchild of Cleopatra Tacltns, and Anton}^, married Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judsea, after the death of his first wife, who was Acts, • xxiy 24 also named Drusilla. These are the last notices that we meet with of the royal family of Egypt. (41) As soon as the news of Caligula's death reached j^g^pi^^g Egypt, the joy of the Jews knew no hounds. They at Antiq. once flew to arms to revenge themselves on the Alex- andrians, whose streets were again the seat of civil war. The governor did what he could to quiet both parties, but was not wholly successful till the decree of the new emperor reached Alexandria. In this Claudius (see Fig. 46) again granted to the Jews the full rights of citizenship, which they had enjoyed under the Ptolemies, and which had been allowed by Augustus; he left them to choose their own high-priest, to enjoy their own religion without hindrance, and he repealed the laws of Caligula under which they had been groaning. At this time the josephus, Jewish alabarch in Egypt was Demetrius, a man of Antiq.xx.7 wealth and high birth, who had married Mariamne, the daughter of the elder Agrippa. (42) The government under Claudius was mild and just, at least as far as a government could be in which every tax- gatherer, every military governor, and every sub -prefect meant to enrich himself by his appointment. Every Roman officer, from the general down to the lowest tribune, claimed the right of travelling through the country free of expense, and seizing the carts and cattle of the villagers to carry him forward to the next town, under the pretence of being a courier on the public service. The temper of the peasants wag sorely tried by this tyranny; and difficult would they have found it to obey the command, * Whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile go with him twain.' But we have a decree of the ninth Hoskins's VOL. II. I 114 CLAUDIUS. A.D. 41—55. [OHAP. XIIT. Visit to year of this reign, carved on the temple in the Great Oasis, in which Cneius Capito, the prefect of Egypt, endeavours to put a stop to this injustice. He orders that no traveller shall have the privilege of a courier unless he has a proper warrant, and that then he shall only claim a free lodging ; that clerks in the villages shall keep a register of all that is taken on account of the public service ; and that if anybody make an unjust claim he shall pay four times the amount to the informer and six times the amount to the emperor. But royal decrees could do little or nothing in cities and provinces where there were no judges to enforce them ; and the people of the distant province of Upper Egypt must have felt this well-meant law as a cruel insult when they were told that if they were ill-used they might bring up their complaints to Basilides, the freedman of the emperor at Alexandria. The employment of the informer is a full acknowledgment of the weakness of this absolute government, and that the prefect had not the power to enforce his own decrees ; and, when we com- pare this law with that of Alexander on his conquest of the country, we have no difficulty in seeing why Egypt rose under the Ptolemies and sunk under the selfish policy of Augustus. (43) Claudius was somewhat of a scholar and an author ; he had studied history by the help, or at least by the advice, of Livy, and he wrote several volumes both in Greek and in Suetonius ^^^^n. The former he might perhaps think would be Vit. Claud, chiefly valued in Alexandria ; and when he founded a new college in that city, called after himself the Claudian Museum, he ordered that on given days every year his history of Carthage should be publicly read in one museum, and his history of Italy in the other ; thus securing during his reign an attention to his writings which their merits alone would not have gained. (44) Under the government of Claudius the Egyptians were Zoega again allowed to coin money ; and in his first year Numi begins that most rich and elegant series in which every coin is dated with the year of the emperor's reign. CHAP, xiri.] VOYAGE TO INDIA. 115 The coins of the Ptolemies were strictly Greek in their work- manship, and the few Egj^^tian characters that we see upon them are so much altered by the classic taste of the die- engraver that w^e hardty know them again. But it is much otherwise with the coins of the emperors; they are covered with the ornaments, characters, and religious ceremonies of the native Egyptians ; and, though the st3de of art is often bad, they are not equalled by any series of coins whatever in the service they render to the historian. (45) It was in this reign, in the time of the elder Pliny, that the route through Egypt to India first became really p^ny, known to the Greeks and Romans. The trade was ^- then so great that Pliny calculated the worth of gold and silver sent every year to the East at four hundred thousand pounds sterling, in exchange for which Egypt received back goods which in Rome were sold for one hundred times that amount. The merchants went up the Nile to Coptos, W' hence they travelled through the desert for two hundred and sixty miles to Berenice, the port on the Red Sea ; but, as this journey was made only by night to avoid the heat, and on camels' backs, it was not done in less than twelve days. From Berenice they set sail about the middle of July, when the dog-star rose with the sun, and in about thirty days reached either Ocelis, a town on the southern coast of Arabia, or Canes in the frankincense coimtry, on the eastern coast of Africa not far from the equator. Thence, trusting themselves to the trade wind, which had lately been discovered by a pilot named Hippalus, they boldly crossed the Arabian Sea, and reached Muziiis a port on the Malabar coast of India in forty days, or in the middle of September. They left India on their return at the end of December. The place on the Indian coast w^hich the Egyptian merchant vessels then reached is learnt from the coins found there ; and as we know the course of the trade wind by which they arrived w^e also know the part of Africa where they left the shore and braved the dangers of the ocean. A hoard of Roman gold coins of these reigns has been dug up in 116 CLAUDIUS. A.D. 41—55. [cnAr. X!ii. our own days near Calicut, under the roots of a Ban3^an tree. It tells its own tale. It had been there buried by an Alexandrian merchant on his arrival from this voyage, and left safe under the cover of the sacred tree to await his return from a second journey. But he died before his return, and his secret died with him. The whole voyage from Alexandria and back took rather less than a year. For the next fourteen hundred years this continued to be the route between Europe and India, till the voyage round the Cape of Good Hope was discovered by the Portuguese, and that important trade was overthrown in a moment : and, curious to remark, by an equally sudden change in our own days, by the invention of steam-boats, the Red Sea is again the route to India, and that country is now reached from England in half the time that it used to be reached from Berenice. The products of the Indian trade were chiefly silk, diamonds and other precious stones, ginger, spices, and some Pliny, lib. scents. The state of Ethiopia was then such that no VI. 34. trade came down the Nile to Syene ; and the produce of southern Africa was brought by coasting vessels to Berenice, the before-mentioned port on the Bed Sea. These products were ivory, rhinoceros teeth, hippopotamus skins, tortoise shell, apes, monkeys, and slaves. Codex The- i"^^) '^^^^ Romans in most cases collected the od. xii. 97. revenues of a province by means of a publican or farmer, to whom the taxes were let by auction ; but such was Pliny, lib. the importance of Eg^^^t that the same jealousy which made them think its government too great to be trusted to a man of high rank, made them think its revenues too large to be trusted to one farmer. The smaller branches of the Egyptian revenue were however let out as usual, and even the collection of the customs of the whole of the Red Sea was not thought too much to trust to one citizen. Annius Plocamus, who farmed them in this reign, had a little fleet under his command to collect them with ; and, tempted either by trade or plunder, his ships were sometimes as far out as the south coast of Arabia. On one occasion one of his freedmen CHAP. XIII.l THE PAPYRUS. 117 in tlie command of a vessel was carried by a north wind into the open ocean, and after being fifteen daj's at sea found himself on the coast of Ceylon. This island was not then wholly new to the geographers of Egypt and Europe. It had been heard of by the pilots in the voyage of Alexander the Great ; Eratosthenes had given it a place in his map ; and it had often been reached from Africa by the sailors of the Eed Sea in wickerwork boats made of papyrus ; but this was the first time it had been visited by an European. (47) In the neighbourhood of this above mentioned road from Coptos to Berenice were the porphyritic quarries and the emerald mines, which were brisldy worked under the inscript. emperor Claudius. The mountain was now named the Claudian mountain. (48) As this route for trade became known, the geographers began to understand the wide space that separates India from Africa. Hitherto, notwithstanding a few voyages of ^..^^^ discovery, it had been the common opinion that Persia Georg. iv. was in the neighbourhood of Ethiopia. The Greeks had thought that the Nile rose in India; in opposition joseptus, to the Jews who said that it was the river Gihon of f 1. 1. 4. the garden of Eden, which made a circuit round the Genesis, whole of the land of Cush, or Ethiopia. The names of these countries got misused accordingly ; and even after the mistake was cleared up we sometimes find Ethiopia called India. (49) Pliny, though perhaps he had never been in Egypt, gives us an account of many of the products of the , . . 1 . , • . . , Lib.xiii.22. country, and is very particular m his notice of the papyrus and its uses (see Fig. 47), that rush upon which he boasted, in the pride of authorship, that man's immortality rested. It was grown in the pools of stagnant water which were left after the overflow of the Nile. Its thick knotted roots were used as wood, both for making fires and for furni- ture ; and its graceful feathery head was often entwined round the statues of the gods as a garland. Wickerwork boats were woven out of its stalk, while of the bark were made sails, 118 CLAUDIUS. A.D. 41—65. [chap. Xlll. cordage, and cloth. It was chewed as food both raw and cooked, though the juice only was swallowed. Paper was called Saitic, from the city of Sais, near which it grew in greater quantity, hut of a still worse quality. A seventh called Leneotic, was nearer the bark, and so much worse as to be sold by weight. The eighth and last kind was the Emporetic, which was not good enough to write on, and was used in the shops to wrap up parcels. The first two were thirteen inches wide, the Hieratic eleven, the Fannian ten, the Ampitheatric nine, while the Emporetic was not more than six inches wide. After a time the best kinds were found too thin for books, as the writing on one side often made a blot through to the other ; and so in the reign of Claudius Ciesar a new kind was made, called the Claudian, in which the under course Pliny, lib. was of thicker strips of the plant. The linen and ^- cotton trades were both valuable ; the flax was grown chiefly in Lower Egj^pt near Tanis, Pelusium, and Butos; while the cotton was grown in Upper Egypt on the Arabic side Josephtis, of the Nile. Alexandria was also the granary for Antiq.xx.2. ^^le neighbouring countries, and when in the Fig. 47. made of it by splitting it into sheets as thin as possible, two courses of which were laid crosswise and glued together by the natural juice of the plant. The best kind had been called Hieratic paper, because it was used for the sacred books ; but in the time of Augustus two better kinds were made, which were named Augustan and Livian, after himself and his wife. A fourth and fifth of w^orse quality were called Fannian, from the name of a clever Roman maker, and Amphitheatric, from the name of the street in Rome where it was sold. A sixth kind was % CHAP. XIII.] CHEMISTRY— WINE. 119 beginnmg of this reign a great dearth and famine came over all Judaea, the authorities in Jerusalem, like Jacob of old, sent down to Egypt to buy corn, to relieve their starving poor. (50) The Egyptian chemists were able to produce very bright dyes, by methods then unknown to Greece or Eome. Timj, lib. They dipped the cloth first into a liquid of one coloui', called a mordant, to prepare it, and then into a liquid of a second colour ; and it came out dyed of a third colour, unlike either of the former. The ink with which they wrote the name of a deceased person on the mummy-cloth, like our own marking-ink, was made with nitrate of silver. Their know- ledge of chemistry was far greater than that of their neigh- bours, and the science is even now named from the country of its birth. The later Arabs called it Alchemia, the Egyptian art, and hence our words alchemy and chemistr3^ So also Naphtha, or rock oil, from the coast of the Eed Sea ; and Anthracite, or rock fuel, from the coast of Syria, both bear Egyptian names. To some Egyptian stones the Komans gave their own names ; as the black glassy obsidian from Nubia they Lib, xxxvi. called after Obsidius who found it ; the black Tibe- ^^^j rian marble with white spots, and the Augustan marble with regular wavy veins, were both named after the emperors. Porphyry was now used for statues for the first tune ; and sometimes to make a kind of patchwork figure in which the clothed parts were of the coloured stone while the head, hands and feet were of white marble. And it Lib.xxxvii. was thought that diamonds were no where to be found but in the Ethiopian gold mines. (51) Several kinds of wine were made in Egypt ; some in the Arsinoite nome on the banks of the lake IMoeris j and gtrabo a poor Libyan wine at Antiphrse on the coast, a hundred miles from Alexandria. Wine had also been made in Upper Egypt in small quantities time out of mind, as Athenseus, we learn from the monuments ; but it was grown with ^• di£&culty and cost and was not good ; it was not valued by the Greeks. It was poor and thin, and drunk only by those who 120 CLAUDIUS. A.D. '11—55. [CHAr. XIII. were feverish and afraid of anything stronger. That of Anthylla, to the east of Alexandria, was Yevy much better. But better still were the thick luscious Tjeniotic and the mild delicate Marasotic wines. This last was first grown at Plin- tliine, but afterwards on all the banks of the lake Marseotis. The Marieotic wine was white, and sweet and thin, and very Carmina, I. little heating or intoxicating. Horace had carelessly xxxvii. 14. gg^-^ q£ Cleopatra that she was drunk with Marseotic Lib. X. 161. wine; but Lucan, who better knew its quality, says Pliny, that the head- strong lady drank wine far stronger lib. XIV. 9. ^Yir^^-i the Maraiotic. Near Sebennytus three kinds of wine were made ; one bitter named Pence, a second sparkling named Ji^thalon, and the third Thasian, from a vine imported from Thasus. But none of these Egyptian wines were thought equal to those of Greece and Italy. Nor were they made in ^ quantities large enough or cheap enough for the poor ; and here as in other countries the common people for their intoxicating drink used beer or spirits made from barley. Juvenal, l'^^® Egyptian sour wine however made very good Sat.xiii.85. vinegar, and it was then exported for sale in Kome. (52) The foreign wines were imported into Alexandria in tall Stoddart,in naiTow earthen jars, with two handles and no foot. Lit' voL (^^^ ^'^g- ^^-^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ greater part of this pottery was i""- made in the island of Rhodes where very little wine was grown ; but many of the wine districts made their own wine jars. The names stamped upon the broken handles found among the rubbish of ancient Alexandria prove that its citizens drank wine from Corinth in Greece, and Cnidus in Caria, from the islands of Crete, Cyprus, Thasus, and Chios, from Apamea on the Orontes, and from a large district on the southern coast of the Black Sea, as well as Fig' 48. fi'oni Sicily and other places nearer to Rhodes that exported their wine in the Rhodian jars. (53) During this half century that great national work the lake of Moeris, by which thousands of acres had been flooded CHAP. XIII.] LAKE OF MGERIS DESTROYED. 121 and made fertile, and the watering of the lower country regulated, was through the neglect of the embankments at once destroyed. The latest traveller who mentions . Lib. V. 9. it IS Strabo, and the latest geographer Pomponius Mela. By its means the province of Arsinoe was made one of the most fruitful and beautiful spots in Egypt. Here only does the olive grow wild. Here the vine will grow. And by the help of this embanked lake the province was made yet more fruitful. But before Pliny wrote the bank had oiven I'liiiy* . ^ lib. xxxvi. way, the pent-up waters had made for themselves a 16. channel into the lake now called Birket el Keiroun, and the Fig. 49. two small pyramids, which had hitherto been surrounded by water, then stood on dry ground. Thus was the country slowly going to ruin by the faults of the government, and ignorance in the foreign rulers. But on the other hand the beauti- Wilkinson, ful temple of Latopolis which had been begun under the Ptolemies, was finished in this reign ; and bears the name of Claudius with those of some later emperors on its portico and walls. (See Fig. 49.) The columns are most massive, and as elegant as they are grand. The capitals are, some copied from palm leaves and some from papyrus flowers. The temple was dedicated to the god Kneph ; but in this city a gtrabo, sacred fish also received the worship of the inhabitants. 122 CLAUDIUS. A.D. 41—55. [chap, XIII. (54) In the Egyptian language the word for a year is Bait, which is also the name of a bird. In hieroglyphics this word is spelt by a Palm-branch Bai and the letter T, followed some- times by a circle as a picture of the year. (See Fig. ^ jl^ 50.) Hence arose among a people fond of mystery 4 and allegory a mode of speaking of the year under the name of a palm-branch or of a bird ; and they Fig. 50. formed a fable out of a mere confusion of words. The Greeks, who were not slow to copy Egyptian mysticism, called this fabulous bird the Phoenix from their own name for the palm-tree. The end of any long period of time they called the return of the phoenix to earth. The Romans borrowed the fable, though perhaps without understanding the Aurelius allegory ; and in the seventh year of this reign, when ClaucUi.^^** the emperor celebrated the secular games at Rome, at A.D. 47. the end of the eighth century since the city was built, it was said that the phoenix had come to Egypt and was thence brought to Rome. This was in the consulship of Plautius and Pliny, Vitellius ; and it would seem to be only from mistakes lib. X. 2. ij^g name that Pliny places the event eleven years Annal, earlier, in the consulship of Plautius and Papinius, hb. VI. 28. ^j^^i ^Yiat Tacitus places it thirteen years earlier in the consulship of Fabius and Vitellius. This fable is here of no importance ; but, as on other occasions it is connected with some of the remarkable epochs in Egyptian history, it is as well that no mention of it by the historians should be passed by without notice. The story of the Phcenix lost nothing by travelling to a distance. In Rome it was said that Clemens ^ ^ Romanus, this wonderful bird was a native of Arabia where it Epist. Cor. -^^g^ ^^^^ hundred years, that on its death a gTub came out of its body which in due time became a perfect bird ; and that the new phoenix brought to Egypt the bones of its parent in the nest of spices in which it had died, and laid them on the altar in the temple of the sun in Heliopolis. It then returned to Arabia to live in its turn for five hundred years, and die and give life again to another as before. The Christians CUAP. XIII.] THE JEWS REBEL. 123 saw in this story a type of the resurrection ; and Clement bishop of Eome quotes it as such in his Epistle to the Corinthians. (55) We find the name of Claudius on several of the temples of Upper Egypt, particularly on that of ApoUinopolis Wilkinson, Magna, and on the portico of the great temples of Latopolis, which were being built in this reign. Fig, 51. (56) In the beginning of the reign of Nero, (see Fig. 51) an Egyptian Jew, who claimed to be josephus, listened to as a prophet, raised the ^^13''^^^* minds of his countrymen into a ferment of religious zeal by preaching about the sufferings of their brethren in Judaea; and he was able to get together a body of men, called in reproach the Sicarii, Acts, xxi. or ruffians, whose numbers are variously stated at four thousand and thirty thousand, whom he led out of Egj^pt to free the holy city from the bondage of the heathen. But Felix the Eoman governor led against them the garrison of Jerusalem, and easily scattered the half-armed rabble. By such acts of religious zeal on the part of the Jews they Bell. Jud. were again brought to blows with the Greeks of Alex- andria. The Macedonians, as the latter still called themselves, had met in pubhc assembly to send an embassy to Rome, and some Jews who entered the meeting, which as citizens they had a full right to do, were seized and ill-treated by them as spies. They would perhaps have even been put to death if a large body of their countrymen had not run to their rescue. The Jews attacked the assembled Greeks with stones and lighted torches, and would have burned the amphitheatre and all that were in it, if the prefect, Tiberius Alexander, had not sent some of the elders of their own nation to calm theii' angry feelings. But though the mischief was stopped for a time, it soon broke out again ; and the prefect was forced to call out the garrison 124 NERO. A.D. 55—68. [chap, xiir. of two Roman legions and five thousand Libj^ans before he could re-establish peace in the cit}^ The Jews were alwaj^s the greatest sufferers in these civil broils ; and Josephus says that fifty thousand of his countrymen w^ere left dead in the streets of Alexandria. But this number is very improbable, as the prefect was a friend to the Jewish nation, and as the Roman legions were not withdrawn to the camp till they had guarded the Jews in carrying away and burying the bodies of their friends. (57) It was a natural policy on the part of the emperors to change a prefect whenever his province was disturbed by rebellion, as we have seen in the case of Flaccus, who was recalled by Caligula. It was easier to send a new governor ~ ., than to inquire into a wrong or to redress a grievance ; J. acituSj Annal. xiii. and accordingly in the next year C. Balbillus was A.D. 56. sent from Rome as prefect of Egypt. He is praised Nat.Qurest. by Seneca as an elegant and learned writer; but his IV. 13. history of Egypt is now lost. We only learn from it that crocodiles, which are now not often seen below the Thebaid, were then still common in the Delta ; Balbillus fancied that he saw them fighting with the dolphins in the Pliny^ Heracleotic mouth of the Nile. He reached Alex- hb. XIX. 1. on the sixth day after leaving the Straits of Sicily, which was spoken of as the quickest voyage known. (58) The Alexandrian sliips were better built and better manned than any others, and, as a greater number of vessels sailed every year between that port and Puteoli on the coast of Italy than between any other two places, no voyage was better understood or more quickly performed. They were out of sight of land for five hundred miles between Syracuse and Cyrene. Hence w^e see that the quickest rate of sailing, with a fair wind, was at that time about one hundred and fifty miles in the twenty-four hours. But these ships had very little power of bearing up against the wind; and if it were contrary the voyage became tedious. They had two masts. The mainmast carried a large square mainsail, and sometimes a small topsail. CHAP. XIII.] THE VOYAGE TO ITALY. 125 The foremast carried a small square foresail. (See Fig. 52.) If the captain on sailing out of the port of Alexandria found the wind westerly and was unable to creep along the African ^^tg^ coast to Cyrene, he stood over to the coast of Asia Minor, in hopes of there finding a more favourable wind. If a storm arose, he ran into the nearest port, perhaps in Crete, perhaps in Malta, there to wait the return of fair weather. If winter then came on, he had to lie by till spring. Thus a vessel laden with Egyptian wheat, leaving Alexandria in September, after the harvest had been brought down to the coast, would sometimes spend five months on its voyage from that port to PuteoH. Such w^as the case with the ship bearing the children of Jove as its figure-head, which picked up the apostle josephus, Paul and the historian Josephus when they had been ^ wrecked together on the island of Malta; and such perhaps would have been the case with the ship which they before found on the coast of Lycia, had it been able to reach a safe harbour, and not been wrecked at Malta. (59) The rocky island of Malta, with the largest and safest harbour in the Mediterranean, was a natural place for ships to touch at between Alexandria and Italy. Its population was made up of those races which had sailed upon its waters first from Carthage and then from Alexandria ; it was a mixture of Phenicians, Egyptians, and Greco-Egyptians. To judge from the skulls turned up in the burial-places, the Egyptians were the most numerous, and here as elsewhere the Egyptian superstitions conquered and put down all the other super- 126 NERO. A.D. 55—68. [chap. XIII. stitions. While the island was under the Phenicians the coins had the head of the Sicilian goddess on one side, and on the other the Egyptian trinity of Isis, Osiris, and Nepthys. (See Fig. 53.) When it was under the Greek rule the head on the coins received an Egyptian head-dress, and became that of the goddess Isis, and on the other side of the coin was a winged Acts, figure of Osiris. It was at this time governed by a xxviu. 7. j^Qi^an governor. The large temple built with bar- Overland ^a^ia^ rudeness, and ornamented with the Phenician Journey, palm-branch, was on somewhat of a Eoman plan, with a circular end to every room. (See Fig. 54.) But it was Fig. 54. dedicated to the chief god of Egj^pt, and is even yet called by its Greek name Hagia Chem, the temple of Chem. Such is nearly all that is known of the early history of Malta. The little neighbouring island of Cossyra between Sicily and CHAP. XIII.] THE ISLAND OF. MALTA. 127 Carthage also shows upon its coins clear traces of its taste for Egyptian customs. (See Fig. 55.) Fig. 55. (60) The first five years of this reign, the quinquennium Neronis, while the emperor was under the tutorship of Aurelius the philosopher Seneca, became in Eome proverbial for good government, and on the coinage we see marks ^^^^ of Egypt being equally well treated. In the third year ^sypt- we see on a coin the queen sitting on a throne with the -^-d. 58. word agreement, cis if to praise the young emperor's good feeling in following the advice of his mother Agrippina. On another the emperor is styled the young good genius, and he is represented by the sacred basilisk crowned with the double crown of Egypt. The new prefect Balbillus was an j^g^^..^^ Asiatic Greek, and no doubt received his Roman ap. Boeckh. names of Tiberius Claudius on being made a freedman of the late emperor. He governed the country mildly and justly ; and the grateful inhabitants declared that Idem. 4699. under him the Nile was more than usually bountiful, and that its waters always rose to their just height. But in the latter part of the reign the Egyptians smarted severely under that cruel principle of a despotic monarchy that every prefect, every sub-prefect, and even every deputy tax-gatherer, might be equally despotic in his own department. On a coin of the thirteenth year we see a ship with the word emperor -hearer, being that in which he then sailed into Greece, or in which the Alexandrians thought that he would visit their city. (See Fig. 56.) But if they had really hoped for his visit as a pleasure, 128 NERO. A.D. 55—08. [chap. XIII. they must have thought it a danger escaped when they learned Dion. Cass. ^^^^ character ; they must have been undeceived when hb. 1x111. ^YiQ prefect Crecinna Tuscus was punished with banish- ment for venturing to bathe in tlie bath which was meant for the emperor's use if he had come. Fig. 50. (Gl) During the first century and a half of Roman sway in Egypt the school of Alexandria was nearly silent. The professors were still followed by numerous pupils, who, after taking lessons in rhetoric at Rome, and perhaps studying philosophy at Athens, might for some time sit under a gram- Anthologia marian at Alexandria ; but we meet with no author of Grseca. note. We have a few poems by Leonides of Alex- andria, one of which is addressed to the empress Poppsea, as the wife of Jupiter, on his presenting a celestial globe to her on Photius., her birthda3^ Pamphila wrote a miscellaneous history cod. cixxv. ^£ entertaining stories, and her lively simple style makes Suida?. ^^^^^^ much regret its loss. Her Commentaries on the philosophers are often quoted by Diogenes Laertius. Chseremon, a Stoic philosopher, had been, during the last reign at the head of the Alexandrian library, but he was removed to ^ . . Rome as one of the tutors to the vounj? Nero. He is hpigr. XI. ^ S''- ridiculed by Martial for writing in praise of death, Ap. Por- -when from age and poverty he was less able to enjoy phyr. De abstinen. life. We still possess a most curious though short account by him of the monastic habits of the ancient Egj^ptians; but his astronomical writings are lost, and they Lib. xvii. "^^'^^^ probably worth but little, as he is laughed at by Ap Tzetz. Strabo for writing on the subject. He also wrote on in Iliad. Hieroglyphics, and a small fragment containing his CHAP. XIII.] CHRISTIANITY. 129 opinion of the meanings of nineteen characters still remains to us. But he is not always right ; he thinks the characters were used allegorically for thoughts, not for sounds ; and fancies that the priests used them to keep secret the real nature of the gods. (62) He was succeeded at the Museum by his pupil Dionysius, who had the charge of the library till the ^^.^^^^ reign of Trajan. Dionysius was also employed by the prefect as a secretary of state, or in the language of- the day, secretary to the embassies, epistles, and answers. He w^as the author of the Periegesis, and aimed at the rank of a poet by writing a treatise on geography in heroic verse. From this work he is named Dionysius Periegetes. "While careful to remind us, on the one hand, that Pelusium was an Asiatic city of Phenician sailors, and, on the other, that his birth-place Alexandria was a Macedonian city, he gives due honour to Egypt and the Egyptians. There is no river, says he, equal to the Nile for carr}ing fertility and adding to the happiness of the land. It divides Asia from Libya, falling between rocks at Syene, and then passing by the old and famous city of Thebes, where Memnon every morning salutes his beloved Aurora as she rises. On its banks dwells a rich and glorious race of men, who were the first to cultivate the arts of life ; the first to make trial of the plough and sow their seed in a straight furrow ; and the first to map the heavens and trace the sloping path of the sun. (63) If we may trust to the traditions of the church, j-^ggi^j^g it was in this reign that Christianity was first brought Eccl.^Hist. into Egypt by the evangelist Mark, the disciple of the apostle Peter. Many were already craving for religious food more real than the old superstitions. The Egyptian had been shaken in his attachment to the sacred animals by Greek ridicule. The Greek had been weakened in his belief of old Homer's gods by living with men who had never heard of them. Both were tired of worshipping the stones that they had shaped with their own hands. Both were dissatisfied with 130 NERO. A.D. 00—68. [chap. XIII. the scheme of explaining the actions of their gods b}^ means of allegoiy. The crumbling away of the old opinions left men more fitted to receive the new religion from Galilee. Mark's preaching converted crowds in Alexandria ; but after a short stay he returned to Rome, in about the eleventh year of this reigii, leaving Annianus to watch over the growing church. Annianus is usually called the first bishop of Alexandria ; and Eusebius, who lived two hundred years later, has given us the names of his successors in an unbroken chain. If we would inquire whether the early converts to Christianity in Alexandria were Jews, Greeks, or Egyptians, we have nothing to guide us Eutychii ^^"^^ the names of these bishops. Annianus, or Anna- Annales. -j^^q}! as liis name was written by the Arabic historians, was most likely a Jew ; indeed the evangelist Mark would begin by addressing himself to the Jews, and would leave the care of the infant church to one of his own nation. In the Platonic Jews, Christianity found a soil so exactly suited to its reception that it is only by the dates that the Therapeutae of Alexandria and their historian Philo are proved not to be Christian ; and, again, it was in the close union between the Platonic Jews and the Platonists that Christianity found its easiest path to the ears and hearts of the pagans. The bishops that followed seem to have been Greek converts. Before the death of Annaniah, Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Eoman armies, and the Jews sunk in their o^n eyes and in those of their fellow- citizens throughout the empii'e ; hence the second bishop of Alexandria was less likely to be of Hebrew blood ; and it was long before any Egyptians aimed at rank in the church. But though the spread of Christianity was rapid, both among the Greeks and the Eg}^tians, we must not hope to find any early traces of it in the historians. It was at first embraced by the unlearned and the poor, whose deeds and opinions are seldom mentioned in history ; and we may readily believe the scornful reproach of the unbelievers, that it was chiefly received by the unfortunate, the unhappy, the despised, and the sinful. 'NYhen the white-robed priestesses of Ceres CHAP. XIII.] CHRISTIANITY. 131 carried tlie sacred basket thronii,ii the streets of ^ , ^ Calhma- Alexandria they cried out, ' Sinners awaj^ or keep chus, in ' 3^our eyes to the ground ; keep your eyes to the * ground ! ' When the crier, standing on the steps of Celsus, ap. the portico in front of the great temple, called upon the pagans to come near and join in the celebration of their mysteries, he cried out, ' All ye who are clean of hands and * pure of heart, come to the sacrifice ; all ye ^Yho are guiltless * in thought and deed, come to the sacrifice.' But many a repentant sinner and humble spirit must have drawn back in distrust from a summons which to him was so forbidding, and been glad to hear the Good Tidings of God's mercy offered by Christianity to those who labour and are heav}^ laden, and to the broken-hearted who would turn away from their wicked- ness. While such were the chief followers of the Gospel, it w^as not likely to be much noticed by the historians ; and we must wait till it forced its way into the schools and the palace before we shall find many traces of the rapidity with which it was spreading. (64) During these reigns the Ethiopian Arabs kept up their irregular warfare against the southern frontier. The tribe most dreaded were the Blemmyes, an uncivilised people, Dionysius described by the affrighted neighbours as having no -p^^^^' heads, but with eyes and mouth on the breast ; and lib. v. 8. it was under that name that the Arabs spread during each century further and further into Egypt, separating the province from the more cultivated tribes of Upper Ethiopia or Meroe. The cities along the banks of the Nile in Lower Ethiopia, between Nubia and Meroe, were ruined by being in the debate - able land between the two nations. The early Greek travellers had counted about twenty cities on each side of the Nile between Syene and Meroe ; but when, in a moment of leisure, the Roman government proposed to punish and stop the inroads of these troublesome neighbours, and sent forward a tribune with a guard of soldiers, he reported on his return that the whole country was a desert, and that there was K 2 132 NERO. A.D. 55-63. [chap. XIII. scarce!}" a city inhabited on eitlier side of tlie Nile bej^ond Lucanus, Nubia. But he had not marched very far. The hb. X. 190. iiiterior of Africa was then as little known as now. To seek for the fountains of the Nile was another name for an impossible task ; and, though modern travellers have already pushed so far back as to learn that it is one of the longest rivers in the world, the chief mountains in which it rises still remain closed against us by the same difficulties, the uncivilised habits of the Arabs. (Go) But Egypt itself was so quiet as not to need the Josephus, Bell. Jud. presence of so large a Eoman force as usual to keep it ^' in obedience ; and when Vespasian, who commanded Nero's armies in Syria, found the Jews more obstinate in their rebellion and less easily crushed than he expected, the emperor sent the young Titus to Alexandria, to lead to his father's assistance all the troops that could be spared. Titus led into Palestine through Arabia two legions, the Fifth and the Tenth, which were then in Egypt ; and accordingly we find him described in the book of Eevelation as the second beast with two horns that came up against Judaea by land, while Vespasian, now in command of parts of ten legions, is the first beast with ten horns that came up out of the sea. (60) We find a temple of this reign in the Oasis of Dakleh, Wilkinson, ^r the Western Oasis, which seems to have been a Thebes. more flourishing spot in the time of the Eomans than when Egypt itself was better governed. It is so far removed from the cities in the valley of the Nile that its position, and even existence, was long unknown to Europeans, and to such hiding-places as this many of the Egyptians fled, to be further from the tyranny of the Roman tax-gatherers. CHAPTER XIV. THE REIGNS OF GALEA, OTHO, VITELLIUS, VESPASIAN, TITUS, AND DOmTIAN. A.D. 68 — 97. (1) Hitherto tlie Eoman empii'e had descended for just one hundred years through five emperors like a family riia^.j^^g inheritance ; but on the death of Nero the Julian and Hist. lib. i. Claudian families were at an end, and Galba, who was raised to the purple by the choice of the soldiers, endea- voiu'ed to persuade the Eomans and their dependent provinces that they had regained their liberties. The Egyptians ^oecra may have been puzzled by the word freedom, then Numi -3ilgypt. struck upon the coins by their foreigTi masters, but must have been pleased to find it accompanied with a redress of grievances. (2) Galba began his reign with the praiseworthy endeavour of repairing the injustice done by liis cruel predecessor. He at once recalled the prefect of 'Egypt, and appointed in his place Tiberius Julius Alexander, an Alexandrian, a son of the former prefect of that name ; and thus Egypt was under the government of a native prefect. The peaceable situation of the Great Oasis, withdrawn from many of those tumults which have in other places overthrown temples and destroyed records, has saved a long Greek inscription of the decree which jjog^j-j^g^g was now issued in redress of the erievances suffered Visit to Oasis. under Nero. It is a proclamation by Julius Demetrius, the commander of the Oasis, quoting the decree of Tiberius Julius Alexander, the new prefect of Egj^pt. (3) The prefect acknowledges that the loud complaints with 134 GALEA. A.D. GS. [chap. XIV. which he was met on entering upon his government were w^ell founded, and he promises tliat the unjust taxes shall cease ; that nohody shall he forced to act as a provincial tax-gatherer ; that no dehts shall he cancelled or sales made void under the plea of money owing to the revenue ; that no freeman shall he thrown into prison for deht, unless it he a deht due to the royal revenue, and that no private debt shall be made over to the tax-gatherer to be by him collected as a public debt ; that no property settled on the wife at marriage shall be seized for taxes due from the husband ; and that all new charges and claims which had grown up within the last five years shall be repealed. In order to discourage informers, whom in the weakness of their government the prefects had much employed, and by w^hom the families in Alexandria were much harassed, and to whom he laid the great falling off in the population of that city, he orders, that if anybody should make three charges and fail in proving them, he shall forfeit half his property and lose the right of bringing an action at law. The land had always paid a tax in proportion to the number of acres over- flowed and manured by the waters of the Nile; and the husbandmen had latterly been frightened by the double threat of a new measurement of the land, and of making it at the same time pay according to the ancient registers of the over- flow when the canals had been more open and more acres flooded; but the prefect promises that there shall be no new- measurement, and that they shall only be taxed according to the actual overflow. (4) But Galba's reign was short. An ambitious general, raised to the throne by the bought or even unbought choice of the army, has always been found less able to secure the obedi- ence of his subjects than those princes who gamed their rank by the accident of birth. The power that made is tempted to unmake ; and thus Galba was murdered after a reign of seven months. Some of his coins, however, are dated in the second year of his reign, according to the Alexandrian custom of counting the years. They called the j29th of August, the first CHAP. XIV.] OTHO— VITELLIUS. 135 new-year's day after the sovereign came to the throne, the lirst day of his second year. (See Fig. 57.) Fig. 57. (5) On his death, Otho was acknowledged as emperor by Kome and the East, while the hardy legions of Ger- ^p^^-^^g many thought themselves entitled to choose for them- Hist. i. ii. selves, and they set up their own general Vitellius. The two legions in Egypt sided with the four legions in Syria mider Mucianus, and the three legions which under Vespasian were carrying on the memorable war against the Jews ; and all took the oaths to Otho. We find no hieroglj^phical ^ogcra inscriptions durine; this short rei^n of a few weeks, but Numi there are many Alexandrian coins to prove the truth of the historian ; and some of them, like those of Galba, bear the unlooked-for word freedom. (6) In the few weeks which then passed between the news of Otho's death and of Vespasian's being raised to the purple in Syria, Vitellius was acknowledged in Eg}^ot ; and the Alexandrian mint struck a few coins in his name wdth the figure of Victory. But as soon as the legions of Egypt heard that the Syrian army had made choice of another emperor, they withdrew their .allegiance from Vitellius, and promised it to his Syrian rival. (7) Vespasian was at Csesarea, in command of the army employed in the Jewish war, when the news reached ^ i. ' Josepnus, him that Otho was dead, and that Vitellius had been Bell. Jud. raised to the purple by the German legions and acknowledged at Eome ; and, without wasting more time in .refusing the honour than was necessary to prove that his 136 VESPASIAN, A.D. GO— 79. [chap. XIV. soldiers were in earnest in offering it, he allowed himself to be proclaimed emperor, as the successor of Otho. He would not, however, then risk a march upon Rome, but he sent to Alex- andria to tell Tiberius Alexander, the governor of Eg}'pt, what he had done ; he ordered him to claim in his name the allegiance of that great province, and added that he should soon be there himself. The two Eoman legions in Egypt much preferred the choice of the eastern to that of the western arm}^, and the Alexandrians, who had onl}^ just acknowledged Vitellius, readily took the oath to be faithful to Vespasian. This made it less necessary for him to hasten thither, and he only reached Alexandria in time to hear that Vitellius had been murdered after a reign of eight months, and that he ^ ^ himself had been acknowledged as emperor by Eome Numi and the western legions. His Egj^ptian coins in the -^gypt. ^^^^^ ^£ -^^^ reign, by the word 2^e(ice, point to the end of the civil war. Phiiostra- When Vespasian (see Fig. 58) entered Alexandria, uis,^Vit. lie was met by the philosophers and magis- trates in great pomp. The philosophers indeed, in a city where beside the officers of govern- ment talent formed the only aristocracy^, were a very important body ; and Dion, Euphrates, and Apollo- nius had been useful in securmg for Vespasian the allegiance of the Alexandrians. Dion was an orator, who had been professor of rhetoric, but he had given up that study for philosophy. His orations, or rather declamations, written to be spoken in tlie schools, many of which have, come down to us, gained for him the name of Chrysostome, or golden'inoutlied. But as they were written to be read before a class of admiring pupils, not to be spoken before a noisy assembly of citi- zens, they have no warmth or earnestness, and are more fitted to teach the figures of speech than to change the lot of kiugdoms. An audience of learned critics did not call forth the efforts of the orator like a crowd of rude politicians, CHAP. XIV.] APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 137 Epist. i. 10. whose attention could be gained only .by the speaker's skill. Euphrates, his friend, was a Platonist, who afterwards Ennapius, married the daughter of the prefect of Syria, and ^^"o^^- removed to Rome. There his talents and virtues gained him the friendship of the younger Pliny, who admired his philo- sophic garb, his mild but reverend countenance, his uncut hair, and long white beard, and quoted him as a proof of the healthy state of the liberal studies in Eome. ApoUonius of Tyana, the most celebrated of these phiiostra- philosophers, was one of the first who gained his eminence from the study of Eastern philosophy, which was then rising in the opinions of the Greeks as highly worth their notice. He had been travelling in the East ; and, boasting that he was already master of all the fabled wisdom of the Magi of Babylon and of the Gjmmosophists of India, he was come to Egypt to compare this mystic philosophy with that of the hermits of Ethiopia and the Thebaid. Addressing himself as a pupil to the priests, he willingly yielded his belief to their mystic claims ; and, whether from being deceived or as a deceiver, whether as an enthusiast or as a cheat, he pretended to have learned all the supernatui'al knowledge which they By the Egyptians he was looked upon as the favourite of heaven : he pretended to teach. claimed the power of working miracles by his magical arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledge of astrology. In the Thebaid he was so far honoured that at the Eusebius, bidding of the priests ^nTeroci. one of the sacred trees ^i- spoke to him, as had been their custom from of old with favourites (see Fig. 59), and in a clear and rather womanly voice addressed him as a teacher from heaven ; and, if we could believe the marvellous stories told of him by his biographer, we should not wonder at 138 VESPASIAN. A.D. 09—79. [chap. XIV, Hierocles and other pagans comparing his mii'acles to those of Jesus. So easy was the working of miracles then thought, that his pretensions were scarcely doubted by those even who had the good sense to see the falseness of liis philosophy; and by the writer of the Book of Eevelation, when Ch.xix.20. _ . . . . Vespasian is called the Beast, Apollonius is called the false prophet that wrought miracles in the presence of the Beast. Apollonius had before visited Tarsus, Antioch, and 2 Thess., Ephesus, about the time that the apostle Paul was u. 3, 4. preaching in those cities ; and he was probably the impostor whom the apostle speaks of as the man of sin, who was opposing and exalting himself against everything that ought to be revered, and whose tricks were soon to be laid bare. (9) It was to witness such superstitious practices as these, and to learn the art of deceiving their followers, that the Egyptian priests were now consulted by the Greeks. The Juvenal, Oracle at Delphi was silent, but the oracle of Ammon Sat. VI. 553. continued to return an answer. The mystic philo- sophy of the East had come into fashion in Alexandria, and the priests were more celebrated as magicians than as philo- sophers. They would tell a man's fortune and the XXXV.' 36. year that he was to die by examining the lines of his Apuleius ^oi'ehead. Some of them even undertook, for a sum of Metam. money, to raise the dead to life, or rather to recall for a time to earth the unwilling spiiits, and make them answer any questions that might be put to them. Ventrilo- quism, or speaking as if from the stomach "without Leviticus, . . ^ . . xix. 31. moving the face or lips, was an art often practised m ap. ixx. Egypt, and perhaps invented there. By this the priests gained a power over the minds of the cheated listeners, and could make them believe that a tree, a statue, or a dead body, was speaking to them. Their pretended miracles were so common, so little thought of, and yet so little disbelieved even by the Christians in a superstitious age when the ordinai-y coui'se of nature was but little understood, that St. Jerome CHAP. XIV.] PRETENDED MIRACLES. 139 remarks, that miracles prove nothing, either for or Psaim. against the truth of a religion ; they had been brought forward as successfully by pagans as by Jews or Christians, and had lost their weight as arguments. (10) The Alexandrian men of letters seldom erred by wrap- ping themselves up in pride to avoid the fault of meanness ; they usually cringed to the gi*eat. ApoUonius was wholly at the service of Vespasian, and the emperor repaid the philosopher by flattery as well as by more solid favours. He kept him always by his side during his stay in Egypt; he acknowledged his rank as a prophet, and tried to make fmiher use of him in persuadrug the Egyptians of his own divine right to the throne. Vespasian begged him to make use of his prayers Eusebius, that he might obtain from God the empire which he Hierod had as yet hardly grasped ; but ApoUonius, claiming ^i^- even a liigher mission from heaven than Vespasian was granting to him, answered with as much arrogance as flattery, ' I have * myself already made you emperor.' With the intimacy between Vespasian and ApoUonius begins the use of gnostic emblems on the Alexandiian coins. The imperial pupil was not slow in learning from such a master ; and the people were as ready to believe in the emperor's miracles as in the phUo- sopher's. As Vespasian w^as walking through the Tacitus, streets of Alexandria, a man well known as having 2ist.lib.iv. a disease in his eyes threw himself at his feet, and begged of him to heal his blindness. He had been told by the god Serapis that he should regain his sight if the emperor would but deign to spit upon his eyelids. Another man, who had lost the use of a hand, had been told by the same god that he should be healed if the emperor would but trample on him with his feet. Vespasian at first laughed at them and thrust them off; but at last he so far yielded to theii^ prayers, and to the flattery of his friends, as to have the physicians of Alexandria consulted whether it was in his power to heal these unfortunate men. The physicians, like good courtiers, were not so unwise as to think it impossible; besides, it 140 VESPASIAN. A.D. 69—79. [chap. XIV. seemed meant by tlie god as a public proof of Vespasian's right to the throne ; if he were successful the glory would be his, and if he failed the laugh would be against the cripples. The two men were therefore brought before him, and in the face of the assembled citizens he trampled on one and spit on the other ; and his flatterers declared that he had healed the maimed and given sight to the blind. (11) Vespasian met with further wonders when he entered the temple of Serapis to consult the god as to the state and fortunes of the empire. He went into the inner sanctuary alone, and to his surprise there he beheld the old Basilides, the freedman of Claudius, one of the chief men of Alexandria, who he knew was then lying dangerously ill, and several days' journey from the city. He inquired of the priests whether Basilides had been in the temple, and was assured that he had not. He then asked whether he had been in Alexandria ; but nobody had seen him there. Lastly, on sendmg messengers, he learned that he was on his death-bed eighty miles off. "With this miracle before his eyes, he could not distrust the answers which the priests gave to his questions. Josephus ^-^^^ From Alexandria Vespasian sent back Titus to Bell. Jud. Judaea to finish the siege of Jerusalem. Titus led his iv. 11. . ^ troops two miles and a-half to Nicopolis, and there embarking on the canal sailed along the branches of the river to Thmuis, near Mendes. From thence his first day's march was to Tanis, his second to Heracleum, his third to Pelusium, where he crossed the river, his fourth through the desert to Cassium, his fifth to Ostracene, where he was met with a supply of water, his sixth to Rhinocolura, and his seventh to Eaphia the border town, where he entered Palestine. (13) The Jewish writer Joseph the son of Matthias, or Flavins Josephus as he called himself w^hen he entered the service of the emperor, was then in Alexandria, He had been taken prisoner by Vespasian, but had gained his freedom by the betrayal of his country's cause; and he joined the army of Titus and marched to the overthrow of Jerusalem, and of the CHAP. XIV.] TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM DESTROYED. 141 Temple in which his forefathers had served as high jog^pi^^g^ priests. The upper city was defended by Simon ; Bell. Jud. and the temple and lower parts by John. These were i^evel.cliap. the two mtnesses of the Book of Kevelation. But ^i- 3- unfortunately they quarrelled with one another ; and notwith- standing the obstinate and heroic struggles of the Jews, ^ ^ Judaea was wholly conquered by the Romans, and Jeru- salem and its other fortresses either received Roman garrisons or were dismantled. The Temple was overthrown in Origen., the month of September, and withm forty-two years, l^^' savs Orio'en, of the crucifixion. Titus made slaves of Josephus, . , -. ^-,111 BelL Jud. nmety-seven thousand men, many ot whom he led lib. vii. lo. with him into Egypt, and then sent them to work in EccT.^Hist. the mines. These were soon followed by a crowd of ^i- 7. other brave Jews, who chose rather to quit their homes and live as wanderers in Egypt than to own Vespasian as their king. They knew no lord but Jehovah ; to take the oaths or to pay tribute to Ceesitr was to renounce the faith of their fathers. But they found no safety in Egypt. Their Greek brethren turned against them, and handed six hundred of them up to Lupus, the governor of Egypt, to be punished ; and their countryman Josephus brands them all with the name of Sicarii, or ruffians. They tried to liide themselves in Thebes and other cities less under the eyes of the Roman governor. They were however followed and taken, and the courage with which the boys and mere children bore their sufferings, sooner than acknowledge Vespasian for their king, drew forth the praise of even the time-serving Josephus. (14) The Greek Jews of Egypt gained nothing by this treachery towards their Hebrew brethren ; they were them- selves looked down upon by the Alexandrians and distrusted by the Romans. The emperor ordered the prefect Lupus to shut up the temple at Onion near Hehopolis, in which during the last three hundred years they had been allowed to have an altar, in rivalry to the Temple of Jerusalem. Even Josephus, whose betrayal of his countrymen might have saved him from 142 VESPASIAN, A.D. 69—79. [chap, XIV, their enemies, was sent with many others in chains to Kome, and was only set free on his making himself known to Titus. Indeed, when the Hebrew Jews lost their capital and their rank as a nation, their brethren felt lowered in the eyes of their fellow-citizens in whatever city they dwelt, and in Alexandria Joseplus ^^^^^^ ^^^^ hope of keeping their privileges ; Antiq. xli. although the emperor refused to repeal the edict 3 which granted them their citizenship, an edict to which they always appealed for protection, but often with very little success. (15) In taking leTive of the historian Josephus, whose writings have been so often quoted in these pages, we must remark that, though his style is elegant, his narrative simple, and his manner earnest, yet his history cannot be read without some distrust. He was false to his country, to its religious laws, and to his foreign wife. He is sometimes biassed by his wish to raise the character of his countrymen, at other times by his eagerness to excuse his own conduct. His history, how- ever, throws great light upon the state of the Israelites at a time which is in the highest degree interesting to all Chris- tians ; and in his answer to Apion, who had written against the Jews, we find some short but most valuable quotations from many writings which were then in the Alexandrian libraries but have been since lost, from Manetho, from Dius, from Menander of Ephesus, from Berosus and from Heca- inVita. . . taeus of Abdera. His life was chequered with many remarkable events, but with none to us more remarkable than his sailing with the Apostle Paul from Judsea to Italy, and being shipwrecked with him on the island of Malta. (16) Here perhaps we should mention the Wisdom of Solo- mon, a religious treatise in the Bible, which, because its author is unknown, has been placed among the Apocrypha. It is full of beautiful and devout thoughts, and reminds us of the writings of Philo and the Son of Sirach ; but its language is much more like that of the New Testament. Nothing in it declares with certaint}^ its author's time or place ; but his cnAP. XIV.] WISDOM OF SOLOMON. 143 opinions prove that he was a Jew of the Alexandrian school, and seemingly a convert to Christianity. He shows ch. iii. 14. his Egyptian opinions by praising an unmarried life, ^* and by saying that God did not create death; and further shows the place where he lived by blaming the Egyptians throughout without naming them. He wrote after the con- quest of JudaBa by Vespasian, as he says that God's ch. xv. 14. people were crushed by their enemies. He hastily ^• runs over many of the events in Jewish history without ever naming the persons. He calls Cain the unrighteous man ; and Noah, Lot, Jacob, and Joseph are each in his turn called the righteous man. But the righteous man described at , , , Ch.ii.iv. V. greatest length we must believe meant for the Founder of our religion. He was reproached with calling himself the Son of God ; he was reviled and tortured, con- demned to a disgraceful death, and told with a sneer when dying that God would save him if he were his son ; and at the day of judgment he is to stand with boldness before his enemies. The writer makes a person of God's wis- ch. ix, 9. dom, who was present at the creation, and was an unspotted mirror of his power, the image of his goodness, and God himself loved her ; and also of God's Word, by ch. ix. i. whom he made all things, and who afterwards leaped ch.xvm.is. down from heaven out of the royal throne, as a fierce man of war, to punish the Egjrptians. And we may remark that when the word Trinity is first used by a Christian writer, Theo- philus, bishop of Antioch, it is, as in this work, the Lib. ii. Almight}^, his Word, and his Wisdom. God's Wisdom is also made into a person in the gnostic treatise of Pistis- Sophia ; it is her penitential hymns and heavenly teacliings that the Saviour is employed to carry to mankind. (17) The Alexandrians were sadly disappointed in Vespa- sian. They had been among the first to acknowledge Dion. Cass. him as emperor while his power was yet doubtful, and they looked for a sum of money as a largess ; but to their sorrow he increased the taxes, and re-established some which Hi VESPASIAN. A.D. 69—79. [chap. XIV. had fallen into disuse. They had a joke against him, about his claiming from one of his friends the trifling debt of six oboli ; and upon hearing of their witticisms he was so angry that he ordered this sum of six oboli to be levied as a poll-tax upon Suetonius, every man in the city, and he only let them off on his Vit.Vespas. Titus's begging for them. He went to Eome, carrying with him the nickname of Cybiosactes, the scullion^ wdiicli the Alexandrians gave him for his stinginess and greedi- ness, and which they had before given to Seleucus, w^ho robbed the tomb of Alexander the Great of its golden sarcophagus. (18) Titus saw the importance of pleasing the people ; and Suetonius, ^^is wish to humour their ancient prejudices, at the Yit. Titi. ceremony of consecrating a new bull as Apis, brought some blame upon him. He there, as became the occasion, wore the state crown, and dazzled the people of Memphis with his regal pomp ; but while thus endeavouring to strengthen his father's throne, he was by some accused of grasping at it for himself. (19) The gTeat temple of Kneph at Latopohs, which had been Wilkinson, work of many reigns and perhaps many centuries, Thebes. ^.^^g finished under Vespasian. It is a building worthy of the best times of Egyptian architecture. It has a grand portico, upheld by four rows of massive columns, with Denon. pi. capitals in the form of papyrus flowers. On the 52,53,54. ceiling is a zodiac, like that at Tentyra; and though many other kings' names are carved on the walls, that of Vespasian is in the dedication over the entrance. The econo- mist wiU perhaps ask from what soiu'ce the oppressed Egyp- tians drew the wealth, and where they found the encouragement, necessary to finish these gigantic undertakings which were begun in times of greater prosperity; but the only answer which we can give is, that the chief encouragement at all times to any great work is a strong sense of religious duty, and the only fund of wealth upon which men can draw for their generosity, or nations for their public works, is to be found in self-denial. CHAP. XIV.] TITUS. A.D. 79—82. 145 (20) Of the reign of Titus in Egypt (see Fig. 60) we Zoega. find no trace beyond his coins struck each year at "9- Alexandria, and his name carved on one or two temples whicli had been built in former reigns. Fig. 60. Fig. 61. (21) Of the reign of Domitian (see Fig. 61) we learn something from the poet Juvenal, who then held a gatyr. xvi. military post in the province ; and he gives us a sad 82. account of the state of lawlessness in which the troops lived under his command. All quarrels between soldiers and citizens were tried by the ofacers according to martial law ; and justice was very far from being even-handed between the Roman and the poor Egj^ptian. No witness was bold enough to come forward and say anything against a soldier, while everj^body was believed who spoke on his behalf. But as it was much the same at this time with the Roman army everywhere, perhaps Egypt may not have been worse off than the other provinces of the empire. Juvenal was at a great age when he was guetonius, sent into Egypt ; and he felt that the command of a cohort on the very borders of the desert was a cruel banishment from the literary society of Rome. His death in the camp was hastened by his wish to return home. (22) As what Juvenal chiefly aimed at in his writings was to lash the follies of the age, he of course found plenty of amusement in the superstitions and sacred animals of Egypt. But he sometimes takes a poet's liberty, and when he juvenal. tells us that man's was almost the only flesh that they ^^^y^'- ate without sinning, we need not believe him to the letter. He gives a lively picture of a fight which lie saw between tlie VOL. IT. L 14(5 DOMITIAN. A.D. 82—97. [chap. XIV. citizens of two towns. The towns of Ombos and Tentyra, though about a hundred miles apart, had a long-standing quarrel about their gods. At Ombos they worshipped the crocodile and the crocodile-headed god Savak, while at Tentyra they w^orshipped the goddess Athor, and were celebrated for their sldll in catching and lolling crocodiles. So, taking advantage of a feast or holiday, as the people of Modena and Bologna did in the days of Tassoni, they marched out for a fight. The men of Ombos were beaten and put to flight ; but one of them, stumbling as he ran away, was caught and torn to pieces, and, as Juvenal adds, eaten by the men of Tentyra. Their worshipping beasts, birds, and fishes (see mummy of a fish, Fig. G2), and even growing their gods in the garden, are Fig. 62. pleasantly hit off by him ; they left nothing, said he, without Pliny, worship, but the goddess of chastity. The 'mother lib.xix.22. go(j(jess, Isis the queen of heaven, w^as the deity to whom they bowed with the most tender devotion, and to swear by Isis was their favourite oath ; and hence the leek, in their own language named Isi, was no doubt the vegetable called a god by Juvenal. (23) At the same time also the towns of Oxyrynchon and Cynopolis, in the Heptanomos, had a little civil war De Iside,*' about the animals which they worshipped. Somebody at Cynopolis was said to have caught an OxyrjTichus fish in the Nile and eaten it ; and so the people of Oxyrynchon, in revenge, made an attack upon the dogs, the gods of CjTiopolis. They caught a number of them, killed them in sacrifice to their offended fish-god, and eat them. The two parties then flew to arms and fought several battles; they sacked one another's CHAP. XIV.] THE RELIGION. 147 cities in turns, and the war was not stopped till the Eoman troops marched to the spot and punished them both. (24) But we gain a more agreeable and most likely a more true notion of the mystical religion and philosophy of the Eg}"ptians in these days from the serious enquiries of pe Iside Plutarch, who, instead of looking for what he could laugh at, was only too ready to believe that he saw wisdom hidden under an allegorj^ in all their superstitions. Many of the habits of the priests, such as shaving the whole body, wearing linen instead of cotton, and refusing some meats as impure, seem to have arisen from a love of cleanliness ; their religion ordered what was useful. And it also forbade what was hurtful ; so to stir the fire with a sword was displeasing to the gods, because it spoilt the temper of the steel. None but the vulgar now looked upon the animals and statues as gods ; the priests believed that the unseen gods, who acted with one mind and with one providence, were the authors of all good ; and though these, like the sun and moon, were called in each country by a different name, yet, like those luminaries, they were the same over all the world. Outward ceremonies in religion were no longer thought enough without a good life ; and as the Greeks said that beard and cloak did not make a philosopher, so the Egyptians said that white linen and a tonsure would not make a follower of Isis. All the sacrifices to the gods had a secondary meaning, or at least they tried to join a moral aim to the outward act; as on the twentieth day of the month, when they ate honey and figs in honour of Thoth, they sang ' Sweet is truth.' The Egj^tians, like most other Eastern polytheists, held the doctrine which was after- wards called Manicheism ; they believed in a good and in a wicked god, who governed the world between them. Of these the former made himself threefold, because three is a perfect number, and they adopted into their religion that curious metaphysical opmion that everything divine is formed of three parts ; and accordingly on the Theban monuments we often see the gods in groups of three. They worshipped Osiris, Isis, and L 2 us DO]\IITIAN. A.D. 82—97. [chap. XIV, Horus, under the form of a right-angled triangle, in which Horus was the side opposite to the right-angle ; and the little neatly cut stones, found in the tombs, not strictly triangles, but shaped like the letter A (see Fig. 63), explain how the child Horus, though opposite to the right-angle, was at the same time the shortest side. But the Fig. 63. favourite part of their mythology was the lamenta- tion of Isis for the death of her husband Osiris. He was killed by the wicked Typhon, who scattered his limbs over the earth ; and they were x^icked up by Isis, who put them together and buried them. Horus then undertook to avenge his father's death, and conquered Typhon and put him to flight. The latter, the wicked Typhon, had two sons named Hiero- solymus and Judseus after the enemies of the nation. All this was now supposed to cover much hidden wisdom. But we do not recognise the story on the most ancient monuments of the Thebaid, and it was most likely the growth of modern times, and perhaps of the province of Lower Egypt ; but, at any rate, it was old enough to give birth to the more elegant Greek story of Venus lamenting for the death of Adonis. (25) By another change the god Horus, who used to be a crowned king of manly stature, was now a child holding a finger to his mouth, and thereby marking that he had not yet learned to talk. (See Fig. 64.) The Eo- mans, who did not understand this Egyptian symbol for youthfulness, thought that in this character he was commanding silence ; and they gave the name of Harpocrates, Horus the poiverful, to a god of silence. Horus was also often placed as a ^ child in the arms of his mother Isis ; and thus by the loving nature of the group were awakened tlie more tender feelings of the worshipper. (See Fig. 6;").) The Egyptians like the Greeks, had always been CHAP. XIV.] THE RELIGION. 149 loud in declaring that they were beloved by their gods; but they received their favours with little gratitude, and hardly professed that they felt any love towards the gods in return. But after the time of the Christian era, we meet with more kindly feelings even among the Pagans. We find from the Greek names of persons that they at least had begun to think their gods deserving of love, and in this group of the mother and child, such a favourite also in Christian art, we see in what direction these more kindly feelings found an entrance into the Egyptian religion. As fast as opinion was raising the great god Serapis above his fellows and making the wrathful judge into the ruler of the world, so fast was the same opinion creating for itself a harbour of refuge in the child Horus and its mother. (26) The deep earnestness of the Egyptians in the belief of their own religion was the chief cause of its being adopted by others. We are more ready to be persuaded when the speaker is himself in earnest. The Greeks had borrowed much from it. Though in Eome it had been p^ny^ ji^,, forbidden by law, it was much cul- 12. tivated there in private ; and the engraved rings on the fingers of the wealthy Komans which bore the figures of Harpocrates and other Egyptian gods (see Fig. 66), easily escaped the notice of the magistrate, suetonius, But the superstitious Domitian, Fig. G6. who was in the habit of consulting astro- logers and Chaldean fortune-tellers, allowed the Egyptian worship. He built at Rome a temple Cassiodori to Isis, and another to Serapis ; and such was the Ctronicon. eagerness of the citizens for pictures of the mother goddess with her child in her arms, that, according to Juvenal, Sat. xii. 28. the Roman painters all lived upon the goddess Isis. Sat. vi. 527. For her temple in the Campus Martins, holy water was even brought from the Nile to purify the building and the Apuleius, votaries; and a regular college of priests was maintained 150 DOMITIAN. A.D. 82-97. [chap. XIV. there by their zeal and at their cost, with a splendour worthy of Suetonius, ^^^^ Boman capital. Domitian also, was somewhat of a m Vita. scholar, and he sent to Alexandria for copies of their hooks, to restore the public library at Eome which had been Martial, lately burnt ; while his garden on the banks of the hb. 1. 26. Tyber was richer in the Egyptian winter blowing rose than even the gardens of Memphis and Alexandria. (27) During this century the coinage continues one of the subjects of chief interest to the antiquary. (See Fig, 67.) In Fig. 67. the eleventh year of his reign, when Domitian took upon himself the tribunitian power at Rome for a second period of ten years, the event was celebrated in Alex- andria with a triumphal procession and games in the hippo- drome, of all which we see clear traces on the Egyptian Numi coins. The Egyptian comage of that year surpasses that of all former years in beauty and variety. Fig. 68. — Trinity of Isis, Horus, and Nephtliys. CHAPTER XV. THE KEIGNS OF NEEVA, TRAJAN, HADRIAN, AND THE TWO ANTONINES. A.D. 97 — 181. (1) The coinage is almost the only trace of Nerva zoega, having reigned in Egypt ; but it is at the same time ^^^^ enough to prove the mildness of his government. Exodus The Jews who by their own law were of old required to pay half a shekel, or a didrachm, to the service of their temple, had on their conquest been made to pay that sum as a yearly tribute to the Ptolemies, Mattbew, and afterwards to the emperors. It was a poll-tax levied on every Jew throughout the empire. But Mionnet, Nerva had the humanity to reheve them from this insulting tribute, and well did he deserve the honour of having it recorded on his coins. (See Fig. 69). (2) The coinage of the eleventh year of his succes- ^OS. sor Trajan (see Fig. 70) is very '(o'l^^aN f remarkable for its beauty and va- ^gyp*- riety, even more so than that of the eleventh year of Domitian. The coins have hitherto proclaimed the games and conquests of the emperors, the bountiful overflow of the Nile, and sometimes the worship of Serapis ; but we now enter upon the most brilliant period of the Egyptian coinage, and find a rich variety of fables taken both from Egyptian and Greek mythology. The coins of Rome m ^7 Fig. 152 TRAJAN. A.D. 98—117. [chap, XV. ill tliis and the following reigns show the wealth, good taste, and learning of the nation, but the}^ are even passed by the coins of ^^gypt. (See Fig. 71.) AVhile history is nearly silent, and the buildings and other proofs of Koman good government have perished, the coins alone are quite enough to prove the well- being of the people. Among the Egyptian coins those of Fig. 71. Trajan, Hadrian, jind the Antonines equal in number those of all ■ the other emperors together, Avhile in beauty they f^a* surpass them. They are mostly of copper, of a small size, and thick, weighing about one hundred and ten grains, and some larger of two hundred and twenty grains ; the silver coins are less common, and of mixt metal. (3) Though the Komans, while admiring and copying every thing that was Greek, affected to look upon the Petronius, ° Authoiogia Egyptians as savages, who were only known to be human beings by their having a voice, still the Egyp- tian physicians were held by them in the highest repute. The CHAP. XV.] THE PHYSICIANS. 153 more wealthy Romans often sailed to Alexandria for the benefit of their advice. Pliny the elder however thought that Ljb, xxxi. of the invalids who went to Egypt for their health more were cured by the sea voyage than by the physicians on their arrival. One of Cicero's physicians was an Epi'^t. ^ . .ad. Famil. Egyptian. Pliny the younger repaid his Eg3^ptian xvi. 15. oculist Harpocrates by getting a rescript from the Plin.^Epist. emperor to make him a Roman citizen. But the statesman did not know under what harsh laws his friend was born, for the grant was void in the case of an Egyptian, the emperor's rescript was bad as being against the law ; and Pliny had again to beg the greater favour that the Egyptian might first be made a citizen of Alexandria, without which the former favour was useless. Thus, even in Alexandiia, a con- quered province governed by the despotic will of a military emperor, there were still some laws or principles which the emperor found it not easy to break. The courts of justice, those to whom the edicts were addressed and by whom they were to be explained and carried into effect, claimed a power in some cases above the emperor ; and the first article in co^ex The- the Roman code was that an imperial rescript, by whomsoever or howsoever obtained, was void if it was against the law. As the lawyers and magistrates formed part of the body of citizens, the Alexandrians had so far a share in governing themselves ; but this the Egyptians lost by being under Greek magistrates. (4) Trajan always kept in the public granaries of Rome a sup- ply of Egyptian corn equal to seven times the canon, lampridius, or yearly gift to the poor citizens ; and in this prudent ^eiiog. course he was followed by all his successors, till the store was squandered by the Avorthless Elagabalus. One year, pii^y^ when the Nile did not rise to its usual height, and ^^^^sy^'- much of the corn -land of the Delta, instead of being moistened by its waters and enriched by its mud, was left a dry sandy plain, the granaries of Rome were unlocked to feed the city of Alexandria. The Alexandrians then saw the unusual sight of 154 TllAJAN. A.D. 98—117. [chap. XV. ships unloading their cargoes of wheat in their harbour, and the Romans boasted that they took the Egyptian tribute in corn, not because they could not feed themselves, but because the Egyptians had nothing else to send them. (5) Alexandria under the Romans was still the centre of the ^. trading world, not only having its own great trade in Diou Chry- . Bost. ad corn, but being the port tlirough which the trade of India and Arabia passed to Europe, and at which the S3Tian vessels touched in their way to Italy. The harbour was crowded with masts and strange prows and uncouth sails, and the quays always busy with loading and unloading ; while in the streets might be seen men of all languages and all dresses, copper- coloured Egyptians, swarthy Jews, lively bust- ling Greeks, and haughty Italians, with Asiatics from the neighbouring coasts of Syria and Cilicia, and even dark Ethio- pians, painted Arabs, Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and Indians, all gay with their national costumes. Alexandria was a spot in which Europe met Asia, and each wondered at the strangeness of the other. (6) Of the Alexandrians themselves we receive a very un- favourable account from their countiyman Dion Chrysostome. With their wealth, they had those vices which usually follow or cause the loss of national independence. They were eager after nothing but food and horse-races, those never-faihng bribes for which the idle of every country will sell all that a man should hold most dear. They were grave and quiet in their sacrifices and listless in business, but in the theatre or in the stadium men, women, and children were alike heated into passion, and overcome with eagerness and warmth of feeling. A scurrilous song or a horse-race would so rouse them into a quarrel that they could not hear for their own noise, nor see for the dust raised by their own bustle in the hippodrome ; while all those acts of their rulers which in a more wholesome state of society would have called for notice passed by im- heeded. They cared more for the tumble of a favourite charioteer than for the sinking state of the nation. The ready CHAr, XV.] THE ALEXANDRIAN CHARACTER. 155 employment of ridicule in the place of argument, of wit instead of graver reason, of nicknames as their most powerful weapon, was one of the worst points in the Alexandrian character ; and their history proves the truth of the Wise Man's remark, who, when he tells us which characters are most formed hy natui-e to undermine the foundations of society and overturn the state, does not mention the proud or the cruel, the childish or the rash, the lustful or the wicked, but the mockers and scorners. Frankness and manliness are hardly to be looked for under a despotic government where men are forbidden to speak their minds openly ; and the Alexandrians made use of such checks upon their rulers as the law allowed them. They lived under an absolute monarchy tempered only by ridicule. Though their city was four hundred years old, they w^ere still colonists and without a mother- country. They had very little faith in anything great or good, whether human or divine. They had few cherished prejudices, no honoured traditions, sadly little love of fame, and chey wrote no histories. But in luxury and delicacy they set the fashion to their conquerors, juvenal. The wealthy Alexandrian walked about Rome in a ^' scarlet robe, in summer fanning himself with gold, and dis- playing on his fingers rings carefully suited to the season ; as his hands were too delicate to carry his heavier jewels in the warm weather. Many admired, though some called him a reptile spawned out of the Nile's mud. At the supper statius, tables of the rich the Alexandrian singing boys were ^^^^^ much valued; the smart young Roman wallied along Martial, the Via Sacra humming an Alexandrian time ; the favourite comic actor, the delight of the city, whose jokes set the theatre in a roar, w^as an Alexandrian; the Retiarius, who with no w^eapon but a net fought j^^g^^.^^^ against an armed gladiator in the Roman forum, and Gruter, came off conqueror in twenty-six such battles, w^as an Alexandrian ; and no breed of fighting-cocks was Geoponica, thought equal to those reared in Alexandria. ^• (7) In the reign of Augustus the Roman generals had been 156 TRAJAN. A.D. 98—117. [chap. XV Ammianus, tlefeated in their attacks on Arabia; but under Trajan, hb. XIV. -^'hen the Romans were masters of all the countries which surround Arabia Nabata^a, and when Egypt was so far quiet that the legions could be withdrawn without danger to the provinces, the Arabs could hold out no longer, and the rocky fastness of Petra was forced to receive a Eoman garrison. The event was as usual commemorated on the coins of Rome ; and for the next four hundred years that remarkable Arab city Labovde's formed part of the Roman empire ; and Europeans Travels, j^^^y travelling through the desert from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem are agreeably surprised at coming upon temples, carved out of the solid rock, ornamented with Corinthian columns of the age of the Antonines. (See Fig. 72.) Fig. 72. (8j In the twelfth year of this reign, when Lucius Sulpicius Inscript. Simius was prefect, some additions which had been Letronue. j^^^de to the temple at Panopolis in the Thebaid were dedicated in the name of the emperor ; and in the nineteenth onAP. XV.] THE END OF THE AGE. 157 year, when Marcus Rutilius Lupus was prefect, a new portico in the Oasis of Thebes was in the same manner dedicated to Serapis and Isis. A small temple which had been jj^g^^j^^ before built at Dendera, near the ojreat temple of Boeckh., . . 4716. c. Athor or Venus, was in the first year of this reign dedicated to the empress Plotina, under the name of the great goddess the younger Venus. (9) The canal from the Nile near Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, which had been first made by Necho, had been ptoiemjei either finished or a second time made by Philadelphus ; ^^ograph. and in this reign that great undertaking was again renew^ed. But the stream of the Nile was deserting the Bubastite branch, which was less navigable than formerly ; and the engineers now changed the greater part of the canal's bed. They thought it wiser to bring the water from a higher part of the Nile, so that the current in the canal might run into the Red Sea instead of out, and its waters might still be fresh and useful to agriculture. It now began at Babylon opposite Memphis, and, passing by Heliopolis, Scenae Veteranorum, Heroopolis, and Serapion, joined the Upper Bitter Lake, and thence entered the Red Sea at a town which, taking its name from the locks, was called Clysmon, about ten miles to the south of Arsinoe. This latter town was no longer a port, having been separated from the sea by the continual advance of the sands. We have no knowledge of how long the care of the imperial prefects kept this new canal open and in use. The encroachment of the sands would fill it up whenever it was neglected ; it was perhaps one of the first of the Roman works that went to decay ; and, w^hen we find the Christian , ... . . . I>icuilus, pilgrims sailing along it seven centuries later, in their Mensura way from England to the holy sepulchre, it had been again opened by the Mahomedan conquerors of Egypt. (10) As Alexandria has been the birthplace of many for- geries in religious literature, we readily give it credit for others. Here most likely were written the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the work of a Jewish convert to Christianity. 158 TRAJAN. A.D. 98—117. [chap. XV. It pretends to be an account of the deaths of the twelve sons of Jacob, with the prophetic speeches which they made to their ^ ^ children on their death-beds. Traian, in the fourth Zemach j^ear of his reign, about thirty-four years after the destruction of Jerusalem, had promised Joshua the son of Annaniah that the Jews should have leave to return to the holy city and rebuild the Temple ; and this, as w^e shall see, fixes the time when this Avork w^as written. The patriarch Reuben foretells the coming of the high-priest Christ. Levi also, quoting from the book of Enoch, foretells the coming of a man in the power of the Most High to renew the Law ; his being called an impostor, his death, and resurrection ; and he makes the seventy wrecks of the book of Daniel end with the destruction of the Temple. He then continues his prophecy through the space of seven weeks or forty-nine years more, each of which weeks is to be the reign of a new high-priest. In the fifth week, under the fifth high priest, that is, before the ninth year of Trajan's reign, the Jews are to return into the land of their desolation, and to rebuild the house of the Lord ; and the failure in this prophecy fixes the date of the writing. In the seventh week there are to be wicked idolatrous priests, after which the priesthood is to be at an end, and is to be foUow^ed by the reign of God upon earth. Judah and Neph- thalim also foretell the glory of Israel ; but it is not clear whether they point to Jesus, or to the re -establishment of the Jews as a nation in their own country. This gTeat and glorious event, whether it was to be the second coming of Christ and the end of the world, as many of the Christians thought, or wiiether it was to be the restoration of the sceptre to Judah and the re -establishment of the Jewish kingdom, was looked forward to as an event close at hand, and it raised the minds of the Jews into a fervour of religious enthusiasm. As the wished-for time drew near, the end of the seven great weeks from the destruction of the Temple, all the eastern provinces of the Roman empire w^ere disturbed by the rebel- lious rising of the Jews, CHAP. XV.] THE JEWS REBEL. 159 (11) Most likely at this time the poet Ezekiel wrote his Greek tragedy of the Departure from Egypt, which would seem meant to encourage his countrymen to march a second time through the desert from Eg}^t to the promised land. In this poem the chief speakers are God and Moses ; but we now possess only a few dialogues of it, in one of which an angel boastfully describes the triumphant march of the Israelites and the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Eed Sea. (12) Moved by these writings, or rather by the religious enthusiasm which gave birth to the writings, the Jews g^g^^^^^g of Egypt in the eighteenth year of this reign were Eccl. Hist, agam roused into a quarrel with their Greek fellow- Orosius, citizens ; and in the next year, the last of the reign, ^^^* they rose against their Roman governors in open rebellion, and they were not put down till the prefect Lupus had brought his forces against them. At first the Jews were successful, more particularly in the villages; and the Greeks fled to Alexandria, where they were the stronger, and there they slew the Jews in revenge, though not till after many obstinate and bloody battles in the streets. After this the Jews of Cyrene marched through the desert into Egypt, under the command of Lucuas, to help their brethren ; and the rebellion took the regular form of a civil war, with all its usual horrors. The emperor sent against the Jews an army followed by a fleet, which, after numerous skirmishes and battles, routed them with great slaughter, and drove numbers of them back into the desert, from whence they harassed the villages as robbers. (13) By these unsuccessful appeals to force, the Jews lost all right to those privileges of citizenship which they always claimed, and which had been granted by the emperors, though usually refused by the Alexandrians. Henceforth they were low- ered to the rank of Egyptians, and nothing but the emperor's edict could raise a Jew or an Egyptian to the rank of an Alex- andrian. The overthrow of Jerusalem had sealed the fate of the Jews in every country where they dwelt in their dispersion ; their second temple at Onion in the Delta was also closed, and 160 HADRIAN. A.D. 117-138. [CITAP. XV. M Fig. 73. their despair and disappointment at the failure of these hopes seem in many cases to have turned their minds to the Christian Eccl. Hist, "^iew of the Old Testament prophecies ; henceforth, hb. 111. 35. g^^.g Eusebius, the Jews embraced the Christian reli- gion more readily and in greater numbers. It was probably at this time that the Jews of Egypt were again made to pay the poll-tax for leave to w^orship the God of their fathers, from which the}'^ had been relieved by Nerva. (14) In the sixth year of the A.r. 122. , . . reign of Hadrian (see Fig. 78), Egypt was honoured by a visit from the emperor, who, with a restless activity joined to a praiseworthy love of knowledge, had already run over a large part of his dominions. After marching on foot over the snows of Scotland, he came to ex- pose himself bareheaded to the scorching Spartianus, sun of the Thebaid. He was led to Egypt at that Vit. Hadr. ^^^^^ some riots of a character more serious than usual, which had arisen between two cities, probably Memphis and Heliopohs, about a bull, as to whether it was to be Apis or Mnevis. Egypt had been for some years without a sacred bull ; and when at length the priests found one, marked with the wished-for spots, the inhabitants of those two cities flew to arms, and the peace of the province was disturbed by their religious zeal, each claiming the bull as their own. Hadrian was accompanied by his favourite, the beautiful Anti- Dion. Cass. lib. ixix. nous, who drowned himself in the Nile during their journey towards Thebes. It would seem that the emperor had been consulting with the Egj^ptian astrologers as to his future fate and the welfare of the empire ; and that the oracle had declared that the loss of wdiat he then held most dear was necessary to his future happiness ; and that on this Antinous had generously devoted his own life in the service of his master, and thrown himself into the Nile near the village of Besa. The emperor to show^ his gratitude built a large city CHAP. XV.] ANTINOUS DROWNED. 161 near the spot, whicli like Alexandria was to be governed by Greek laws ; be ornamented it with temples and statues, and named it Antinoopolis, in honour of the lost favourite. It stood on the east bank of the Xile, opposite to Hermopolis. Travellers stiU trace the walls of the baths, a theatre, Wilkinson, a triumphal arch (see Fig. 74), and a hippodrome, ^^^bes. while the wide space covered by ruins and the number of Fig. 74. Corinthian columns prove the magnificence and taste of the founder. Here divine honours were reo-ularly paid to ^ . the favourite in his own temple, as to one of the gods Ceisum, lii. of the country ; chariot-races and other public games EccI. Hist, were every year celebrated to his memory in the ^' hippodrome and theatre, to the surprise of the people of Upper Egypt who were unused to that method of honouring the dead; and in the seventh and followino- years coins were „ ° Zoega, struck to his honour in Alexandria, under the name Numi of the hero Antinous. (See Fig. 75). The country ptoiemtei round the new city was then made into a nome under ^^°si'ap^. the name of Antinoites ; and the province of the Heptanomis, 162 HADRIAN. A.D. 117—138. [chap. XV. below Lycopolis but above the Delta, -wliich took its name from its seven nomes, henceforward held eight. Fig. 75. (15) In Alexandria the emperor mixed freely with the „ professors of the Museum, askinp- them questions and Spartianus, ^ ^ ^ o i Yit. Hadr. answering theirs in return ; and he dropped his tear Antiiologia ^-^ ^j-^g tomb of the great Pompey, in the form Cassiodori of a Greek epigram, though with very little point. He ChronicoD. j.^-^j large sums of money in building and orna- menting the cit}^ and the Alexandrians were much pleased Yount'' with his behaviour. Among other honours that they Hieiogl. paid him, they changed the name of the month Decem- '^^* her, calling it the month Hadrian ; but as they were not followed by the rest of the empire the name soon went out of use. The emperor's patronage of philosophy was rather at the cost of the Alexandrian Museum, for he enrolled among its paid professors men who were teaching from school to Phiiostrat., school in Italy and Asia Minor. Thus Polemon of Vit. Soph. Laodicea, who taught oratory and philosophy at Eome, Laodicea, and Smyrna, and had the right of a free passage for himself and his servants in any of the public ships whenever he chose to move from city to city for the purposes of study or teaching, had at the same time a salary from the Alexandrian Museum. Dionysius of Miletus also received his salary as a professor in tlie Museum while teaching philosophy and the Athensous, ^^'^ of memory at Miletus and Ephesus. Pancrates, lib. XV. ^Yie Alexandrian poet, gained his salary in the Museum CUAP. XV.] THE PHILOSOPHERS. 163 by the easy task of a little flattery. On Hadrian's return to Alexandria from the Thebaid, the poet presented to him a rose- coloured lotus, a flower well known in India though less common in Egypt than either the blue or white lotus, and assured him that it had sprung out of the blood of the lion slain by his royal javelin at a lion -hunt in Libya. The emperor was pleased with the compliment, and gave him a place in the Museum ; and Pancrates in return named the plant the lotus of Antinous. This story could hardly have Fig. 76. been known to Linnseus, or, when that great naturalist was giving names to the vegetable world, his classical taste, which has shown itself so playfully in many other cases, would most likely have led him to name this plant not the Nym- phcea Indica, but the Nymphcea Antinoi. (See Fig. Lucian., 70). Pancrates was a warm admirer of the mystical I'^Uopseud. opinions of the Egj^otians which were then coming into note in Alexandria. He was said to have lived under ground in holy solitude or converse with the gods for twenty-three years, and during that time to have been taught magic by the goddess Isis, and thus to have gained the power of working miracles. M 2 164 HADRIAN. A.D. 117-138. [{/ft A p. XV. He learned to call upon the queen of darkness by her Egyptian name Hecate, and when driving out evil spirits to speak to them in the Eg3^ptian language. AVhether these Greek students of the Eastern mysticism were deceivers or deceived, whether they were led by a love of notoriety or of knowledge, is in most cases doubtful, but they were surrounded by a crowd of credulous admirers, who formed a strange contrast with the sceptics and critics of the Museum. (16) Among the Alexandrian grammarians of this reign were Suldas and Valerius Pollio, who wrote a lexicon of the words Photius. peculiar to the Attic dialect ; Valerius Diodorus his son, and Ptolemy Chennus the father of Hephsestion, who wrote a work called The Sphinx, and of whose writings we still possess a few fragments in the collections of Photius. The grammarian g Apollonius Dyscolus, so called perhaps from a morose- ness of manner, wrote largely on rhetoric, on the Greek dialects, on accents, prosody, and on other branches of grammar. In the few pages that remain of his numerous writings, we trace the love of the marvellous which was then growing among some of the philosophers. He tells us many remarkable stories, which he collected rather as a judicious inquirer than as a credulous believer ; such as of second sight ; an account of a lad who fell asleep in the field while watching his sheep, and then slept for fifty-seven years, and awoke to wonder at the strangeness of the changes that had taken place in the meanwhile ; and of a man who after death used from time to time to leave his body, and wander over the earth as a spirit, till his wife, tired of his coming back again so often, put a stop to it by having the mummy burnt. He gives us for the first time Eastern tales in a Greek dress, and we thus learn the source from which Europe gained much of its literature in the middle ages. Though the more valuable writings by Apollonius are lost, we may trust to the praises of the Lib.i. prsef. grammarian Priscian, who thought him unequalled for skill and patience in unravelling a grammatical difficulty. But the Alexandrian author of greatest note was the historian CHAP. XV.] THE MUSICAL STATUE. 165 Appian, who tells us that he had spent some years in Proemium. Eome practising as a lawyer, and returned to Egypt on being appointed to a high post in the government of his native city. There he wTote his Roman history. It is an un-ornamented faithful narrative, divided according to the nations with whom the Romans fought, and particularly valued for the writer's knowledge of military tactics. It is indeed rather a history of the Roman wars and conquests than a history of the republic. (17) In this reign the Jews, forgetful of what they had just suffered under Trajan, again rose against the power of orosius, Rome ; and, when Judsea rebelled against its prefect Q^g^JJ^gf * Tinnius Rufus, a little army of Jews marched out of lus. Egypt and Libya, to help their brethren and to free the holy land. But they were everywhere routed and put down with a slaughter equalled to their resolute struggles. (18) Travellers, on reaching a distant point of a jom^ney oT on viewing any remarkable object of their curiosity, have at all times been fond of carving or scribbling their names on the spot, to boast of their prowess to after-comers; and never had any place been more favoured with memorials of this kind than the great statue of Amunothpli at Thebes. This colossal statue, fifty-three feet high, was famed, as long as the Egyptian priesthood lasted, for sending forth musical sounds every morning at sunrise, when first touched by the sun's rays ; and no traveller ever visited Thebes without listening for these remarkable notes. The journey through Upper Egypt was at this time perfectly open and safe, and the legs and feet of the statue are covered with names, and inscriptions in prose and verse, of travellers who had visited it at sunrise during the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. From these inscript. curious memorials we learn the names of Egyptian ^^'^go^Llt prefects otherwise unknown to history ; and from the ^^l- 29. same we learn that Hadrian visited Thebes a second time with his queen Sabina, in the fifteenth year of his reign ; and his triumphal entry into Alexandria is marked on ' 166 HADRIAN. A.D. 117—138. [cnAP. XV. the coins of that year. When the empress first visited the statue she Avas disappointed at not hearing the musical sounds; but, on her hinting tlireats of the emperor's displeasure, her CHAP. XV.] HADRIAN'S LETTER. 1&7 curiosity was gTatified on the following morning. This gigan- tic statue of hard gritstone had formerly been broken in half across the waist, and the upper part thrown to the ground, either by the shock of an earthquake or the ruder shock of Persian zeal against the Egyptian religion; and for some centuries past the musical notes had issued from the broken fragments. Such was its fallen state when the empress °^ ^ Lib. xvii. Sabina saw it, and when Strabo and Juvenal and Sat. xv. Pausanias listened to its sounds ; and it was not till after the reign of Hadrian that it was again raised upright like its companion, as our travellers now see it. (See Fig. 77). (19) Among the attendants of queen Sabina, was a lady of the name of Julia Balbilla, a daughter of Claudius Balbillus the prefect of Egypt in the reign of Nero. She was a Greek by bii'th though bearing a Roman name, and she has jjjggj.jp^ left us several short poems carved on the foot of ap.Boeckh. 4725 4730. the musical statue, which record Hadrian and his ' Queen's visit to Thebes and her own descent from Antio- chus king of Commagena. She wrote with marked ^olic peculiarities ; among which her use of the F or Digamma is worthy of note. (20) From this second visit, and a longer acquaintance, Hadrian seems to have formed a very poor opinion of the Egyptians and Egyptian Jews ; and the following curious letter to his friend Servianus throws much light upon their religion as worshippers of Serapis, at the same time that it y^p-g^^^g proves how numerous the Christians had become in Vit. Satur- Alexandria, even within seventy years of the evange- ^^^^* list Mark beginning to preach there. * Hadrian Augustus to Servianus the consul, greeting : * As for Egypt, which you w^re praising to me, dearest Servianus, I have found its people wholly light, waver- ing, and flying after every breath of a report. Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those who call them- selves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. There is no 168 HADHIAN. A.D. 117-138. [chap. XV. ruler of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no presbyter of the Christians, who is not a mathematician, an augur, and a sooth- sayer. The very patriarch himself, when he came into Egj^pt, w'as by some said to worship Serapis, and by others to worsliip Christ. As a race of men they are seditious, vain, and spite- ful ; as a body, wealthy and prosperous, of w^hom nobody lives in idleness. Some blow glass, some make paper, and others linen. There is work for the lame and work for the blind; even those who have lost the use of their hands do not live in idleness. Their one god is nothing ; Christians, Jews, and all nations worship him. I wash this body of men w^as better behaved, and worthy of their number; for as for that they ought to hold the chief place in Egypt. I have granted every- thing unto them ; I have restored their old privileges, and have made them grateful by adding new ones.' (21) Among the crowd of gods that had formerly been worshipped in Egypt, Serapis had latterly been rising above the rest. He was the god of the dead, who in the next world was to reward the good and punish the wicked ; and in the growing wor- ship of this one all-seeing judge of men's actions w^e cannot but trace the dow^nfall of Eusebius, some of the evils of polytheism. A Evan^ plurality in unity was another method lib.iii.15. ^low used to explain away the poly- theism. The oracle w^hen consulted about the divme nature had answered, ' I am Ea, and ' Horus, and Osiris ;' (See Fig. 78) or, as the Greeks translated it Apollo, and Lord, and Bacchus ; * I rule the hours and the seasons, * the wdnd and the storms, the day, and the * night ; I am king of the stars and myself an ' immortal fire.' Hence arose the opinion which seems to have been given to Hadrian, that the Egyptians had only one god, and his mistake in thinking that the worshippers of Serapis were Fig. 7' CHAP. XV.J THE GNOSTICS. 169 Christians. The emperor indeed himself, though a Lampridiu polvtheist, was very little of an idolator ; for though he Vit. Alex- andri. wished to add Christ to the numher of the Koman gods, he on tlie other hand ordered that the temples built in his reign should have no images for worship ; and in after ages it was common to call all temples without statues Hadrian's temples. But there w^ere other and stronger reasons for Hadrian's classing the Christians with the Egyptian astrologers. A Christian heresy was then rising into notice in Egypt in that very form, taking its opinions from the philosophy on which it w^as engrafted. Before Christianity was preached in Alexandria there were already three religions or forms of philosophy belonging to the three races of men who peopled that busy city ; first, the Greek philosoph}^ which was chiefly Platonism ; secondly, the Eastern mysticism of the Egyptians ; and lastlj^ the religion of the Jews. These were often more or less mixed, as we see them all imited in the works of Philo-Judaeus ; and in the writings of the early converts we usually find Christianity clothed in one or other of these forms, according to the opinions held by the writers before their conversion. The first Christian teachers, the apostolic fathers as they are called, because they had been hearers of the apostles themselves, were mostly Jews ; but among the Egj^ptians and Greeks of Alexandria their religion lost much of its purely moral caste, and became, with the former, an astrological mysticism, and with the latter an abstract speculative theology. It is of the Egyptian Jews that Hadrian speaks in his letter just quoted ; many of them had been already converted to Christianit}^, and their religion had taken the form of Gnosticism. (22) Gnosticism, or Science, for the name means no more, was not then new in Alexandria, nor were its followers originally Christians. It was the proud name claimed for their opinions by those who studied the eastern philosophy of the Magi ; and Egypt seems to have been as much its ^cts viii native soil as India. Simon Magus, who, distrusting his own art of sorcery, wished to buy from the apostles the 170 HADRIAN. A.D. 117—138. [chap. XV. Epiphanius, power of Working miracles, is supposed to have been Hcxres. 2i. ^ Gnostic ; the Nicolaitans spoken of in the Book of Eevelation were a sect of Gnostics ; and it was against the 1 Tim vi ^^^titheses of gnosticism, or the ' oppositions of science 20. falsely so called,' that the apostle Paul warned Theodoret., Timothy. Cerinthus was one of the first who tried to aret. u. gj-^gp^^£^ Christianity on these opinions. He had studied many years in Alexandria, but it was in Asia Minor that he gathered round himself a sect of followers. The Gnostics taught that there were several spiiitual powers or beings proceeding out of the everlasting God, to whom he had trusted the creation and government of the world, and whom they called ceo7is, or ages, and Cerinthus said that one of these „ , . ceons, named Christ, dwelt in the body of Jesus. Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. Cerinthus also taught his followers that the looked- lib. \u. 25. kingdom of Christ was to be an earthly kingdom, and he was by many believed to be the author of the Book of Eevelation, though there seems to be no other ground for thinking so beyond the opinions taught in that remarkable work. Eusebii (^"3) But Basilides was the founder of the Egyptian Ghronicon. g^^^ q£ Christian Gnostics. By his learning and ability he raised himself and his followers into importance, and Epiphanius, ^^^^y would Seem to be the persons spoken of by Hgeres. 24. jjadrian. Basilides dwelt sometimes at Aphro- ditopolis and sometimes in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, but not in the capital itself ; and he counted many more Clemens, Egyptians than Greeks among his followers. He Theodoret!* taught a religious fatalism, and the doctrine of Hseret, election, that nobody could believe in Christianity IrenEeus, ^ j ^ adv. Hjeres. unless he had been elected to salvation, and that the elect could not fall by sin. He held that matter was itself eternal like the deity; and, making the divine attributes into so many persons, taught that the deity had begotten out of himself seven ceons or natures (perhaps the seven spirits of God mentioned in the book of Revelation)? namely Mind, Word, Prudence, AVisdom, Power, Justice, and CHAP. XV.] THE GNOSTICS. 171 Peace ; which eight persons together formed the one ever- blessed Ogdoad. Puzzled, as so many other inquirers have been, with the origin of evil, and with the difficulty of believing that the Giver of all good was himself the author of sin, Basilides made a second god of the devil or the personification of sin. He set a great value on mathematics ; sometimes inquiring into Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks, and the number of months in our Lord's ministry; at other times naming God the Abraxas, because the letters of that word are the numerals for three hundred and sixty-five, the number of days in a year. The Gnostics endeavoured to blend these and more mischievous opinions with Christianity. They show that the study of the exact sciences will not save men from the wildest fancies in moral science or the most baseless opinions in religion. We still possess the traces of their Macarii astrology in a number of amulets and engraved gems, ^^^axas. with the word Abraxas or rather Ahrasax smd other emblems of their superstition, which they kept as charms against diseases and evil spirits. The word ABE A- SAX may be translated Hurt me not. To their mystic rites we may trace many of the reproaches thrown upon our religion, such as that Minutius the Christians worshipped the head of an ass, using the animal's Coptic name Eeo, to re- present the name of lao, or Jehovah. (See Fig. 79). To the same source we may also trace some of the pecu- liarities of the Christian fathers, such as St. Ambrose calling Jesus i^uc. * the good scarabseus, who ^' Fig. 79. Fig. 80. rolled up before him the hitherto unshapen mud of our bodies;' a thought which seems to have been borrowed as much Egypt, from the hieroglyphics as from the insect's habits; Inscript. and perhaps from the Egyptian priests in some cases, Holpolio using the scarabeeus to denote the god Horus-Ea, and ^i^- i- ^0. sometimes the word only-hcrjotteiu (See Fig. 80.) We trace this 172 HADRIAN. A.D. 117—138. [chap. XV. thought on the Gnostic gems where we see a winged griffin rolling before him a wheel the emblem of eternity. He may be meant perhaps for the Saviour. He sits like a conqueror on horseback, trampling under foot the serpent of old, the spirit of sin and death. His horse is in the form of a ram, with an eagle's head and the crowned asp or basilisk for its tail. Before him stands the figure of victory giving him a crown ; above are written the words Alpha and Omega, and below perhaps the word Jehovah. (See Fig. 81.) Fig. 81. (24) But there were other Egyptians who rivalled Basilides Theodoret., in forming large sects of Christian Gnostics. One of Eplphanhis "tli^se was Carpocratcs of Alexandria, whose followers Hferes. i. differed but little from the BasiHdians, except in the greater looseness of their morals, and in their having portraits of Jesus. He was followed by his son Epiphanes, who had studied Platonism in Alexandiia, and who was thus enabled to give a more Grecian form to the Gnostic opinions. Then came Isidorus, the son of Basilides, who taught the same heresy before the end of this reign ; and in the following reign Valentinus, a native of Pharbsethum, who had studied in Alexandria. This last raised the number of the ceons to thirty, and after preaching through Upper and Lower Egj-pt, he carried his Gnostic opinions to Italy, where he threw the Koman church into alarm by the crowd of followers who Tertullian., eagerly embraced this mystical superstition. Apelles Hseret.xxx. ^^so, another Gnostic, when driven away from Italy, studied many years in Alexandria, and returned, says Tertullian, CHAr. XV.] THE GNOSTICS. 178 no better for living in that city of heretics. Another Christian sect were the Ophitse, so named from their grafting Epiphanius. Christianity on their ancient worship of the serpent, ^7. whom they thought Christ, or even above Christ, as being the author of the knowledge of good and evil. Their Macarii engraved gems with a serpent, named the Spirit of -^^^^^^s. Death, or an armed man's body with two serpents for his legs, and with the word iao for Jehovah, and various mystic letters and figures, prove that to them Jehovah was a god of wrath not of merc}^ a God to be feared not to be loved. (See Figs. 28 and 83) Beneath both these figures they wrote the charmed word ABRASAX, hurt me not ; and they studied the same arts of magic as the followers of Basilides. (25) So far we have seen the form which Christianity at first took among the Egyptians ; but, as few writings by these Gnostics have come down to our time, we chiefly know their opinions from the reproaches of their enemies. It was not till the second generation of Gnostic teachers were spreading their poisonous heresies, that the Greek philosophers began to embrace Christianity, or the Chi'istians to study Greek literature ; but as soon as that was the case we have an unbroken chain of writings, in which we find Christianity more or less mixed with Alexandriim Platonism. (26) The Christians borrowed at the same time the old customs and the old opinions ; it was natural to do so. Of course many of their customs were wholl}^ blameless. Clemens Psedag. iii. Such was the use of the wedding rmg. It was a piece 2. Fig. 52. Fig. 83. 174 HADRIAN. A.D. 117—138. [chap. XV. of money, and flie Egyptian at liis marriage placed it on his wife's finger in token of his trusting her with all his property. The early Christians saw no harm in following this custom, particularl}^ as the ring hore no engraved stone with idolatrous figures on it. And in our own marriage ceremony the man places the same plain ring of gold on his bride's finger when he says, With all my worldly goods I thee endow." (27) The philosopher Justin, after those who had talked with the apostles, is the earliest Christian writer whose works have reached us. He was a Greek, born in Samaria ; but Dialog, cum Tryphone. lie studied many years in Alexandria under philo- Apoiog. u. gQp]-^gpg q£ opinions. He did not however at once find in the schools the wisdom he was in search for. The Stoic could teach him nothing about God ; the Peripatetic wished to be paid for his lessons before he gave them ; and the Pytha- gorean proposed to begin with music and mathematics. Not content with these, Justin turned to the Platonist, whose purer philosophy seemed to add wings to his thoughts, and taught him to mount aloft towards true wisdom. While turning over in his mind what he had thus learned in the several schools, dissatisfied with the philosophers' views of God's government and man's duty, he chanced one day to meet with an old man walking on the sea-shore near Alexandria, to whom he unbosomed his thoughts, and by whom he was converted to Christianity. Platonism was the step to the new religion. (28) Justin tells us, that there were no people whether Greeks or barbarians, or even dwellers in tents and waggons, among whom prayers were not offered up to our heavenl}^ father in the name of the crucified Jesus. The Christians met every Sunday for public worship, which began with a reading from the prophets, or from the memoirs of the apostles called the Gospels. This was followed by a sermon, a prayer, the bread and wine, and a second prayer. Justin's quotations prove that he is speaking of our New Testament, which within a hundred years of the crucifixion was read in all the principal cities in which Greek was spoken. CHAP. XV.] THE CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 175 (29) When Justin became a Christian he still wore the dress of a philosopher, and held to many of the opinions which he had gained from other sources ; and his writings, like those of all the Christian Fathers of the early Alexandrian school,, have many traces of Platonism. His chief work is a Dialogue which he held with a Jew named Trypho. He therein explains his own change of opinion from Platonism to Christianity, and quotes largely from the Old Testament to prove to the Jew that Jesus is the Messiah whom his nation had been looking for. To these arguments Trypho makes suitable answers, and the dialogue ends with Justin's setting sail for Eome, Trypho thanking him for calling his attention to the prophecies, and wishing him health and a safe voyage, while Justin prays that Trypho may have his mind turned to Christ. At Eome he wrote his apologies for Christianity, addressed to the ° , , Eusebius, Romans and to the emperor Antoninus Pius, and there Ecci. Hist, by his death in the cause of his religion he gained the ^' name of Justin Martyr. (30) The Platonic professorship in Alexandria had usually been held by an Athenian, and for a short time Philippus Athenagoras of Athens taught that branch of philo- Sidetes, ap. sophy in the Museum ; but he afterwards embraced the Christian religion, and then taught Christianity openly in Alexandria. He enjoys with Justin the honour of being one of the first men of learning who were converted, and, like Justin, his chief work is an apology for the Christians, addressed to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Athenagoras confines himself in his defence to the resurrection from the dead and the unity of the deity, the points chiefly attacked by the pagans. Apologia The philosophers had defended their numerous gods, Christ, as being only parts of the deity, and said that they also believed in only one god ; but Athenagoras argues that the eternal uncreated God is undivided and without parts, and he says that when the Christians spoke of the Son of God they did not mean either a second God or a part of the deity, but only God's wisdom and understanding. He beautifully explains the 176 IIAML\N. A.D. 117—138. [chap. XT. doctrines of the Christians by quoting the commands of the New Testament, that we should love our enemies and pra}^ for those wlio injure us, and that we shouki guard even our looks and thoughts, lest they lead us into sin. (31) Hadrian's Egyptian coins are remarkable both for Zoe^a, n^iii^ber and variety. In the sixth year of the reign we Nurni see a ship with spread sails, most likely in gratitude JSgypt. for the emperor's safe arrival in Egypt. In the eighth year we see the head of the favourite Antinous, who had been Fig. 81. placed among the gods of the country. In the eleventh 3'ear, when the emperor took up the tribunitial power at Kome for a second period of ten years, we find a series of coins each bearing the name of the nome or district in which it was coined. This indeed is the most remarkable year of the most remarkable reign in the whole history of coinage ; we have numerous coins for every year of this reign, and, in this year, for nearly every nome in Egypt. Some coins are strongly marked with the favourite opinion of the Gnostics as to the opposition between good and. evil. (See Fig. 84). On one we have the war CHAP. XV.] END OF THE AGE— RETURN OF THE PHCENIX. 177 between the serpent of good and the serpent of evil, distin- guished b}^ their different forms and by the emblems of Isis and Serapis; on others the heads of Isis and Serapis the principles of love and fear ; while on a third these two are united into a trinity by Horus, who is standing on an eagle instead of having an eagle's head, as of old. (32) The beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius (see Fig. 85) was remarkable as being the end of the censorinus Sothic period of one thousand die nat. Theon, ap. four hundred and sixty j^ears ; Cory, the moveable new-j^ear's day of the calendar had come round to the place in the natural year from which it first began to move in the reign of Menophres or Thothmosis III. : it had come round to the day when the dog-star rose lieliacally. If the years had been counted from the beginning of this great year there could have been no doubt when it came to an end, as from the want of a leap-year the new-year's day must have been always moving one day in four years ; but no satisfactory reckoning of tlie years had been kept, and as the end of the period was only known by obsen^a- tion, there was some little doubt about the exact year. Indeed, among the Greek astronomers Dositlieus said the dog-star rises heliacally twenty-three days after midsummer, INIeton twenty-eight days, and Euctemon thirty-one days; they thus left a doubt of thirty- two years as to when the period should end, but the statesmen placed it in the first year of the reign of Antoninus. This end of the Sothic period was called the return of the phoenix, and had been looked forward to by the Eg3^tians for many years, and is well marked on the coins of this reign. The coins for the first eight years teem ° to 2oega, with astronomy. There are several with the goddess Numi Isis in a boat, which we know, from the zodiac in the '^^^P*' Memnonium at Thebes, was meant for the heliacal rising of the dog-star. In the second and in the sixth year we find on the 178 ANTONINUS PIUS. A.D. 138-162. [chap. XV. coins the remarkable word aion, the age or period, and an ibis with a glory of rays round its head, meant for the bird phoenix. (See Fig. 86.) In the seventh year we see Orpheus playing on his lyre while all the animals of the forest are listening, thus pointing out the return of the golden age. In the eighth year we have the head of Serapis surrounded by the seven planets, Fig- and the whole within the twelve signs of the zodiac ; and on another coin we have the sun and moon within the signs of the zodiac. A series of twelve coins for the same year tells us that the house of the sun, in the language of the astrologers, is in the lion, that of the moon in the crab, the houses of Venus in the scales and the bull, those of Mars in the scorpion and the ram, those of Jupiter in the archer and the fishes, those of Saturn in the sea-goat and aquarius, those of Mercury in the virgin and the twins. On the coins of the same year we have the eagle and thunderbolt, the sphinx, the bull Apis, the Nile and crocodile, Isis nursing the child Horus, the hawk-headed Aroeris, and the winged sun. On coins of other years we have a camelopard, Horus sitting on the lotus-flower, and a sacrifice to Isis, which was celebrated on the last day of the year, (See Fig. 87.) Zoe^^a "^^^ coins also tell us of the bountiful overflow Numi of the Nile, and of the goodness of the harvests that followed; thus, in the ninth, tenth, thirteenth, and seventeenth years, we see the river Nile in the form of an old man leaning on a crocodile, pouring corn and fruit out of a cornucopia, while a child by his side, with the figures Lucian., Rhetor. IG, tells US that on those years the waters of the Nile rose at Memphis to the wished-for height of sixteen cubits. From these latter coins it would seem that but little change had taken place in the soil of the Delta by the yearly deposit of mud: Herodotus says that sixteen cubits Lib. ii. 13. was the wished-for rise of the Nile at Memphis when HAP. XV.] THE COINS. 179 he was there. And we should almost think that the seasons were more favourable to the husbandman during the reign of an Antonine than of a Caligula, did we not set it down to the canals being better cleansed by the care of the prefect, and to the mildness of the government leaving the people at liberty to enjoy the bounties of nature, and at the same time making them more grateful in acknowledging them. Fig. 87. (34) The mystic emblems on the coins are only what we might look for from the spread of the Gnostic opinions, and the eagerness with which the Greeks were copjdng the super- stitions of the Egyptians ; and, wliile astrology was thus coun- tenanced by the state, of course it was not less followed by the people. The poor Jews took to it as a trade. In juvenal, Alexandria the Jewess, half beggar half fortune-teller, Sat.vi.5i3. would stop people in the streets and interpret dreams by the help of the bible, or sit under a sacred tree like a sybil, and promise wealth to those who consulted her, duly proportioned to the size of the coin by which she was paid. We find among N 2 ISO ANTONINUS nUS. A.D. 13S-1G2. [chap. XV. Yount^'s ^^^^ Theban ruins pieces of papyrus with inscriptions, Hierogl. describing the positions of the heavens at particular hours in this veimi, for the astroloo'ers therewith to calcuhite the nativities of the persons then born. On one is a. complete horoscope, containing the places of the sun, moon, and every planet, noted down on the zodiac in degrees and minutes of a degi'ee ; and with these particulars the mathe- matician undertook to foretell the marriage, fortune, and death of the person who had been born at the instant when the heavenly bodies were so situated ; and, as the horoscope was buried in the tomb -with the mummy, we must suppose that it was thought to hold good even in the next world. By the help of this superstitious record we now fix the date of this emperor's reign with mathematical certainty. (35) But astrology was not the only end to which mathe- matics were then turned. Claudius Ptolemy, the astronomer and geographer, was at that time the ornament of the mathe- matical school of Alexandria. In his writings he treats of the earth as the centre of the heavens, and the sun, moon, and planets as moving in circles and epicycles round it. This had been the opinion of most of the early astronomers ; but since this theory of the heavens received the stamp of his authority it is now always called the Ptolemaic system. ^Ve should remark, however, that Ptolemy does not speak of the epicycles in which the ancients supposed the planets moved as having any real existence, but only as a theory invented ' to save the ' appearances.' He has left man}- valuable observations on the planets and fixed stars ; but has done us a still greater service by collecting together in his great work, his Syntaxis or Almagest, the scattered observations and knowledge of the earlier astronomers. AVhat is now of the greatest value to us is the series of eclipses which had been observed at Babylon and Alexandria for the eight hundred years before his time. By recording these Ptolemy has done more for chronology than any other writer whatever; on these we chiefly rest for the dates of the kings of Babylon, of Persia, of Judaea, and of CHAP. XV.] ASTRONOMY. 181 Egypt. In liis work on geography Ptolemy explains how a globe is to be made, and how a map is to be laid down on a projection nearly the same as that now used. He measures the latitudes by the length of the longest day at each place, and the longitudes by the distance from the meridian of Alex- andria ; and his geographical description of the countries of the world is more minute and more exact than that of any former writer. His work on Musical Harmony is the best explanation of the opinions of the ancients on that subject. As his Kfe drew to a close, when he was in about his seventy- seventh year he wished to leave behind him the results of his labours, in some form which was more hkely to last than on fi'ail and crumbling papjTus. So, on a column of hard stone, in the city of Canopus, he engraved the Elements of the planets' orbits, the result of more than twenty years' observations. This stone, meant to have been so lasting, has long since been lost, but his Elements of the planets have been saved for us by being copied by boine friendly hand on the despised papyrus. Ptolemy observed the altitudes of the heavenly bodies on the meridian by means of ^ brass circle fixed on a column, with a graduated edge and a plumb line to mark the zenith, and two moveable points to guide the sight. In the case of the sun he also used a mm'al quadrant, noting on the edge the shadow of a point in the centre. This also had a plumb line. The difference of longitude between two bodies he mea- sured by means of a very complicated astrolabe formed of several circles. (See Fig. 88.) One circle revolved on Fig. 88. a fixed diameter, which was the pole of the equator; and it carried with it three other circles, one fixed at right angles to it as an ecliptic, and two 182 ANTONINUS PIUS. A.D. 138—162. [chap. XV. which revolved, one within and one without it, on a diameter which was the pole of the ecliptic. By these two the difference of longitude between two bodies was measured upon the graduated ecliptic circle, while one of them had two moveable points for the sight, by which at the same time the latitude of one of the observed bodies was measured. (80) In this reign was made a new survey of all the military roads in the Eoman empire, called the Itinerary of Antoninus. It included the great roads of Egypt, which were only six in number. One was from Contra-Pselcis in Nubia along the east bank of the Nile, to Babylon opposite Memphis, and there turning eastward through Heliopolis and the district of the Jews to Clysmon, where Trajan's canal entered the Ked Sea. A second, from Memphis to Pelusium, made use of this for about thirty miles, joining it at Babylon, and leaving it at Scense Veteranorum. By these two roads a traveller could go from Pelusium to the head of the Eed Sea ; but there was a shorter road through the desert which joined the first at Serapion, about fifty miles from Clysmon, instead of at Scen£e Veteranorum, and which was therefore ^bove a hundred miles shorter. A fourth was along the west bank of the Nile from Hiera Sycaminon in Nubia to Alexandria, leaving the river at Andropolis, about sixty miles from the latter city. A fifth was from Palestine to Alexandria, running along the coast of the Mediterranean from Eaphia to Pelusium, and thence, leaving the coast to avoid the flat countiy, which was under water during the inundation; it joined the last at Andropolis. The sixth road was from Coptos on the Nile to Berenice on the Eed Sea, between which towns were ten stations, about twenty-five miles apart, where the traveller might rest with his camels each day, after travelling from the former station by night to avoid the heat. These six were probably the only roads under the care of the prefect. Though Syene was the bomidary of the pro- vince of Egypt, the Eoman power was felt for about one Wilkinsou, hundred miles into Nubia, and we find the names of Thebes. ^j^^ emperors on several temples between Syene and CHAP. XV.] THE EO ADS— THE COASTS— THE TRADE. 183 Hiera Sycaminon. But beyond this, though we find inscrip- tions left by Roman travellers, the emperors seem never to have aimed at making military roads, or holding any cities against the inroads of the Blemmies and other Arabs. (37) To this sm-vey we must add the valuable geographical knowledge given by Ai-rian in his voyage round the Arriani shores of the Red Sea, wherein he mentions the several I'enplus. ports and their distances, with the tribes and cities near the coast. The trade of Egypt to India, Ethiopia, and Arabia was then most valuable, and carried on with great activity ; but, as the merchandise was in each case carried only for short distances from city to city, the traveller could gain but little knowledge of where it came from, or even sometimes of where it was going. The Egyptians sent coarse linen, glass bottles, brazen vessels, brass for money, and iron for weapons of war and hunting ; and they received back ivory, rhinoceros' teeth, Indian steel, Indian ink, silks, slaves, tortoise shell, myrrh, and other scents, with many other eastern articles of high price and little weight. The presents which the merchants made to the petty kings of Arabia were chiefly horses, mules, and gold and silver vases. Beside this, the ports on the Red Sea, carried on a brisk trade among themselves in corn, expressed oil, wicker boats, and sugar. Of sugar, or honey from the cane, this is perhaps the earliest mention found in history ; but Arrian does not speak of the sugar-cane as then new, nor does he tell us where it was grown. Had sugar been then seen for the first time he would certainly have said so ; it must have been an article well known in the Indian trade. While pass- , ^ Id script. ing through Egypt on his travels, or while living ap. Boekh. there and holding some post under the prefect, ' the historian Arrian has left us his name and a few lines of poetry carved on the foot of the great Sphinx near the P3Tamids. (38) At this time also the travellers continued to carve their names and their feelings of wonder on the foot of the musical statue at Thebes and in the deep empty tombs of the Tlieban 184 MARCUS AURELIUS. A.D. 162—181. [chap. XV. Idngs. These inscriptions are full of curious information. For ^, . , .^^^ example it lias been doubted whether the Eoman army Ibid. 4766. , , was provided with medical officers. Their writers have not mentioned them. But part of the Second Legion was at this time stationed at Thebes ; and one Asclepiades, while cutting his name in a tomb which once held some old Theban, has cleared up the doubt for us, by saying that he was physician to the Second Legion. (39) Antoninus made a hippodrome, or race-course, for the J. Malala, amusement of the citizens of Alexandria, and built Aciiiiies gates to the city, called the gate of the sun and Tatius, y. -fche gate of the moon, the former fronting the harbour and the latter fronting the lake Mareotis, and joined by the great street which ran across the whole width of the city. But this reign was not wholly without trouble ; there was a rebel- lion in which the prefect Dinarchus lost his life, and for which the Alexandrians were severely punished by the emperor. (40) The coins of Marcus Aurelius (see Fig. 89), the suc- cessor of Antonius Pius, have a Kumi^ rich variety of subjects, falling not far short of those of the last reign. On those of the fifth year, the bountiful overflow of the Nile is gratefully acknow- ledged by the figure of the god holdmg a cornucopia, and a troop of sixteen chil- dren playing round him. It had been Fig- 89. not unusual in hieroglyphical writing to express a thought by means of a figiu'e which in the Coptic language had nearly the same sound ; and we have seen this copied on the coins in the case of a Greek word, in the bird phoenix being used for the palm-branch phoenix, or the hiero- glj^phical word year ; and here we seem to have the same done in the case of a Latin word, as the sixteen children or ciqncls T,,. mean sixteen cuhits, the wished-for height of the Nile's Pliny, ' ^ lib. xxxvi. overflow. The statue of the Nile, which had been 12. . carried by Vespasian to Rome and placed in the CHAP. XV.] THE COINS. 185 temple of Peace, was surrounded by the same sixteen children. (See Fig. 90.) On the coins of his twelfth year the sail held up Fig. 90. by the goddess Isis is blown towards the Pharos lighthouse, as if in that year the emperor had been expected in Alexandria. (See Fig. 91.) Fig. 91. (41) We find no coins in the eleventh or fourteenth years of this reign, which makes it probable that it was in the eleventh year that the rebellion of the native soldiers took a.d. 172. place. 1 These were most likely Arabs who had been yf^/^ admitted into the ranks of the legions, but having Antonini. withdrawn to the desert they now harassed the towns with their marauding inroads, and it was not till after some time that they were wholly put down by Avidius Cassius at the head of the legions. But Cassius himself was unable to resist the tempt- ations which always beset a successful general, and after this 186 MARCUS AUEELIUS. A.D, 162—181. [chap. XV. victory he allowed himself to be declared emperor by the legions of Eeypt: and this seems to have been the A.D. 175. ° ^"^.-^ . cause of no coins being struck in Alexandria in the fourteenth year of the reign. Cassius left his son Msecianus in Alexandria with the title of Pretorian Prefect, while he liimself marched into S3Tia to secure that province. There the legions followed the example of their brethren m Egypt, and the Syrians were glad to acknowledge a general of the eastern armies as their sovereign. But on Marcus leading an army into Syria he was met with the news that the rebels had repented, and had put Cassius to death, and he then moved his forces towards Egypt; but before his arrival the Egyptian legions had in the same manner put Msecianus to death, and all had returned to their allegiance. (42) When Marcus arrived in Alexandria the citizens were agreeably surprised by the mildness of his conduct. He at once forgave his enemies ; and nobody whatever was put to death for having joined in the rebellion. The severest punish- ment, even to the children of Cassius, was banishment from the province, but without restraint, and with the forfeiture of less than half their patrimony. In Alexandria the emperor laid aside the severity of the soldier, and mingled with the people as a fellow- citizen in the temples and public places ; while with the professors in the Museum he was a philosopher, joining them in their studies in the schools. (13) Eome and Athens at this time alike looked upon Alex- andria as the centre of the world's learning. The library was then in its greatest glory; the readers were numerous, and Christianity had as yet raised no doubts about the value of its pagan treasures. All the wisdom of Greece, written on rolls of brittle - papyrus or tough parchment, was ranged in boxes on its shelves. Of these writings the few that have been saved from the wreck of time are no doubt some of the best, and they are perhaps enough to guide our less simple taste towards the unornamented grace and natural elegance of the Greek model. But we often fancy those treasures most valuable that are CHAP. XV.] THE LIBRARY. 187 beyond our reach, and hence when we run over the names of the authors in this library we think perhaps too much of those which are now missing. The student in the Museum Qumtilian, could have read the lyric poems of Alc£eus and ^' ^' Stersichorus, which in matter and style were excellent enough to be judged not quite so good as Homer; the tender lamenta- tions of Simonides; the warm breathings of Sappho the tenth muse ; the pithy iambics of Archilochus, full of noble flights and brave irregularities ; the comedies of Menander, containing every kind of excellence ; those of Eupolis and Cratinus, which were equal to Aristophanes ; the histories of Theopom- pus, which in the speeches were as good as Thucydides ; the lively agreeable orations of Hj^perides, the accuser of Demo- sthenes ; with the books of travels and annalists, and countless others of less merit for style and genius, but which, if they had been saved, would not have left Egypt wholly without a history. (44) The trade of writing and making copies of the old authors employed a great many hands in the neighboui'hood of the Museum. Two kinds of hand- writing were in use. I^MO MOAOrOYMGNOOCWier^ onoNGg £-T l^ON of^i [:ic6.bb.NTclm dlC6^A Fig. 92. One was a running hand, with the letters joined together in rather a slovenly manner ; and the other a neat regular hand with the letters square and larger, written more slowly but read more easily. (See Fig. 92). Those that wrote the j^^gg^-^g fii'st were called quick-iuriters, those that wrote the Eccl. Hist, second were called book-writers. If an author was not skilled in the use of the pen, he employed a quick-ivriter to write down his words as he delivered them. But in order that 188 MARCUS AURELIUS. A.D. 162—181. [chap. xv. liis work might be published it was handed over to the book- ivriters to be copied out more neatly ; and numbers of young women, skilled in penmanship, were employed in the trade of copying books for sale. For this purpose parchment was coming into use, though the old papyrus was still used as less costly though less lasting. (-45) Athenseus, if we may judge from his writings, was then in the centre of the Alexandrian wits and men of learning. We learn from his own pages that he was born at Naucratis^ and was the friend of Pancrates who lived under Hadrian, and also of Oppian, who died in the reign of Caracalla. His Deipnosophist, or table talk of the Philosophers, is a large work full of pleasing anecdotes and curious information, gathered from comic writers and authors without number that have long since been lost. But it is put together with very little skill. His industry and memory are more remarkable than his judgment or good taste ; and we are sorry to find that the table talk is too often turned towards eating and drink- ing. His amusing work is a picture of society in Alexandria, where everything frivolous was treated as grave, and everything serious was laughed at. The wit sinks into scandal, the humour is at the cost of morality, and the numerous quotations are chosen for their point, not for any lofty thoughts or noble feeling. Alexandria was then as much the seat of Lib. li. 85. . ^ . literary wits as it was of dry criticism ; and Martial, the lively author of the Epigrams, had fifty years before remarked, that there were few places in the world where he would more wish his verses to be repeated than on the banks of the Nile. (46) Nothing could be lower than the poetic taste in Alexandria at this time. The Museum was giving birth to a race of poets, who instead of bringing forth thoughts out of theii' own minds, found them only in the storehouse of the memory. They wrote their patch-work poems by the help of Plomer's lines, which they picked from all parts of the Iliad and Odyssey and so put together as to make them tell a new CHAP. XV.] THE WRITERS. 189 tale. Tliey called themselves Homeric Poets. One j^^^^^p^ of these ingenious writers, named Arius, who had a ap.Boeckh. salar}^ from the Museum as a reward for his industry, visited Upper Egypt, and has left us carved upon the foot of the musical statue of Amunothph, his admiration of what he heard in four of Homer's lines. (47) Valerius Harpocration of Alexandria may have lived about the same time as Athenasus ; hut at any rate not Suidas. earlier, since he had read the Deipnosophist. He was the author of a lexicon in explanation of the writings of the ten Grecian orators. This is one of many useful works of learning and industry without genius for which the world is indebted to the grammarians of Alexandria. It explains the customs of the judges and lawyers at Athens, and the lives of the persons mentioned by the orators. (48) jElius Harpocration was another grammarian of Alex- andria, who lived about the same time, unless Suidas has made two persons out of one. He was the author of ^ ^ . J. Capitoh- several works not now extant, and was called to nus.inVita Veri Eome to give lessons in Greek to the young ^lius Verus, the adopted son of Hadrian and Marcus ; and from the youthful patron the learned grammarian, like any other slave, received the name of ^lius. (49) Hephsestion of Alexandria was another grammarian who assisted in the education of Verus. He was the author of the Encheiridion, a valuable work on the metres, lines, and feet of Greek poetry. The Encheiridion is quoted by Longinus, and is still the chief authority on the subject. When the age of poetry was past, the grammarians explained the rules by which verses had been formed ; had there been any chance of a new poet arising, they would not have wasted their labour in laying down the laws of versification, which might have been imme- diately contradicted. (50) To these grammarians we must add Julius . Suidas. Pollux of Naucratis, who afterwards removed to Athens, where he taught rhetoric. He was the author of the Onomas- 190 MARCUS AURELIUS. A.D. 162-181. [cnAP. XV. ticon, a work on the words and names used in science, one of the countless volumes of the Alexandrian school of verbal criticism, of which those that have come down to us teach us how little we have to regret in the loss of the rest. He dedi- cated it to the emperor Commodus. Probably about this time Eudosia, also the historian Cheiron of Naucratis lived. He son \ol l ^^'ote a work like that of Manetho, on the Alex- P- 43^- andrian and Egyptian priests, their deeds, and their order of succession, and on the kings that had reigned of old over each of the Egyptian tribes. How many doubts about the early part of Eg3T3tian history would this lost work of Cheiron have cleared up ! (51) Lucian, the author of the Dialogues, was at that time Apolog. pro secretary to the prefect of Egypt, and he boasts that mere. cond. large share in writing the laws and ordering the justice of the province. Here this laughing philosopher found a broad mark for his humour in the religion of the Egyptians, their worshipping animals and water-jars, their love Lucianus, magic, the general mourning through the land on Pe luctu. ^i^Q death of the bull Apis, their funeral ceremonies, their placing their mummies round the dinner table as so many guests, and pawning a father or a brother when in want of mone}^ So little had the customs changed, that the Navigium. . p i • i i • i -ti i • i young Egyptians oi high bulli still wore their long hair tied in one lock, and hanging over the right ear, as we see on the Theban sculp- tures fifteen centuries earlier. It was then a mark of royalty, but had since been adopted by many families of high rank. (See Fig. 93.) But the freedom which Lucian used in making game of the old habits would seem to prove that they were already weakened, and ready to fall before Fig. 93. the new religion from Galilee. Eutychii (52) Before the end of this reign we meet with a Annales. gt^^Q^g pi'oof of the Spread of Christianity in Egypt. cnAP. XV.] THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. 191 The number of believers made it necessary for the bishop of Alexandria to appoint three bishops under him, to look after the churches in three other cities ; and accordingly Demetrius, who then held that office, took upon himself the rank, if not the name, of Patriarch of Alexandria. A second proof of . . ' ^ ^ Origen., the spread of Christianity is the pagan philosophers contra Cel- sum. thinking it necessary to write against it. Celsus, an epicurean of Alexandria, was one of the first to attack it ; but his works are only known to us in Origen's Answer. The arguments which he brought forward are not altogether the same as those by which Christianity has been assailed in more modern days. Celsus scarcely called in question the truth of the gospels as a history ; he might perhaps himself, as a child, have seen men who had seen the apostles. He did not doubt the miracles, but argued that they j)roved nothing, as they might have been worked by magic or by Egyptian arts. But he refused to acknowledge the antiquity of the Hebrew scriptures, and said that they were borrowed from the Eg^^D- tians ; he also brought forward the opinion of the Jews, that their prophecies respecting the Messiah did not point to Jesus; and he blamed the philosophy of the New Testament as being unfavourable to learning, and its morality as too forgiving toward sinners. His chief attempt was to- throw ridicule on the narrative in the gospels, and while so doing he proves the esteem in which they were held; and at the same time his numerous references to every part of the New Testament prove that it was in every respect the same book that we now read for the truths of our religion. (53) Origen, whom we shall hereafter have to speak of, answered the several arguments of Celsus with skill and candour. He challenges his readers to a comparison between the Christians and pagans in point of morals, in Alexandria or in any other city. He argues in the most forcible way that Christianity had overcome all difficulties, and had spread itself far and wide against the power of kings and emperors, which it could not have done without the help of God ; and lie says that 192 MARCUS AURRLIUS. A.D. 162— ISl. [OHAP. XV. nobod}^ but a Christian ever died a mart}^ to the truth of his religion. He makes good use of the Jewish prophecies ; but, unlike modern writers on the truth of Christianity, he brings forward no proofs in support of the truth of the gospel history ; they were not wanted, as Celsus and the pagans had not called it in question. (54) Celsus was a believer in one God, and thought it unimportant under what name he was spoken of whether as Ammon, Jupiter, or Adonai. He defended the pagans, as only believing that their numerous gods were so many angels or servants of the Almighty. He blamed the Hebrew writers for saying that God created man in his own image ; because God is without form. But though a pagan, Celsus had a great respect for the Hebrew scriptures; in quoting the Dialogue, which we have now unfortunately lost, between Jason and Papiscus, the one a Christian and the other a Jew of Alex- andria, though he argued that the Christian's arguments were weak, it is clear that he in some part admitted the weight of an appeal to prophecy, in proof of Jesus being a divine teacher. Jews and Christians were not then separated by the wide gulph that was set between them by the council of Nicsea. They were fellow- sufferers under pagan persecution and contempt, and they made common cause against atheism on the one side and idolatry on the other. The real strength of Christianity lay then as now in its consoling view of God's merc}', in the purity of its morality, and in our feeling it to be true by the measure which the Creator has planted in our own breasts ; but the logical arguments by which it was supported during the first two centuries were drawn more from the Hebrew prophecies, and less from the miracles, than they have ever been since. (55) Another and a painful proof of the number of Egyptian Christians is seen in the literary frauds of which their writers were guilt}', most likely to satisfy the minds of those pagan converts that they had already made, rather than from a wish to make new believers. About this time was written by an unknown Christian author a poem in eight books, named the CHAP. XV.] CHRISTIAN FORGERIES. 193 Sibylline Verses, which must not be mistaken for the pagan fragments of the same name. It is written in the form of a prophecy, in the style used by the Gnostics, and is full of dark sentences and half-expressed hints. It describes the Roman emperors by the numbers, or first letters of their names, and thus teaches us what is meant by the number of the Beast in the Book of Bevelation. It begins with a slight glance at the history of the Jews, it giieves in a melanchol}^ tone over the several nations of the earth, and foretells Christ's coming about the time that Egypt should be conquered by the Romans. It then enumerates the emperors who are to reign over Rome down to the three successors of him who is to be named after the Adriatic Sea, in whose family the sceptre is to remain for ever. This fixes the time of the author to the reign of Aurelius and Verus, or at latest to that of Commodus ; while the whole train of thought points to Alexandiia as the place where it was written. These verses profess to be the work of an inspired sibyl of the time of Noah, and they were received by many of the Egyptian Christians as a proof of the divine mission of Jesus. They are undoubtedly a pious fraud, and as such they deceived many. Celsus charges the Oric^en Christians with being sibyllists ; but, notwithstanding Hymn this sneer, these verses are quoted as authority by ' many Christian writers, and even by the Romish Church to the present day. (56) Another spurious Christian w^ork of about the same time is the Clementina, or the Recognitions of Clemens, bishop of Rome. It is an account of the travels of the apostle Peter and his conversation with Simon Magus ; but the author's knowledge of the Egyptian mythology, of the opinions of the Greek philosophers, and of the astrological rules by which fortunes are foretold from the planets' places, amply prove that he was an Egyptian or an Alexandrian. He was most likely a Jewish convert, as he does not believe the divinity of Jesus, and he puts into the mouth of Simon Magus, as an heretical opinion, the Platonic doctrine of two inferior gods proceeding 194 MARCUS AURELIUS. A.D. 1G2— 131. [CHAr. XV. from the Creator of all things. No name ranked higher among the Christians than that of Clemens Romanus ; and this is onl}' one out of several cases of Christian authors who wished to give weight to their own opinions by i^assing them upon the world as his writings. (57) In studying the history of literature, as we note the several times in which poetry, criticism, and science flourished, so it is equally curious to mark the ages which have given birth to literary forgeries. These are likely to have been written at a time when poetic genius was wanting ; when men had seen and valued literary excellence, but could no longer produce it. In Alexandria it was when Theocritus, Calli- machus, and Apollonius were no more. It was at a time when the art of criticism had decayed ; when the followers of Aristophanes and Aristarchus had lost the power of making pretenders tremble under their lash ; and when the professors in the Musetim were unable to detect the falsehood of what the dealers in manuscripts offered for sale as an original author. It is not always easy to learn when and where works put forth under a false name were really written ; but we have already mentioned several which were written in Alexandria since the time of Euergetes II., and it is probable that many others were about this time forged by the dishonest cleverness of the Alexandrians. if Fig.' 94. — Ornament of Lotus and Lily. CHAPTER XVI. THE REIGNS OF COMMODUS, PERTINAX, NIGER, SEVERUS, CARA- CALLA, MACRINUS, ELAGABALUS, ALEXANDER, MAXBIINUS, BALBINUS, THE GORDIANS, AND PHILIP. A.D. 181-249. (1) The late emperor had pardoned the children of the rebel general Avidius Cassius, but Commodus (see Fig. 95) Vuicatius, began his reign by putting them to death ; and, while thus disregarding the example and advice of his "^^^i father, he paid his memory the idle ^oYV^- compliment of continuing his series of dates on his own coins. But the Egyptian coin- age of Commodus clearly betrays the sad change that was gradually taking place in the arts of the country ; we no longer see the former beauty and variety of subjects ; and the silver, which had before been very much mixed with copper, was under Commodus hardly to be known from brass. On a coin of the tenth year we see the lighthouse of the island of Pharos with a ship sailing away from it. This may Lampridiua have been in token of the Esfyptian fleet which Com- "^"it- Com- ^"^ ^ modi. modus established to fetch with the necessary regu- larity the yearly supply of corn from Alexandria. Or it may mean that in that year Egypt had been honoured with a visit from the emperor. This is not improbable, as in Kome he was very partial to the Egyptian superstitions, and he had adopted the tonsure, and had his head shaven like a priest of Isis, that o 2 196 COMMODUS. A.D. ISl— 194. [OIIAP. XYI. Fig. 96. he might more properly carry an Anubis- staff in the sacred processions. (See Fig. 90.) (2) Upper Egypt had hxtterly been falling off Aristides ^^^^ population. It had been drained Oratio of all its hoarded wealth. Its carrvintf ^gypt. trade through Coptos to the Eed Sea was much lessened. Any tribute that its temples received from the piety of the neighbourhood was small. Nubia was a desert ; and a few soldiers at Syene were enough to guard the poverty of the Thebaid from the inroads of the Blemmyes. It was no longer necessary to send criminals to the Oasis; it was enough to banish them to the neighbourhood of Thebes. Hence we learn but little of the state of the country. Now and then a traveller, after measuring the pyramids of Memphis and the underground tombs of Thebes, might venture as far as the cataracts, and watch the sun at noon on the longest day, shining to the bottom of the sacred well at Syene, like the orator Aristides and his friend Dion in this reign ; but even such travellers were few. Aristides indeed lost the notes which he made upon his journey ; and from him we learn little beyond the measure of the Nile's rise, which was twenty-eight cubits at Elephantine, twenty-one at Coptos, and fourteen at Memphis. (3) The celebrated Museum, which had held the vast library of .the Ptolemies, had been burnt by the soldiers of Julius Caesar in one of their battles with the Egyptian army in the streets of Alexandria ; but the loss had been in part repaired by Mark Antony's gift of the library from Pergamus to the temple of Serapis. The new library however would seem to have been placed in a building somewhat separated from the temple, as when the temple of Serapis was burnt in the reign of Eusebii MarcLis Aurclius, and again when it was in part Chronicon, ciegti^oycd by fire in the second year of this reign we hear of no loss of books; and two hundred years later the CHAP. XVI.] TEMPLE OF SERAPIS< 197 library of the Serapium had risen to the number of seven hundred thousand volumes. The temple-keeper to j^^^^.^^^^ the great god Serapis, or one of the temple -keepers, (^ruter, at this time was Asclepiades, a noted boxer and wrestler, who had been made chief of the wrestling-ground and had received the high rank of the emperor's freedman. He set up a statue to his father Demetrius, an equally noted boxer and wrestler, who had been chief priest of the wrestling-ground and of the emperor's baths in the last reign. Such was the strange union of offices and honours among the priests of Alexandria. Another favourite in the theatre was Apolaustus of j^ggj-jpi; Memphis, who removed to Eome where he was crowned Gruter, cccxiii. 8. as conqueror m tne games, and as a reward made priest to Apollo and emperor's freedman. Fig. 97. (4) The city of Canopus was still a large mart for mer- chandise, as the shallow but safe entrance to its strabo, harbour made it a favourite with pilots of the small ^' trading vessels, who rather dreaded the rocks at the mouth of the harbour of Alexandria. A temple of Serapis inscriptap. which had lately been built at Canopus was dedicated l^^tronne. to the god in the name of the emperor Commodus ; and there some of the grosser superstitions of the polytheists fled before the spread of Christianity and Platonism in Alexandria. The Canobic jars, which held those parts of the body that could not be made solid in the mummy, and which had the heads of the four lesser gods of the dead on their lids, received their name from this city. (See Fig. 07.) The sculptures on the ^jjj^-jjgQjj beautiful temples of Contra-Latopolis were also Thebes. IDS COMMODUS. A.D. 181—194. [chap. XVI. pl^^53' fii^islied in this reign, and the emperor's names and titles were carved on the walls in hieroglyphics, with those of the Ptolemies, under whom the temple itself had been built. Commodus may perhaps not have been the last emperor whose name and praises were carved in hieroglyphics ; but all the great buildings in the Thebaid, whicli add such value to the early history of Egypt, had ceased before his reign. Other buildings of a less lasting form were no doubt being built, such as the Greek temples at Antinoopolis and Ptolemais, which have long since been swept away ; but the Eg}*ptian priests, with their gigantic undertakings, their noble plan of working for after ages rather than for themselves, were nearly rumed, and we find no ancient building now standing in Eg}^t that was raised after the time of the Antonines. (5) But the poverty of the Egyptians was not the only cause Inscript built no more temples. Though the colossal R.^Soc. Lit. statue of Amunothph uttered its musical notes every morning at sunrise, still tuneful amid the desolation' with which it was surrounded, and the Nile was still worshipped at midsummer by the husbandman to secui'e its fertilising overflow ; nevertheless the religion itself for which the 'temples had been built was fast giving way before the silent spread of Christianity. The religion of the Egyptians, unlike that of the Greeks, was no longer upheld by the magistrate ; it rested solely on the belief of its followers, and it may have sunk into Christianity the faster for the greater number of truths which were contained in it than in the paganism of other nations. The scanty hieroglyphic al records tell us little of thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Indeed that cumbersome mode of writing, which alone was used in religious matters, was little fitted for anything beyond the most material parts of their mythology. Hence we must not believe that the Egyptian polytheism was quite so gross as would appear from the sculptures ; and indeed we there learn that they believed, even at the earliest times, in a resurrection from the tomb, a day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and pmiishments. CHAP. XVI.] THE SACRED BOOKS. 199 (6) The priests made a great boast of their learning and philosophy, and could each repeat by heart those ^gj^ens books of Thoth which belonc^ed to his own order. Alex. ^ ° . Strom. VI. The singer who walked first in the sacred processions bearing the symbols of music, could repeat the books of hj-mns and the rules for the king's Hfe. (See Fig. 98.) The sooth- sayer who followed, carrying a clock and a palm-branch, the emblem of the year, could repeat the four astrological books ; Fig. 98. The Singer. The Prophet. The Scribe. one on the moon's phases, one on the fixed stars, and two on their hehacal risings. The scribe w^ho walked next, carrying a book and the flat rule which held the ink and pen, was acquainted with the geography of the world and of the Nile, and with those books which describe the motions of the sun, moon and planets, and the fm'niture of the temple and consecrated places. The master of the robes understood the ten books relating to education, to the marks on the sacred heifers, and to the worship of the gods, embracing the sacrifices, the first-fruits, the hj-mns, the prayers, the processions, and festivals. The prophet or preacher who walked last, carrying in his arms the great waterpot, was the president of the temple, and learned in the ten books, called hieratic, relating to the laws, the gods, the management of the temples, and the 200 COMMODUS. A.D. 181—194. [chap. XVI. revenue. Thus, of the forty-two chief books of Thoth, thirtj^- six were learned by these priests, while the remaining six on the body, its diseases, and medicines, were learned b}^ the Pastophori, priests who carried the image of the god in a small shrine. (See Fig. 99.) These books had been written at various times : some may have been very old, but some were undoubtedly new ; they tof^ether formed the Ec^yptian bible. TheopHlus ° . T Antiocii. Apollonius, or ApoUonides Horapis, lib. 11. ni. Egyptian priest, had lately pub- lished a work on these matters in his own language named Shomenuthi, the hook of the Fig. 99. gods. (7) But the priests were no longer the earnest sincere teachers as of old ; they had invented a system of secondary meanings, by which they explained away the coarse religion of their statues and sacred animals. Like many other nations, they had two religions, one for the many and one for the few ; one, material and visible, for the crowds in the outer court-yards, in which the hero was made a god and every attribute of deity was made a person ; and another, spiritual and intellectual, for the learned in the schools and sacred colleges. Even if w^e were not told, we could have no doubt but the main point of secret knowledge among the learned was a disbelief in those very doctrines which they w^ere teaching to the vulgar, and which they now explained among themselves, by sajdng that Jamblichus ^^^^ ^ second meaning. This was perhaps part De myster. of the great secret of the goddess Isis, the secret of Abydos, the betrayer of which w^as more guilty than he who should try to stop the haris or sacred barge in the Celsus, ap. procession on the Nile. We learn from Celsus, that Origen. eyen tliose who believed in the gods of the vulgar looked upon them only as so many inferior agents of the one God. And we are told more expressly in the religious treatise of Hermes Trismegistus, which was written Lib. xvii. CHAP. XVI.] THE RELIGION. 201 about this reign, that the Egyptians now taught that first of truths, that beside the Creator and his created works there was no third being ; that all that was visible to ej^esight was created ; and that the one God, the creator and father of all, was an all-powerful, good, invisible being. How far the Egyptian priests taught this in their schools as early as the great Jewish law-giver taught it openly to his whole nation, w^e have now no means of knowing ; but the writings of Plato, who studied at HeHopolis, will be acknowledged as evidence that it was there taught before the Greeks had a notion of it. The worship of gods, before whose statues the nation had bowed with unchanging devotion for at least two thousand years w^as now drawing to a close. Hitherto the priests had been able to resist all new opinions. The name of Amun-Ra had at one time been cut out from the Theban monuments to make way for a god from Lower Egypt ; but it had been cut in again when the storm passed by. The Jewish monotheism had left the crowd of gods unlessened. The Persian efforts had over- thrown statues and broken open temples, but had not been able to introduce their worship of the sun. The Greek conquerors had yielded to the Egyptian mind without a struggle; and Alexander had humbly begged at the door of the temple to be acknowledged as a son of Amun. But in the fulness of time these opinions, which seemed as firmly based as the monuments which represented them, sank before a religion which set up no new statues, and could command no force to break open temples. (8) The Egyptian priests, who had been proud of the superiority of their own doctrines over the paganism of their neighbours, felt for the overthrow of their national religion. * Our land,' says the author of Hermes Trismegistus, ' is the * temple of the world ; but, as wdse men should foresee all things, ' 3^ou should know that a time is coming when it will seem that *the Egyptians have by an unfailing piety served God in vain, * and their holy religion will become void ; for the divinity will * return from earth to heaven, Egypt will be forsaken, and the 202 COMMODUS. A.D. ISl— 194. [chap. XVI. * land which was the seat of the divinity will be void of religion. * For when strangers shall possess this kingdom religion will be ' neglected, and laws made against piety and divine worship, with * punishment on those who favour it. Then this holy seat will be *full of idolatry, idols' temples, and dead men's tombs. * 0 Egypt, Egypt ! there will remain only a feigned show of thy * religion, not believed by posterity ; and nought but the letters * which stand engraven on thy pillars will declare thy pious deeds ; * and in thee will dwell the Scythians, the Indians, or some other ' barbarous nation. The divinity wdll fly to heaven, and Egypt ' will be forsaken by God and man. I call upon thee, most holy ' river, I foretell unto thee what will come to pass. Thy waters ' and holy streams will be filled with blood, and will overflow thy * banks, so that the dead will be more numerous than the living; * and he that remains alive will be known to be an Egyptian only * by his language, while in his deeds he Avill seem a barbarian.' But nothing that has once had being ever wholly dies; and many a faint trace of the Egyptian mind may yet be found mingled with our modern opinions, growing fainter each century as it spreads over a wider surface, but never to be quite lost. (9) With the decay of the old religion there was too clearly to be seen an accompanying breaking up of societj^ Men are not held together by self interest only ; civil and moral laws are not obeyed from the mere dictates of prudence ; and hence lawgivers have usually stamped their codes with a divine sanc- tion. Religion is the great bond by which men have at all times been held in social union; the introduction of a new religion is a revolution as violent as a military conquest, and it may be centuries before the new framework is strong enough to act as a bond to society. (10) The spread of Christianity among the Egyptians was such that their teachers found it necessary to supply them with a life of Jesus, written in their own language, that they might the more readily explain to them his claim to be obeyed, and the nature of his commands. The Gospel according to the CHAP. XVI.] THE CHRISTIANS. 203 Egyptians, for sucli was the name this work bore, has qi^^^^^ lona since been lost, and was little quoted b}^ the Alexandr. , . Strom, iii. Alexandrians. It was most likely a translation from one of the four gospels, though it had some different readings suited to its own church, and contained some praise of celibacy not found in the New Testament ; but it was not valued by the Greeks, and was lost on the spread of the Coptic translation of the whole New Testament. (11) The grave serious Christians of Upper Egypt were very unhke the lively Alexandrians. But though the difference arose from peculiarities of national character, it was only spoken of as a difference of opinion. The Egyptians formed an ascetic sect in the church, who were called heretics by the Alex- andrians, and named Docetae, because they taught that the Saviour was a god, and did not really suffer on the cross, but was crucified only in ajpiKarance. They of necessity used the Gospel according to the Egyptians, which is quoted by Cassianus, one of their writers; many of them renounced marriage with the other pleasures and duties of social life, and placed their chief virtue in painful self-denial ; and out of them sprang that remarkable class of hermits, monks, and fathers of the desert who in a few centuries covered , . htymologi- Europe with monasteries. To act the Egyptian was con :Mag- proverbial with the Greeks for being sly and for being gloomy. (12) It is remarkable that the translation of a gospel into Coptic introduced a Greek alphabet into the Coptic language. Though for all religious purposes the scribes continued to use the ancient hieroglyphics, in which we trace the first steps by which pictures are made to represent words and syllables rather than letters, yet for the common purposes of writing they had long since' made use of the enchorial or common hand, in which the earlier system of writing is improved by the characters representing only letters, though sadly too numerous for each to have a fixed and well known force. But, as the hieroglyphics were also always used for carved writing on all 20i C0MM0DU3. A.D. 181—194. [chap. XVI. sli s Hi f q k h 8 j sh s 0 subjects, and the common hand only used on papyrus with a reed pen, the latter became wholly an indistinct running hand ; it lost that beauty and regularity which the hierogl3'phics, like the Greek and Roman characters, kept by being carved on stone, and hence it would seem arose the want of a new alphabet for the New Testament. This was made by merely adding to the Greek alphabet six new letters bor- rowed from the hieroglyphics (see Fig. 100) for those sounds which the Greeks did not use ; and the writ- ing was then written from left to right like an European language. By this Coptic alphabet the Greeks repaid an old debt to the Egyptians. Egypt had before taught Greece and the rest of its neighbours the first rudiments of the art of writing ; Six Coptic Letters, with their merogiyphic Originals. and HOW Grcccc gavc baclv to Egypt the last improvement in that art in the form of an alphabet of thirty well shaped letters. (18) It was only on the ancient hieroglyphics thus falling into disuse that the Greeks of Alexandria, almost for the first time, had the curiosity to study the principles on which they were w^ritten. Clemens Alexandrinus, wdio thought no branch of knowledge unworthy of his attention, gives a slight Strom. V. account of them, nearly agreeing with the results of our modern discoveries. He mentions the three lands of writing; first, the Ideroglyioliic (see Fig. 101); secondly, the hieratic (see Fig. 102), which is nearly the same, but written with a pen, and less ornamental than the carved figures ; and thirdl}^, the cpistolograpldc, or common alphabetic writing, now usually called the enchorial. (See Fig. 108). He then divides the hieroglyphic into the alphabetic and the symbolic ; and lastly, he divides the symbolic characters into the imitative, the figurative, and those formed like riddles. As instances of these last we may quote, for the first, the three zigzag lines CHAP. XVI.] EGYPTIAN WRITING. 205 which by simple imitation mean ' Water ; ' for the second, the oval, which means ' a Name,' because kings' names were written within ovals ; and for the third, a cup with three anvils, which mean ' Lord of Battles,' because ' Cup ' and ' Lord ' have nearly the same sound NEB, and ' Anvils ' and ' Battles ' have nearly the same sound, IMESHE. (See Fig. 104). Fk. 101. Fig. 102. WNA/V wwv Fig. 103. a Fig. 104. (14) In this reign Pantaenus of Athens a stoic philosopher, held the first place among the Christians of Alex- pjusebius andria. He is celebrated for uniting the study of heathen learning with a religious zeal which led him to preach Christianity in India, or rather Abyssinia. He introduced a taste for philosophy among the Christians ; and, though Athen- agoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founder of the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learned Christian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century. To have been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learning among the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no great praise. Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness over the world ? But we must remember that a new religion cannot be 206 COMMODUS. A.D. 181—191. [OHAP. XVI- introduced without some danger that learning and science may get forbidden, together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in the same schools ; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagans and Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians, learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion ; and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have founded a school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearly two centuries. Pantsenus has left no writings of his own, and is best known through his pupil or fellow-student Clemens. He is said to have brought with him to Hiei'ony- . ... mus, Catai. Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he met Scriptor. i-^ig travels, a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel in the original Hebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which if we possessed it would settle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all that now bears that apostle's name in the Greek translation. (15) The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish him from Clemens of Eome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeeded Panteenus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time a voluminous writer. He was in his philosophy a Platonist, though sometimes called of the Eclectic school. He has left an Address to the Gentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eight books of Stromata, or collections^ which he wrote to describe the perfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model for his imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects of Gnostics ' falsely so called.' By his advice, and by the imitation of Christ, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, to knowledge ; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant and then a son ; he is to become at last a god walldng in the flesh. In these writings Clemens pleads the cause of learning, both as a Christian and a scholar, saying that all science is sent from heaven as the true foundation of religion ; and he does not scruple to quote Plato for philosophical arguments, while quoting the New Testament CTIAP. XVI.] THE CATECHETICAL SCHOOL. 207 for its religious truths. He points out to us tlie 111-1 Strom. V. passage in Plato, which we could never otherwise have found, in which that philosopher was said to have taught the doctrme of the trinity. ' When Plato says, All (^pist. ad ' things ai-e around the King of all, and all things ^^'^ * are because of him, and he is the cause of all that is good ; * and the things which are second are around the second ; * and the things which are third are around the third ; ' I cannot but understand that the holy trinity was meant ; ' that the tliiixl was the Holy Spirit, and the second the Son, * through whom all things were made according to the will of ' the Father.' (IG) But Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief mark of the Gnostic sect. He „ Strom. VI, thought much of the sacred power of numbers. Abra- ham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot, which when wi'itten in Greek numerals thus, I^H, formed the sacred sign for the name of Jesus. Ten was a perfect number, and is that of the commandments given to Moses. Seven was a glorious number, and there are seven pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week ; and the two fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude were miraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egj^t under Joseph. Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventh day, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus ; but here there is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud of some zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found in the pagan poets. His judgment was not equal to his learning and piety ; and in his writings many an addition is made to the simple religion which Jesus taught and practised. (17) During the reign of Pertinax, which lasted only three months, we find no traces of his power in Egypt, except the money which the Alexandrians' coined in his name. Zoega, It seems to have been the duty of the prefect of the ^"^^^ mint, as soon as he heard of an emperor's death, to 19^- 20S PESCENNIUS NIGER. A.D. 194—196. [chap. XVI. lose no time in issuing coins in the name of his successor. It was one of the means to proclaim and secure the allegiance of the province for the new emperor. (18) During the reign of Commodus, Pescennius Niger had Sparilanus, been at the head of the legion that was employed in ^^it.Pescen- Upper Egypt in stopping the inroads of their trouhle- A.D. 194. some neighbours, who already sometimes bore the name of Saracens. He was a hardy soldier, and strict in his discipline, while he shared the labours of the field and of the camp with the men under him. He would not allow them the use of wine ; and once, when the troo2)s that guarded the frontier at Syene sent to ask for it, he bluntly answered, ' You * have got the Nile to drink, and cannot possibly want more.' Once, when a cohort had been routed by the Saracens, the men complained that they could not fight without wine; but he would not relax in his discipline ; ' Those who have * just now beaten you,' said Niger, ' drink nothing but * water.' He gained the love and thanks of the people of Upper Egypt by thus bridling the lawlessness of the troops ; and they gave him his statue cut in black basalt, in allusion to his name Niger. This statue was placed in his Roman villa. (19) But on the death of Pertinax, when Septimius Severus declared himself emperor in Pannonia, Niger, who was then in the province of Syria, did the same. Egypt and the Egyptian legions readily and heartily joined his party, which made it unnecessary for him to stay in that part of the empire ; so he Spartianus, niarched upon Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia. But Vit. Seven. Hiqyq^ after a few months, he was met by the army of his rival, who also sent a second army into Egypt; and he was defeated and slain at Cyzicus in IMysia, after having been acknowledged as emperor in Egypt and Syria for perhaps a year and a few months. We find no Alexandrian coins of Niger, although we cannot allow a shorter space of time to his reign than one whole yesiv, together with a few months of the preceding and following years. "Within that time Severus had CHAP. XVI.] A SENATE IN ALEXANDRIA. 209 to march upon Rome against his first rival Julian, to punish the praetorian guards, and then to conquer Niger. (20) After the death of his rival, when Severus was the undisputed master of the empire, and was no longer ^ ^ wanted in the other provinces, he found leisure to visit Egypt ; and like other active-minded travellers, he examined the pyramids of Memphis and the temples at Thebes, and laughed at the worship of Serapis and the Egj^tian animals. His visit to Alexandria was marked by many new laws. Now that the Greeks of that cit}^ crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, had lost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared by their Eoman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus. He gave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege that had hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freely granted in other provinces where rebellion was j ^ ^ less dreaded. He also ornamented the cit}^ with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, which was named after himself the Bath of Severus. (21) The quick succession of three usurping emperors within three years of the murder of Commodus had left many pi,jiQgtj^.j^. cities marked with the guilt of rebellion, and some t^s, in vit. Sophist. eager to rush into it. Proclus, the sophist, who had a profitable school of rhetoric at Naucratis, his native city, found the place then too much unsettled by the political changes for his school to thrive there; so he put his large property, of mone}^ furniture, slaves, books, papyrus, and other merchan- dise, on board a ship, and removed to Athens, where a number of pupils flocked around him as before, each paying one hundred drachmae, or about four pounds sterling, for as many lectures as he chose to attend. The city of Naucratis, which had given birth to Athenseus and Julius Pollux, henceforth ceased to be a seat of learning. (22) Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, Spartianus, forbidding anybody, under a severe punishment, from Seven, becoming Jew or Christian. But he who gives the blow is VOL. ir. . . p 210 SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. A.D. 196-211. [ohap. xyi. likely to speak of it more liglitly than he who smarts under it ; Eusebius, and we learn from the historian of the Church, that, ur^?^^*^ in the tenth year of this reign, the Christians suffered A.D. 204. a cruel i)ersecution from their governors and their fellow-citizens. Among others who then lost their lives for theii' religion, was Leonides, the father of Origen. He left seven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly cele- brated writer, was only sixteen years old, but was already deeply read in the hol}^ Scriptures, and in the great writers of Greece. As the property of Leonides w^as forfeited, his children were left in poverty ; but the young Origen was adopted by a wealthy lady, zealous for the new religion, by whose help he was enabled to continue his studies under Clemens. In order to read the Old Testament in the original, he made himself master of the Hebrew language, which was a study then very unusual among the Greeks, whether Jews or Christians. (23) In this persecution of the Church all public worship ^ IV was forbidden to the Christians : and Tertullian of Tertullian., ' Apoiog. Carthage eloquently complains that while the emperor xxiv. allowed the Egyptians to worship cows, goats, or crocodiles, or indeed any animal they chose, he only punished those that bowed down before the Creator and Governor of the Hierony course, at this time of trouble the cate- musj^Cat. chetical school was broken up and scattered, so that there w^as no public teaching of Christianity in Alex- andria. But Origen ventured to do that privately which was forbidden to be done openly ; and, when the storm had blown over, Demetrius, the bishop, appointed him to that office at the head of the school which he had already so bravely taken upon himself in the hour of danger. Origen could boast of several pupils who added their names to the noble list of martyrs who lost their lives for Christianity, among whom the best known was Plutarch, the brother of Heraclas. Origen afterwards removed for a time to Palestine, and fell under the displeasure of his own bishop for being there ordained a presbyter. CHAP. XVI.] THE CATECflETICAL SCHOOL. 211 (24) The charge of the catechetical school then fell ^usebius to Heraclas, in whose hands it fulh^ maintained its Ecci.Hist. , . , , . . , , 1 , lib. vi.31. high character ; and it was then that the custom began of foreign pux^ils coming to Alexandria to study Christianity. Among others Julius Africanus there studied under Heraclas. He was a native of Palestine, perhaps of Emmaus; and to gain further knowledge of Christianity he did not go to Galilee, where the Saviour himself had taught, nor to Antioch, where the apostles had been teaching, but he came to this seat of learning. Here he wrote his great work on chronology, to prove the antiquity of the true religion. In this he was chiefly guided by Manetho's history of Eg^^ot. But his chronology is now for the most part lost, and known to us only in the pages of Eusebius and Syncellus ; and thus our knowledge of Manetho's history is now chiefly gained by finding Africanus, who quoted him, himself quoted by those two writers. (25) In Egypt Severus seems to have dated the years . Zoega, of his reign from the death of Niger, though he had Numi reigned in Rome since the deaths of Pertinax and Julian. His Egyptian coins are either copper, or M^daiiles brass plated with a little silver ; and after a few reigns ^SJV^- even those last traces of a silver coinage are lost in this falling country. In tracing the history of a word's meaning we often throw a light upon the customs of a nation. Thus, in Borne, gold was so far common that avarice was called the love of gold ; while in Greece, where silver was the metal most in use, money was called argurioii. In the same way it is curiously showTi that silver was no longer used in Deponderi-' Egypt, by our finding that the brass coin of one hundred and ten grains weight, as being the only piece of money seen in circulation, w^as named an argiirion. (26) The latter years of the reign of Caracalla were 2^^.^^^^ spent in visiting the provinces of his wide empire ; nus, lib. iv. and after he had passed through Thrace and Asia Minor, Egypt had the misfortune to be honoured by a visit from its emperor. The satirical Alexandrians, who in the p 2 212 CARACALLA. A.D. 211—217. [chap. xyi. midst of tlicir own follies and vices were ahva3'S clever in lashing those of their rulers, had latterly been turning their unseemly jokes against Caracalla. They had laughed at his dressing like Achilles and Alexander the Great, while in his person he was below the usual height ; and they had not for- gotten his murder of his brother, and his talking of marrying his own mother. Some of these dangerous witticisms had reached his ears at Eome, and they were not forgotten. But Caracalla never showed his displeasure ; and as he passed through Antioch he gave out that he was going to visit the city founded by Alexander the Great, and to consult the oracle in the temple of Serapis. (27) The Alexandrians in their joy got ready the hecatombs for his sacrifices ; and the emperor entered their city through row^s of torches to the sound of soft music, while the air was sweetened with costl}^ scents, and the road scattered with flowers. After a few days he sacrificed in the temple of Sera- pis, and then visited the tomb of Alexander, where he took off his scarlet cloak, his rings, and his girdle covered with precious stones, and dutifully laid them on the sarcophagus of the hero. The Alexandrians were delighted wdth their visitor; and crowds flocked into the city to witness the daily and nightly shows, little aware of the unforgiving malice that was lurking in his mind. (28) The emperor then issued a decree that all the youths of Alexandria of an age to enter the army should meet him in a plain on the outside of the city; they had already a Mace- donian and a Spartan phalanx, and he was going to make an Alexandrian phalanx. Accordingly the plain was filled with thousands of young men, who w^ere ranged in bodies according to their height, their age, and their fitness for bearing arms, while their friends and relations came in equal numbers to be witnesses of their honour. The emperor moved through their ranks, and was loudly greeted with their cheers, while the army which encircled the wdiole plain was gradually closing round the crowd and lessening the circle. AYhen the ring was cnAP. XVI.] MAORINUS. A.D. 217—218. 213 formed, Caracalla withdrew with his guards and gave the looked-for signal. The soldiers then lowered their spears and charged on the unarmed crowd, of whom a part were butchered and part driven headlong into the ditches and canals ; and such was the slaughter that the waters of the Nile, which at midsummer are alwaj'S red with the mud from the upper country, were said to have flowed coloured to the sea with the blood of the sufferers. Caracalla then returned to Antioch, congratulating himself on the revenge that he had taken on the Alexandrians for their iokes : not however till he had ^. ' , Dion consecrated in the temple of Serapis the sword with Cassius, which he boasted that he had slain his brother Geta. (29) Caracalla further punished the Alexandrians by stopping the public games and the allowance of corn to the citizens ; and, to lessen the danger of their rebelling, he had the fortiiB.- cations carried between the rest of the city and the great palace-quarter the Bruchium, thus dividing Alexandria into two fortified cities, with towers on the walls between them. Hitherto, under the Komans as under the Ptolemies, the Alex- andrians had been the trusted favourites of their rulers, who made use of them to keep the Egyptians in bondage. But under Caracalla that policy was changed ; the Alexandrians were treated as enemies ; and we see for the first time Egj^p- tians taking their seat in the Roman senate, and the lib. li. Egyptian religion openly cultivated by the emperor, Spartianus. who then built a temple in Rome to the goddess Isis. (30) On the murder of Caracalla, INIacrinus, who Capitoli- was thought to be the author of his death, was ac- knowledged as emperor; and though he only reigned ^'^-^l^. for about two months, yet, as the Egyptian new-year's ^°u^l' day fell within that time, we find Alexandrian coins ^sjp^- for the first and second years of his reign. The Egyptians pretended that the death of Caracalla had been foretold by signs from heaven ; that a ball of fire had fallen on ^.^^ the temple of Serapis, which destroyed nothincf but Cassius, . . *" . . lib. Ixxviii. the sword with which Caracalla had slain his brother; 214 ELAGABALUS. A.D. 218-222. [chap. XVI. and that an Egyptian named Serapion, who had been thrown into a lion's den for naming Macrinus as the future emperor, had escaped unhurt by the wild beasts. (31) Macrinus recalled from Alexandria Julian the prefect of Egypt, and appointed to that post his friend Basilianus, with Marius Secundus, a senator, as second in command, who was the first senator that had ever held command in Egj^pt. He was himself at Antioch when Bassianus, a SjTian, pretending to be the son of Caracalla, offered himself to the legions as that emperor's successor. When the news reached Alexandria that the Syrian troops had joined the pretended Antoninus, the prefect Basilianus at once put to death the public, couriers that brought the unwelcome tidings. But when, a few days after- wards, it was known that Macrinus had been defeated and killed, the doubts about his successor led to serious struggles between the troops and the Alexandrians. The Alexandrians could have had no love for a son of Caracalla ; Basilianus and Secundus had before declared against him ; but, on the other hand, the choice of the soldiers was guided by their brethren in Syria. The citizens flew to arms, and da}^ after day was the battle fought in the streets of Alexandria between two parties, neither of whom was strong enough, even if successful, to have any weight in settling the fate of the Eoman empire. Marius Secundus lost his life in the struggle. The prefect Basilianus fled to Italy to escape from his own soldiers ; and the province of Egypt then followed the example of the rest of the East in acknowledging the new emperor. Lampridius, ("*^) ^o^' years Eome was disgraced by the gabalf^^^^' sovereignty of Elagabalus, the pretended son of Caracalla, and we find his coins each year in Alex- Zoega, Num. ^g. andria. He was succeeded by the young Alexander, whose amiable virtues however could not gain for him the respect which he lost by the weakness of his government. Lampridius, The Alexandrians, always ready to lampoon their andri^^^^ rulers, laughed at his wish to be thought a Roman ; A.D. 222. ii^Qy called him the Syrian, the high-priest, and the CHAP. XVI. [ NEW PLATONISTS. 215 ruler of the synagogue. And well might they think slightly of his government when a i)refect of Egypt owed his ^^.^^ aj)pointment to the emperor's want of power to pmiish Cassius, * 111). IxXXc him. Epagathus had headed a mutiny of the praeto- rian guards in Eome, in which their general Ulpian was killed ; and Alexander, afraid to punish the murderers, made the ringleader of the rebels prefect of Egypt in order to send him out of the way ; so little did it then seem necessary to follow the cautious policy of Augustus, or to fear a rebellion in that province. But after a short time, when Epagathus had been forgotten hj the Eoman legion, he was removed to the govern- ment of Crete, and then at last punished with death. (38) Potamo, a teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, had formerly tried, though with very little success, to ^. ' ^ Diogenes unite the followers of Plato and Aristotle, by showing Laevtius, how far the doctrmes of those two philosophers agreed. But in this reign he was followed in his ^ .^^ attempt by Ammonius Saccas, who became the founder of a new and most important school of philosophy, that of the Alexandrian Platonists. It is much to be regretted that we know so little of a man who was able to work so great a change in the philosophy of the pagan world, and who had so great an influence on the opinions of the Christians. But he wrote nothing, and is only known to us through his pupils, in whose writings we trace the mind and system of the teacher. The most celebrated of these pupils were Plotinus, Heren- porpbyrms, nius, and Origen a pagan writer, together with Lon- I'lotim. ginus, the great master of the * sublime,' who owns him his teacher in elegant literature. Ammonius was unequalled in the variety and depth of his knowledge, and was by his fol- lowers called heaven-taught. He aimed at putting an Eunapius, end to the triflings and quarrels of the philosophers ^^^-Sop^- by showing that all the great truths were the same in each system, and by pointing out where Plato and Aristotle agreed instead of where they diff'ered ; or rather by culling opinions out of both schools of philosoph}^, and by gathering together 216 ALEXANDER SEVERUS. A.D. 222-235. [chap. XVI. the scattered limbs of Truth, whose lovely form had been hewn to pieces and thrown to the four winds like the mangled body of Osiris. (34) As a critic Ammonius walked in the very highest path, not counting syllables and marking faulty lines like the fol- lowers of Aristarclius, but leading the pupils in his lecture- room to admire the beauties of the great authors, and firmg Longinns, them with the wish to rival them. He pointed out to Sect. xm. ti^gm ii^Q passages in w^hich Plato, to improve his style, had entered on a noble strife with Homer, and had tried in his prose to equal beauties of the poet which age after age had stami)ed with its approval. Of these lectures Longinus was a hearer, and to them we owe much of his golden treatise on the Sublime in writing, a treatise written to encourage authors in the aim after excellence, and to instruct them in the art of taking pains. This w^ork of Longinus is the noblest piece of literary criticism which came forth from the Museum. In it we find the Old Testament quoted for the first time by a pagan writer; it is quoted for its style only, but we may thence reasonably suppose that it was not unknown to his great master Ammonius, and may have been of use to him in his lectures on philosophy, as indeed the Jewish opinions seem to have coloured the writings of his followers. (35) Plotinus w^as born at L3^copolis, and, after studying Porphyrius, philosophy for many years, he entered the school Yit. Plotmi. q£ Ammonius at the age of twenty-eight, where he studied for eleven years more. In the works of Plotinus we have the philosophy of the Greeks, freed from their m}i;hology, taking up the form of a philosophical religion, a deism accom- panied with a pure and high-toned morality, but clouded in all tlie darkness of metaphysics. Like the other Platonists he enlarges on the doctrine of the trinity, though without using the word. He argues against the philosophy of the Gnostics, and points out that in calling the world evil, and the cause of evil, they were denying the goodness or power of the Creator, and lowering the model upon which their own characters were CHAP. XVI.] NEW PLATONISTS. 217 to be formed. He teaches that it is not enough for a man to have the virtues of society, or even to be without vices, but he must aim higher, and take God for his model ; and that after all his pains he will still fall far short of his aim ; for though one man may be like another as a picture is like a picture, yet a good man can only be like God as a copy is like the original. (36) In the Greek mythology the gods were hmited in their powers and knowledge ; they were liable to mistakes, to vicious passions, and to change of purpose. Like mankind, whose concerns they rather meddled with than governed, they were themselves under the all-powerful laws of fate ; and they seemed to have been looked upon as agents or servants of a deity, while the deity himself was wanting. It was round this unfortunate framework that the pagans entwined their hopes and fears, their feelings of human weakness, of devotion, of duty, and of religion. By the philosophers indeed this had been wholly thrown aside as a fable ; but they had offered to the ignorant multitude nothing in its place. Those who sneered at the baseless system of the many raised no fabric of their own. It remained for the Alexandrian Platonists, bor- rowing freely from the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Christians, to offer to their followers the beautiful philosophy of Plato in a form more nearly approaching what we could call a religion. The overwhelming feeling of our own weakness, and of the debt which we owe to some unseen power above us, was not confined to the Christians, though perhaps strongly called into being by the spread of their religion. It was this feeling that gave birth to the New Platonism of the Alexandrians, which the pagans then raised up as a rival to the religion of the New Testament. The same spirit which led these Eclectic philoso- phers, in forming their own system, to make use of the doctrines of Aristotle as well as those of Plato, taught them to look also to Christianity for whatever would give a further strength to their philosophy. To swell the numbers of their forces they counted among their allies many of the troops of the enemy. And in so doing they were followed unfortunately » 218 ALEXANDER SEVERUS. A.D. 222—235. [chap. XVI. b}^ the Christians, who, while they felt the strength of their own arguments and the sui3eriority of their own philosophy, still, in order to help the approach of converts, and to lessen the distance which separated them from the philosophers, were willing to make large advances towards Platonism. (37) But these pagan writers are hardly so well known as Origen, who on his return to Alexandria was the chief ornament of the Christian church. Origen was as well read in the poets and philosophers of Greece as in the Jewish and Christian scriptures ; and he pleaded the cause of his religion as w^ell by the purity, piety and humility of his life, as by the learning and De Oratio- ability of his writings. But he is now called a heretic ne, cap. 44. j^gc^use in his work on Prayer he writes against the custom of addressing prayers to Jesus. He has also been much blamed for arguing against the eternity of future punishments ; as when men had not yet thought of making their own punish- ments lead to the amendment of the criminal, they did not see that they wronged their heavenly Father by thinking that his Homil. in punislimeiits were meant for vengeance. He reduced Levit. V. j^j^^Q ^ system the mystic method of interpreting the Scriptures which Philo and the Alexandrian Jews had used in their endeavour to make the Old Testament speak a meaning more agreeable to their philosophy. He said that every text has a threefold meaning, the historic, the moral, and the mystic, arising from the division of our powers into the bodily, the moral, and the intellectual; and he of course attached the greatest value to that sense which is furthest removed from the simple meaning of the words. The Old Testament was still the principal sacred volume of the Christians. Had Origen, like modern Christians, given his chief attention to the New Testament, he would perhaps have felt no need of this mode of interpretation, nor a wish to make the ancient records speak a more modern meaning. His chief w^ork is his answer to Celsus, who had written an attack upon Christianity. Origen however was misled by the examples of Clemens and Ammonius, and like them attempted to unite with Christianity many of the ciiAr. XVI.] ORIGEN. 219 dreams of Alexandrian Platonism. Indeed it is from the rise of the school of Ammonius, and from this spread of Platonism amongst the Christians, that we must date the wide division between Judaism and Christianity, which became broader and broader till by the decrees of the council of Niceea it was made into a gulf that now seems scarcely passable. (38) AYhoever makes an effort to be useful is soon called upon to make a second effort to bear the disappointment of his want of success. Such was the case with Origen ; and in Eusebhis the tenth year of this reign he withdrew to Csesarea, .^i^** on finding himself made uncomfortable at Alexandria by the displeasure of Demetrius the bishop ; and he left the care of the Christian school to Heraclas, who had been one of his pupils. Origen's opinions met with no blame in Csesarea, where Christianity was not yet so far removed from its early simplicity as in Egypt. The Christians of Syria and Palestine highly prized his teaching when it was no longer valued in Alexandria. He died at Tyre in the reign of G alius. Many of his writings are addressed to his friend A -L • 1 • • Hierony- Ambrosius, at whose persuasion they were written, and mus, Cat. who had been recalled by him from the heresy of the Marcionites. Ambrosius was a deacon in the church and a rich man; he died before Origen, and was much blamed for having left nothing by will to his friend, who was then in old age and poverty. (39) On the death of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had just before succeeded Origen in the charge of the Christian Eutychii school, was chosen bishop of Alexandria ; and christi- ^^^l^s. anity had by that time so far spread through the cities of Upper and Lower Egj^pt that he found it necessary to ordain twenty bishops under him, while three had been found enough by his predecessor. From his being the head of the bishops who were all styled fathers, Heraclas received the title of Pajm, pope or grandfather, the title afterwards used by the bishops of Eome. (40) Among the presbyters ordained by Heraclas was 220 MAXIMIN. A.D. 235—237. [chap. XVI. Aminonius Saccas, the founder of the Platonic school ; but he afterwards forsook the religion of Jesus ; and we must Hierony- ^ ^ mus, Cat. not mistake him for a second Alexandrian Christian Scuptoi. of ^}^g n-xnie of Ammonius, who can hardly have been the same person as the former, for he never changed his religion, and was the author of the Evangelical Canons, a work afterwards continued by Eusebius of Csesarea. (41) Among the pagans of Alexandria we may mention Herodian, the author of a history of Eome from the reign of Marcus Aurelius to his own times. It is written in an elegant style, and is more particularly valuable for a period of history where we have so few historians to guide us. He w^as Suidas. ■ . ° . the son of Apollonius, an author who had written largely on rhetoric and grammar, particularly on the dialects, tones, and accents. (42) On the death of the emperor Alexander, while Italy was torn to pieces by civil wars and by its generals' rival A.D. 235. claims for the purple, the Alexandrians seem to have taken no part in the struggles, but to have acknowledged each Zoega, emperor as soon as the news reached them that he had ^"ypt ^^ken the title. In one year we find Alexandrian coins A.D. 237. of Maximin and his son Maximus, with those of the A.D. 238. two Gordians, who for a few weeks reigned in Carthage, and in the next year ^\e again have coins of Maximin and Maximus, with those of Balbinus and Pupienus, and of Gordianus Pius. (43) The Persians, taking advantage of the w^eakness in the Porphyrius, empire caused by these civil wars, had latterly been Vit. Piotini. hai'assing the eastern frontier ; and it soon became the duty of the young Gordian to march against them in person. Hitherto the Roman armies had usually been successful ; but unfortunately the Persians, or rather their Syrian and Arab allies, had latterly risen as much as tlie Romans had fallen off in courage and warlike skill. The army of Gordian was routed, and the emperor himself slain, either by traitors or by the enemy. Hereafter we shall see the Romans CHAP. XVI.] GORDIANUS PIUS-PHILIP. 221 paying the just penalty for the example that they had set to the surrounding nations. They had taught them that conquest should he a people's chief aim, that the great use of strength was to crush a neighbour; and it was not long before Egypt and the other eastern provinces suffered under the same treatment. So little had a defeat been expected that the philosopher Plotinus had left his studies in Alexandria to join the army, in hopes of gaining for himself an insight into the eastern philosophy that was so much talked of in Egypt. After the rout of the army he with difficulty escaped to Antioch and thence he removed to Rome, wliere he taught the New Platonism to scholars of all nations, including Serapion the rhetorician, and Eustochius the physician, from Alexandria. (44) Philip, who is accused by the historia;ns of being the author of Gordian's death, succeeded him on the capitoiinus throne ; but he is only known in the history of Egypt Goidi- by his Alexandrian coins, which we find with the ' A.D. 244. dates of each of the seven years of his reign, and ^^^^^ these seem to prove that for one year he had been Numi associated with Gordian in the purple. Fig. 105. — Egypt Nursing Crocodiles. CHAPTER XVIL TPIE EEIGXS OF DECIUS, GALLUS, VALERIAN, GALLIEXUS (REBEL- LION), CLAUDIUS, AURELIAN (REBELLION), TACITUS, PROBUS (rebellion), CARUS, DIOCLETIAN (tHE GREAT REBELLION), GALERIUS AND LICINIUS. A.D. 249 — 323. (1) In the reign of Decius the Christians of Egypt were ao'ain harassed bv the zeal with which the laws Eusebius, , , .\ Ecci. Hist, against their religion were put in force. The perse- a!i).^}9. ciition began by their fellow-citizens informing Dionygius, ^o-ainst them; but in the next year it was followed ap. Syncel- o ' lum. up by the prefect .Emilianus : and several Christians A.D. 250. 1 ^' J- were summoned before the magistrate and put to death. Many fled for safety to the desert and to Mount Sinai, where they fell into a danger of a different kind ; they were taken prisoners by the Saracens and carried away as slaves. Dionysius the bishop of Alexandria, himself fled from the storm, and was then banished to the village of Cephro in the desert. But his flight was not without some scandal to the church, as there were not a few who thought that he was called upon by his rank at least to await, if not to court the pains of martjTdom. Indeed the persecution was less remarkable for the sufferings of the Christians than for the numbers who failed in their courage, and renounced Christianity under the threats of the magistrate. Dionysius the bishop, who had shown no courage himself, was willing to pardon their weak- ness, and after fit proof of sorrow again to receive them as brethren. But his humanity offended the zeal of many whose distance from the danger had saved them from temptation ; and it was found necessary to summon a council at Rome to settle CHAP. XVII.] CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY. 223 the dispute. In this assembly the moderate party prevailed ; and some who refused to receive back those who had once fallen away from the faith, were themselves turned out of the church. (2) Dionysius had succeeded Heraclas in the bishoprick, having before succeeded him as head of the cateche- g^g^Q^y. tical school. He was the author of several works, mus, Cat. ... . . Scriptor. written m defence of the trmitarian opmions, on the one hand against the Egyptian Gnostics, who said that there were eight, and even thirty, persons in the godhead, and, on the other hand, against the Syrian bishop Paul of Samosata on the Euphrates, who said that Jesus was a man, and that the Word and Holy Spiiit were not persons, but attributes of God. (3) But while Dionysius was thus engaged in a controversy with such opposite opinions, Egypt and Libya were giving birth to a new view of the trinity. Sabellius bishop Tlieodoret. of Ptolemais near Cyrene was putting forth the Srereticu. opinion that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were onl}^ three names for the one God, and that the Creator of the world had himself appeared upon earth in the form of Jesus. ApudSyn- Against this opinion Dionysius again engaged in controversy, arguing against Sabellius that Jesus was not the the Creator but the first of created beings. Thus, while Paul of Samosata said that Jesus was only a man, Sabellius said that he was the almighty Creator; and though starting from such opposite pomts they met together in the belief of the strict unity of God. (4) The Christians were thus each generation changing further and further fi'om the simple truths which had been preached to the fishermen on the lake of Galilee ; sometimes leaning towards Greek polytheism and sometimes towards Egyptian mysticism. As in each quarrel the most myste- rious opinions were thought the most sacred, each generation added new mysteries to its religion; and the progress was rapid, from a practical piety, to a profession of opinions which they did not pretend to understand. 224 VALERIAN. A.D. 253-2G0. [chap. xvir. (5) During tlie reigns of Gallus, of ^imilius iEmilianus, and of Valerian, the Alexandrians coined money in the Zoega, Numi name of each emperor as soon as the news reached S.^252. Eg3'pt that he had made Italy acknowledge his title. Eusebu Gallus and his son reigned two years and four Chronicon. " A.D. 254. months ; iEmilianus, who rebelled in Pannonia, reigned three months; and Valerian reigned about six years. (6) Egypt, as a trading country, now suffered severely from the want of order and quiet government ; and in particular since the reign of Alexander Severus it had been kept in a fever by rebellions, persecutions, and this unceasing change of rulers. Change brings the fear of change ; and this fear checks trade, throws the labourer out of employment, and leaves the poor of the cities without wages, and without food. Famine is always Eiisebii followed by disease ; and Egypt and Alexandria were Chronicon. yigited in the reign of Gallus by a dreadful plague, one of those scourges that force themselves on the notice of the historian. It w^as probably the same disease that in a less frightful form has been not uncommon in that country and in DeMorbis ^^^^ lower parts of Syria. The physician Aretseus Acutis,lib.i. clescribes it under the name of ulcers on the tonsils. The unhappy sufferer was tortured at the same time with heat and cold. He breathed with pain ; and his breath was so putrid that he could not bear his own smell. The face became discoloured and ghastly. The acuteness of the fever made the thirst extreme ; and yet the wretched man was afraid to drink for fear of the pain occasioned by swallowing. If he ventured to put a draught of water into his mouth, it was immediately thrown out at the nostrils with convulsive struggles. He was unable either to lie down or sit, but walked about in melan- choly uneasiness, shunned by everj^body, and he usually died in violent pain. It seems by the letters of bishop Dionysius that , . in Alexandria the population had so much fallen off Eusebius, ^ Eccl. Hist, that the inhabitants between the ages of fourteen and lib. yii. 20. . , , , , P -, eighty w^ere not more than those between forty and OHAP. XVII. J RISE OF PALMYRA. 225 seventy liad been formerly, as appeared by old records then existing. The misery that the city had suffered may be measured by its lessened numbers. (7) During these latter years the eastern half of the empire was chiefly guarded by Odenathus of Palmyra, the brave and faithful ally of Kome, under whose wise rule his country for a short time held a rank among the great empires of the world which it never could have gained but for an union of many favourable circumstances. The city and little state of pii^y, Palmyra is situated in the desert of Syria, between ^* Damascus and Babylon, one hundred and seventy-six Eoman miles from the one and nearly twice as far from the other, and is remarkable for the richness of its soil and its pleasant streams, while surrounded on every side by vast plains of barren sands. Thus separated from the rest of the world, between the Eoman and the Parthian empires, it had long kept its freedom, while each of those great rival powers rather courted its friendship than aimed at conquering it. But, as the cause of Kome grew weaker, Odenathus wisely threw his weight into the lighter scale ; and latterly, without aiming at conquest, he found himself almost the sovereign of those provinces of the Roman empire which were in danger of being overrun by the Persians. Valerian himself was conquered, taken Tr. Poilio, prisoner, and put to death by Sapor, long of Persia ; J/*^* and Gallienus his son, who was idling away his life 260. in disgraceful pleasures in the west, wisely gave the title of emperor to Odenathus, and declared him his colleague on the throne. (8) No sooner was Valerian taken prisoner than every province of the Roman empire, feeling the sword Tr. Poilio, powerless in the weak hands of Gallienus, declared its own general emperor ; and when Macrianus, who had 260. been left in command in Syria, gathered together the scattered forces of the eastern army, and made himself emperor of the East, the Egyptians owned him as their sovereign. As Mac- rianus found his age too great for the activity required of a VOL. II. Q 226 GALLIENUS. A.D. 253—208. [chap. xyii. rebel emperor, lie made Lis two sons, Macrianus junior and Zoe'^a Quietus, his colleagues ; and we find their names on Numi^ the coins of Alexandria dated the first and second 3'ears of their reign. But Macrianus was defeated by Domitianus at the head of a part of the army of Aureolus, who had made himself emperor in Illyricum, and he lost his life, together with one of his sons, while the other soon afterwards met with the same fate from Odenathus. (9) After this, Egypt was governed for a short time in the name of Gallienus ; but the fickle Alexandrians soon made a ^ ^ rebel emperor for themselves. The Koman republic, Vit. Mmi- says the historian, was often in danger from the head- strong giddiness of the Alexandrians. Any civility forgotten, a place in the baths not yielded, a heap of rubbish, or even a pair of old shoes in the streets, was often enough to throw the state into the greatest danger, and make it necessary to call out the troops to put down the riots. Thus, A.D. 265. ^ ^ one day one of the prefect's slaves was beaten by the soldiers, for saying that his shoes were better than theirs. On this a riotous crowd gathered round the house of ^milianus to complain of the conduct of his soldiers. He was attacked with stones and such weapons as are usually within the reach of a mob. He had no choice but to call out the troops, who, when they had quieted tlie city and were intoxicated with their success, saluted him watli the title of emperor ; and hatred of Gallienus made the rest of the Egyptian army agree to their choice. (10) The new emperor called himself Alexander, and was even thought to deserve the name. He governed Egypt during his short reign with great vigour. He led his army through the Thebaid, and drove back the barbarians with a courage and activity which had latterly been uncommon in the Egyptian army. Alexandria then sent no tribute to Eome. Tr. rollio, * Vit. Gal. *Well! cannot we live without Egyptian linen?' was the forced joke of Gallienus, when the Eomans were in alarm at the loss of the usual supply of corn. But ^Emili- CHAP, xvir. KEBELLIOX. 227 anus was soon beaten by Tlieodotus, tlie general of Gallienus, who besieged him in the strong quarter of Alexandria called the Bruchium, and then took him prisoner and strangled him. (11) During this siege the ministers of Christianity were able to lessen some of the horrors of war by persuading jj^g^^^g^ the besieo'ers to allow the useless mouths to quit the Ecd. Hist. . vii. 32 . blockaded fortress. Eusebius, afterwards bishop of Laodicea, was without the trenches tr3ing to lessen the cruelties of the siege ; and Anatolius, the Christian peripatetic, was within the walls, endeavoming to persuade the rebels to surrender. Gallienus, in gratitude to his general, -^^^^ would have granted him the honour of a proconsular Vit.^mi- triumph, to dazzle the eyes of the Alexandrians ; but the policy of Augustus was not wholly forgotten, and the emperor was reminded by the priests that it was unlawful for the consular fasces to enter Alexandria. (12) The late emperor Valerian had begun his reign with mild treatment of the Christians ; but he was over-persuaded by the Alexandrians. He then allowed the power of the magistrate to be used, in order to check the Christian religion. But in this weakness of the empire, Gallienus could no j;ygebius longer with safety allow the Christians to be persecuted Ecci. Hist, for their religion. Both theii* numbers and their station made it dangerous to treat them as enemies ; and the emperor ordered all persecution to be stopped. The imperial rescript for that purpose was even addressed to ^Dionysius, Pinna, ' Demetrius, and the other bishops ; ' it grants them full indulgence in the exercise of their religion, and by its very address almost acknowledges their rank in the state. By this edict of Gallienus the Christians were put on a better footing than at any time since their numbers brought them under the notice of the magistrate. (13) When the bishop Dionysius retui'ned to Alex- ^^ggi^j^g andria, he found the place sadly ruined by the late Ecci.Hist. siege. The middle of the city was a vast waste. It was easier, he says, to go from one end of Egypt to the other Q 2 228 GALLIENUS. A.D. 2o3— 268. [chap. xvir. than to cross the main street which divided the Brnchiuni from the western end of Alexandria. The place was still marked with all the horrors of last week's hattle. Then, as usual, disease and famine followed upon war. Not a house was without a funeral. Death was everywhere to he seen in its most ghastly form. Bodies were left unburied in the streets to be eaten by the dogs. Men ran away from their sickening friends in fear. As the sun set they felt in doubt whether they should be alive to see it rise in the morning. Cowards hid their alarms in noisy amusements and laughter. Not a few in very despair rushed into riot and vice. But the Christians clung to one another in brotherly love ; the}^ visited the sick; they laid out and buried their dead; and many of them thereby caught the disease themselves, and died as martyrs to the strength of their faith and love. (14) The short rebellions of Macrianus and Alexander ^Emilianus had made no break in the series of Alex- Zoega, Numi andrian coins in the name of Gallienus. We have them for every year of his reign of sixteen years, from the death of iEmilius iEmilianus, when he was made emperor by his father Valerian. (15) In these times of war and rebellion, the schools, whether Christian or pagan, fell off in scholars and in learning; but we ma}^ mention with honour Anatolius, whom we have just spoken of at the siege of the Bruchium. He attempted to revive the Peripatetic school in Alexandria ; and, by taking the opinions of Aristotle as his base, and joining thereto such doctri]ies, Christian as well as pagan, as he thought true, he wished to do for Aristotle what Ammonius and Plotinus had done so successful^ for Plato. Anatolius was no doubt in part moved towards the study of Aristotle's colder philosophy by the zeal which the pagan school of Ammonius had shown towards the opinions of Plato. He was probably not very successful in his attempt ; but he was afterwards followed by others, and we shall hereafter see with regret that the Chris- tians, leaving Plato to their enemies, confined themselves to CHAP, XVII.] THE WRITERS. 229 the study of Aristotle. Anatolius wrote largely on . Hierony- niatliematics and astrononi}^, and on tlie true time of mus, Cat. Easter ; and some years afterwards lie succeeded ^^^^P^"^* Eusebius of iVlexandria in the bishopric of Laodicea. We may also mention Pierius, another laresbyter of the Alexandrian church, whose learned and eles^ant writino's chained ^ ^ Philippus him the name of the Younger Origen, and who, when Sidetes, ap. Dionysius was made bishop of Alexandria, filled the professor's chair in the catechetical school, with credit to himself and usefully to the cause of religion. (16) At the same time Nepos, one of the Eoyptian . T . .7 Eusebius, bishops, wrote his work m favour of the millennium, or Ecci. Hist, the expected reign of Christ upon earth for the space of one thousand years ; in support of which opinion he quoted the Book of Kevelation. Against this heresy Dionysius, as his superior bishop, wrote an epistle, in which he even denied the authority of the Book of Eevelation, and gave it as his opinion that it was not written by John the Apostle; while many thought that it was written by Cerinthus the Gnostic, who was known to have held the same view of the millennium. Dionysius died in the twelfth year of this reign, at a great age, having been too old to attend the synod of Antioch, where Paul of Samosata was condemned as a heretic. (17) About this time Porphyry was at the head of Suidas. the school of Alexandrian Platonists, as the pupil of Plotinus and the successor of Ammonius. But though the school and the loliilosopliy took its name from the city of its founder, Porphyry lived for some time in Eome, as the rebel- lions in Alexandria made it a very unfit place for a philo- sophical school. He was an admirer of the Egyptian j;^gg|j|,jg philosopliy; and one of his works on the nature of Prsep.Evan. . lib. xiv. 10. demons, and about the true path to happiness as taught in the Books of Thoth, was in the form of an epistle to Nectanebo, an Egyptian priest. He has left a treatise entitled, On the Cave of the Nymphs, and a second On Abstinence. His short history, or rather chronology, of the Ptolemies is of 230 GALLIENUS. A.D. 253—268. [chap. xyii. the greatest value, and its exactness is proved by several eclipses which have been recorded by the Alexandrian astro- nomers, and calculated by the help of modern science. To Valckenaer ^^^^'P^y^T ^'^ ^-^^0 ^^^'^ some of the notes on Homer, De codice known under the name of the Scholia, -which seem to Leidensi. . i m i i • i have been written while he was a student m the Museum at Alexandria, w'here it was usual to exercise the pupils by questions on the great epic poet, and for them to give their answers to the professor in writing. Trebonius (1^) long as Odenathus lived, the victories of PoUio. ^i^g Palmyrenes were always over the enemies of Eome; but on the assassination of himself and his son Hero des, though the armies of Palmyra were still led to battle with equal courage, its counsels were no longer guided with the same moderation. Zenobia, the widow of Odenathus, seized the command of the army for herself and her infant sons Herennius and Timolaus ; and her masculine courage and stern virtues well qualified her for the bold task that she had undertaken. She threw off the friendship of Eome, and routed the armies which Gallienus sent aoainst her; and claimino- to be descended ^ from Cleopatra, she marched upon Egypt to seize the throne of her ancestors, and to add that kingdom to Syria and Asia Minor which she already possessed. Tr. Pollio, (19) It was in the last year of the reign of Galli- Ait.ciaiidu, QYiiis that Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, sent an army against Egypt. It was led by her general Zabda, who Zosimus, '^^'^s joined by an Egyptian named Timogenes; and, lib. 1. -^ith. seventy thousand Palmyrenes, Syrians, and other barbarians, they routed the Eoman army of fifty thousand Ef:^yptians under Probatus. The unfortunate Eoman A.D. 268. ^•^■^ general put an end to his own life ; but nevertheless the Palmyrenes were unsuccessful, and Egypt followed the example of Eome and took the oaths to Claudius. For three Zoega, years the coins of xUexandria bear the name of that -Sgypt. emperor. Tr. Pollio. (20) On the death of Claudius, his bi'other Quin* CHAP. XVII.] ZEXOBIA OF PALMYRA. 231 tillus assumed the purple in Europe ; and tliougli he ^-d. 270. only reigned for seventeen days the Alexandrian moneyers found time to engrave dies and to coin money in his name. (21) On the death of Claudius also, the Palm^Tenes renewed their attacks upon Egypt, and this second time with success. The whole kino'dom acknowledo-ed Zenobia as their „ ^ Zoega, queen; and in the fourth and fifth years of her reign in Numi Palmyra we find her name on the Alexandrian coins. (See Fig. 106.) The Greeks, who had been masters of Egypt for six hundred years, ever since the time of Alexander the Fig. 106. Great, either in their own name or in that of the Roman emperors, were then for the first time governed by an Asiatic. Palmyra in the desert was then ornamented with the spoils of Egypt ; and travellers yet admire the remains of eight large columns of red poqihyry, each thirty feet high, which stood in front of the two gates to the great temple. They speak for themselves, and tell their own history. From their material and form and size we must suppose that these columns were quarried between Thebes and the Eed Sea, were cut into shape by Egyptian workmen under the guidance of Greek artists in the service of the Homan emperors ; and were thence carried away by the Syrian queen to the oasis-city in the desert between Damascus and Babylon. (22) Zenobia was a handsome woman of a dark „ ^ Tr. Polho, complexion, with an aquiline nose, quick piercing Vit. Zeno- eyes, and a masculine voice. She had the command- ing qualities of Cleopatra, from whom her flatterers traced her descent, and she was without her vices. She could not speak so many languages as flattery had attributed to that fascinating 232 AURELIAN. A.D. 270—275. [chap. XVII. queen ; but, while Syriac was her native tongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to have taught to her children ; she carried on her government in Greek, and could speak Coptic witli the Egyptians, whose history she had studied and written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of the Persian court to the self-denial and military virtues of a camp. With these qualities, followed by a success in arms which they seemed to deserve, the world could not help remarking, that while Gallienus was wasting his time with fiddlers and players, in idleness that would have disgraced a woman, Zenobia was governing her half of the empire like a man. (23) Zenobia made Antioch and Palmyra the capitals of her empire, and Egypt became for the time a province of Syria. Her religion like her language was Syriac. The name of her husband, Odenathus, means sacred to the goddess Adoneth, and that of her son Yaballathus means sacred to the goddess Baaletli. But as her troops were many of them Saracens or Arabs, a people nearly the same as the Blemmyes, who akeady formed part of the people of Upper Egypt, this conquest gave a new rank to that ^^art of the population, and made them less quiet thereafter in their slavery to the Greeks of Alexandria. (24) But the sceptre of Pvome had lately been grasped by the firmer hand of Aurelian, and the reign of Zenobia drew to Zoega, a close. Aurelian at first granted her the title of his ^^i- colleague -in the empire, and we find Alexandrian coins Fi. Vo- with her head on one side and his on the other. But vTt! Auie- -^^^^ leading his forces into SjTia, and, haui. after routing Zenobia's army in one or two battles, he took her prisoner at Emessa. tie then led her to Kome, where after being made the ornament of his triumph, she was allowed to spend the rest of her days in quiet, having reigned for foiu' years in Palmyra, though only for a few months in Egypt. (25) On the defeat of Zenobia it would seem that Egypt and CHAP. XVII.] VABALLATHUS ATHENODORUS. 233 Syria were still left under the government of one of her sons, with the title of colleague of Aurelian. The Alex- ^^gga, andrian coins are then dated in the first year of Numi iEgypt. Aurelian and the fourth of Vahallathus, or accordmg A.D. 2(0. to the Greek translation of this name, ot Athenodorus, who counted his years from the death of Odenathus. (See Fig. 107.) Fig. 107. (26) The young Herodes, who had been killed with his father Odenathus, was not the son of Zenobia but of t^.^ t^qwio, a former wife, and Zenobia always acted towards him Herod, with the unkindness unfortunately too common in a step- mother. She had claimed the throne for her infant sons Herennius and Timolaus ; and we are left in doubt by the historians about Vahallathus : Vopiscus, who calls „, . him the son of Zenobia, does not tell us who was his cus, in Vit, father. We know but little of him beyond his coins ; but from these we learn that, after reigning one year with Aurelian, he aimed at reigning alone, took the title of Augus- tus, and dropped the name of Aurelian from his coins. This step was most likely the cause of his overthrow and ^ 271 death, which happened in the same year. (27) On the overthrow of Zenobia's family, Egypt, which had been so fruitful in rebels, submitted to the emperor Aure- lian, but it was only for a few months. The Greeks of Alex- andria, now lessened in numbers, were found to be no longer masters of the kingdom. Former rebellions in Egypt had been caused by the two Koman legions and the Greek mercenaries sometimes claiming the right to appoint an emperor to the Eoman world ; but Zenobia's conquest had raised the Egyptian and Arab population in their own opinion, and they were no 2-M AURELIAN. A.D. 270—275. [chap. XVII. longer willing to be governed by an Alexandrian or European Fi. Yopis- master. Tliey set up Firmus a Syrian, a native of Firmr ^ Seleucia, who took the title of emperor ; and, resting A.D. 272. liis power on that part of the population that had been treated as slaves or barbarians for six hundred years, he aimed at the conquest of Alexandria. (28) Firmus w^as a man of great size and bodily strength, and of coarse, barbarian manners. He had gained great wealth b}' trading to India ; and had a paper trade so profitable that he used to boast that he could feed an army on papyrus and glue. His house was furnished with glass windows, a luxury then but little known, and the squares of glass w-ere fastened into the frames by means of bitumen. His chief strength was in the Arabs or Blemmyes of Upper Egypt, and in the Sara- cens who had lately been fighting against Kome under the Vopiscus, standard of Zenobia. Firmus fixed his government Vit. Probi. Coptos and Ptolemais, and held all Upper Egypt ; but he either never conquered Alexandria, or did not hold it 2^^^^ for many months, as for every year that he reigned Nximi in the Thebaid we find Alexandrian coins bearing the name of Aurelian. Firmus w^as at last conquered by Aurelian in person, who took him prisoner, and had him tortured and then put to death. During these troubles Rome had been thrown into alarm at the thoughts of losing the usual supply of Egyptian corn, as since the reign of Elagabalus the Roman granaries had never held more than was wanted for the year; but Aurelian hastened to write word to the Roman people that the country was again quiet, and that the yearly supplies which had been delayed by the wickedness of Firmus would soon arrive safe. Had Firmus raised the Roman legions in rebellion, he would have been honoured with the title of a rebel emperor; but, as his power rested on the Egyptians and Arabs, Aurelian only boasted that he had rid the world of a robber. Another rebel emperor about this time w^as Domitius Domitianus ; but we have no certain knowledge of the year in which he rebelled j nor indeed without the help of the coins CHAP. XVII.] FIRMUS— D0MITIANU3. 235 should we know in what province of the whole Roman empire he had assumed the purple. The historian only tells 2osimus us that in the reign of Aurelian the general Domi- lib. i. 49. tianus was put to death, for aimincj at a change. We Zoega, . Numi learn however from the coins, that he reigned for ^gypt. parts of a first and a second yetiv in Egypt ; but the Numism. subject of his reign is not without its difficulties, as ^^"^^b^*^^^- we find Alexandrian coins of Domitianus with Latin inscrip- tions, and dated in the third year of his reign. (See Fig. 108.) The Latin language had not at this time been used on the Fig. lOS. coins of Alexandria ; and he could not have held Alexandria, for any one whole year, as the series of AureHan's coins is not broken. It is possible that the Latin coins of Domitianus ma}- belong to a second and later usurper of tlie same name. (30) Aurelian had reigned in Eome from the death of Claudius; and, notwithstanding the four rebels to whom we have given the title of sovereigns of Egypt, monej^ ^oetra was coined in Alexandria in his name during each of those years. His coinage however reminds us of the troubled and fallen state of the country ; and from Medailies this time forward, copper, or rather brass, is the only metal used. (31) Aurelian left Probus in the command of the Egyptian army, and that general's skill and activity found full . . Fl- Vopis- employment in driving back the barbarians who ens, in Yit. pressed upon the province on each of the three sides on which it was open to attack* His first battles were against 236 SEVErvINA. A.D. 275—276. [chap. XVII. the Africims and Marmarida}, "svho were in arms on the side of C3'rene, and he next took the fiehl against the Pahnj-renes and Saracens, who still claimed Egypt in the name of the family of Zenobia. He employed the leisure of his soldiers in mam^ useful works ; in repairing bridges, temples, and porticoes, and more particularly in widening the trenches and keeping open the canals, and in such other works as were of use in raising and forwarding the yearly supply of corn to Rome. Aurelian increased the amount of the Egyptian tribute which was paid in glass, paper, linen, hemp, and corn ; the latter he increased by one twelfth part, and he placed a larger number of ships on the voyage to make the supply certain. (3,2) The Christians were well treated during this reign, and Eutycliii their patriarch Nero so far took courage as to build the Aianalea. church of St. IMary in Alexandria. This was probably the first church that was built in Eg3^pt for the public service of christianit}^, which for two hundred years had been preached in private rooms, and very often in secret. The service was in Greek, as indeed it was in all parts of Egypt : for it does not appear that Christian prayers were publicly read in the Egyptian language before the quarrel between the two churches Renaiidot ^^^^^^^ Copts Unwilling to use Greek prayers. The Liturgire Liturgy there read was probablv very nearly the same Orien tales. i t • p o -v r i as that afterwards known as the Liturgy of St. Mark. This is among the oldest of the Christian liturgies, and it shows its country by the prayer that the waters of the River may rise to their just measure, and that rain may be sent from heaven to the countries that need it. (33) "We learn from the historians that eight months were allowed to pass between the death of Aurelian and the choice of a successor; and during this time the power rested in the hands of his widow. The sway of a woman was never openly r, acknowledged in Rome, but the Alexandrians and Zoega, o ' Numi Egyptians were used to female rule, and from the Alexandrian coins Ave learn that in Egypt the govern- CHAP, XYII.] TACITUS. A.D. 27G. 237 ment was carried on in the name of the empress Severina. The last coins of Aurelian bear the date of the sixth year of his reign, and the coins of Severina are dated in the sixth and seventh years. (See Fig. 109.) But after Tacitus -pi Vopig. was chosen emperor by his colleagues of the Koman ^Siti^ senate, and during his short reign of six months, his authority was obeyed by the Egyptian legions under A.D, 276. Zoega, Probus, as is fully proved by the Alexandrian coins Numi bearing his name, all dated in the first year of his reign. Fig. 109. (34) On the death of Tacitus his brother Florian . ^ ^ Fl. \opis- hoped to succeed to the imperial power, and was cus, in Yit. Probi. acknowledged by the senate and troops of Rome. A.D. 276, But when the news reached Egypt, it was at once felt by the legions that Probus, both by his own personal qualities and by the high state of discipline of the army under his command, and by his success against the Egyptian rebels, had a better claim to the purple than any other general. At first the opinion ran round the camp in a whisper, and at last the army spoke the general wish aloud ; they snatched a purple cloak from a statue in one of the temples to throw over him, they placed him on an earthen mound as a tribunal, and against his will saluted him with the title of emperor. The choice of the Egyptian legions was soon approved of by Asia Minor, SjTia, and Italy ; Florian was put to death, and Probus shortly after- wards marched into Gaul and Germany, to quiet those provinces. (35) After a year or two, Probus was recalled into Egj^pt by hearing that the Blemmyes had risen in arms, and that Upper 238 PROBLTS. A.D. 276—283, [chap. xvii. Egypt was again independent of the Roman power. Not only Coptos, wliicli had for centuries been an Arab citj^ but even Ptolemais, the Greek capital of the Thebaid, was now peopled by tliose barbarians, and they had to be reconquered by Probug as foreign cities, and kept in obedience by Roman garrisons ; and on his return to Rome he thought his victories over the Blemmyes of Upper Egypt not unworthy of a triumph. (86) By these unceasing wars, the Egyptian legions had lately been brought into a high state of discipline ; and, confident in their strength, and in the success with which they had made their late general emperor of the Roman world, they now attempted to raise up a rival to him in tlie person of their present general Saturninus. Saturninus had been Fl. Vopis. ^ ^ Gus, in Vit. made general of the eastern frontier by Aurelian, who k.A.turuim. j^^^i given him strict orders never to enter Egypt. * The Egyptians,' says the. historian, meaning however the Alexandrians, * are boastful, vain, spiteful, licentious, fond of * change, clever in making songs and epigrams against their ' rulers, and much given to soothsaying and augury.' Aurelian well knew that the loyalty of a successful general was not to be trusted in Egypt, and during his lifetime Saturninus never entered that province. But after his death, when Probus was called away to the other parts of the empire, the government of Egypt was added to the other duties of Saturninus ; and no sooner was he seen there, at the head of an army that seemed strong enough to enforce his wishes, than the fickle Alex- andrians saluted him with the title of emperor and Augustus. But Saturninus was a wise man and shunned the dangerous honour; he had hitherto fought always for his country; he had saved the provinces of Spain, Gaul, and Africa from the enemy or from rebellion ; and he knew the value of his rank and character too well to fling it away for a bauble. To escape from further difficulties he withdrew from Egypt, and moved his head-quarters into Palestine. But the treasonable cheers of the Alexandrians could neither be forgotten by himself nor by his troops ; he had withstood the calls of ambition, but he CIUP. XVII.] CARUS— NUMERIANUS-CARINUS. 239 yielded at last to his fears ; he became a rebel for fear of being thought one, and he declared himself emperor as the safest mode of escaping punishment. But he was soon afterwards defeated and strangled, against the will of the forgiving Probus. (87) On the death of Probus, the empire fell to ^ ^ Carus and his sons Numerianus and Carinus, whose ^^^^^ names are found on the Alexandrian coins, but whose short reigns have left no other trace in Egypt. At this time also we find upon the coins the name of Trajan's second Egyptian legion, which was at all times sta- -^.^^ tioned in Egypt, and which, acting upon an authority J?^^^j^^^'2^ usually granted to the legions in the provinces, coined money for their own pay. (See Fig. 110.) Fig. 110. (38) The reign of Diocletian was one of sad suffering and trouble to the unhappy Egyptians ; and in the fourth year the people of Upper Egypt rose in fi^^T^* open war against the Roman government, and gave ^^^^^^.^ the title of emperor to Achilleus, their leader in the rebellion. Galerius, the Roman general, led an army against the rebels, and marched through the whole of the Thebaid ; but though the Egyptians were routed whenever they were bold enough to meet the legions in battle, yet the rebellion was not very easily crushed. The Romans were scarcely obeyed beyond the spot on which their army was encamped. In the fourth year of the rebellion, Diocletian came to Egypt, and the cities of Coptos and Busiris were besieged by the emperor in person, and wholly destroyed after a regular 240 DIOCLETIAN. A.D. 285—305. [chap. XVII. (39) When Diocletian reached the southern limits of Egj^t Procopius, lie was able to judge of the difficulty, and indeed the Per,sic.i.i9. ^selessness, of trying to hold any part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there was less than the cost of the troops required to collect it. He therefore made a new treaty with the Nobata?, as the people between the first and second cataracts were now called. He gave up to them the whole of Lower Ethiopia, or the province called Nubia. The valley for twelve schoeni, or seventy miles, above Syene, which bore the name of the Dodecaschoenos, had been held by Augustus and his successors, and this was now given up to the original inhabitants. Diocletian strengthened the fortifications on the isle of Elepliantme, to guard what was thenceforth the uttermost point of defence, and agreed to pay to the Nobatee and Blemmyes a yearly sum of gold on the latter promising no longer to harass Upper Egypt with their marauding inroads, and on the former promising to forbid the Blemmyes from doing so. What remains of the Roman wall built against the inroads of these troublesome neighbours, runs along the edge of the cultivated land on the east side of the river for some distance to the north of the cataract. (40) But so much was the strength of the Greek party Eusebii lessened, and so deeply rooted among the Egyptians Chronicon. ^^^^ their hatred of their rulers and the belief that they should then be able to throw off the yoke, that soon afterwards Alexandria declared in favour of Achilleus, and Diocletian was again called to Egypt to regain the capital. Such J.Malala. i n i i • was the strength oi the rebels that the city could not be taken without a regular siege. Diocletian surrounded it with a ditch and w^all, and turned aside the canals that supplied Eutropius, the citizens with water. After a tedious siege of eight AD ^297 months, Alexandria was at last taken by storm, and J. Malala. AchiUeus was put to death. A large part of the city was burnt at the storming, nor would the punishment of the citizens have there ended, but for Diocletian's humane inter- pretation of an accident. The horse on which he sat stumbled CHAP. XVII.] THE GREAT REBELLION. £41 as he entered the city with his troops, and he had the humanity to understand it as a command from heaven that he shouki stop the pillage of the city ; and the citizens in gratitude erected near the spot a bronze statue of the horse to which they owed so much. This statue, whether of the horse or of the emperor on horse- back, as we may rather suppose it to have been, has long since been lost, but we cannot be mistaken in the place where it stood. The lofty column in the centre of the temple of Serapis, now well known by the name of Pompey's pillar, once held a statue on the top, and on the base it still bears the Wilkinson, inscription of the grateful citizens, ' To the most honoured emperor, the saviour of Alexan- dria, the unconquerable Diocletian.' (See Fig. 111.) (41) This rebellion had lasted more than nine years, and the Egyptians seemed never in want of money for the purposes of the war. Diocletian was struck with their riches, and he ordered a careful search to be made through Egypt, for all writings on alchemy, an art which the Egyptians studied together with magic and astrology. These books he ordered to be burnt, under a belief that they were the great sources of the wealth by which his own power had been resisted. Want and misery no doubt caused this rebellion, but the rebellion cer- tainly caused further want and misery. The navigation of the Nile was stopped, the canals were no longer kept cleared, the fields were badl}^ tilled, trade and manufactures were ruined. Since the rebellions against the Persians, Egypt had never suffered so much. It had been sadly changed by the troubles of the last sixty years, during which it had been six times in arms against Pvome ; and when the great rebellion was put down by Diocletian, it was no longer the same country ^^that it had been under the Antonines. The frame-work of society had been shaken, the Greeks had lessened in numbers, and still more in weight. The fall of the Ptolemies, and the conquest Fig. 111. Suidas. 242 DIOCLETIAN. A.D. 285-305. [chap. XVII. by Kome, did not make so great a change. The bright days of Egypt as a Greek kingdom began with the buikling of Alex- andria, and ended with the rebelUons againt Gallienus, Aurelian, and Diocletian. The native Egyptians, both Copts and Arabs, now rise into notice, but only because Greek civilisation sinks around them. And soon the upper classes among the Copts, to avoid the duty of maintaining a family of children in such troubled times, rush by thousands into monasteries and con- vents, and further lessen the population by their religious vows of celibacy. (42) Diocletian perhaps did not think it wise to inquire how far the Alexandrian Greeks, the favoured citizens, had Procopius, Arcau. cap. joined their Egyptian townsmen in the rebellion. They must have encouraged if not headed the revolt ; they had certainly deserved punishment, but the emperor even made an addition to the yearl}^ supply of corn which was granted to them, together with the citizens of Rome, out of the Egyptian land-tax, and he allowed them to divide it among themselves. This was the bribe paid by the government to the Alexandrians for their help against the Egyptians ; after the Alexandrians had joined the rebels, Diocletian, instead of punishing their disobedience raised the bribe for the future. With this privilege of a supply of food offered to every citizen who was poor enough to claim it, the citizens were the least industrious of all the inhabitants of the place. The poorer Alexandrians formed a riotous mob, proud of their superiority over the Egyptians and Jews, who were not entitled to carry arms. They were ready on every occasion to laugh at their rulers, and to meet in public assembly in the theatre to express their blame, without possessing any of those habits which form sober and virtuous citizens. As they were not dependent on trade they had nothing to lose by a riot ; they had the privileges of an upper class without their motives to guard the peace of the city. They increased all the evils which necessarily arise out of the overgrown size of a capital, without adding anything to the stock of industry and intelligence. CHAP. XVII.] PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 243 (i 8) In the twelfth year of the reign, that in which Alexan- dria rehelled and the siege was begun, the Egyptian coinage for the most part ceased. Henceforth, though money was often coined in Alexandria as in every other great city of the empire, the inscriptions were usually in Latin, and the designs the same as those on the coins of Eome. In taking leave of this long and valuable series of coins with dates, which has been our guide in the chronology of these reigns, we must not forget to acknowledge how much we owe to the labours of the learned Zoega. In his Nmni Mgypti Imperatorii, the mere descrip- tions, almost without a remark, speak the very words of history. (44) The reign of Diocletian is chiefly remarkable for the new law which was then made against the Christians, Eusebius and for the cruel severity with which it was put into nw^j^^*' force. The issuing of this fearful edict, which was to 304. root out Christianity from the world, took place in the twentieth year of the reign, according to the Alexandrians, or in the nineteenth year after the emperor's first installation as consul, as years were reckoned in the other parts of the empire. The churches, which since the reign of Gallienus had been every- where rising, were ordered to be destroyed and the Bibles to be burnt, while banishment, slavery, and death were the punishments threatened against those who obstinately clung to their religion. In no province of the empire was the persecu- tion more severe than in Egypt ; and many Christians fled to Syria, where the law, though the same, was more mildly carried into execution. But the Christians were too numerous to fly and too few to resist. The ecclesiastical writers present us with a sad tale of tortures and of death borne by those who nobly refused to renounce their faith, — a tale which is only made less sad by the doubt how far the writers' feelings may have misled their judgment, and made them overstate the numbers. (45) But we may safely rely upon the account which Eusebius gives us of what he himself saw in Egypt. Many were put to R 2 2H DIOCLETIAN. A.D. 285—305. [chap. xvii. death on the same day, some beheaded, and some bmiit. The executioners were tired, and the hearts of the pagan judges melted, by the miliinching firmness of the Christians. Many who were eminent for wealth, rank, and learning, chose to lay down their lives rather than throw a few grains of corn upon the altar, or comply with any ceremony that was required of them as a religious test. The judges begged them to think of their wives and children, and pointed out that they were the cause of their own death; but the Christians were usually firm, and were beheaded for the refusal to take the test. Among the most celebrated of the Egyptian martyrs were Peter bishop of Alexandria, with Faustus, Dius, and Ammo- nius, presbyters under him ; the learned Phileas bishop of Thmuis, Hesychius the editor of the Septuagint, and the bishops Pachomius and Theodorus ; though the pagans must have been still more surprised at Philoromus, the receiver- general of the taxes at Alexandria. This man, after the prefect of Egypt and the general of the troops, was perhaps the highest Eoman officer in the province. He sat in public as a judge in Alexandria, surrounded by a guard of soldiers, daily deciding all causes relating to the taxes of Egypt. He was accused of no crime but that of being a Christian, which he was earnestly entreated to deny, and was at liberty indirectly to disprove by joining in some pagan sacrifice. The bishops of Alexandria and Thmuis may have been strengthened under their trials by their rank in the church, by having them- selves urged others to do their duty in the same case, but the receiver-general of the taxes could have had nothing to encourage him but the strength of his faith and a noble scorn of falsehood ; he was reproached or ridiculed by all around him, but he refused to deny his religion and was beheaded as a common criminal. Eusebius ^'^^'^ mau}^ cascs the Christians even willingly Martyr. Pa- and unneccssarily brought death and torture npon " ^ " ^' themselves. When the pagan judge in Alexandria was reproaching some Christians who were brought before him CHAP. XVII,] PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 245 ^vitll their folly, obstinacy, and treason, ^^ildisius, who stood by, came up and struck him as he sat upon the judgment seat surrounded by his guards, and rudely reproached him with his cruelty. Conduct such as that would be overlooked in no court of justice, and we cannot be surprised that ^Edisius should have been punished severely for such an insult to the magistrate ; he was put to death wdth torture, and his body w^as thrown into the sea. (47) The ready ministers of this cruel persecution ^ . , . , . Epiplianius, were Culeianus the prefect of the Tliebaid and Hiero- Hseres. cles the prefect of Alexandria. The latter was pecu- liarly well chosen for the task ; he added the zeal of the theologian to the ready obedience of the soldier. He had written against the Christians a w^ork named Philalethcs (the lover of truth), wdiich we now know only in the answer by Eusebius of Csesarea. In this he denounced the apostles as impostors, and the Christian miracles as trifling; and, comparing them, with the pretended miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, he pro- nounced the latter more numerous, more important, and better authenticated by Maximus and Damis the philosophers than the former by the evangelists ; and he ridiculed the Christians for calling Jesus a god, while the pagans did not raise Apol- lonius higher than a man beloved by the gods. (48) This persecution under Diocletian was one of the most severe that the Christians ever underwent from the Eomans. It did not, however, wholly stop the religious services, nor break up the regular government of the church. In ^, . , PLilippus the catechetical school, Pierius, whom yve have before Sidetes, ap. spoken of as a man of learning, was succeeded by ^ Theognostus and then by Serapion, whose name reminds us that the Egyptian party was gaining weight in the Alexandrian church. It can hardly have been for his superior learning, it may have been because his opinions were becoming more popular than those of the Greeks, that a professor with an Egyptian name was placed at the head of the catechetical school. Serapion was succeeded by Peter, who afterwards 246 DIOCLETIAN. A.D. 2S5— 305. [chap. XVII. gained the bislioprick of Alexandria and a martyr's crown. But these men were little known beyond their lecture-room. Eutycbii the twentieth year of the reign, on the death of Annales. Pg^er the bisllop of Alexandria, who lost his life as a martyr, the presbyters of the chui'ch met to choose a successor. Among theii' number was Alius, whose name afterwards became so famous in ecclesiastical history, and who had already, even before he was ordained a priest, offended many by the bold manner in which he stated his religious opinions. But upon Pliilo tor ^^^^ believe a pai'tial historian, the majo- guis, Eccl. rity of votes fell in the choice of a patriarch of Alexandria, and had he not himself modestly given way to the more ambitious Alexander, he might perhaps have been saved from the treatment which he afterwards suffered from his rival. (49) When Diocletian and his colleague Valerius A.D. 305. .... Maximian resigned the purple, Eg}^3t with the rest of the East was given to Galerius, who had also as Caesar been named Maximian on his Egyptian coins, while Constantius Lactantius, Chlorus ruled the West. Galerius gTanted some persecut! slight indulgence to the Chiistians without wholly A.D. 307. stopping the persecution. But all favour was again withdrawn from them by his successor Maximin, who had indeed misgoverned Egypt for some years, under the title of Csesar, before the rank of Augustus was granted to him. He encom'aged private informers, he set townsman against towns- man ; and, as the wishes of the emperor are quickly under- stood by all under him, those who wished for his favoiu- courted it by giving him an excuse for his cruelties. The cities sent up petitions to him, begging that the Christians might not be allowed to have chiu'ches within their walls. The history of these reigns indeed is little more than the history of the persecutions ; and when the Alexandrian astro- ^^^^^ nomers, droj^ping the era of Augustus, began to date Pharagius, from the first year of Diocletian, the Christian writers Dyn. \u. .^^ same way dated from the era of Martyrs. CHAP. XVII.] DIVISIONS AMONG CHRISTIANS. 247 (50) It can be no matter of surprise to us that, in a persecution which threatened all classes of society, „ . , . ^ Epiplianius, there should have been many who, when they were Hajres. accused of being Christians, wanted the courage to undergo the pains of martyrdom, and escaped the punishment by joining in a pagan sacrifice. When the storm was blown over, these men again asked to be received into the church, and their conduct gave rise to the very same quarrel that had divided the Christians in the reign of Decius. Meletius, a bishop of the Thebaid, was at the head of the party who would make no allowance for the weakness of their brethren, and who refused to grant to the repentant the forgiveness that they asked for. He had himself borne the same trials without bending, he had been sent as a criminal to work in the Egyp- tian mines, and had returned to Alexandria from his banish- ment, proud of his sufferings and furious against those who had escaped through cowardice. But the larger part of the bishops were of a more forgiving nature, they could not all boast of the same constancy, and the repentant Christians were re-admitted into communion with the faithful, while the fol- lowers of Meletius were branded with the name of heretics. (51) In Alexandi'ia, Meletius soon found another and, as it proved, a more memorable occasion for the display of his zeal. He has the unenviable honour of being the author of the great Arian quarrel, by accusing of heresy Arius, at that time a pres- byter of the church of Baucala near Alexandria, and by calling upon Alexander, the bishop, to inquire into his belief, and to condemn it if found unsound. Arius frankly and openly acknow- ledged his opinions : he thought Jesus a created being, and would speak of him in no higher terms than those used in the New Testament and Apostles' Creed, and defended his opinions by an appeal to the Scriptures. But he soon found that his defence was thought weak, and without waiting to be con- demned he withdrew before the storm to Palestine, where he remained till summoned before the council of Nic£ea in the coming reign. 24S MAXIMIN. A.D. 307—312. [ciiAr. xvir. (52) It was cliu'iiig these reigns of trouble, about wliich histor}^ is sadl}^ silent, when Greek learning was sinking, and after the country had been for a year or two in the power of the Syrians, that the worship of Mithra was brought into Alexandria, where superstitious ceremonies and philosophical Socrates Subtleties were equally welcome. Mithra was the Ecci Hist. Persian e'od of the sun : and in the system of two fi^ods, hb. 111. 2. ^ ' to ' Sozomen, one good and the other wicked, he was the god of goodness. The chief symbol in his worship was the figure of a young hero in Phrygian cap and trousers, mounted on a sinking bull, and stabbing it in sacrifice to the god. (See. Fig. 112.) In a deserted part of Alexandria called the Mithrium, his rites were celebrated among ruins and rubbish ; and his ignorant followers were as ignorantly and wickedly accused of there slaying their fellow-citizens on his altars. Such are too often the accusations which the strong bring against the weak. (53) It was about the same time that the eastern doctrine Alexander ^f Manicheism was said to have been brought into Lycopol. Egypt by Papus, and Thomas or Hermas, disciples of the Persian Manes, who has given his name to his opinions. CHAP, XVII.] MANICHEISM. 249 Little, however, is known of any of these men ; for j^pip],j^Qj^g though their doctrines were widely spread, yet they adver . . Manicb. scarcely made a sect. Indeed the history of Mani- cheism is not so much the history of a sect as of an opinion. Manicheism was a Persian form of Gnosticism, and its most important doctrine was, that the world was created and governed by two principles, one good and the other evil, but equally eternal and self-existent. One w^as mind and the other matter, one causing the happiness and the other the misery of mankind^ one living in light and the other in darkness. This opinion had its rise in the dif&culty of explaining the origin of sin, and of understanding how a merciful Creator could allow the existence of evil. The ignorant in all ages of Christianity seem to have held nearly the same opinion in one form or other, thinking that sin has arisen either from a wicked being or from the wickedness of the flesh itself. The Jews igaiah, alone proclaimed that God created good and God ^* created evil. But w^e know of few writers who have ever owned themselves Manicheans, though many have been reproached as such ; their doctrine is now known only in the works written against it. Of all heresies among the Christians this is the one most denounced by the ecclesiastical wTiters, and most severely threatened by the laws when the lawmakers became Christian ; and of all the accusations of the angry contro- versialists this w^as the most reproachful. We might almost think that the numerous fathers who have written against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory, when the enemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcely answered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view would lead us to remark, how much the writers, as well as the readers, must have felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of sin, since men have run into such wild opinions to explain it. (54) Another heresy, which for a time made even « . , . ^ ^ ^ Epiphanms, as much noise as the last, was that of Hieracas of Hseres. Leontopolis. Even in Egypt, where for two thousand 250 MAXIMIN. A.D. 307—312. [chap. XVII. years it had been the custom to make the bodies of the dead into mummies, to embahn them against the day of resurrection, a custom which had been usually practised by the Christians, this native Egyptian ventured to teach that nothing but the soul would rise from the dead, and that we must look forward to only a spiritual resurrection. Hieracas w^as a man of some learning, and, much to the vexation of those wdio opposed his arguments, he could repeat nearly the whole Bible by heart. He wrote chiefly in Coptic, though he was not ignorant of Greek ; and he died at a great age, leaving works in both languages. Hierony- (55) The bisliop Hesychius, the martyr in the late PrSfat. in persecution, was one of the learned men of the time. Paralipom. jjg published a new edition of the Septuagint Old Testament, and also of the New Testament. This edition was valued and chiefly used in Egypt, while that by Lucianus, who suffered in the same persecution, was read in Asia Minor from Constantinople to Antioch, and the older edition by Origen remained in use in Palestine. But such was the credit of Alexandria, as the chief seat of Christian learning and of the true faith, that distant churches sent there for copies of the Scriptures, foreign translations w^ere mostly made from Alex- andrian copies, and the greater number of Christians even now read the Bible according to the edition by Hesychius. We must, however, fear that these editors were by no means judicious in their labours. From the text itself w^e can learn that the early copiers of the Bible thought those manuscripts most valuable which were most full. Many a gloss and marginal note got written into the text. Their devotional feelings blinded their critical judgment ; and they never ventured to put aside a modern addition as spurious. This mistaken view of their duty had of old guided the Hebrew copiers in Jerusalem ; and though in Alexandria a juster criticism had been applied to the copies of Homer, it was not thought proper to use the same good sense when making copies of the Bible. So strong was the habit of grafting the additions into the text, that the Greek CHAP. XVII.] EDITIONS OF THE BIBLE. 251 translation became more copious than the Hebrew original, as the Latin soon afterwards became more copious than the Greek. (56) It was about this time, at least after Theodotion's translation of Daniel had received the sanction of the Alex- andrian church, and when the teachers of Christianity found willing hearers in every city of Egypt, that the Bible was translated into the language of the country. We have now parts of three Coptic versions, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and the Bashmuric ; though the last two are hardly original versions, but rather adaptations of the INIemphitic version to the dialect of the Thebaid and of the Bashmour province in the east of the Delta. The}^ are translated closely, and nearly word by word from the Greek ; and, being meant for a people among whom that language had been spoken for centuries, about one word in five is Greek. The Thebaic and Bashmuric may have been translated from the edition by Hesychius ; but the Coptic version seems older, and its value to the biblical critic is very great, as it helps us, with the quotations in Origen and Clemens, to distinguish the edition of the sacred text which was then used in Alexandria, and is shown in the cele- brated Vatican manuscript, from the later editions used after- wards in Constantinople and Italy, when Christian literature flourished in those countries. (57) The emperor Maximin died at Tarsus after 2osinius being defeated by Licinius, who like himself had been lib. ii. raised to the rank of Augustus by Galerius, and to whom the empire. of Egypt and the East then fell, while Constantine, the son of Constantius, governed Italy and the West. Licinius held his empire for ten years against the growing strength of his colleague and rival ; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hun- dred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and fifty trii-emes, of which Egypt furnished 252 LICINIUS. A.D. 313—322. [chap. XVII. eight}'. He was defeated near Adrianople ; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he surrendered to Con- stantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a single emperor. Fig. 113.— Doum Tulin of Upper Egypt. CHAPTER XVIII. THE REIGNS OF CONSTANTINE, CONSTANTIUS, JULIAN, JOVIAN, AND VALENS. A.D. 323— 37S. (1) The reign of Constantine is remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and philo- a.d. 323. sophy of the empire by the emperor's embracing the ecci!^h& Christian faith. The Christians were at once released ^• from every punishment and disability on account of their religion, which was then more than tolerated ; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans, and every min- ister of the church was released from the burden of civil and military duties. Whether the emperor's conversion arose from education, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means of knowing ; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was the religion of a most important class of his subjects. It had flourished under the frowns of power, and it was now to be corrupted by its smiles. The ignorant, the thoughtless, and the selfish of all classes, who take their religion from their rulers, began to declare themselves Chris- tians ; the rites of the pagans then passed into the church, and their subtleties into her creed ; and the Egyptian Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already called the Jewish. (2) The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy than a religious sect. Before Alexander's conquest the Greek settlers at Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples and sacrifices ; but since the building 254 CONSTANTINE. A.D. 323—337. [OHAP. XVIII, of Alexandria tliey liad been smitten with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the temples of Serapis and INIithra, and to receive instruction from the Egyptian priests. They had supported the religion of the conquered Egyptians without wholly believing it ; and had shaken by their ridicule the respect for the very ceremonies which they upheld by law. Polytheism among the Greeks had been fur- ther shaken by the Platonists ; and Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the Egyptians, Before the conversion of Constantino the Egyptian church had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular government not much differing from the episcopal p'overnment of the . present day. Till the time of Hieronym ^ , f . Epist. ci. ad Heraclas and Dionysius, the bishops had been always Evangeium. ^j^^g^^^ ^-^^ votes of the presbyters, as the arch- deacons were by the deacons. Dionysius in his public epistles joins with himself his fellow-presbyters as if he were only the first among equals ; but after that time some irregularities had crept into the elections, and latterly the church had become more monarchical. There was a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city, each assisted by a body of priests and deacons. They had been clad in faith, holiness, humility, and charity ; but Constantine robed them in honour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride, avarice, and ambition. (3) This reign is no less remarkable for the religious quarrel which then divided the Christians, which set church against church and bishop against bishop, as soon as they lost that great bond of union the fear of the pagans. Jesus of Nazareth was acknowledged by Constantine as a god or divine person ; and, in the attempt then made by the Alexandrians to arrive at a more exact definition of his nature, while the emperor was willing to be guided by the bishops in his theological opinions, he was able to instruct them all in the more valuable lessons of mutual toleration and forbearance. The followers of all the early religions of the world of course held different opinions. CHAP. XVIII.] THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 255 but they distinguished themselves apart only by outward cere- monies and modes of worship, such as by sacrifices among the Greeks and Romans, and among the Jews and Egyptians by circumcision, and abstinence from certain meats. When Jesus of Nazareth introduced his spiritual religion of repentance and amendment of life, he taught that the test by which his disci- ples were to be known was their love to one another. After his death, however, the Christians gave more importance to opinions in religion, and towards the end of the third century they proposed to distinguish their fellow-worshippers in a mode hitherto unknown to the world, namely, by the profession of belief in certain opinions ; for as yet there was no difference in their belief of historic facts. This gave rise to numerous metaphysical discussions, particularly among the more specula- tive and mystical. (4) Though Eg3^pt had long been the slave of Greece and Rome, those two great states had always owned her as their mistress in pagan superstitions and religious novelties ; and the schools of Alexandria, in which mathematics and chemistry were now only valued as helps to astrology and alchemy, and in which the study of philosophy had almost given place to verbal subtleties, gave birth to the quarrel about the nature of Jesus which has divided the Christian world for fifteen cen- turies. Theologians have found it difficult to determine what the immediate successors of the apostles and the early writers thought about the exact nature of the great founder of our religion. As it had never been brought to a logical dispute to be settled by argument or authority, the writers had not expressed their opinions in those exact terms which are so carefully used after a controversy has arisen. The Christians who had been born Jews believed that Jesus was a man, the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament; with the philoso- phical Greeks he was the divine wisdom, the Platonic Logos ; and with the Egyptians he was one out of several (^ons, or powers proceeding from the Deity. Clemens Romanus, the friend of the apostle Paul, only calls him our high-priest and SoG CONSTANTINE. A.D. 323—337. [chap, xviii. master, phrases which Photius in the ninth century thought little short of blasphemy ; while the philosopher Justin Martyr, and after liim Clemens Alexandrinus, speak of Jesus as a god in a human form. But tlie pagan converts used the word ' god ' in a sense that the Jewish converts shrunk from. Dionysius Apud Syn- bisllop of Alexandria, when arguing against Sahellius, ceiium. ^ ^^^^^ Lord was the first born of every created De Orati- ... one. being ; but, as Origen writes against the practice of addressing prayers to him, many Christians, finding it easier to worship Jesus than to imitate him, must have already con- sidered him as the disposer or one of the disposers of all human events. But these inexact opinions did not satisfy that school which united the superstition of the Egyptians with the more refined speculations of the New Platonists. The teachers of Christianity, when explaining the great mission of Jesus, had made use of the figurative language of the Alexandrian Plato - Eusebius, nists, and the Egyptian party now declared that this ^antinT' l^i^g^'^^'^gG was to be understood literally ; and, as soon lib- i- as the quarrels with tlie pagans ceased, we find the Christians of Egypt and Alexandria divided into two parties, on the question whether the Son is of the same substance or only of a similar substance with the Father. (5) These disputes were brought to the ears of the emperor „ by Alexander bishop of Alexandria, and Arius the presbyter before mentioned. The bishop had been enquiring into the belief of the presbyter, and the latter had argued against his superior and against the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. The emperor's letter to the angry theologians, in this first ecclesiastical quarrel that was ever brought before a Christian monarch, calls for our warmest praise. It is addressed to Alexander and Arius, and he therein tells them that they are raising useless questions, which it is not necessary to settle, and which, though a good exercise for the understanding, only breed ill will, and should be kept by each man in his own breast. He regrets the religious madness which has seized all Egypt ; and CHAP. XVIII.] THE ARL\N CONTROVERSY. 257 lastly lie orders the bishop not to question the priest as to his belief, and orders the priest, if questioned, not to return an answer. But this wise letter, so worthy of a Christian Lib. iii, and a statesman, had no weight with the Alexandrian divines. The quarrel gained in importance from being noticed by the emperor; the civil government of the country was clogged ; and Constantine, after having once interfered, was persuaded to call a council of bishops to settle the Christian faith for the future. Nicsea in Bithynia was chosen as the spot most convenient for eastern Christendom to meet in; and two hundred and fifty bishops, followed by crowds of priests, there met in council from Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Libya, with one or two from Western Europe. (6) At this synod, Athanasius, a young deacon in the Alex- andrian church, came for the first time into notice as gQ(,j,^tgg the champion of Alexander his bishop against Arius, Eccl. Hist, who was then placed upon his trial. All the authority eloquence, and charity of the emperor were needed to quell the tumultuous passions of the assembly. It ended its stormy labours by voting what was called the Homoousian doctrine, that Jesus was of one substance with God. They put forth to the world the celebrated creed, named, from the city in which they met, the Nicene creed, and they excommmiicated Arius and his followers, who were then all banished by the emperor. The meetincf had afterwards less difficulty in coming ^ , . ° ./to Eusebius. excommunicating the Jews ; and all except the Eg3'p- tians returned home with a wish that the quarrel should be forgotten and forgiven. (7) Thus in an evil hour, though with great pomp and solemnity, was the ill-starred alliance struck between the old subtleties and the new religion. This first attempt among the Christians at setthng the true faith by putting fetters on the mind, by drawing up a creed and punishing those that disbelieved it, was but the beginning of theological difficulties ; VOL, II, s lib. iv. 258 CONSTANTINE. A.D. 323-337. [chap. XVIII. and had the Christians grown wise by experience, they would never have allowed the attempt to be repeated. The difficulties in Egypt arose as much from the difference of blood and language of the races that inhabited the country as from their religious belief ; and Constantine must soon have seen that if as a theologian he had decided right, yet as a statesman he had been helping the Egyptians against the friends of his own Greek government in Alexandria. (8) After a reasonable delay, Arius addressed to the emperor Socrates ^ letter either of explanation or apology, asserting his Eccl. Hist, full belief in Christianity, explaining his faith b}^ using the words of the apostles' creed, and begging to be re-admitted into the church. The emperor, either from a readi- ness to forgive, or from a change of policy, or from an ignorance of the theological controversy, was satisfied with the apology, and thereupon wTote a mild conciliatory letter to Athanasius, who had in the mean time been made bishop of Alexandria, expressing his wish that forgiveness should at all times be offered to the repentant, and ordering him to re-admit Arius to his rank in the church. But the young Athanasius who had gained his favour with the Egyptian clergy, and had been raised to his high seat, by his zeal shown against Arius, refused to obey the commands of the emperor, alleging that it was unlawful to re-admit into the church anybody who had once been excommunicated. Constantine could hardly be expected to listen to this excuse, or to overlook this direct refusal to obey his orders. The rebellious Athanasius was ordered into the emperor's presence at Constantinople, and soon afterwards called before a council of bishops at Tyre, where he was deposed from his see and banished for disobedience. At the A.B. 335. same council, in the thirtieth year of this reign, Arius was re-admitted into communion with the church, and after a few months he was allowed to return to Alexandria, to the indignation of the popular party in that city, while Athanasius remained in banishment during the rest of the reign. (9) Among other evils which arose from this practice of CHAP. XVIII.] CONSTANTINOPLE BUILT. 259 jud ging and condemning the opinions of our neighbours one was, that it gave power in the church to men who would otherwise have been least entitled to weight and influence. Humble, meek, and affectionate Christians are least forward in making creeds for their brethren aiid blaming those who differ from them. On the other hand, the violent proud and enthusi- astic, who either cannot or will not weigh the arguments of their opponents, are always most positive and most unsparing in their reproaches. These men usually take the lead in a system of persecution. Athanasius rose to his high rank over the heads of the elder presbyters by his fitness for the harsher duties then required of an archbishop. Theological opinions became the watchwords of two contending parties ; religion lost much of its empire over the heart ; and the mild spirit of Christianity gave way to angry quarrels and cruel persecutions. The church then became the stronghold of the passion for power and pomp, indeed of the lusts and vices to which Christianity is most hostile. Such has too often been its history. (10) After the council of Nicsea we hear little more of the despised body of Nazarenes, or Jewish Christians. . That name had once embraced the whole body of believers; but on the spread of Christianity among the gentiles it was confined to those who held fast to the laws of Moses, and believed that Jesus was no more than the greatest of the prophets. The Jews felt little encouragement to embrace Christianity, and form part of a sect that was now denounced by all other Epiphanius Christians as heretical; and after the time of Constan- Hferes. xx. tine the name and opinions of the Nazarenes are only known among the Jews of Abyssinia and the opposite coast of Arabia. (11) Another remarkable event of this reign was the foun- dation of the new city of Constantinople, to which the ^, ' Chronicon emperor removed the seat of his government. Rome Aiexandr. AD 328 lost much by the building of the new capital, although the emperors had for some time past ceased to live in Italy'; but Alexandria lost more, it lost the rank which it had long 260 COxNSTANTINE. A.D. 323—337. [chap. XVIII. held as the centre of Greek learning and Greek thought, and it felt a hlow from which Kome was saved by the difference of language. The patriarch of Alexandria was no longer the head of Greek Christendom, that rank was granted to the bishop of the imperial city ; many of tlie philosophers who hung round the palace at Constantinople would otherwise have studied and taught in the ^luseum ; and the Greeks, by whose superiority Egypt had so long been kept in subjection, gradually became Macrobius, ^^^^ weaker party. In the opinion of the historian, as in Saturn, i. ^j^g ^^-^^^ geographer, Alexandria had formerly been a Greek state on the borders of Egypt ; but since the rebellion in the reign of Diocletian it was becoming more and more an Egyptian city ; and those who in religion and politics thought and felt as Egyptians soon formed the larger half of the Alexandrians. Few problems are more difficult than to find the reasons why civilisation and literature forsake a once favoured shore, why empires fall and arts decay on spots where they once flourished ; but we may sometimes find out a part of the reasons, and in this case it would seem that the gradual fall of Alexandria was quickened by the building of Constantinople. The climate of Egypt was hardly fitted for the Greek race. Their numbers never could have been kept up by births alone, and they now began to lessen as the attraction to new-comers ceased. The pure Greek names henceforth become less common ; and among the monks and writers we now meet with Ammonius, Anuph, Horus, Nilus, Oresiesis, Serapion, Tryphiodorus, and so forth, named after the old gods of the country. (12) Constantine removed an obelisk from Egypt for the Clironicon ornament of his new city, and he brought down Ammknus ^^i^o^ier from Heliopolis to Alexandria; but he died lib. xvii. before the second left the country, and it was after- w^ards taken by his son to Kome. These obelisks w^ere as usual covered with hieroglyphics, and we have a translation said to be made from the latter by Hermapion, an Egyptian priest ; but though from the style and matter we know that it is a real CHAP. XVIII.] THE PHILOSOPHERS. 261 translation from an obelisk, we have not found the inscription from which it was taken. In order to take away its ^ Socrates, pagan character from the religious ceremony with Eccl. Hist, which the yearty rise of the Nile was celebrated in ^' Alexandria, Constantine removed the sacred cubit from the temple of Serapis to one of the Christian churches ; and notwithstanding the gloomy forebodings of the people, the Nile rose as usual, and the clergy afterwards celebrated the time of its overflow as a Christian festival, according to their usual plan of grafting one religion on the other. (13) The pagan philosophers under Constantine had but few pupils and met with but little encouragement. Alypius of Alexandria and his friend lamblichus, however, still Eunapius, taught the philosophy of Ammonius and Plotinus, though the philosophers were so much in the habit of moving about to Alexandria, Pergamus, or Rome, that it is not always easy to know in what school they taught. The only writings by Alypius now remaining are his Introduction to Music ; in which he explains the notation of the fifteen modes or tones in their respective kinds of Diatonic, Chromatic, and Enharmonic. His signs are said to be Pythagorean. They are in pairs, of which one is thought to represent the note struck on the lyre, and the other the tone of the voice to be sung thereto. They thus imply accord or harmony. The same signs are found in some manuscripts written over the syllables of ancient poems ; and thereby scholars, learned at once in the Greek language, in the art of deciphering signs, and in the science of music, now chant the odes of Pindar in strains not unlike our Cathedral psalmody. lamblichus, who had studied under Anatolius in the school of Christian Peripatetics, has left many works. In his Treatise on Mysteries, in which he quotes the Hermetic boolcs of Bytis an Egyptian priest, the outward visible symbols become emblems of divine truth ; the Egyptian religion becomes a branch of Platonism ; and their gods so many agents or intermediate beings, only worshipped as servants of the one Creator. 262 CONSTANTIUS. A.D. 338-361. [chap. XVIII. (14) Achilles Tatius was the author of an astronomical work Suidis ^^^^ sphere, meant as a commentary on the Phenomena of Aratus, and of a well written but licen- tious romance, named ' The loves of Clitophon and Leucippe.' He became a Christian, and his learning raised him to the rank of a bishop. His mathematics and his licentious writings were the fruits of an Alexandrian education ; but what Christian flock had the doubtful advantage of his care as a bishop is unknown. (15) Sopator succeeded lambKchus as professor of Platonism Suidas Alexandria, with the proud title of successor to Sozomen ^l^^o. For some time he enjoyed the friendship of Ecci. Hist. Constantino : but, when religion made a quarrel lib. i. 5. ' . . ^ ^ between the friends, the philosopher was put to death by the emperor. The pagan account of the quarrel was that, when Constantine had Idlled his son, he applied to Sopator to be purified from his guilt; and when the Platonist answered that he knew of no ceremony that could absolve a man from such a crime, the emperor appHed to the Christians for baptism. This story may not be true, and the ecclesiastical historian remarks that Constantine had professed Christianity several years before the murder of his son ; but then, as after his conversion he had got Sopator to consecrate his Job. Lydus. new city with a variety of pagan ceremonies, he may m the same way have asked him to absolve him from the guilt of murder. (IG) On the death of Constantinej his three sons, without A.D. 337. entirely dismembering the empire, divided the pro- Chronicon "^'inces of the Eoman world into three shares. Con- Alexandr. gtautine II., the eldest son, who succeeded to the bocrates, Eccl. Hist, throne of his father in Constantinople, and Constans Ab'u/-*Pha- the youngest, who dwelt in Eorne, divided Europe ragius. between them ; while Constantius, the second son, held Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt, of which possessions Antiocli on the Orontes was at that time the capital. Thus Alexandria was doomed to a further faU. AVhen governed by Rome it had still been the first of Greek CHAP. XVIII.] COUNCIL OF ANTIOCH. 263 cities; afterwards when the seat of the empire was fixed at Constantinople, it became the second ; but on this division of the Eoman w^orkl, when the seat of government came still nearer to Egypt, and Antioch rose as the capital of the East, Alexandria fell to be the third among Greek cities. Egypt quietly received its political orders from Antioch. Its opinions also in some cases follow^ed those of the capital, and it is curious to remark that the Alexandrian writers when dating by the era of the creation, were now willing to consider the world ten years less old than they used, because it w-as so thought at Antioch. But it was not so with their religious opinions, and as long as Antioch and its emperor undertook to govern the Egyptian church there was little peace in the province. (17) The three emperors did not take the same side in the quarrel which under the name of religion was then unsettling the obedience of the Egyptians, and even in some „ ^-^■^ . . Socrates, degree troubling the rest of the empire. Constantius Ecci. Hist, held the Arian opinions of S^Tia ; but Constantine 11. ^ * and Constans openly gave their countenance to the party of the rebellious Athanasius, who under their favour ven- Theodore- tured to return to Alexandria, where, after an absence J?.^' ' ' Hist. lib. 11. of two years and four months, he was received in the Abul-Pha- warmest manner by his admiring flock. But on the ^^s^^^- death of Constantine II., who was shortly afterwards killed in battle by his brother Constans, Constantius felt himself more master of his own kingdom ; he deposed Athanasius, „ Socrates, and summoned a .council of bishops at Antioch to Ecci. Hist, elect a new patriarch of Alexandria. Christian ^^^* ^' bishops, though they had latterly owed their ordination to the authority of their equals, had always received their bishopricks by the choice of their presbyters or of their flocks ; and though they were glad to receive the support of the emperor, they were not willing to acknowledge him as their head. Hence, when the council at Antioch first elected Eusebius of Emisa, into the bishoprick of Alexandria, he chose to refuse the honour which 264 CONSTANTIUS. A.D, 338—361. [chap. XVIII. tliey had only a doubtful right to bestow, rather than to venture into the city in the face of his popular rival. The council then elected Gregory, whose greater courage and ambition led him to accept the office. (18) The council of Antioch then made some changes in the creed ; they left out the words ' God of God, of one substance < with the Father,' as being the chief cause of the quarrel, and as supporting too much the Egyptian doctrine of Sabellianism ; and they styled Jesus, in the words of the New Testament, ' the first begotten of every creature, and the express image of ' his Father's substance.' A few years later, a second council met in the same place, and drew up a creed more near to what we now call the Athanasian ; but it was firmly rejected by tie Egyptian and Eoman churches, because it did not contain the homoousian or consubstantial doctrine. Thus in these tines of passionate strife and in the midst of party quarrels, the councils fixed their opinion by means of creeds, and left to their successors the task of defending them. Creeds written in the dark have now to be defended in the light ; and those who profess them have the painful task of employing learning to justify ignorance. (19) Gregory was no sooner elected to the bishoprick than he issued his commands as bishop, though, if he had the courage, he had not at the tune the power to enter Alexandria. But Syrianus the general of the Egyptian troops was soon afterwards ordered by the emperor to place him on his episcopal throne ; and he led him into the city, surrounded by the spears of five thousand soldiers, and followed by the small body of Alexandrians that after this invasion of their acknow- ledged rights still called themselves Arians. Gregory entered Alexandria in the evening, meaning to take his seat in the church, on the next day ; but the people in their zeal did not wait quietly for the dreaded morning, they ran at once to the church, and passed the night there with Athanasius in the greatest anxiety. In the morning, when Gregory arrived at the church, accompanied with the troops, he found the doors CUAP. XVIII.] ATHANASIUS. 265 barricadoed and the building full of men and women, denouncing the sacrilege, and threatening resistance. But the general gave orders that the church should be stormed, and the new bishop carried in by force of arms ; and Athanasius, seeing that all resistance was useless, ordered the deacons to give out a psalm, and they all marched out at the opposite door singing. After these acts of violence on the part of the troops, and of zealous resistance on the part of the people, the whole city was thrown into an uproar, and the prefect was hardly strong enough to carry on the government ; the regular supply of corn for the poor citizens of Alexandria, and for Constantinople, was stopped ; and the blame of the whole thrown upon Athanasius. He was a second time obliged to leave Egypt, and he fled to Eome, w^here he was warmly received by the emperor Constans and the Roman bishop. But the zeal of the Athanasian party would not allow Gregory to keep possession of the church which he had gained only by force ; they soon afterwards set fire to it and burned it to the ground, choosing that there should be no church at all rather than that it should be in the hands of the Ai-ians ; and the Arian clergy and bishops, though supported by the favour of the emperor and the troops of the prefect, were everywhere throughout Egypt driven from their churches and monasteries. (20) During this quarrel it seems to have been felt by both parties that the choice of the people, or at least of the clergy, was necessary to make a bishop, and that Gregory had very little claim to that rank in Alexandria. Julius the bishop of Rome warmly espoused the cause of Athanasius, and he wrote a letter to the Alexandrian church, praising their zeal for their bishop, and ordering them to re -admit him to his former rank, from which he had been deposed by the council of Antioch, but to which he had been restored by the Western bishops. Atha- nasius was also warmly supported by Constans the emperor of the West, who at the same time wrote to his brother Constantius, begging him to replace the Alexandrian bishop, and threatening that if he would not he should be made to do so by force of arms. 266 CONSTANTIUS. A.D, 338-361. [chap. XVIII. (21) Constantius, after taking the advice of liis own bishops, thought it wisest to yield to the wishes or rather the commands of his brother Constans, and he wrote to Athanasius calling him into his presence in Constantinople. But the rebellious bishop was not willing to trust himself within the reach of his offended sovereign ; and it w^as not till after a second and a third letter, pressing him to come and promising him his safety, that he ventured within the limits of the Eastern empire. Strong in his high character for learning, firmness, and political skill, carrying with him the allegiance of the Egyptian nation, Avliich was yielded to him much rather than to the emperor, and backed by the threats of Constans, Athanasius was at least a match for Constantius. At Constantinople the emperor and his subject the Alexandrian bishop made a formal treaty, by which it was agreed that, if Constantius would allow the Homoousian clergy throughout his dominions to return to their churches, Athanasius would in the same way throughout Egypt restore the Arian clergy ; and upon this agreement Athanasius himself returned to Alexandria. (22) Among the followers of Athanasius was that important mixed race with whom the Egyptian civilisation chiefly rested, a race that may be called Coptic, but half Greek and half Egyptian in their language and religion as in their forefathers. But in feelings they were wholly opposed to the Greeks of Alexandria. Never since the last Nectanebo was conquered by the Persians, eight hundred years earlier, did the Egyptians seem so near to throwing off the foreign yoke and rising again as an independent nation. But the Greeks, who had taught them so much, had not taught them the arts of war ; and the nation remained enslaved to those who could wield the sword. The return of Athanasius, however, w- as only the signal for a fresh uproar, and the Arians complained that Egypt was kept tTheodoret. ^ Constant turmoil by his zealous activity. Nor Hteretic.iv. ^^q^q i\^q Arians his only enemies. He had offended many others of his clergy by his overbearing manners, and more particularly by his following in the steps of Alexander the CHAP. XVIII.] ATHANASIUS. 267 late bishop, in claiming new and higher powers for the office of patriarch than had ever been yielded to the bishops of Alex- andria before their spiritual rank had been changed into civil rank by the emperor's adoption of their religion. Meletius headed a strong party of bishops, priests, and deacons, in opposing the new claims of the archiepiscopal see of Alexandria. His followers differed in no point of doctrine from the Athana- sian party, but as they sided with the Arians they were usually called heretics. (23) By this time the statesmen and magistrates had gained a clear view of the change which had come over the political state of the empire, first by the spread of Christianity, and secondly by the emperor's embracing it. By supporting Christianity the emperors gave rank in the state to an organised and w^ell-trained bod}^, which immediately found itself in possession of all that civil povv^er which in an ignorant age is given to the clergy. A bishoprick, which a few years before was a post of danger, was now a place of great profit, and secured to its possessor every worldly advantage of wealth, honour, and power. An archbishop in the capital, obeyed by a bishop in every city, with numerous priests and deacons under them, was usually of more weight than the prefect. gQgj,j^tgg While Athanasius was at the height of his popularity Ecci. Hist, in Egypt, and was supported by the emperor of the West, the emperor Constantius was very far from being his master. But on the death of Constans when Constantius became sovereign of the whole empire, he once more tried to make Alexandria and the Egyptian church obedient to his wishes. He was,, however, still doubtful how far it was prudent to measure his strength against that of the bishop, and he chose rather to begin privately with threats before using his power openly. He first wrote word to Athanasius, as . ^, ^ i- 'J ' Athanasius, if in answer to a request from the bishop j that he was at liberty, if he wished, to visit Italy ; but he sent the letter by the hands of the notary Diogenes, who added, by word of mouth, that the permission was meant for a command, 2C8 CONSTANTIUS. A.D. 338—361. [chap. XVIII. unci that it was the emperor's pleasure that he should imme- diately quit his bishoprick and the province. But this under- hand conduct of the emperor only showed his own weakness. Athanasius steadily refused to obey any unwritten orders, and held his bishoprick for upwards of two years longer, before Constantius felt strong enough to enforce his wishes. Towards the end of that time, Syrianus, the general of the Egj^ptian army, to whom this delicate task was entrusted, gathered together from other parts of the province a body of five thousand chosen men, and with these he marched quietly into Alexandria, to overawe, if possible, the rebellious bishop. He gave out no reasons for his conduct ; but the Arians, who were in the secret, openly boasted that it would soon be their turn to possess the churches. Syrianus then sent for Athanasius, and in the presence of Maximus the prefect again delivered to him the command of Constantius, that he should quit Egypt and retire into banishment, and he threatened to carry this command into execution by the help of the troops if he met with any resistance. Athanasius without refusing to obey, begged to be shown the emperor's orders in writing ; but this reasonable request was refused. He then entreated them even to give him, in their own handwritiug, an order for his banish- ment ; but this was also refused, and the citizens, who were made acquainted with the emperor's wishes and the bishop's firmness, waited in dreadful anxiety to see whether the prefect and the general would venture to enforce their orders. The presbytery of the church and the corporation of the city went up to Syrianus in solemn procession to beg him either to show a written authority for the banishment of their bishop, or to write to Constantinople to learn the en:iperor's pleasure. To this request Syrianus at last yielded, and gave his word to the friends of Athanasius that he would take no further steps till the return of the messengers which he then sent to Constan- tinople. (24) But Syrianus had before received his orders, which, were, if possible, to frighten Athanasius into obedience, and, if CHAP. XVIII.] ATUANASIUS. 2G9 that could not be done, then to employ force, but not to expose the emperor's written commands to the danger of being suc- cessfully resisted. He therefore only waited for an opportunity of carrying them into effect ; and at midnight, on the A.D. 356. fourteenth of Mecliir, our ninth of February, twenty- three days after the promise had been given, Syrianus, at the head of his troops, armed for the assault, surrounded the church where Athanasius and a crowded assembly were at prayers. The doors were forcibly and suddenly broken open, the armed soldiers rushed forward to seize the bishop, and numbers of his faithful friends were slain in their efforts to save him. Athanasius, however, escaped in the tu- Athanasius, mult ; but though the general was unsuccessful, the ^^^•'^^* -^^'^^Q- bodies of the slain, and the arms of the soldiers found scat- tered through the church in the morning, were full proofs of his unholy attempt. The friends of the bishop drew up and signed a public declaration describing the outrage, and Syrianus sent to Constantinople a counter-protest declaring that there had been no disturbance in the city. (25) Athanasius, with nearly the whole of the nation for his friends, easily escaped the vengeance of the emperor ; and, withdrawing for a third time from public life, he passed the remainder of this reign in concealment. He did not however neglect the interests of his flock. He encouraged them with his letters, and even privately visited his friends in Alexandria. As the greater part of the population was eager to . ^ Palladius, befriend him, he was there able to hide himself for Hist. Lau- six years. Disregarding the scandal that might arise from it, he lived in the house of a young woman who concealed him in her chamber, and waited on him with untiring zeal. She was then in the flower of her youth, only twenty years of age ; and fifty years afterwards, in the reign of Theodosius II., when the name of the archbishop ranked with those of the apostles, this woman used to boast among the monks of Alex- andria, that in her youth she had for six years concealed the great Athanasius. 270 COKSTANTIUS. A.D. 338— 3G1. [chap, xviii. (•-2G) But tliougli the general was not wholly successful, Athanasius, though lie was not able even to recover from the Hist. Allan, dii^^^-ci^ the broken weapons of his soldiers, the proofs of his outrage, though the bishop escaped his vigilance, yet the Athanasian party was for the time crushed. Sebasti- Socrates, Eccl. Hist, anus, the new prefect, was sent into Egypt with ^ * "* orders to seize Athanasius dead or alive, wherever he should be found within the province ; and under his protection the Arian party in Alexandria again ventured to meet in public, and proceeded to choose a bishop. They elected to this high post the celebrated George of Cappadocia, a man who, while he equalled his more popular rival in learning and in ambition, fell far behind him in coolness of judgment, and in that- political skill which is as much wanted in the guidance of a religious party as in the government of an empire. (27) George was born at Epiphania in Cilicia, and was the Ammianus, son of a clothier, but his ambition led him into the lib. xxii. church, as being at that time the fairest field for the display of talent ; and he rose from one station to another till he reached the high post of bishop of Alexandria. The fickle irritable Alexandrians needed no such firebrand to Ught up the flames of discontent. George took no pains to conceal the fact that he held his bishoprick by the favour of the emperor and the power of the army against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, he opened his doors to informers of the worst description ; anybody who stood in the way of his grasp at power was accused of being an enemy to the emperor; and, forgetting his profession, says the pagan historian, which should have made him gentle and forgiving, he was himself the chief cause of sedition in his bishoprick. He proposed to the emperor to lay a house -tax on Alexandria, thereby to repay the expense incurred by Alexander the Great in building the city ; and he made the imperial government more unpopular than it had ever been since AuQ'ustus landed in Eoypt. The Socrates, , ^ ,° f*^ Eccl. Hist, crimes which he is said to have rushed into during his struggles with the Athanasian party almost pass CHAP, xvm.] CHRISTIANITY IN ABYSSINIA. 271 belief ; but we learn them chiefly from the pen of his enemy. He used the army as the means of terrifjing the Homoousians into an acknowledgement of the Arian opinions. He banished fifteen bishops to the Great Oasis, besides others of lower rank. He beat, tortured, and put to death ; the persecution was more cruel than any suffered from the pagans, except perhaps that in the reign of Diocletian ; and thirty Egyptian bishops are said to have lost their lives while Geors'e Theodoret. • -, A 1 . Eccl. Hist. was patriarch of Alexandria. lib. u. (28) At this time the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea were becoming a little more known to Alexandria. Meropius, travelling in the reign of Constantine for Socrates, curiosity and the sake of knowledge, had visited ^- Auxum the capital of the Hexumita?, in Abyssinia. His companion Frumentius undertook to convert the people to Christianity and persuade them to trade with Egypt ; and, as he found them willing to listen to his arguments, he came home to Alexandria to tell of his success and ask for support. Athanasius readily entered into a plan for spreading the blessings of Christianity and the power of the Alexandrian church. To increase the missionary's weight he consecrated him a bishop, and sent him back to Auxum to continue his good work. His progress however was somewhat . . f 1 A ' Athanasius checked by sectarian jealousy; for, when Athanasius Apoiog. i 21 was deposed by Constantius, Frumentius was recalled to receive again his orders and his opinions from George the new patriarch. Constantius also sent an embassy to the Homeritse on the opposite coast of Arabia, under Philostor- Theophilus a monk and deacon in the church. The gius, Homeritse were of Jewish blood though of gentile ^' faith, and were readily converted, if not to Christianity at least to friendship with the emperor. After consecrating their churches, Theophilus crossed over to the African coast, to the Hexumitse, to carry on the work which Frumentius had begun. There he was equally successful in the object of his embassy. Both in trade and in religion, the Hexumitse, who were also of 272 CONSTANTIUS. A.D. 338—301. [chap. XVIII. Jewish blood, were eager to be connected with the Europeans, from whom they were cut off b}^ Arabs of a wilder race. He found also a little to the south of Auxum a settlement of SjTians, who were said to have been placed there by Alexander the Great. These tribes spoke the language called Ethiopic, a dialect of Arabic which was not used in the countr}^ which w^e have hitherto called Ethiopia. The Ethiopic version of the Bible was about this time made for their use. It was translated out of the Greek from the Alexandrian copies, as the Greek version w^as held in such value that it was not thought necessary to look to the Hebrew original of the Old Testament. But these w^ell-meant efforts did little at the time towards making the Hexumitee Christians. Distance and the Blemmyes checked their intercourse with Alexandria. It was not till two hundred years later that they could be said in the slightest sense to be converted to Christianity. (59) As we advance in the history of Christianity in Egypt we leave the ages of enlightened learning and enter upon those of ignorance and bigotry. We have more than once had to remark the readiness with which pagan Europe copied the religious worship of Egypt; and not a few of the superstitions wdiich have at times disfigured Christianity seem to have sprung from that fruitful soil. Though the origin of monastic life has Piiny^ sometimes been claimed for the Essenes on the lib. V. 15. gi^ores of the Dead Sea, yet it was in Egypt that it was framed into a system, and became the model for the Christian world. It took its rise in the serious and gloomy views of religion w^hich always formed part of the Egyptian polytheism, and which the Greeks remarked as very unlike their own gay and tasteful modes of worship, and which were readily engrafted by the Egyptian converts into their own Christian belief. Weak-minded but well-meaning men, little satisfied with a life spent under their own guidance, are often glad to put themselves into another's keepmg ; and they find obedience to a monastic rule less troublesome than being left to their own unsteady conscience. In the reigns of Constantme CHAP. XVI ri.] CHRISTIAN MONKS. 273 and his sons, hundreds of Christians, both men and women, quitting the pleasures and trials of the busy world, withdrew one by one into the Egyptian desert, where the sands are as boundless as the ocean, where the sunshine is less cheerful than darkness, to spend their lonely days and watchful nights in religious meditation and in prayer. They were led by a gloomy view of their duty towards God, and by a want of fellow-feeling for their neighbour; and they seemed to think that pain and misery in this w^orld would save them from punishment hereafter. So difficult indeed do we all feel the practice of self-denial in the active paths of life, that these hermits, by habits which often degenerated into ignorance and idleness, earned the admiration of their fellow Christians more easily than they could have done by active benevolence or learned industry among the crowds of a city. The lives of manj^ of these Fathers of the Desert were written by the Christians who lived at the same time ; but a full account of the miracles which were said to have been worked in their favour, or by their means, would now only call forth a smile of pity, or perhaps even of ridicule. The painful want and torture, however, which they suffered in acknowledgment of their sinfulness vrere allowed by their admiring followers to be a proof of their real holiness and of the truth of their miracles. (30) The monks had borrowed many of their customs from the old Egyptian priests, such as shaving the head ; Syntagma and Athanasius in his charge to them orders them not ^octoee. to adopt the tonsure on the head, nor to shave the beard. He forbids their employing magic or incantations to assist their prayers. He endeavours to stop their emulation in fasting, and orders those whose strength of body enabled them to fast longest not to boast of it. But he orders them not even to speak to a woman, and wishes them not to bathe, as being an immodest act. The early Christians, as being a sect of Jews, had followed many Jewish customs, such as observing the sabbath as well as the Lord's day ; but latterly the line VOL. II, T 274 CONSTANTIUS. A.D. 338—361. [OHAP. XA-III. between the two religions had been growing wider, and Atha- nasius orders the monks not to keep holy the Jewish sabbath. After a few years their religious duties were clearly laid down for them in several well-drawn codes, when it was seen that outward obedience to a religious rule does not always lead to inward piety, and indeed has more often been allowed to stand in its place. (31) One of the earliest of these ascetics was Ammon, wdio on the morning of his marriage is said to have per- Socrates, , ^ , . . Eccl. Hist, suaded his young wife of the superior holiness of a Lb. IV. single life, and to have agreed with her that they should devote themselves apart to the honour of God in the desert. But, in thus avoiding the pleasures, the duties, and the temptations of the world, Ammon lost many of the virtues and even the decencies of society ; he never washed himself, or changed his garments, because he thought it wrong for a religious man even to see himself undressed ; and when he had occasion to cross a canal, his biographer tells us that attendant angels carried him over the water in their arms, lest, w^hile keeping his vows, he should be troubled by wet clothes. But the self-denial and severities of Ammon were thrown into the shade by the far greater amount of w^ant and pain and torture which were borne by his follower Anthony. Had the life and temptations of St. Anthony been w^ritten in the monasteries of Spain or Italy, in the eleventh century, w^e should less wonder at the number of miracles that we are called upon to believe ; but since they were published as if by Athanasius, in whose diocese the monk dwelt, and wdio was visited by him at Alex- andria, we are not a little startled at the boldness of the fable ; and we are driven to the painful remark, that by as much as the ecclesiastical writers surpass the pagan historians in earnestness and zeal, they fall below them in truth and impar- tiality. They wrote with as little judgment as if they thought that common sense would never again visit the earth. That the Life of St. Anthony was not written by Athanasius is clear from the writer's ignorance of the streets of Alexandria. CHAP. XVIII.] ST. ANTHONY. 275 (32) St. Anthony dwelt in the neighbourhood of g^^^jj^g^j Heracleopolis, and was visited in his solitude by the Eccl. Hist, soul of x\mmon, and guided in his religious duties by Athanasius, his advice. While living alone in the tombs, he was Vit. Anto- attacked by the devil in various forms. At one time, the walls of his cell were broken down, and in rushed a troop of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and Avolves, that were however easily put to flight, by the prayers of the saint. At another time, the devil in the form of a stranger knocked at the monastery, and when St. Anthony opened the door, and asked who was there, the wicked one unhesitatingly answered Satan, but fled on hearing the name of Christ. St. Anthony healed the sick by his prayers, drove out demons by the sign of the cross, and knew what was happening at a distance, as well as what was going to happen at a future time. After twenty years thus spent in solitar}^ meditation and painful self-denial, he came forth to the world as a heaven -taught teacher, to help in denouncing the Arian opinions. He had no respect for learning ; letters, he said, were made by the under- standing, and as he possessed an understanding he could have no w^ant of letters. When his fame was at its height, and he was honoured with a letter from the emperor, he was unable to write an answer to it in Greek. The only studies that he valued were those of the Bible and of astrology ; and he chose to have his fortune told rather by calculations founded on the hour of his becoming a monk than on the hour of his birth. He wrote, however, a few letters in the Coptic language 2-^^.^^^^ to the Egyptian monasteries, which gained him the mus, Cat. title of one of the ecclesiastical writers, and which were afterwards translated into Greek. (83) The ecclesiastical history of these times is crowded with miracles ; and the question naturally arises whether we owe these stories to the dishonesty or to the weakness of the historians. But before attributing them to either, we moderns should call to mind that then the course of nature had been less exactly observed, and its laws were less understood, and T 2 276 CONSTANTIUS. A.D. 338—361. CHAP. XVIII. therefore what was regular and what was irregular was less known than now. Violations of the expected order of events seemed common ; and as nobody could think they came to pass without a cause, the belief in miraculous powers was universal. Any circumstance is of course believed on weaker evidence by one who thus fancies it probable than by one who thinks it improbable ; and hence a man of strict truth and good under- standing might then relate, and believe, marvels which are now thought the creation of either weak enthusiasts or impostors. When the hearer inw^ardly felt that the religious teaching was divine, he perhaps first fancied and then told others that the teacher had proved it so by his miracles. (34) Among the Christian writers of the time was Serapion, Hierony- bishop of Thmuis, a friend of Anthony, w^ho wrote a Scriptor** '^^l^^ble work against the opinions of the Mani- c , chseans. But the most learned Christian of this reign Socrates, ° Eccl. Hist, was the blind Didymus, who was at the head of the catechetical school. He was deeply skilled in mathe- matics as well as in pagan philosophy ; and many came from afar to Alexandria, to see him and hear his lectures. He was warmly attached to Athanasius and the Nicene creed, much indeed to the grief of the Arians, wdio wished to boast that every man of learning was on their side in the controversy. He wrote a commentary on the Bible, and a treatise against the Manichgeans, which is still extant. (35) In the religious controversies, whether pagan or Christian, Rome had often looked to Egypt for its opinions ; Athanasius, Constans, w^heu wanting copies of the Greek scriptures Apologia, Rome, had lately sent to Alexandria, and had received the approved text from Athanasius. The two countries held nearl}" the same opinions and had the same dislike of the Greeks ; so when Jerom visited Egypt he found the church, Epist. 58. holding, he said, the true Roman faith as taught by the Epist. 61. apostles. He studied for some time under Didymus, having the same religious opinions with the Egyptian, and the same dislike to Arianism. But no dread of heresy stopped CHAP. XVIII.] THE ^Y^lITERS. 277 Jeroin in his search for knowledge and for books. He obtained copies of the whole of Origen's works, and read them with the greatest admiration. It is true that he finds fault with many of his opinions ; but no admirer of Origen could speak in higher terms of praise of his virtues and his learning, of the qualities of his head and of his heart, than Jerom uses while he timidly pretends to think that he has done wrong in reading his works. (36) Among the pagans the rhetorician Aphthonius was the professor who enjoyed most celebrity for his wisdom Philostor- and eloquence ; and man}^ came from a distance to Hist. Hb.^Ui. hear him. His opinions leaned towards those of the Manichseans ; and ^Etius, an Arian, who had come to profit by his teaching, undertook to confute him in public. AVithin seven da3's after the discussion Aphthonius died, and the Christians boasted that if not convinced, he was at least killed, by the arguments of ^tius. (37) At this time the emperor himself on his Eoman coins at the end of the eleventh century from the building ^_p^ 347. of the cit}^ did not refuse to mark the happy reneical Mionnet, of the years by the old Egj^ptian astrological fable of the return of the phcenix. (See Fig 114.) Fig. 114. (38) From the treatise of Juhus Fermicus against the pagan superstitions, it would seem that the sacred animals of the Egyptians were no longer kept in the several cities in which they used to be worshipped, and that many of the old gods had been gradually dropped from the m}i:hology, which was then chiefly confined to the worship of Isis and Osiris. The great week of the yeai' was the feast of Isis, when the priests joined the 278 CONSTANTIUS. A.D. 338—361. [chap. XVIII. goddess in her grief for the loss of the good Osiris, who had been killed through jealousy by the wicked Typhon. The priests shaved their heads, beat their breasts, tore the skin off their arms, and opened up the old wounds of former years, in grief for the death of Osiris, and in honour of the widowed Isis. After some days' search for the scattered limbs of Osiris, which had been thrown by Typhon into the Nile, they are found by Isis, with the help of her sister Nephthis and the hunter Anubis ; they are carefully buried ; and the grief of the priests and worshippers is then turned into joy. The river Nile was also still worshipped for the blessings which it scatters along its banks, but we hear no more of Amun-E,a, Chem, Horus, Aroeris, and the other gods of the Thebaid, whose worship ceased with the fall of that part of the country. (39) But great changes often take place with very little Ammianus, improvement ; the fall of idolatry only made way for lib. XIX. 12. ^Yie rise of magic and astrology. Abydos in Upper Egypt had latterly gained great renown for the temple of Besa, a god whose name is new to us, but whose oracle was much consulted, not only by the Egyptians but by Greek strangers, and by others who sent their questions in writing. Some of these letters on parchment had been taken from the temple by informers, and carried to the emperor, whose ears were never deaf to a charge against the pagans. On this accusation numbers of all ranks were dragged out of Egypt, to be tried and punished in Syria, with torture and forfeiture of goods. Such indeed was the nation's belief in these oracles and prophecies, that it gave to the priests a greater power than it was safe to trust them with. By prophesying that a man was to be an emperor they could make him a traitor, and perhaps raise a village in rebellion. As the devotedness of their followers made it dangerous for the magistrates to punish the mischief- makers, they had no choice but to punish those who consulted them. Without forbidding the divine oracle to answer, they forbade anybody to question it. Parnasius, who had been a prefect of Egypt, a man of spotless character, was banished for XVIII.] MAGIC AND ASTROLOGY. 279 thus illegally seeking a knowledge of the future ; and Deme- trius Cjtliras, an aged philosopher, was put to the rack on a charge of having sacrificed to the god, and only released because he persisted through his tortures in asserting that he sacrificed in gratitude for blessings received, and not from a wish thus to learn his future fate. (40) In the falling state of the empire the towns and villages of Egypt found their rulers too weak either to guard them or to tyrannise over them, and they sometimes formed themselves into small societies, and took means for their own defence. The law had so far allowed this as in some cases to grant a corporate constitution to a city. But in other cases a city kept in its pay a courtier or government servant powerful enough to guard it against the extortions of the provincial tax-gatherer or would put itself under the patronage of a neighbour rich enough and strong enough to guard it. This however could not be allowed, even if not used as the means of throwing off the authority of the provincial povernment: and Codex . . . . Theod.xi. accordingly at this time we begin to find laws against 24. i. the new crime of patronage. These associations gave a place of refuge to criminals, they stopped the worshipper in his way to the temple, and the tax-gatherer in collecting the tribute. But new laws have little weight when there is no power to enforce them, and the orders from Constantinople were little heeded in Upper Egypt. (41) But this patronage which the emperor wdshed to put down was weak compared to that of the bishops and clergy, which the law allowed and even upheld, and which was the great check to the tyranny of the civil governor. While the emperor at a distance gave orders through his prefect, the people looked up to the bishop as their head ; and hence the power of each was checked by the other. The emperors had not yet made the terrors of religion a tool in the hands of the magistrate; nor had they yet learned from the pontifex and augurs of pagan Kome the great secret that civil power is never so strong as when based on that of the church. 280 JULIAN. A.D. 362—363. [chap. XVIII. (42) On the death of Constantius, Julian was at once acknowledged as emperor, and the Roman world was A.D. 361. . ^ . again, but for the last time, governed by a pagan. The Christians had been in power for fifty-five years under Constantine and his sons, during which time the pagans had been made to feel that their enemies had got the upper hand of Ammianus them. But on the accession of Julian their places hb. xxii. were again changed ; and the Egyptians among others crowded to Constantinople to complain of injustice done by the Christian prefect and bishop, and to pray for a redress of wrongs. They were however sadly disappointed in their emperor ; he put them off with an unfeeling joke ; he ordered them to meet him at Chalcedon on the other side of the straits of Constantinople, and, instead of following them according to his promise, he gave orders that no vessel should bring an Egyptian from Chalcedon to the capital; and the Egyptians, after wasting their time and money, returned home in despair. But though their complaints were laughed at they were not overlooked, and the author of their grievances was punished ; Artemius, the prefect of Egypt, was summoned to Chalcedon, and not being able to disprove the crimes laid to his charge by the Alexandrians, he paid his life as the forfeit for his misgovernment during the last reign. (43) While Artemius was on his trial the pagans of Alexan- dria remained quiet, and in daily fear of his return to power, for after their treatment at Chalcedon they by no means felt sure of what would be the emperor's policy in matters of religion ; but they no sooner heard of the death of Artemius than they took it as a sign that they had full leave to revenge themselves on the Christians. The mob rose first against the bishop George, who had lately been careless or wanton enough publicly to declare his regret that any of their temples should be allowed to stand ; and they seized him in the streets and trampled him to death. They next slew Dracontius, the prefect of the Alexandrian mint, whom they accused of over- turning a pagan altar within that building. Their anger was CHAP. XVIII.] BISHOP GEORGE MURDERED. 281 then turned against Diodorus, who was employed in building a church on a waste spot of ground that had once been gQgj.^^gg sacred to the worship of Mithra, but had since been Ecci. Hist. . . . lib. iii. given b}" the emperor Constantius to the Christians. In clearing the ground, the workmen had turned up a number of human bones that had been buried there in former ages, and these had been brought forward by the Christians in reproach against the pagans as so many proofs of human sacrifices. Diodorus also, in his Christian zeal, had wounded at Ammianus. the same time their pride and superstition, by cutting off the single lock from the heads of the young Eg}T3tians. Tliis lock had in the time of Eameses been the mark of 3'outhful royalty ; under the Ptolemies the mark of high rank ; but was now common to all. Diodorus treated it as an offence against his religion. For this he was attacked and killed, with George and Dracontius. The mob carried the bodies of the three murdered men upon camels to the side of the lake, and there burned them, and threw the ashes into the water, for fear, as they said, that a church should be built over their remains, as had been sometimes done over the bodies of martyrs. (44) When the news of this outrage against the laws was brought to the philosophical emperor, he contented himself with threatening by an imperial edict that if the offence were repeated, he would visit it with severe punishment. juHani But in every act of Julian we trace the scholar and ^pistolae. the lover of learning. George had employed his wealth in getting together a large library, rich in historians, rhetoricians, and philosophers of all sects; and, on the murder of the bishop, Julian wrote letter after letter to Alexandria, to beg the prefect and his friend Porphyrins to save these books, and send them to him in Cappadocia. He promised freedom to the librarian if he gave them up, and torture if he hid them ; and further begged that no books in favour of Christianity should be destroyed, lest other and better books should be lost with them. JULIAN. A.D. 302— ;5G8. [chap. xvin. (45) There is too much reason to believe that the friends of Socrates Athanasius were not displeased at the murder of the Eccl. Hist, bishop George and their Arian fellow Christians ; at lib. ili. any rate they made no effort to save them, and the same mob that had put to death George as an enemy to paganism, now joined his rival Athanasius in a triumphal entry into the city, when, with the other Egyptian bishops, he was allowed to return from banishment. Athanasius could brook no rival to his power ; the civil force of the city was completely overpowered by his party, and the Arian clergy were forced to hide themselves, as the only means of saving their lives. But, while thus in danger from their enemies, the Arians proceeded to elect a successor to their murdered bishop, and they chose Lucius to that post of honour, but of danger. Athanasius, however, in reality and openly filled the office of bishop ; and he summoned a synod at Alexandria, at which he re-admitted into the church Lucifer and Eusebius, two bishops who had been banished to the Thebaid, and he again decreed that the three persons in the Trinity were of one substance. (46) Though the emperor Julian thought that George, the Epist. ad 1^^^ bishop, had deserved all that he suffered, as having Pop. Alex. |)ggj2 zealous in favour of Christianity, and forward in putting down paganism and in closing the temples, yet he was still more opposed to Athanasius. That able churchman held Edict, ad ^^^^ power as a rebel, by the help of the Egyptian mob, Alexandr. affainst the wishes of the Greeks of Alexandria and against the orders of the late emperor; and Julian made an edict, ordering that he should be driven out of the city within twentj^-four hours of the command reaching Alexandria. The prefect of Egypt was at first unable, or unwilling, to enforce these orders against the wish of the inhabitants ; and Atha- Epist. ad nasius was not driven into banishment till Julian wrote Ecdicium. ^TQY^ that, if the rebellious bishop were to be fornid in any part of Egypt after a day then named, he would fine the prefect and the officers under him one hundred pounds weight of gold. Thus Athanasius was for the fourth time banished CHAP, xviii.] FOURTH BANISHMENT OF ATHANASIUS. 283 from Alexandria : first by Constantine, who was willing . Socrates, to receive his own creed ; twice by Constantius, who Eccl. Hist, held the Arian opinions ; and now again by the pagan Julian. (47) Though the Christians were out of favour with the emperor, and never were employed in any office of trust, yet they were too numerous for him to venture on a persecution. But Julian allowed them to be ill-treated by his prefects, and took no notice of their complaints. He made a law, forbidding any Christians being educated in pagan literature, believuig that ignorance would stop the spread of their religion. In the churches of Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, this w^as felt as a heavy grievance ; but it w^as less thought of in Egypt. Science and learning were less cultivated by the Christians in Alex- andria since the overthrow of the Arian party ; and a q Syncel- little later, to charge a writer with Grsecising w^as the same as saying that he wanted orthodoxy. (48) Julian was a warm friend to learning and philo- ^ . Epist. xlv. sophy among the pagans. He recalled to Alexandria the physician Zeno, who in the last reign had fled from the Georgian faction, as the Christians were then called. He founded in the same city a college for music, and Epist. Ivi, ordered the prefect Ecdicius to look out for some young men of skill in that science, particularly from among the pupils of Dioscorus ; and he allotted them a maintenance from the treasury, with rewards for the most skilful. At Canopus, a pagan philosopher, Antoninus, the son of Eustathius, Eunapius, taking advantage of the turn in public opinion, and copying the Christian monks of the Thebaid, drew round him a crowd of followers by his self-denial and painful torture of the body. The Alexandrians flocked in crowds to his dwel- ling ; and such was his character for holiness, that his death, in the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, was thought by the Egyptians to be the cause of the overthrow of paganism. (49) But Egyptian paganism, which had slumbered for fifty 284 JULIAN. A.D. 362—363. [chap, xviit. 3'ears under the Christian emperors, was not again to be awaked .to its former life. Though the wars between the Athanasins, , contra several cities for the honour of their gods, the bull, the crocodile, or the fish, had never ceased, all rever- Ammianus, ence for those gods was dead. The sacred animals^ hb. xxu. particular the bulls Apis and Mnevis, w^ere again waited upon by their priests as of old ; but it was a vain attempt on the part of the pagans. Not only was the Egyptian religion overthrown, but the Thebaid, the country of that religion, was fallen too low to be again raised. The people of Upper Egypt had lost all heart, not more from the tyranny of the Boman government in the north than from the attacks and settlement of the Arabs in the south. All changes in the country, whether for the better or the worse, were laid to the charge of these latter unwelcome neighbours ; and when the inquiring traveller asked to be shown the crocodile, the river- horse, and the other animals for which Egypt had once been noted, he was told with a sigh that they were seldom to be seen in the Delta since the Thebaid had been peopled with the Blemmyes. Falsehood, the usual vice of slaves, had taken a deep hold on the Egj-ptian character. A denial of their wealth w^as the means by which they usually tried to save it from the Roman tax-gatherer ; and an Egyptian was ashamed of himself as a coward, if he could not show a back covered with stripes gained in the attempt to save his money. Pecu- liarities of character often descend unchanged in a nation for Lane's many centuries ; and, after fourteen hundred years of Egypt. ^i^Q same slavery, the same stripes from the lash of the tax-gatherer are still the boast of the Egyptian peasant. Cyrene was already a desert ; the only cities of note in Upper Eg3^pt were Coptos, Hermopolis, and Antinoopolis ; but Alex- andria was still the queen of cities, though the large quarter called the Bruchium had not been rebuilt ; and the Serapium, with its library of seven hundred thousand volumes, was, after the capitol of Rome, the chief building in the world. (50) This temple of Serapis was situated on a rising ground CHAP. XVIII.] TEMPLE OF SERAPIS. 285 at the west end of the city, and though not built like Aphtbonius a fortification, was sometimes called the citadel of Sopliistes. Alexandria. It was entered by two roads ; that on one side was a slope for carriages, and on the other a grand flight of a hundred steps from the street, with each step wider than that below it. At the top of this flight of steps was a portico, in the form of a circular roof, upheld by four columns. Through this was the entrance into the great court-yard, in the middle of which stood the roofless hall or temple, surrounded by columns and porticoes, inside and out. In some of the inner porticoes were the book-cases for the library which made Alex- andria the very temple of science and learning, while other porticoes were dedicated to the service of the ancient religion. The roofs were ornamented with gilding, the capitals of the columns were of copper gilt, and the walls were covered with paintings. In the middle of the inner area stood one lofty column, which could be seen by all the country round, and even from ships some distance out at sea. The great statue of Serapis, which had been made under the Ptolemies, . ' Eufinus, havmg perhaps marble feet, but for the rest built of Eccl.Hist. lib xi 23 wood, clothed with drapery, and glittering with gold ' ' * and silver, stood in one of the covered chambers, which had a small window so contrived as to let the sun's rays kiss the lips of the statue on the appointed occasions. This was one of the tricks employed in the sacred mysteries, to dazzle the worshipper by the sudden blaze of light which on the proper occasions was let into the dark room. The temple itself, with its fountain, its two obelisks, and its gilt ornaments, has long since been destroyed ; and the column in the centre, under the name of Pompey's pillar, alone remains to mark the spot where it stood, and is one of the few works of Greek art which in size and strength vie Avith the old Egyptian monuments. (51) The reign of Julian, instead of raising paganism Socrates, to its former strength, had only shown that its life was i^b^^i^f 4*' gone ; and under Jovian, his successor, the Christians ^^4- were again brought into power. A Christian emperor, how- 286 JOVIAN. A.D. 364. [chap. XVIII. ever, would have been but little welcome to the Egyptians if like Constantius, and even Constantine in his latter years, he had leaned to the Arian party; but Jovian soon showed his attachment to the Nicene creed, and he re -appointed Atha- nasius to the bishoprick of Alexandria. But though Athanasius regained his rank, yet the Arian bishop Lucius was not deposed. Each party in Alexandria had its own bishop ; those who thought that the Son was of the same substance with the Father looked up to Athanasius, while those who gave to Jesus the lower rank of being of a similar substance to the Creator obeyed Lucius. (52) We must not, however, be led away by words to think that a disagreement on this curious metaphysical proposition was the only cause of the quarrel which divided Egypt into such angry parties. The creeds were made use of as the watchwords in a political struggle. Blood, language, and geo- graphical boundaries divided the parties; and religious opinions seldom cross these unchanging lines. Every Egj^tian believed in the Nicene creed and the incorruptibility of the bod}^ of Jesus, and hated the Alexandrian Greeks; while the more refined Greeks were as united in explaining away the Nicene creed by the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, and in despising the ignorant Egyptians. Christianity, which speaks so forcibly to the poor, the unlearned, and the slave, had educated the Egyp- tian population, had raised them in their own eyes ; and, as the popular party gained strength, the Arians lost ground in Alexandria. At the same time the Greeks were falling off in learning and in science, and in all those arts of civilisation which had given them the superiority. Like other great poli- tical changes, this may not have been understood at the time ; but in less than a hundred years it was found that the Eg}^- tians were no longer the slaves, nor the Greeks the masters. Zosimus, (^^) 0^ t^^^ death of Jovian, when Valentinian divided hb. IV. ^YiQ Roman empire with his brother, he took Italy and A.D. 365. West for his own kingdom, and gave to Yalens Egypt and the eastern provinces, in which Greek was the CHAP. XVIII.] FIFTH BANISHMENT OF ATHANASIUS. 287 language of the government. Each emperor adopted q^^^^^^^^ the religion of his capital ; Yalentinian held the Ecci. Hist. Nicene faith, and Yalens the Arian faith ; and unhappy Egypt was the only part of the empii'e whose religion differed from that of its rulers. Had the creeds marked the limits of the two empires, Eg^-pt would have belonged to Rome ; but, as geographical boundaries and language form yet stronger ties, Egypt was given to Constantinople, or rather to Antioch, the nearer of the two eastern capitals. (54) By Yalens, Athanasius was forced for the fifth time to fly from Alexandria, to avoid the displeasure which his dis- obedience again drew down upon him. But his flock again rose in rebellion in favour of their popular bishop ; and the emperor was either persuaded or frightened into allowing him to return to his bishoprick, where he spent the few remaining 3^ears of liis life in peace. Athanasius died at an advanced age, leaving a name more famous than that of any one of the emperors under whom he lived. He taught the Christian world that there was a power greater than that of kings, namely the church. He was often beaten in the struggle, but every victory over him was followed by the defeat of the civil power ; he was five times banished, but five times he returned in triumph. The temporal power of the church was then nearly new ; it only rose upon the conversion of Constantine, and it w^as weak compared to what it became in after ages ; but, when an emperor of Germany did penance barefoot before Pope Hildebrand, and a king of England was whipped at Becket's tomb, we only witness the full-grown strength of the infant power that was being reared by the bishop of Alexandria. His writings are numerous and wholly controversial, chiefly against the Arians. The Athanasian creed seems to have been so named only because it was thought to contain his opinions, as it is known to be by a later author. He was not a man to shudder at its declaration of our Heavenly Father's eternal wrath against those who held any other opinions ; but yet it is not likely that he would have w^holly approved of it, as it does 2SS VALENS. A.D. 365—378. [chap. XVIII. not state that ' the Son is of one substance with the Father,' words which he thouglit all -important as a bulwark against the Arians, and for which he would willingly have laid down his life. (55) On the death of Athanasius, the Homoousian party- chose Peter as his successor in the bishoprick, overlooking Lucius, the Arian bishop, whose election had been approved by the emperors Julian, Jovian, and Yalens. But as the Egyptian chui'ch had lost its great champion, the emperor ventm^ed to re-assert his authority. He sent Peter to prison, and ordered all the churches to be given up to the Arians, threatening with banishment from Egypt whoever disobeyed his edict. The per- secution which the Homoousian party throughout Upper Egypt then suffered from the Arians equalled, says the ecclesiastical historian, anything they had before suffered from the pagans. Every monastery in Egypt was broken open by Lucius at the head of an armed force, and the cruelty of the bishop surpassed that of the soldiers. Men, of whose virtues the world was not worth}', were stript, beaten, stoned, and put to the sword ; and the Homoousian monks in reveno-e, when praving for Eccl. Hist, success in working mii'acles, used to call upon the ^ ' ' name of ' Jesus Christ whom Lucius persecuted.' But the list of cruelties makes us doubt the truth of the tale ; we must choose between one party being violent enough to act so wickedly, or the other party being violent enough to accuse them falsely of it ; and though theological hatred has been the cause of many outrages, they have fortunately been more often inflicted by the pen than by the sword. We must hope that Lucius was innocent of some of the crimes thus laid to his charge; Hieronv- have no further knowledge of his character ; mus, Cat. ig unknown as an author, and wrote little beside his Scriptor. ^ . Paschal letters to his churches. The breaking open of Orosius, c5 r lib.vii.33. the monasteries above spoken of seems to have been for the purpose of making the inmates bear their share in the military service of the state, rather than for any religious reasons. When Constantine embraced Christianity, he at once CHAP. XVIII.] THE MONKS. 289 recognised all the religious scruples of its professors ; and not only the bishops and presbyters but all laymen who had entered the monastic orders were freed from the duty of serving in the army. But under the growing dislike of mili- tary service, and the difficulty of finding soldiers, when to escape from the army many called themselves Christian monks, this excuse could no lont^er be listened to, and Valens ^ , Codex made a law that monastic vows should not save a man Theod. xii. from enlistment. But this law was not easily carried ' into force in the monasteries on the borders of the desert, which were often well built and well guarded fortresses ; and on Mount Nitria in particular, many monks lost their Eusebii lives in their resistance to the troops that were sent Chromcon. to fetch recruits. (56) The monastic institutions of Egypt had already reached their full growth. They w^ere acknowledged by the laws of the empire as ecclesiastical corporations, and allowed to hold pro- perty ; and by a new law of this reign, if a monk or Codex nun died without a will or any known kindred, the ^^^^d.v. 3. property went to the monastery as heir at law. One of the most celebrated of these monasteries w^as on Tabenna, an island in the Nile a few miles to the north of Thebes, ^ bozomen, where Pachomius, after meditating for some years Ecci. Hist, alone in a cave, had gathered round him thirteen ^ ' hundred followers, who owned him as the founder of their order, and gave him credit ^for the gift of prophecy. His disciples in the other monasteries of Upper Egypt amounted to six thousand more. His laws were of the severest kind, as best fitted to keep the thoughts always turned to heaven. The monks were clothed in skins, they prayed twelve times a day, they worked laboriously with their hands, and ate but little. The divine Anuph was at the head of another order of monks, and he boasted that he could by prayer obtain from heaven whatever he wished. Hor was at the head of another „ Sozomen, monastery, where, though wholly unable to read or Eccl. Hist, write, he spent his life in singing psalms, and, as his ^ ' 290 VALENS. A.D. 365—378. [chap. XVIII. followers and perhaps he Inmself believed, in worldng miracles. Serapion was at the head of a thousand monks in the Arsinoite nome, who raised their food by their own labour, and shared it with their poorer neighbours. Near Nitria, a place in the Mareotic nome which gave its name to the nitre springs, there were as many as fifty cells ; but those who aimed at greater solitude and severer mortification withdrew further into the desert, to Scetis in the same nome, a spot already sanctified by the trials and triumphs of St. Anthon}-. Here, in a monastery surrounded by the sands, by the side of a lake whose waters are Salter than the brine of the ocean, with no grass or trees to rest the aching eye, where the dazzling sky is seldom relieved with a cloud, where the breezes are too often laden with dry dust, where the works of nature seem to teach rather God's power than his goodness, these monks cultivated a gloomy religion, with hearts painfully attuned to the scenery around them. Here dwelt Moses, wdio in his youth had been a remarkable sinner, and in his old age became even more remarkable as a saint. It was said that for six years he spent every night in prayer, without once closing liis eyes in sleep ; and that one night, when liis cell was attacked by four robbers, he carried them all off at once on his back to the neighbouring monastery to be punished, because he would himself hurt no man. Benjamin also dwelt at Scetis ; he consecrated oil to heal the diseases of those who washed with it, and during the eight months that he was himself dying of a dropsy, he touched for their diseases all who came to the door of his cell to be healed. Hellas carried fire in his bosom without burning his clothes. EHas spent seventy years in solitude on the borders of the Arabian desert near Antinoopolis. Apelles was a black- smith near Achoris ; he w^as tempted by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman, but he scorched the tempter's face with a red-hot iron, Apollos spent forty years in solitude, and the account of his life and miracles was written by Timotheus bishop of Alexandria. Dorotheus, who though a Theban had settled near Alexandria, mortified his flesh by trying to live CHAP, xviir.] THE MONKS. 291 without sleep. He never willingly lay down to rest, nor indeed ever slept till the weakness of the body sunk under the efforts of the spirit. Paul, who dwelt at Pherma, repeated -g.^^^^y three hundred prayers every day, and kept three hun- mus, Vita dred pebbles in a bag to help him in his reckoning. He was the friend of Anthony, and when dying begged to be wrapt in the cloak given him by that holy monk, who had himself received it as a present from Athanasius. His friends and admirers claimed for Paul the honour of being the first Christian hermit, and they maintained their improbable opinion by asserting that he had been a monk for ninety-seven years, and that he had retired to the desert at the age of sixteen, when the church was persecuted in the reign of Valerian. At a time when our modern plan of registering births was unknown, it was of course difficult to disprove such an assertion, particularly when supported by the authority of J erom. (57) The unceasing prayers and sufferings of these monks drew after them the admiration of those who had not the zeal and strength to copy theii* painful self-denial. Men that would have grumbled at the partial weakness of an emperor, for promoting officers who echoed his praises in the palaces of Constantinople rather than those who executed his orders under an African sun, were imwise enough to fancy their heavenly Sovereign better pleased with continual worship than ■svith active usefulness. All Egypt believed that the monks were the especial favourites of heaven, that they worked miracles, and that divine wisdom flowed from their lips without the help or" hindrance of human learning. They were all Homoousians, believing that the Son was of one substance with the Father ; some as trinitarians holding the opinions of Athanasius ; some as Sabellians believing that Jesus was the creator of the world, and that his body was not liable to corruption ; some as anthropomorphites believing that God was of a human form like Jesus; but all warmly attached to the Nicene creed, denying the two natures of Christ, and hating V 2 292 VALENS. A.D. 365—878. [cnAP. XYIII. Oratio in the Ariaii Greeks of Alexandria and the other cities, ^gypt. Gregory of Nazianzum remarks that Eg3^pt was the most Christ-loving of countries, and adds with true simplicity that wonderful to say, after having so latety worshipped hulls, goats, and crocodiles, it was now teaching the world the worship of the Trinity in the truest form. (58) Among these monks, however, there were some few Suidas ^^^^ learning. Macarius the Egyptian, who was so called to distinguish him fi'om Macarius the Alexan- diian, is one of the best known of the monks of Mount Nitria. He has left behind him fifty homilies, and a volume on Christian Perfection which places him in the first rank among the writers on practical Christianity. He was strictly of the Athanasian party ; but, while the writings of his brethren are sadly too much filled with reproaches against their adversaries and extravagrant praises of the lives and mii'acles of the monks, the works of IMacarius breathe the purest love of God and of his neighbour. Evagrius also, who had studied under Socrates, ^ . . Eccl. Hist, both Macarius of Alexandria and Macarius of Egypt, wrote on the Gnostic pliilosophy, as well as a history of the monks ; and his pupil Palladius wrote a history of the monasteries of Egypt. (59) To visit some of these monasteries was a not uncommon Vitse journey with the earnest Christians of other countries RosWd' "^'^^ means of travelling. Pvufinus, a young hb. 11. student of Aquileia on the Adriatic, near the modem city of Trieste, was fii'ed with the wish of examining their way of life, and he was so fortunate as to meet with a wealthy widow in Eome, who was willing to accompany him and to bear the cost of the journey. They sailed together to Alexandria, and Eufinus then with some male companions ventured on the more difficult journey through the Thebaid. At Oxyrinchus he found a city wholly devoted to religion. There were twelve churches there. There was no tower, no gate, no corner of the place, that was not made use of for monks' cells. The great temples, in which the sacred animals used to be worshipped, CHAP. XVIII.] THE MONKS. 293 were now Christian monasteries. The religion was changed but not the people's habits. The bishop told Rufinns that there were ten thousand monks and twenty thousand nuns in the city. From this crowd of holy people he went to the solitary cell of Theon, a monk learned in the Greek, Latin, and Coptic languages. He spent three days at Lycopolis in a cell at the top of a steep rock with a monk named John, whose fame was such that the Roman general at Syene consulted him as to when he should give battle to the Ethiopians on the frontier. He visited the large monastery on the island of Tabenna near Thebes, where three thousand silent monks dwelt under the government of Ammon. The monastery near Hermopolis held five hundred monks, who were of a more cultivated order in society than the others. Neglect of cleanliness formed no part of their monastic rule ; their garments were as clean as their hearts were pure. Apollonius, their well-informed superior, explained to Rufinus much of the old religion and ceremonies, and the worship of animals. Near Hermopolis, however, paganism was still flourishing, and the monastery was in a state of warfare with the neighbouring villages, and with the priests in the great temple of that city. When the travellers left the monastery Apollonius kindly sent with them three interpreters to show them the other Coptic monasteries which they wished to see, and to help them to the information that they wanted. On their route they examined several monas- teries in towns of which they did not know the names, one on a rock overhanging the river, one in a walled garden with wells and fruit-trees. They visited Elias in his cave near Anti- noopolis, and then the monastery near Heracleopolis. In the Arsinoite nome, as in Oxyrinchus, they found the whole population under monastic vows, but at the same time industrious cultivators of that fertile province, and sending the produce to the Alexandrian market. In the neighbourhood of Memphis and Babylon were an equally large number of monks ; and there Rufinus was shown the pyramids, as the granaries in which the patriarch Joseph had stored his corn. He lastly 294 VALENS. A.D. 365—378. [chap. XVIII. visited Mount Nitria, whose monasteries were more famous than any others in Egypt. He returned in safety to Alex- andria thankful for the sight of so much religious zeal and for having escaped the dangers of the journey. From thence he led his nohle patroness to Jerusalem, to warm their piety with the sight of spots which will always be sacred in the eyes of the Christian. (GO) We must not hastily judge the extravagance of the monks without taking into account the moral state of the country. We may heheve the historians, or we may satisfy ourselves from the codes of the empire, that the monks were thought a blessing to the times in which they lived. The success which followed upon this preaching of an extreme asceticism only proves the grossness of the vice that it was meant to cure. While every luxury of the body was cultivated as the chief end of life, the monks preached and practised fasting and a neglect of dress. While scurrilous jokes, witty scandal, and illnatured epigrams were the chief ornaments of conversation, the monks practised solitary silence and prayer. While the sacred tie of marriage was so little known that the population fell off, and mind and body were alike ruined by debauchery, the monks preached celibacy. While riches were so much more gained by fraud than by honest industry that every rich man was thought to have been either a rogue or the heir to a rogue, the monks practised personal poverty or a community of goods. Monkish institutions spread because they were found useful, but their being found useful proves the low state of morals at the time. (61) Of the three kinds of monks, the Coenobites who lived Hieronym. large monasteries, the Anchorites or hermits who Epist.xviii. (J^git alone in the desert, and the Eemoboth who dwelt three or four together in cities, the first two maintained their character for holiness. The Coenobites, if ever they longed after the pleasures which they had forsworn, were saved by their strict rules and by their obedience to their superiors, and the Anchorites by their solitude. But the Eemoboth, CHAP. XVIII.] THE SARACENS. 295 living among the crowd and professing holiness superior to that of their fellow citizens, sooner fell into those vices which monks in all ages have heen more or less guilty of. They were charged with hypocrisy, a love of good living, with hoarding wealth while professing poverty, and with quarrelling with the clergy ; and, after thus losing character, the name and institution went out of use. (62) The pagans, who were now no longer ahle to worship publicly as they chose, took care to proclaim their opinions indirectly in such ways as the law could not reach. ^ . Hieronym. In the hippodrome, which was the noisiest of the Vit. Hila- places where the people met in public, they made a profession of their faith by the choice of which horses they bet on ; and Christians and pagans alike showed their zeal for religion by hooting and clapping of hands. Prayers and superstitious ceremonies were used on both sides to add to the horses' speed ; and the monk Hilarion, the pupil of Anthony, gained no little credit for sprinkling holy water on the horses of his party, and thus enabling Christianity to outrun paganism in the hippodrome at Gaza. (63) During these reigns of weakness and misgovernment, it was no doubt a cruel policy rather than humanity, that led the tax-gatherers to collect the tribute in kind. More could be squeezed out of a ruined people by taking what they had to give than by requiring it to be paid in copper coin. Hence ^^^^^^ Valens made a law that no tribute throughout the Tjieodos. empu-e should be taken in money ; and he laid a new land-tax upon Egypt, to the amount of a soldier's clothing for every thirty acres. (64) The Saracens had for some time past been encroaching on the eastern frontiers of the empire, and had only been kept back by treaties which proved the weakness of the Socrates, Romans, as the armies of Constantinople were still called, and which encouraged the barbarians in their . . Sozomen, attacks. On the death of their king, the command EccI. Hist, over the Saracens fell to their queen Msevia, who 296 VALENS. A.D. 865—378. [chap. XVIII. broke the last treaty, laid waste Palestine and Phenicia with her armies, conquered or gained over the Arabs of Petra, and pressed upon the Egyptians at the head of the Ked Sea. On this, Valens renewed the truce, but on terms still more favourable to the invaders. Many of the Saracens were Christians, and by an article of the treaty they were to have a bishop granted them for their church, and for this purpose they sent Moses to Alexandria to be ordained. But the Saracens sided with the Egyptians, in religion as well as poUcy, against the Arian Greeks. Hence Moses refused to be ordained by Lucius the patriarch of Alexandria, and chose rather to receive his appointment from some of the Homoousian bishops who were living in banishment in the Thebaid. Darkness and ignorance were thus spreading themselves over the earth; and after this advance of the barbarians the interesting city of Petra, which since the time of Trajan had been in the power or the friendship of Kome or Constantinople, was lost to the civilised world. This rocky fastness, which was ornamented with temples, (see Fig. 72) a triumphal arch, and a theatre, and had been a bishop's see, was henceforth closed against all travellers ; it had no place in the map till it was discovered by Burckhardt in our own days without a human being dwelling in it, with oleanders and tamarisks choking up its entrance through the cliff, and with brambles trailing their branches over the rock-hewn temples. Fig. 115. — Isis, as the Dog-Star, Rising. CHAPTER XIX. THE REIGNS OF THEODOSIUS I., ARCADIUS, AND THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 379—450. (1) The reign of Theodosius is remarkable for the blow then given to paganism. The old religion had been sinking ^ even before Christianity had become the religion of the emperors ; it had been discouraged by Constantine, who had closed many of the temples ; but Theodosius made ^ ^ ^ law in the first year of his reign that the whole of the Theod. empire should be Christian, and should receive the ^' trinitarian faith. He soon afterwards ordered that ^i"- S, 3. Sunday should be kept holy, and forbad all work and law- proceedings on that day ; and he sent Cynegius, the zosimus, prefect of the palace, into Egypt, to see these laws carried into effect in that province. (2) The wishes of the emperor were ably followed up q^^.^^^^ by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria. He cleansed Eccl. Hist, the temple of Mithra, and overthrew the statues in the celebrated temple of Serapis, which seemed the very citadel of paganism. He also exposed to public ridicule the mystic ornaments and statues which a large part of his fellow- citizens still regarded as sacred. It was not, however, to be supposed that this could be peaceably borne by a people so irritable as the Alexandrians. The students in the schools of philosophy put themselves at the head of the mob to stop the work of destruction, and to revenge themselves against their assailants. Several battles were fought in the streets between the pagans 298 THEODOSIUS I. A.D. 379—304. [chap. XIX. and the Christians, in wliich both parties lost many lives ; but, as the Christians were supported by the power of the prefect, the pagans were routed, and many whose rank would have made them objects of punishment were forced to fly from Alexandria. Among these were Ammonius, the author of a valuable work on Greek sjaionjans, and Helladius, the author of a biographical dictionary, which forms a part of the larger dictionary of Suidas. (3) No sooner had the troops under the command of the prefect put down the pagan opposition than the work of destruction was again carried forward b}^ the zeal of the bishop. The temples were broken open, their ornaments destroyed, and the statues of the gods melted for the use of the Alexandrian church. One statue of an Egyptian god was alone saved from the wreck, and was set up in mockery of those w^ho had wor- shipped it ; and this ridicule of their religion was a cause of greater anger to the pagans than even the destruction of the other statues. The great statue of Serapis, which was Rufiuus, I'll Eccl. Hist, made of wood covered with plates of metal, was Ub. u. 23. pieces by the axes of the soldiers. • The head and limbs were broken off, and the wooden trunk was burnt in the amphitheatre amid the shouts and jeers of the bystanders. A colossal foot of white marble, which was brought from Alexandria, and is now in the British Museum, may be guessed from its size to have been part of this patch- work statue. (4) In the plunder of the temple of Serapis, the great library of more than seven hundred thousand volumes was wholly broken up and scattered. Orosius, the Spaniard, who Lib. vii. 36. . , . . , Visited Alexandria m the next reign, and was the author of a short universal history full of bigotry and mistakes, may be trusted when he says that he saw in the temple the empty shelves, which, within the memory of men then Lib. vi. 15. living, had been plundered of the books that had formerly been got together after the library of the Bruchium was burnt by Julius Csesar. In a work of such lawless plunder. CHAP. XIX.] THE LIBRARY DESTROYED. 299 carried on by ignorant zealots, many of these monuments of pagan genius and learning must have been wilfully or acci- dentally destroyed, though the larger number may have been carried off by the Christians for the other public and private libraries of the cit3\ How many other libraries this city of science may have possessed we are not told, but there were no doubt many. Had Alexandria during the next two centmies given birth to poets and orators, their works, the offspring of native genius, might perhaps have been written without the help of libraries ; but the labours of the mathematicians and grammarians prove that the city was still well furnished with books, beside those on the Christian controversies. (5) It would be dishonest not to point out in each perse- cution, whether by the pagans or by the Christians, the superiority in worth and character of the oppressed over their persecutors. When the Christians were persecuted by the pagans, none but men of unblemished lives and unusual strength of mind stood to their religion in the day of trial, and suffered the penalties of the law ; the weak, the ignorant, and the vicious readily joined in the superstitions required of them, and embracing the religion of the stronger party, easily escaped punishment. So it was when the pagans of Alexandria were persecuted by bishop Theophilus ; the chief sufferers were the men of learning, in whose mmds paganism was a pm'e deism, and who saw nothing but ignorance and superstition on the side of their oppressors ; who thought their worship of the Trinity only a new form of polytheism, and jokingly declared that they were not arithmeticians enough to understand it. Olympius, who was the priest of Serapis when the temple was sacked, and as such the head of the pagans of Alexandria, was a man in every respect the opposite of the bishop Theophilus. He was of a frank open countenance and agreeable manners ; and though his age might have allowed him to speak among his followers in the tone of command, he chose rather in his moral lessons to use the mild persuasion of an equal ; and few hearts were so hardened as not to be led 800 THEODOSIUS I. A.D. 379—394. [chap. XIX. into the path of duty by his exhortations. Whereas Eunapias, ^ Vit. So- the furious monks, says the indignant pagan, were men only in form, but swine in manners. "Whoever put on a black coat, and was not ashamed to be seen with dirty linen, gained a tyrannical power over the minds of the mob, from their belief in his holiness ; and these men attacked the temples of the gods as a propitiation for their own enormous sins. Thus each party reproached the other, and often Rufinus ^^i^j^^stly. Among other religious frauds and pretended Ecci. Hist, miracles of which the pagan priests were accused, was lib. xi. 23. . . . , . . the havmg an iron statue oi Serapis kept hangmg m Fig. 116. the air in a chamber of the temple, by means of a loadstone fixed in the ceiling. The natural difficulties shield them from this charge, but other accusations are not so easily rebutted. (6) After this attack upon the pagans, their religion was no longer openly taught in Alexandria. Some of the more zealous professors withdrew from the capital to Can opus, about ten miles distant, where the ancient priestly learning was still L'b ' 26 ^^^S-'^*' unpersecuted because unnoticed; and there, under the pretence of studying hieroglyphics, a school was opened for teaching magic and other forbidden super- CHAP, XIX.] THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 301 stitions. When the pagan worship ceased throughout Egypt, the temples were very much used as churches, and m some cases received in their ample courtyard a smaller church of Greek architecture, as in that of Medinet Abou. (See Fig. 116.) In other cases Christian ornaments were added to the old walls, as in the rock temple of Kneph, opposite to Abou Simbei, where the figure of Our Saviour with a glory round his head has been painted on the ceiling. (See Fig. 117.) The Fig. 117. Christians, in order to remove from before their eyes the memorials of the old superstition, covered up the sculpture on the walls with mud from the Nile and white plaster. This coating we now take away, at a time when the idolatrous figures are no longer dangerous to religion, and we find the sculpture and painting fresh as when covered up fourteen hundred years ago. (7) It would be unreasonable to suppose that the Egyptians, on embracing Christianity, at once threw off the whole of their pagan rites. Among other customs that they still clung to, was that of making mummies of the bodies of the dead. 302 THEODOSIUS 1. A.D. 379—394. [chap. XIX. Athauasius -'^^tlioiij'' had tried to dissuade the Christian con- Vit. Anto- verts from that practice ; not because the mummy- cases were covered with pagan inscriptions ; but he boldly asserted, what a very little reading would have disproved, that every mode of treating a dead body, beside burial, was forbidden in the Bible as wicked. St. Augustine, on the other Sermo 349 ^^^^'^^^ ^^'^11 Understanding that the immortality of the de Resurrec soul without the body was little likely to be under- cap. xii. ^ T - , . . , _ stood or valued by the ignorant, praises the Egyptians for that very practice, and says that they were the only Christians who really believed in the resurrection from the dead. The figures of the Virgin Mary standing on the new moon, as she ascends up to heaven, seem borrowed from the goddess Isis, who in her character of the dog- star, rises heliacally in the Heliodorus ^^^^ manner. (See Fig. 115.) The tapers even now ^tMopica. burnt before the Eoman catholic altars had also from the earliest times been used to light up the splendours of the Egyptian altars, in the darkness of their temples, and Herodotus ^^^^ been burnt in still greater numbers in the yearly lib. ii. 62. festival of the candles. The playful custom of giving Moses away sugared cakes and sweet-meats on the twenty- Chorenensis, n ^T^ • •i/^t i Hist. Arm. fiftu day of Tybi, our twentieth oi January, was then hb. 111. 62. (.]-^g^j-jgg^ j^gp^ fourteen days earlier, and it still marks with us the feast of Epiphany or Twelfth-night. The division of the people into clergy and laity, which was unknown to Greeks and Eomans, was introduced to Christianity in the fourth century by the Egyptians. While the rest of Christen- dom were clothed in woollen, linen, the common dress of the Egyptians, was universally adopted by the clergy as more becoming to the purity of their manners ; linen, says the Book Ch xix 8 Eevelation is what is appointed for the saints. Artemido- At the Same time the clergy copied the Egyptian roc.' 23. priests in the custom of shaving the crown of the Egyptian head bald. Two thousand years before the bishop of 59, 5 ; 69, Eome pretended to hold the keys of heaven and hell, ^' there was an Egyptian priest with the high-sounding CHAP. XIX.] ARIANISM FORBIDDEN V>Y LAW. 303 title of Appointed Keeper of the two doors of heaven in the city of Thehes. It would be easy to point out other improvements or rather blots upon Christianity, which seem to be of Egyptian growth ; and the mud of the Nile, as Homer remarks, was as fruitful of poisons as it was of medicines. Thus was brought about what has been called the spread of Christianity, but what was rather an union of the two religions or a compromise between the two parties. Wise and good men have doubted whether it helped or hindered the cause of the religion taught by Jesus. (8) The new law in favour of trinitarian Christianity was enforced with as great strictness against the Arians as Eusebii against the pagans. The bishops and priests of that ^l^romcon. party were everywhere turned out of their churches, which were then given up to the Homoousians. Theodosius g^gy^^gg summoned a council of one hundred and fifty bishops Eccl. Hist, at Constantinople, to re-enact the Nicene creed ; and in the futm-e religious rebellions of the Egyptians they always quoted against the Greeks this council of Constantinople, with that of Nicsea, as the foundation of their faith. By this religious policy, Theodosius did much to delay the fall of the empire. He won the friendship of his Egyptian subjects, as well as of their Saracen neighbours, all of whom, as far as they were Christian, held the Nicene faith. Egypt became the Zosimus, safest of his provinces ; and, when his armies had been recruited with so many barbarians that they could no longer be trusted, these new levies were marched into Egypt under the command of Hormisdas, and an equal number of Egyptians were drafted out of the army of Egypt, and led into Thessaly. (9) When the season came for the overflow of the Nile, in the first summer after the destruction of the temples, „ ■'■ ' Sozomen, the waters happened to rise more slowly than usual ; Eccl. Hist, and the Egyptians laid the blame upon the Christian ^ ' emperor, who had forbidden their sacrificing the usual offer- ings in honour of the river-god. The alarm for the loss of THEODOSIUS I. A.D. 379—394. [chap. XIX. their crops carried more weight in the religious controversy than an}^ arguments that could be brought against pagan sacrifices ; and the anger of the people soon threatened a serious rebellion. Evagrius the prefect, in his doubts about the peace of the country, sent to Constantinople for orders ; but the emperor remained firm, he would make no change in the law against paganism, and the fears of the Egyptians and Alexandrians were soon put an end to by a most plenteous overflow. (10) Since the time of Athanasius, and the overthrow of the Arian party in Alexandria, the learning of that city was wholly in the hands of the pagans, and was chiefly mathematical. The writings of Theon, Pappus, and Dioi)hantus, are still g known to the mathematician and the scholar. The time when Diophantus of Alexandria lived is unfortunately not well known ; but it was not later than this reign. He wrote on arithmetic and algebra. He is the earliest writer on algebra whose works are now remaining to us, and has given his name to the Diophantine problems. Pappus wrote a description of the world, and a commentary on Ptolemy's Almagest, beside a work on geometry, published under the name of his Mathematical Collections. Theon was a professor in the IMuseum, and, beside other mathematical works, he wrote on the smaller astrolabe, the instrument then used to measure the stars' places, and on the rise of the Nilej'a subject always of interest to the mathematicians of Egypt, from its importance to the husbandman. From Theon's astronomical observations we learn that the Alexandrian astronomers still made use of the old Egyptian moveable year of three hundred and sixtj^-five days only, and without a leap-year. Paul the Alexandrian astrologer, on the other hand, uses the Julian year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and he dates from the era of Diocletian. "We can make no use of his rules for calculating nativities ; but his rules for telling the day of the week from the day of the month, and for telling on what day of the week each year began, teach us that our present CHAP. XIX.] THE WRITERS. 805 mode of dividing time was used in Egypt. In the same way we do not care to be told by the astrologer what god watches over each part of a man's body ; but from the names of the gods of each day we learn that w^e owe to the Egyptians the present names for the days of the week. Herodotus ^ . . Lib.ii. 82. had hinted that in Egypt each day was named after the god to whom it was dedicated. Dion Cassius had added that they used a week of seven days, each named after . Lib. 37. one of the planets, and that the Jewish sabbath w^as the day of Seb or Saturn. But Paul completes our inform- ation ; and from the three w'e learn that the Egyptians had, time out of mind, employed the week, and that the names for the days now used in every Christian nation ai'e only A.D. 378. translations of those given by the Egyptian priests. Paul wrote in the ninety-foui'th year of the era of Diocletian. (11) Horapollo, the grammarian, was also then a teacher in the schools of Alexandria, though after a short time he ° Suidas. removed to Constantinople. He wrote in the Coptic language a work in explanation of the hieroglyphics, which has gained a notice far beyond what it deserves, because it is the only work on the subject that has come down to us. It is perhaps hardly fair to judge it by the Greek translation made by an unknown writer of the name of Philip, but it is a w'ork of very little value. Before hieroglyphics were understood, nobody hoped to understand them by its help, and the reader saw at a glance that little could be learnt from it ; though wx now look to it wath some curiosity, to see the sparklings of truth which glimmer through the blunders. (12) The closing of the catechetical school naturally followed upon the persecution with which this reign began, pj^j^pp^g Ehodon, who had succeeded the blind Didymus, was Sidetes, ap. Dodwell. the last of thirteen professors who for upwards of two hundred years had been ornaments to Alexandria and to their religion. As they were appointed to the office by the bishop, the last two or three had been of the homoousian opinions ; but as their pu^uls were chiefly Arians, the violence of the 306 ARCADIUS. A.D. 395—408. [chap. XIX. quarrel would have ruined the school, even without the help of a persecution. E-hodon removed with his few remaining pupils to Side in Pamphylia, and henceforth the only school of philosophy in Alexandria was that of the pagans. Thus we see that the school of Clemens, Origen, Heraclas, and Dionysius had no lasting weight in guiding the opinions of the Egyptian church. The ignorant superstition of the monks of the Thebaid and Mount Nitria was more persuasive among the Coptic Christians than the learning of the Alexandrian pro- fessors. (13) The only Christian writings of this time, that we know Hierony- of, are the paschal letters of Theophilus, bishop of Theoph^ Alexandria, which were much praised by Jerom, and Epistolaap. ^7 ^^^^ translated into Latin. They are full of bitter Hieronym. reproaches against Origen and his writings, and they charge him with having treated Jesus more cruelly than Pilate or the Jews had done. John, the famous monk of the Thebaid, was no writer, though believed to have the gift of Sozomen, . . Eccl. Hist, prophecy. He was said to have foretold the victory 1 . vu. The o do sins over the rebel Maximus ; and, when the emperor had got together his troops to march against Eugenius, another rebel who had seized the passes of the Julian Alps, he sent his trusty eunuch Eutropius to fetch the holy Egyptian, or at least to learn from him what would be the event of the war. John refused to go to Europe, but he told the messenger that Theodosius would conquer the rebel, and soon afterwards die ; both of which came to pass as might easily have been guessed. (14) On the death of Theodosius, the Eoman empire was again divided. Arcadius his elder son ruled Egypt A.D. 894. ^ ^-^^ and the East, while Honorius the younger held the West ; and the reins of government at once passed from the ablest to the weakest hands. But the change was little felt Socrates ^gyp^j which continued to be governed by the Eccl. Hist, patriarch Theophilus, without the name but with very nearly the power of a prefect. He was a bold and CJIAP. XIX.] ANTHROPOMORPHITES. 807 wicked man, but as his religious opinions were for the Homoousians against the Arians, and his poKtical feelings were for the Egyptians against the Greeks, he rallied round his government the chief strength of the province. As the pagans and Arians of Alexandria were no longer worthy of his enmity, he fanned into a flame a new quarrel which was then breaking out in the Egyptian church. The monks of Upper Egypt, who were mostly ignorant and unlettered men, were anthro- pomorphites, or believers that God was in outward shape like a man. They quoted from the Jewish scriptures that he made man in his own image, in support of their unworthy opinion of the Creator, rather • than as an encouragement to their own efforts, and a proof of the noble powers that he has entrusted to his creatures. They held that he was of a strictly human form, like Jesus, which to them seemed fully asserted in the Nicene creed. In this opinion they were opposed by those who were better educated, and more particularly by Dioscorus, bishop of Hermopolis, with his three brothers, Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius, who were at the head of the monasteries at Scetis. It suited the policy of the violent Theophilus to side with the more ignorant and larger part}^ and he warmly espoused the anthropomorphite opinion, and branded with the name of Origenists those who argued that God was without form, and who quoted the writings of Origen in support of their opinion. This naturally led to a dispute about Origen's orthodoxy ; and that admirable writer, who had been praised by all parties for two hundred years, who had been quoted as authority as much by Athanasius as by the Arians, was declared to be a heretic by a council of bishops who then met in Cyprus. Every council of bishops, ^, , 1 111/. Theophih wherever held, and mdeed every bishop, was then Epist. ap. supposed to have authority over all Christendom ; and Theophilus, distrusting his own clergy, persuaded Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, to call his council, and get the writings of Origen condemned, as he feared he should not have been able to persuade an Alexandrian council to do X 2 308 ARCADIUS. A.D. 395—408. [chap. XIX. so. The writings of Origen were accordingly forbidden to be read, because tliey contradicted the anthropomorphite opinions. (15) The quarrel between the Origenists and the anthro- , pomorphites did not end in w^ords. A proposition in Nicephorus , ^ ^ Eccl. Hist, theology, or a doubt in metaphysics, was no better ^ ' cause of civil war than the old quarrels about the bull Apis or the crocodile ; but a change of religion had not changed the national character. The patriarch, finding his party the stronger, attacked the enemy in their own monas- teries ; he marched to Mount Nitria at the head of a strong body of soldiers, and, enrolling under his banners the anthropomorphite monks, attacked Dioscorus and the Origenists, set fire to their monasteries, and laid waste the place. (16) Tlieophilus next quarrelled with Peter the chief of the Alexandrian presbyters, whom he accused of admitting to the sacraments of the church a woman who had not renounced the Manichsean heresy ; and he then quarrelled with Isidorus who had the charge of the poor of the church, because he bore witness to Peter's having had the orders of Theophilus himself for what he did. (17) The further we advance in tlie history of Christianity in Egypt, by every step that we leave the bright ages of Origen, Clemens, and the catechetical school, the thicker are the mists of superstition that surround us. In this century there w^as a general digging up of the bodies of the most celebrated Christians of former ages, to heal the diseases and strengthen the faith of the living ; and Constantinople, which as the capital of the empire had been ornamented by the spoils of its subject provinces, had latterly been enriching its churches with the remains of numerous Christian saints. The tombs of Egypt, crowded with mummies that had lain there for centuries could of course furnish relics more easily than most countries, and in this reign Constantinople received from Alexandria a quantity of bones which were supposed to be those of the cnAP. XIX.] SACRED TREE. 309 martvrs slain in the pagan persecutions. The arch- ^ ^ ^ . Homll. in bishop John Chrvsostome received them gratefully, iMartyr. and, though himself smarting under the reproach that ^^^p** he ^Yas not orthodox enough for the superstitious Egyptians, he thanks God that Egypt, which sent forth its corn to feed its hungry neighbours, could also send the bodies of so many martyrs to sanctify their churches. (18) Another superstition, which by this time the pagans had engi'afted on chiistianity, was that of having sacred trees. Though the Egyptian Christians had no sacred animals, yet the}^ had made a tree called the Persea sacred to Cedrenus. Jesus. There was a Persea, or peach-tree, at Hermo- polis wliicli was said to heal the diseases of all who touched it. They also had a tradition that when the infant Jesus had been brought into Egypt by his parents he had rested under the shade of a Persea, and that the tree, foreseeing his after greatness, had bowed down to worship the child. As this tree was not now to be found, it was one of the crimes laid to the charge of Julian, the apostate emperor, that he had destroyed it, as a step towards out-rooting Christianity. As the peach-gi'oves went to decay their destruction was attributed to the malice of the pagans ; and to stop this crime Arcadius made a Justinian, law that no Persea should be cut down in Egypt, and that whoever should be guilty of buying or selling one should forfeit five pounds weight of gold. But the law did not save these trees, which were of foreign gi'owth and only raised by skilful cultivation. The plant has long since been lost to Egypt and botanists believe that they have met with it in the Cailliaud, Date of the desert, the Balanites u^gyptiaca, a fruit- Voyage en tree not uncommon to the south of Meroe. But other naturalists, inquirmg into these superstitions, point out the origin of this story in a sensitive plant of the genus Mimosa, whose branches droop when touched by the traveller, ^^t. ^ , and seem to salute those who rest under its shade. Travels, This mute hospitality has so endeared the tree to the Arabs, that injuring or cutting it down is still strictly forbidden. 310 ARCADIUS. A.D. 895—408. [chap. XIX. (19) We have traced the fall of the Greek party in Alex- andria, in the victories over the Arians during the religious quarrels of the last hundred years ; and in the laws we now read the city's loss of wealth and power. The corporation of Alexandria was no longer ahle to bear the expense of cleansing the river and keeping open the canals ; and four hundred solidi, perhaps about two hundred and forty Codex , n Theodos. pounds sterling, were each year set apart from the ^' ^' custom-house duties of the city for that useful work. (20) At a time when Italy had very little literature to boast of and very little credit to spare, it seems hard to claim any of it for Egypt ; but Claudian, the last of the Eoman poets, was a native of Alexandria. He at first wrote in Greek, though a few epigrams are all that now remain in his native language. It is to his Latin poems, written after he had removed to Rome, that he owes his name and rank as an author. He is one of the few who have been successful as a poet in a foreign language ; and though we cannot place him in the first class, with Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid, he may safely be placed in the second, with Lucan and Statins. (21) The arrival of new settlers in Alexandria had been very much checked by the less prosperous state of the country since the reign of Diocletian. We still however find that many of the men of note were not born in Egypt. Paulus the physician w^as a native of ^Egina. He has left a work on diseases and „. , their remedies. The chief man of learning was Nicepnorus, ... Eccl. Hist. Synesius, a Platonic philosopher, whom the patriarch Theophilus persuaded to join the Christians. As a Platonist he naturally leaned towards many of the doctrines of the popular religion, but he could not believe in a resurrection; Photius, it was not till after Theophilus had ordained him cod. XXVI. i3igi;^op of Ptolemais near Cyrene that he acknowledged ^ . the truth of that doctrine. Nor would he then put Epist.lOS. ... away or disown his wife, as the custom of the church required ; indeed he accepted the bishoprick very unwillingly. He was as fond of playful sport as he was of books, and very CHAP, XIX.] THE WRITERS. 811 much disliked business. He has left a volume of writings, including letters and some hymns. His thoughts are not unworthy of a Christian philosopher, though his theology was drawn rather from pagan than from Christian streams ; for he believed in as many inferior gods as the most ignorant poly- theist or the most imaginative Platonist. When young Synesius, he had studied mathematics and physics under Hypatia, ^P^^^o^*- the daughter of Theon, who was then teaching in Alexandria ; and to her he addresses several of his letters on matters of science ; and he employs her to get made for him in Alex- andria instruments which were beyond the skill of the makers in Cyrene. His grateful praises have saved the names of two prefects of Cj^ene ; the one Anysius, under whose good disci- pline even the barbarians of Hungary behaved like Roman legionaries, and the other Pseonius, who cultivated science in this barren spot. To encourage Paeonius in his praiseworthy studies he made him a present of an astrolabe, to measure the distances of the stars and planets, an instrument which he had had made under the guidance of Hypatia. He laments gynesius, in terms of great feeling over the fallen state of Cyrene, Catastasis. ruined by the Marcomanni and other barbarian mercenaries that were brought into the province to guard it ; and he points with generous shame to the public decrees, carved on a marble monument in the forum, which still declared that the people were Dorians, descended from the Heraclidse. (22) 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, pj^ji^g^Q^. leaving the desert in hope of plunder, overran the gjus, Kccl. 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 waters 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 312 THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409—450. [chap. XIX. gold. Melancholy indeed was the view of the country to a kind-hearted man like Synesius; and in his first hymn he beautifully prays, Wealth I only ask from heaven, Enough to keep chill want and famine From the cottage of my neighbour ; Lest wanting means to help the needy Gloomy thoughts might overcome me. Socrates, (23) On the death of Arcadius, his son Theodosius Ub^^viK^^^* "^^s ^^b' eight years old, but he was quietly acknow- A.D. 408. ledged as emperor of the East, and he left the govern- ment 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. The remains of the Greek and Arian party proposed Timotheus, an archdeacon in the church ; but the Eg3^ptian 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 Timo- theus, 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. (24) Cyril was not less t}Tannical in his bishoprick than his imcle 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 CHAP. XIX.] JEWS PERSECUTED. 313 them from blows ; and the Christians reproached the poor 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 syna- gogues ; they broke them open and plundered them, and in one day drove every Jew out of the city. No Jew had been EutycMi allowed to live in Alexandria or any other city without Tertuiiian paying a poll-tax, for leave to worship God according Apoi. xviii. 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. (25) Orestes the prefect of Alexandria, had before wished to check the power of the bishop ; and he in vain tried gQgj.a|.gs to save the Jews from oppression, and the state from Ecci. Hist. , , . , . . ^ . , lib. vii. the loss of so many good citizens. But it was useless to quarrel with the patriarch, who was supported by the reli- gious 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 had been baptized 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 tlie church with much pomp ; he declared him to be a martyr and a saint, and gave him the name of Saint Thaumasius. But the Christians were ashamed of the new 314 THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409—450. [chap. XIX. martjT : and the bishop, who could not withstand the ridicule, soon afterwards withdrew from him the title. (26) Bad as was this behaviour of the bishop and his friends, the most disgraceful tale still remains to be told. The beauti- ful and learned Hypatia, the daughter of Tlieon the mathema- tician, 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 was 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 Caesar's temple, and there stripped her and murdered her with some broken tiles. She had written commentaries on the Suidas. mathematical w^orks of Diophantus, and on the conic sections of Apollonius. (27) 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, and where the modern village, the remains of the city, yet bears his name and is called by the Arabs, Geergeh. 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 monas- tery of St. Athanasius was built in the most public spot in the CHAP. XIX.] ST. GEORGE AND ST. ATHANASIUS. 315 city, probably that formerly held by the Soraa or royal biuial- place ; and in Thebes a cathedral chiu'ch was dedicated to St. Athanasius witliin the great court-yard of Medinet Abou, where the small and paltry Greek columns are in strange contrast to the grand ai'chitecture of Rameses III. which surrounds them. (See Fig. 116.) How St. George became the patron saint of England is unknown, but the most probable guess is that it was by a simple confusion of names that he was allowed to usurp the place of St. Gregory, who had so large a share in converting our island to Christianity. The names Ge-org-ius and Gre-gor-ius differ by little more than a single letter. (28) 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 w^as refused in Alexandria. But this practice w^as stopt Justinian, by Theodosius, who made a law that the Alex- ^' andrians 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. (29) We may pass over the banishment of John Chrysostome, 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 Chrysostome was Palladius of Galatia, who was sent a prisoner to Syene. As soon as he was p^^jj^^jj^g released from his bonds, instead of being cast down Vit. Chry- sost. 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 DeBragma- of the Brahmins. He arrived in safety at Adule, 316 THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409—450. [chap. xtx. the port on the Red Sea in latitude 15°, where he made acquaintance with ]\Ioses the hishop of that city, and persuaded him to join him in his distant and difficult voyage. From Adule they set sail in one of the vessels employed in the Indian trade ; hut they were unable to accompHsh their pur- pose, 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 Hist. Lau- returning to Egypt. Palladius had travelled in siaca. 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 women, addrest to his friend Lausus. (30) When Nestorius was deposed from the bishoprick of EvacTius Constantinople for refusing to use the words ' Mother Ecci. Hist, of God ' as the title of Jesus's mother, and for falling short in other points of what was then thought ortho- doxy, he was banished to Hibe in the Great Oasis. The world thought it necessary to check heresy by force, and the civil magistrate chose banishment as the most suitable punishment for men whom the state might fear without blaming. But its severity was often increased by religious zeal ; and Egypt was CHAP. XIX.] MONASTIC RULES. 317 cruelly cliosen as the place of banisliment for Nestorius, because he was there shunned as a heretic by the whole of the people. 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 after- wards he died of the sufferings brought on by these forced and painful journeys through the desert. (31) About the same time Egypt was visited by Cassianus, a monk of Gaul, in order to study the monastic Eusebii institutions of the Thebaid. In his work on that Chronicon. 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 cop}dng the Theban monks at a distance. Such was the fame of the Egyptian monasteries that many zealots from jjigi-ony- Italy flocked there, to place themselves under the ^"S' rachomii severe discipline of those holy men. As these Latin Reguiam, monks did not understand either Coptic or Greek, •^p^^-^'^^"- they found some difficulty in regulating their lives with the wished-for exactness ; and the rules of Pachomius, of Theo- dorus, and of Oresiesis, the most celebrated of the founders, were actually sent to Jerom at Eome, to be by liim 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 liolding the key in his hand. They did not alter the rest of the sculpture ; so that Hameses II. is there now seen presenting his offering to the 318 THEODOSIUS 11. A.D. 409—450. CHAP. XIX. Christian saint. (See Fig. 118.) The mixed group gives us proof of the nation's decline in art rather than of its improve- ment in religion. (32) Among the monks of Egypt there were also some men of learning and industry, who in their cells in the desert were working for the benefit of their fellow Christians and posterity. They had made at least three translations of the New Testa- ment into the three dialects of the Coptic language; namely, the Sahidic of Upper Egypt, the Bashmuric of the Bashmour province of the eastern half of the Delta, and the Coptic proper of Memphis and the western half of the Delta. To these were afterwards added the Acts of the council of Nicsea, the lives of the saints and martyrs, the writings of many of the Christian Fathers, the rituals of the Coptic church, and various treatises on religion. Among the more curious of these Coptic writings is the Pistis- Sophia, a volume which contains, but fails to explain, some of the mystic dreamy opinions of the Gnostic Christians. Pistis -Sophia, or Religious Wisdom, is an attribute of the Almighty which becomes one of the angelic beings called iEons, and her teachings are conveyed to mankind by God's Word. Hence the book, which is built V o Y Fig. 118. CHAP. XIX.] COPIES OF THE BIBLE. 319 upon the narrative of the Gospels, contains supposed conver- sations of Jesus with his disciples, in which he relates the hymns and sayings of Pistis- Sophia, and allows his mother, his apostles, and his more intimate friends to explain them to the world. In this way some of the Gnostic Christians introduced a female person into their Trinity, making it more nearly resemble the Pagan trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. 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 almost years, theii* 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 tlu'ee 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. Those of Paris and the Vatican are perhaps the oldest, but the well- known Alexandrian manuscript in the British Museum was most likely written about this time. It was sent to Baber's Charles I, of England by a patriarch of Constantinople, ^^'^^i^go"^- who said that he had it from Egypt, and that there had once been a superscription on it saying that it was written by Thecla, an Egyptian lady of high rank, soon after the council of Nicsea. It is written in capitals, without accents or spaces between the words : it contains, beside the Old and New Testaments, the epistles of Clemens Eomanus, and an epistle of Athanasius about the Psalms, with a list of those which are to be used in prayer for each hour of the day and night, and fourteen hymns, one of which is in praise of Mary, as ' the Mother of God.' These circumstances, together with the style of the hand-writing, seem to fix the date of this valuable manuscript to about this time ; and, on comparing it with the older edition of the New Testament quoted by the Alexandrian fathers, and now shown in the Vatican manuscript, we trace in many readings of the London manuscript the growing dispo- sition of theologians to deny the humanity of Jesus. 320 THEODOSIUS 11. A.D. 409— i50. [chap. XIX. (33) 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 (see Fig. 93) 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 Jerom, 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. (34) 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 Epist! ad this time, in the fifth century, the manufactm'ed Phiiippum. 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 Diversar- was an Egyptian plant ; paper-making was an Egyp- Schedula^"^ tian trade; and Theophilus, a Eoman writer on lib. i. 24. 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 thii'd century, and the strong paper of the eleventh century, CHAP. XIX.] ARMENIAN SCHOLARS. 321 no books remain to us but those written on skins of parchment. (35) At this time Moses of Chorene, who was afterwards the historian of Armenia, came to Alexandria with two ^.^^ or thi'ee other 5^oung Armenians to study the Greek Annen. lib. iii. 61. language and correct the Armenian translation of the Bible. The province of Armenia was now governed by two men who were an honour to their country and their age ; Isaac the patriarch, the successor of the great Nerses, and Mesrobes a learned statesman and scholar. These true patriots wished their nation to use an Armenian alphabet formed on the model of the Greek, but fitted to the sounds in their own language, instead of writing as hitherto sometimes with Persian letters, sometimes with Greek, and sometimes with Syriac. They wished also to have a new Ai'menian Bible made from what they considered the authentic Alexandrian text, in the place of the old version made from the Hebrew or Syriac and written in S3Tiac characters. They accordingly sent Moses and his companions to study in what was then the first school of learning. Though zealous Christians and admirers of Bishop Cyril, yet they were not so bigotted as to wish them to learn Greek from an Egyptian or a monk. The Pagans were the only good teachers of language ; and the young Armenians therefore joined the school of the New Platonists, of which Syrianus was about that time the head. Under such tutorship Moses studied the Greek historians and elegant literature, and his History of Armenia shows that he made good progress. When the scholars • returned home, Ai'menia for a moment became a seat of learning. They had not limited their studies to the Bible. They had translated into Armenian several writers both Christian and Pagan. The Chronicle of Eusebius is best known to us in the Armenian translation ; and Europe is even now receiving from the Armenian monks of St. Lazarus in Y enice some of the learning which Moses and his compani- ons had gained in Alexandria. But some of the Tischendorf, Armenian writings have performed a service and met paiimpa. 322 THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409—450. [chap. XIX. "vvitli a fate that was little to be foreseen. They were often written upon old parchment, and thus they covered up more ancient writings, which were only half defaced. And as we remove the sand of the desert to study the sculptures which have been so long hidden beneath it, so we also clear away the Armenian writing to read upon the twice used parchment portions of the Holy Scriptures in the oldest of our manu- scripts. (36) The Christian writings of this reign are neither many nor valuable. Isodorus of Pelusium has left a large volume of letters, addressed to friends and enemies on theological and religious subjects. But they seem to have been written for publication rather than to be sent to the persons to whom they were addressed. At this time, perhaps, we ought to place Nonnus of the city of Panopohs, the author of a poetical paraphrase of St. John's Gospel, and of the Dionysiaca, a tame and feeble history of the deeds of Bacchus, in heroic verse. Cyril the patriarch of Alexandria has left several writings, but of little worth either for style or argument. They are homilies, commentaries on the Bible, and treatises against Nestorius, against the emperor Julian, and against the anthropomorphite monks. (37) The monks of Mount Sinai suffered much dming these j^.j. reign of weakness from the marauding attacks of the Monach. Arabs. These men had no strong monastery: but Narratio. . ^ *^ himdreds of them lived apart in single cells in the side of the mountains round the valley of Fekan 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 inde- pendent republic, of which the town of Feiran was the capital. The Arabs, from the Jordan to the Bed Sea, made robbery the employment of their lives, and they added much to the voluntary sufferings of the monks. Xilus, 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, CHAP. XIX.] THE WRITTEN VALLEY. 323 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 mui'mui'ing. 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 luriting. Some few of these inscriptions are Greek, and in them the pui-port is that the person named ought to be remembered. But the larger number are in a character which cannot be read, though it bears some resemblance to Hebrew. (See Fig. 119.) Of these VS Fig. 119. several seem to begin with the Hebrew words *In memorj^ of as if they were monumental inscription over the graves. Others begin with the simple word * Name.' (38) The Egyptian physicians had of old always formed a part of the priesthood, and they seem to have done ^^^^^ nearly the same after the spread of Christianity. We find an order of monks named Parabalani, yvho owned the bishop of Alexandria as their head, and who united the offices of physician and nurse in waiting on the sick and djing. 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 Parabalaiii; and their number was limited, first to five hundred, but afterwards, Y 2 THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409 -450. [chap. XIX. Sozomen request of the bishop, to six hundred. A Eccl. Hist, second charitable institution in Alexandria had the lib. viii. care of strangers and the poor, and was also managed by one of the priests. (39) Alexandria was fast sinking in wealth and population, and several new laws were now made to lessen its Codex Theodos, difficulties. One was to add a himdred and ten XIV. 26, 2. i^^^gi^gjg q£ ^Yie daily alimony of the city, the supply on which the riotous citizens were fed in idleness. By xii. 1, 190. a second and a third law the five chief men in the xii. 1, 191. corporation, and every man that had filled a civic office for thii'ty years, were freed from all bodily punishment, J. Maiaia, oiilj to be fined when convicted of a crime, lib. XIV. Theodosius built a large church in Alexandria, which Theodos. "^'^^ called after his name ; and the provincial judges XV. 1, 20. ^QYQ ^qI^ ^ 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. (40) Though the pagan philosophy had been much dis- com-aged at Alexandria by the destruction of the temples and the stop put to the sacrifices, yet the philosophers were still allowed to teach in the schools. S}Tianus w^as at the head of the Platonists, and he wTote largely on the Orphic, P}i;hagorean, and Platonic doctiines ; but so little does the world now value these studies that the works of Syrianus still remain in manuscript, and are therefore unread. "We know him only in a Latin translation of his Commentary on Aristotle's IMetaphysics, in which 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 lamblichus as the true fountains of Platonic wisdom, quite as much as the works of the great philosopher w^ho gave his name to the sect. Syrianus afterwards removed to Athens, to take charge of the Platonic school in that city, and henceforth Athens CHAP. XIX.] PAGAN SCHOLARS. 825 rather than Alexandria became the chief seat of Alexandrian Platonism. (41) Olympiodorus was at the same time undertaking the task of forminsj a Peripatetic school in Alexandria, in ^ ^ ^ . Suidas. opposition to the New Platonism, and he has left Marinus, some of the fruits of his labour in his Commentaries ^ on Aristotle. But the Peripatetic j)hilosophy was no longer attractive to the pagans, though since the fall of the cate- chetical school it had been a good deal followed by the photius, Cln-istians. Olj-mpiodorus also wrote a history, but it was in a stiff inelegant style, and 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 Syene 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 Coptos and Berenice, and which seem to have been the chief object of his journey. His writings on the Sacred Art of Alchemy still remain in manuscript and unprinted in the Library at Paris. (42) Proclus came to Alexandria about the end of this reign, and studied many years under Oljrmpiodorus, but not Marinus to the neglect of the Platonic philosophy, of which he ^^o^^^- 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. He also attended the lectures at the Eoman college and made himself master of the Latin language. But Proclus removed to Athens, where Christianity pressed less severely upon the philosophers than it 326 TEEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409—450. [chap. XIX. did in Alexandria, and where, under Syrianus, the Alexandrian Platonism now flourished more vigorously than in its native city. At Athens he wrote his mathematical and philosophical works, in the latter of which Platonism appears even further removed from the opinions of its great author than it had been in the writings of Plotinus. (43) Beside these great pagan writers, we may mention Damascius, Pampretius the Alexandrian critic, who removed to thiiZ^°' Athens at the same time with Proclus. Orion the Suidas. oTammarian, who had the honour of having Proclus for his pupil, was a native of Thebes, and the author of a small work on etymolog}" which has escaped the accidents of fourteen centuries, when more valuable writings have perished. He afterwards removed to Casarea, where he taught grammar in the schools. Asclepiodotus, who for some time lived at Aphroditopolis, T\Tote on physics, mathematics,, and morals. Thus the pagans still held up theu' heads in the schools. Xor Tlaeophanes, "^^^'G the cercmouies of their religion, though unlawful, ciironogr. ^i;^olly stopped. In the twenty-eighth year of this reign, when the people were assembled in a theatre at Alex- andria to celebrate the midnioht festival of the Nile, Eusebius, . . ° . Vit. Con- a sacrifice which had been forbidden by Constantino and the council of Xicsea, the building fell beneath the weight of the crowd, and upwards of five hundred persons were killed by the fall. (44) Here it will not be uninteresting to review the Notitia macliinery of ofiicers and deputies, civil as well as Dign. Imp. i^^^ilitary, by which Egypt was governed under the successors of Constantine. The whole of the eastern em^^ire was placed under two prefects, the pretorian prefect of the East and the pretorian prefect of Illyricum, who, living at Constan- tinople, 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 latter was no longer under one prefect. There was no consular governor in Egypt between the prefect at CHAP. XIX.] THE GOVERNMENT. 327 Constantinople and the six prefects of the smaller provinces. These provinces were Upper Libya or Cyrene, Lower Libya or the Oasis, the Thebaid, ^gyptiaca or the western part of the Delta, Aiigustanica 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 Princepsy a CorniciLlarms, an Adjutoi^ and others; and was assisted in civil matters by a Commentariensis, a corresponding secretary, a secretary ah 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 w^edges of cavalry, stationed in about fifty cities, which, if they had looked as well in the field as they do upon paper, w^ould have made Theodosius II. as powerful as Augustus. But the number of Greek and Roman troops was smaU. 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 parts of the fifth Macedonian legion, and of Trajan's second legion, w^hich w^ere stationed at Memphis, at Parembole, and at Apollinopolis ; while from the names of the other cohorts we learn that they were Franks, Germans, Portuguese, Quadri, Spaniards, Britons, Moors, Vandals, Gauls, Sarmati, Assyrians, Galatians, Africans, Numidians, and others of less known and more remote places. Egypt itself furnished the Egj^ptian 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's second Felix legion of Thebans, and the Julian Alexandrian legion, stationed in Thrace. Beside these, there were several bodies of native militia, from Abydos, Syene, and other cities, which wTre 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 Egj^ptian troops were chiefly Arab settlers in the Thebaid, for the Copts had long since lost 328 THEODOSIUS II. A.D. 409—450. [chap. XIX. the use of arms. The Copts 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 were 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 corn out of the taxes of Egypt. (45) Soon after this we find the political division of Egypt Hieroclis slightly altered. It is then divided into eight govern- Synecde- ments ; 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 Parsetonium under a general ; Arcadia, or the remainder of the Heptanomis, under a general ; ^^gyptiaca, 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 Eed Sea, under a general. We also meet with several mihtary 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, and which soon gave way to the old names which they were meant to displace. (46) The empire of the East was gradually sinking in power during this long and quiet reign of Theodosius II. ; but the empire of the AVest was being hurried to its fall by the revolt of the barbarians in every one of its wide-spread provinces, in Germany, in Gaul, in Britain, m Spain, and on the coast of CHAP. XIX.] DECAY OF THE EMPIRE. 329 Africa. Two great invasions completed the ruin of Italy. The first was that of the Goths of Dalmatia and Moesia, countries to the south of the Danube, between the Adriatic and Constantinople, who at the beginning of this reign under their king Alaric over -ran Italy and pillaged Eome. The second w^as that of the Huns of Dacia, the country to the north of the Danube, the modern Hungary, who conquered the north of Italy two years after the death of Theodosius. The advance of the Huns upon Rome was first delayed by a ransom, and then stopped by the death of their king Attila. But no such accident could save the Roman empire from decay. Hence- forth in the weakness of the two countries Egypt and Rome are whoUy 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 w^hen Fabius arrived at Alexandria on an embassy from the senate to Ptolemy Philadelphus. Fig. 120. — Gateway at Karnak. CHAPTER XX. THE REIGNS OF MARCIAN, LEO, LEO II., ZENO, BAS1LICX3S, AND ANASTASIUS. A.D. 450 — 518. (1) Theological and political quarrels, under the name of the Homoousian and Arian controversy, had nearl}' separated Egypt from the rest of the empire during the reigns of Constantius and Yalens, 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 the old quarrel again broke out, and though it was under a new name it again took the form of a Theophanes, religious controversy. Cyril the bishop of Alex- Chronogr. andria died in the last reign; and as he had suc- ceeded his uncle, so on his death the bishoprick fell to Dios- corus, 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 Nicephorus, , .iii-i i iii- Ecci. Hist, priest of Constantmople, 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, under- took of his own authority to absolve Eutj^hes from his excom- CHAP. XX.] COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON. 331 munication, and in return to excommunicate the bishop of Constantinople who had condemned him. To settle this quar- rel, 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 bishoprick of Alexandria. (2) In thus condemning the faith of Eutyches, the Greeks were excommunicating the whole of Egypt. The Egyptian belief in the one nature of Christ and the incorruptible nature of his body, which soon afterwards took the name of the Jacobite faith from one of its popular supporters, might per- haps be distinguished by the microscopic eye of the controver- sialist 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 bound- aries 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. (3) Proterius the new bishop entered Alexandria, Nicfipliorus supported by the prefect Florus at the head of the Ecci. Hist/ 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 ; 832 MARCIAN. A.D. 450—457. [OHAP. XX. the mob siUTOimded 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 bishoprick. As a punishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for some time the public games and the allowance of corn to the citi- zens, and only restored them after the return to peace and good order. (4) In the weak state of the empire, the Blemmyes, and Excerpt Nubades, or Nobatse, had latterly been renewing their Legat. inroads upon Upper Eg3T3t ; they had overpowered the Byzant. Romans, as the Greek and barbarian troops of Con- stantinople 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 x^eace. The barbarians proposed, as the terms on their side, to agree never to enter Egypt while Maximinus commanded the troops in the Thebaid ; but the conqueror was not contented with such an unsatisfactory sub- mission, 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 some of their nobles as hostages. On this Maximinus agTeed to a truce for a hundred years. (5) The people whom we now meet with as Nubians, living on both sides of the cataract of Syene, declared themselves of the true Egyptian race by their religion. 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 of returning it to the temple when they had con- sulted it. But as they were now being driven out of the province, they bargained with Maximinus for leave to visit the temple each year without hindrance from the Roman guards ; CHAP. XX.] NUBIAN INROADS. 333 and 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 The- baid, and overran the province as they had done before their defeat. (6) By this success of the Nubians, Christianity was very much driven out of Upper Egypt ; and about seventy years after the law of Theodosius I., 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 m one of the Egyptian temples came at this ap. Boekh. time to the temple of Isis in the island of Philae, and ^^^^* by his votive inscription there declares that he was the son of Pachomius, a prophet, and successor in a right line 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 Thebaid were built dui'ing the hundi-ed and sixty years between the defeat of the Nubians by Diocletian, and their victories i^ the reign of Marcian. (7) The Nubians ^^^re far more civilised than their neigh- bom'S the Blemmyes, whom they were usually able to drive back into their native deserts. We find an inscription Gau,Antiq, in bad Greek, in the gi'eat temple at Talmis, now the ^lelaNubie. village of Kalabshee, which was probably written about this time. An unknown 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; 334 LEO. A.D. 458—473. [chap. XX. 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. (8) On the death of the emperor Marcian, the Alexandrians, Evagrius, taking advantage of the absence of the military prefect nr^ii.^^^*' Dioi^ysius, who was then fighting against the Nubades A.D. 457. in Ui)per Egypt, renewed their attack upon the bishop Proterius, and deposed him fi:om his ofiice. To fill his place they made choice of a monk named Timotheus ^lurus, 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 m 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 Navi- cularii, or contractors for the freight of the Egyptian tribute, were all opposed to the emperor's claim to appomt 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 diffi- cnAP. XX.] RELIGIOUS QUARRELS. 335 culty. These theologians were too busily engaged in their religious controversies to take any notice of the clanger 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. The new bishop was named Timotheus Salophaciolus, but was sometimes called Timotheus Basilicus, or the emperor's Timotheus, to distinguish him from the former, who was the Timotheus of the Egyptians. (9) Even the small province of Libya, which was Kttle more than Parsetonium and the surrounding desert, had Theophanes, ventured during these troubles to rebel against the ^^^onogr. empire ; but it was reduced to obedience by an army under the command of the prefect Heraclius. (10) On the death of Leo, he was succeeded by his Evagrius, grandson, Leo the younger, who died after a reign of ^^^11?^^** one year, and w^as succeeded by his father Zeno, the a.d. 473. son-in-law of the elder Leo. Zeno gave himself up a.d. 474. at once to debauchery and vice, while the empire was harassed on all sides by the barbarians, and the provinces were raised 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. (11) The first step of Basilicus was to recall from A.D, 477* banishment Timotheus ^lurus, the late bishop of ' Alexandria, and to restore him to the bishoprick. He then addressed to him and the other recalled bishops a circular 336 ZENO. A.D. 474-491. [chap. XX. letter, in which he repeals the decrees of the council of Chalce- don, 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. (12) Unfortunately for the Egyptians, Basilicus, who held their opinions in religion, only reigned for about two years, when he was defeated and put to death by Zeno, who regained the throne. (13) As soon as Zeno was again master of the empii-e, he re-established the creed of the council of Chalcedon, and drove away the Jacobite bishops from their bishopricks. Death, however, removed Timotheus iElurus before the emperor's orders were put in force in Alexandria, and the Egj^ptians 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 bishoprick of x\lexandria was so much a civil ofdce 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 Salopliaciolus, who had been living at Canopus ever since he before lost the bishoprick. (14) But, as the patriarch of Alexandria enjoyed the ecclesi- „ astical revenues, and was still in appearance a teacher Evagrius, Eccl. Hist, of religion, the Alexandrians, in recollection of the lib. HI. former rights of the church, still claimed the appoint- ment. They sent John, a priest of their own faith and dean of the church of John the Baptist, as their ambassador to Con- stantinople, not to remonstrate against the late acts of the emperor, but to beg that on future occasions the Alexandrians cnA?. XX.] THE IIENOTICOxNT. 337 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 bomid liim by an oath not to accept the bishoprick if he should ever 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 cliief 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 Egj^^tians. 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 Alex- andria, 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. But in all other points the Henoticon is little short of a smTender 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 Nicsea 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 Eome for comfort and for help. There he met with the usual support ; and Felix, bishop of Rome, wrote to Constantinople, remonstrating with Zeno for dismiss- ing the patriarch. But this was only a small part of the emperor's want of success in his attempt at peace-making ; VOL. II. Z 333 ZENO. A.D. 474—491. [chap. XX. for the crafty Peter, ^vlio had gained the bishoprick by his subscribing to tlie 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 Con- stantinople 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 Alex- andrians as prisoners to Constantinople. (16) Soon after this dispute Peter Mongus died, and for- tunately he was succeeded in the bishoprick 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. (1^) Hierocles, the Alexandrian, was at this time Photmm. 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, Odyss. lib. ' Cyclops, siiice human flesh has been thy food, now IX. 347. < 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 CHAP. XX.] THE WRITERS. 339 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 Aris- totle, and quotes the opinions of his great master, the heaven- taught Ammonius, as of httle less or perhaps of not less weight than those of Plato himself. In the Facetiae 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 leai'ning ; 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. (18) At what time Tr^^hiodorus the Alexandrian gram- marian lived is not certainly known, but most likely . Suidas. about this reign. He has left a short heroic poem, the Taking of Troy, in continuation of the Iliad ; but it is a poor work, of little note. Tr^T^hiodorus however is better > , . . p , . Eustatluus, knov/n for his foolish attempt to rewrite the Odyssey Proem. without once using the letter S. Delightful employ- ment 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 „ . Suidas. of the contents of the. poem. Nor was Tryphiodorus original in his task ; for Nestor a former grammarian, was sa d 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. (10) Coluthus of Lycopolis in the Thebaid was then writing his heroic poem named the Eape of Helen. It is a short, simple, but tame account of the three goddesses quarrelling about their beauty ; of the judgement of Paris, and of Helen's z 2 340 ZENO. A.D. 474—491. [chap. XX. leaving lier 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 Eutlialius, 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 teUs us, to write straight and form his letters neatly, Hesychius has left us a general lexicon of the less common w^ords 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 wdiat 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 then' remedies, quoting the recipes of numerous authors, from the king Nechepsus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Discorides, down to CHAP, XX.] THE WRITERS. 341 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. (23) Anastasius, the next emperor, followed the wise policy which Zeno had entered upon in the latter years of 491, his reign, and he strictly adhered to the terms of the Eutychii peace -making edict. The fom' patriarchs of Alex- -^^^^^es. andria who were chosen during this reign, John, a second John, Dioscorus, and Timotheus, were all of the Jacobite „ ' ' Evagrius, faith ; and the Egj^ptians readily believed that the j^^ci. Hist, emperor was of the same opinion. When called upon by the quarrelling theologians, he w-ould 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. The orthodox bishop of Tunis adds victor, ap. that an unclean spirit seized everybody in Egypt ; ^^^^^s^r. men, children, slaves, monks, and clergymen lost the use of speech and ran about barking like dogs, while strangers w^ere 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 patriarch of this reign, did not go off altogether quietly. He Theopbanes was the cousin of a former patriarch, Timotheus ^^^'onogr. -^lurus, which, if we view the bishoprick as a civil office, might be a reason for the emperor's wishing him to have the 342 ANASTASIUS. A.D. 492—515. [cH\r. XX. appointment. But it was no good reason with the Alex- andrians, who declared that he had not heen chosen according to tlie 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 fii'st ceremony, he went, as was usual at an installation, to St. Mark's church, and there the clergy robed him m 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 AugustaUan rank, was killed by the mob. The Alexandrians treated the affair as mm'der, 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 Constan- tinople to appease his just anger. (25) Anastasius, who had deserved the obedience of the Chronicon Egyptians by his moderation, pardoned their ingTati- Orientale. ^^^q when they offended ; but he was the last Byzan- tine 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. (26) By the tenth year of the reign of Anastasius, the Eutychii Persians, after oveiTunning a large part of Spia and Annales. clefeating the Roman generals, passed Pelusium and A.D. 501. entered Eg}^t. The army of Kobades laid waste the vrhole 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 re the leaving the people ruined as much by the loss of a harvest as by the sword. Alexandria suffered severely from CHAP. XX.] PERSIAN INVASION. S43 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 ^ooor 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. (27) In the early part of this history we have seen ambitious bishops sent out of the way by a banishment to the great Oasis ; and again as the country became more desolate, crimi- nals 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 Eg}^pt was now ruined; and Anastasius Tbeophanes, began his reign by banishing, to the fallen Alex- Chronogr. andria, Longinus, the brother of the late king, and he had him ordained a presbyter, to mark him as unfit for the throne. (28) 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 Antho- logy 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-races in that city and on the statues which stood around the public gymnasium. 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 corn to market ; and one writer in the Anthology to describe the Li^^ 22. country life in Egypt, has the story of a sailor, who 344 ANx\STASIUS. A.D, 492—515. [chap. XX. to avoid the dangers of the ocean turned husbandman, and was then shipwrecked in his own meadows. (20) The book-writers at this time sometimes illuminated Agincourt ^^^^i^' more valuable parchments with gold and silver vol. iii. letters and sometimes employed painters to ornament them with small paintings. The beautiful copy of the work of Dioscorides on Plants in the librar}^ at Vienna was made Fig. 121. m this reign for the princess Juliana of Constantinople. A.D. 507. ^ . . , ^ „ . . 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. (See Fig. 121). 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 w^ell told, though the drawing and perspective are bad and the figures crow^ded. But CHAP. XX.] THE LIGHTHOUSE REPAIRED. 345 these Alexandrian paintings are better than those made in Kome or Constantinople at this time. (30) By the spread of Christianity theatrical representations had been gradually going out of use. The Greek tragedies, as we see in the works of jEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, those models of pure taste in poetry, are founded on the pagan mythology ; and in many of them the gods are brought to walk and talk upon the stage. Hence they of necessity fell under the ban of the clergy. As the Christians became more power- ful 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. (31) The tower or lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the work of days more prosperous than these, had latterly Procopius, been sadly neglected with the other buildings of the "^^oi^l country. For more than seven hundred years, the P- pilot on approaching this flat shore after dark had pointed out to his shipmate what seemed a star in the horizon, and com- forted 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 monu- ment of wisdom and science, which deserved to last for ever, was for a short time longer saved from ruin. An ^j^^ 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. CHAPTER XXI. THE REIGNS OF JUSTIN I., JUSTINIAN, JUSTIN II., TIBERIUS, MAURICIUS, PHOCAS, AND HERACLIUS. A.D. 518 — 640. (1) Justin I. succeeded Anastasius on the throne of A.D. 518. . Constantmople, 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 divi- sion 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 super- Chronicon stitious crecd of Egypt. Severus bishop of Antioch Orientale. ^y^g successful in persuading a large party in the Syrian church to deny the humanity of the Saviour, 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 CHAP. XXI.] SYRIAN MONKS. S47 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, SjTiac 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 Nitria were found to be half Arabic and half Syriac. (2) Justin, the new emperor again lighted up in Alexandria the flames of discord which had been Eccit^mst. 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 3^ear of his reign, on the death of Timotheus, the two Theopbanes, parties again found themselves nearly equal in EStycM * strength ; and Alexandria was for several years kept -A^nnales. 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 Manichsean; 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. (3) Those Persian forces which in the last reign overran the Delta were chiefly Arabs from the opposite coast of the Eed Sea. To call them off from these attacks, and to engage their 348 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—560. [chap. XXI. attention in another quarter, was a natural wish of the states- men of Constantinople : and for this purpose Ana- N onnosus, ' apud Pho- stasius liacl sent an embassy to the Homeritse on the southern coast of Arabia, to persuade them to attack their northern neighbours. The Homeritse 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, wdio had little in common with the Arabs of Yemen, but had frequent intercourse with Abyssinia and the merchants of the Ked Sea. Part of the trade of Solomon and the Tyrians was Theophanes, probably to their coast. To this distant and little Chronogr. iY[\)Q the emperor of Constantinople now sent a second pressing embassy. Julianus the ambassador went up the Nile from Alexandria, and then crossed the Eed Sea, or Indian Sea as it was also called, to Arabia. He was favour- ably received by the Homeritse. Arethas the king gave liim an audience in gTand barbaric state. He was standing in a chariot drawn by four elephants ; he w^ore 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. (4) Justinian, the successor of Justin, settled the quarrel , between the two Alexandrian bishops by summoning Theophanes, . Chronogr. 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 CHAP. XXI.] RIVAL BISHOPS. 349 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 bishoprick, and required the Egyptians to receive the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. (5) 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 main- Eutycliii tained his dangerous post for about six years, when -^i^^ales. the Alexandrians rose in open rebellion, overpowered the troops, and drove him to seek his safety in flight ; and the Jacobite party then turned out all the bishops who held the Greek faith. (6) When Justinian heard that the Jacobites w^ere masters of Egypt he appointed ApoUinarius to the joint oflice of prefect and patriarch of Alexandria, and sent him with a large force to take possession o:'^ his bishoprick. ApoUinarius marched into Alexandria in full military dress at the head of his troops ; but w^hen 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 Avithdraw 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. On the Sunday moriiing the whole city flocked to hear and to disobey Justinian's orders. ApoUinarius 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 shovrer 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 350 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—566. [chap. XXI. within and without the church were put to rout by the sword, the sohliers 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. (7) Henceforth the Melchite or royalist patriarchs, who were Chronicon appointed by the emperor and had the authority of Onentale. ^j^^jj prefects, and were supported by the power of the mihtary prefect, are scarcely mentioned by the historian of the Coptic church. They were too much engaged in civil affairs Leontius ^^^^^ ministers of religion. They collected ActaSanct. their reveuues very much in corn, and carried on a Jan. xxiii. . , . large export trade, transportmg their stores to those parts of Europe where they would fetch 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 corn, being overtaken by a storm on the coast of Italy. The i)i'incely 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 eighty thousand pounds sterling. But while these Melchite or royalist bishops w^ere 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 Renaudot '^^^ts of his flock. The Jacobite bishop was always a Liturgite mouk. At his ordination he was de«lared to be Orientales. . elected by the popular voice, by the bishops, priests, deacons, monks, and all the people of Lower Egypt ; and prayers w^ere 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 chm-ch continued to use the old liturgy, which, as it had been read in xllexandria for time out of mind vras called the liturgy of CHAP. XXI.] THE COPTIC CHURCH. 351 St. Mark, altered however to declare that the son was of the same substance with the Father. But the Coptic church made use of the newer liturgies h}^ their own champions, bishop Cyril, Basil of Cassarea, and Gregory Nazianzen. These three liturgies were all in the Coptic language, and more clearly denied the two natures of Christ. Of the two churches the Coptic had less learning, more bigotry, and opinions more removed from the simple truths of the New Testament > but then the Coptic 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 Coptic 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. (8) The Christianity of the Egyptians was a superstition of the lowest and grossest Idnd ; 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 not a little brought about 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 Antoninus, "after visiting the remarkable ^g^^ Sanc- places in the Holy Land, came to Egypt to search torum,Maii for the chariots of the Eg3Tptiaus who pursued Moses, petrified into rocks at the bottom of the Bed 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 Pthah, 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 352 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—506. [CHAr, XXI. before, and mortal strength had never since been able to open it. (9) The records of the empire declared that the first Caesars had kept six Imndred and forty-five thousand men Agathias. mider 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 Evagrius, J- o Eccl. Hist, the latter half of his vei^n the eastern frontier of this lib. iv. . . ° 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 Abul- ^^^^ Jacobite opinions, and even went so far in one Pharag. of his decrees as to call the body of Jesus incor- Hist. Dyn, . *^ ruptible, as he thought that these were the only means of keeping the allegiance of his subjects or the friend- ship 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. (10) 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 Nabattea, that curious rocky fastness that well deserved the name of Petra, and which had been garrisoned by Komans 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 Eutyciiii g^'^^f- Justinian then built the fortified monastery Annaies. ^-^^^^ 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 CHAP. XXI, J MONASTERY OF MOUNT SINAI. 353 remedied the fault, as far as it could be done, by a small fortress on the higher ground. (See Fig. 122.) This monastery was held by the Egyptians, and maintained out of the Egyptian taxes. In history we are so often misled by names, and facts are so often hid behind words, that it is sometimes useful to recall the attention to what is passing. 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 Fig. 122. the temples were their only fortresses. 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 tlirough means of the Christian priesthood ; and when he is forced to get the Egyptians to defend their own frontier, he builds a monastery and" garrisons it with monks. (11) Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through the islands of Taprobana or Ceylon, and Cog^as Dioscorides or Socotara; but it was chiefly in the Indico- pleustes. 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 fi'om China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans 354 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—566. [onAP. XXI, had formerly thouglit 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 Koman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so many centuries carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was lately turned more Theophanes, strongly into this channel because a war had sprung Chronogr. j^etwecu the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumit£e of Abyssinia on the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritse who dwelt in Arabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. The Homeritse 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 Hexumitse. On this the Hexumitse 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 Homerit£e, and made a new treaty with the emperor of Constantino2)le. The Hexumitse promised to become Christians. They sent to Alexandria to beg for a priest to baptize 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 ambas- sadors and became bishop of the Hexumitse. (13) It was possibly this conquest of the Homeritae by Hadad king of the Hexumitse which was recorded on the ^ monument of Adule, at the foot of the inscription set Indicopl. 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 Sabseans 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 CHAP, XXI. J SOUTH ARABIA AND ABYSSINIA. 855 to the snowy mountains in which that branch of the Nile rises, and conquered the tribes between that stream and the Astapus. This vakiable inscription, which tells us of snowy mountains within the tropics, was copied by Cosmas, a mer- chant of Alexandria, who passed through Adule in his way to India. (13) Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies to these nations at the southern end j^Qj^^Qg^g of the Eed Sea ; to the Homeritse, to persuade them apud Pho- tium. to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to the Hexumitse, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent an embassy to the Homeritse under Abram ; and, as he was successful in his object, he entrusted a second to Abram's son Nonnosus. 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 Meroe. On his way to Auxum, he saw flocks 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 Eed Sea to Caisus, king of the Homeritse, 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. (14) The advantage gained to the Hexumitge by their inva- sion of the Homeritge was soon lost, probably as soon q^^^^^ as their forces were withdrawn. The trade through ludicopl. the country of the Homeritse was agam 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. Elesbaas therefore undertook to repeat the punish- ment 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 A A 2 356 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—566. [chap. XXI. 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 prede- cessor over the enemies he was himself preparing to attack. (15) The invasion by Elesbaas, or Elesthseus as he is also Procopius, named, was immediatelj^ successful. The Homeritse Persic.1.20. ^^qj^q conquered, their ruler was overthrown ; and, to secure their future obedience, the conqueror set over these Jewish Arabs an Abyssinian Christian for their king. Esima- phseus 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 Gregentii make the conquered bear the badge of the conqueror. Disputatio. this purpose he engaged the assistance of Gregen- tius, 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. On a sudden the whole of 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 baptized on the spot. The king stood god-father to Herban, and rewarded him with a high office under his government. (16) Esimaphseus did not long remain king of the Homeritse. Procopius, A rebellion soon broke out against him, and he was hb. 1. 20. deposed. Elesbaas king of Auxum again sent an army to recall the Homeritse to their obedience, but this time CHAP. XXI.] SOUTH ARABIA AND ABYSSINIA. the army joined in the revolt; and Elesbaas 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 Valencia's Greek inscription on a monument at Auxum we learn ^^'^^^^s. the name of Aeizanas, 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 Boug8et8s, a people who dwelt to the north of his country, between Auxum and Egypt, and he stjies himself the invincible Mars, king of kings, king of the Hexumitse, of the Ethiopians, of the Sabeans, and of the Homeritse. (17) These kings of the Hexumitae ornamented the city of Auxum with several beautiful and lofty obelisks, each made of a single block of granite like those in Egypt. We must suppose that they were cut and set its importance from being quoted by the apostle Jude. This is a spurious book, written much later than it pretends to be, and, like parts of the Sibylline verses and the Testaments of the Patriarchs, in which latter it is so often quoted, it changes the facts of past history into the form of dark liints and unfulfilled prophecy. We do not know in what century the Ethiopic translation was made ; but the book itself, which is in part copied from the Old Testament, was written only a few years before the Christian era. It betrays its date by its prophecies. The writer's pre- up by Egyptian workmen, who may have found employment in Abyssinia, when Eg}^pt no longer valued their skill and labour. One obelisk only now stands upright. It is about sixty feet high. It has no hieroglyphics, but is not without sculpture on the sides. The top is not pointed but rounded, and so far its style reminds us of Roman taste in architecture. (See Fig, 123.) To the Jewish Ethiopians of Abyssinia we are indebted for our knowledge of that curious Hebrew work the Book of Enoch, which gains 358 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—566. [chap. XXI. tended knowledge of the future is limited to his real knowledge of the past. (18) Egypt in its mismanaged state seemed to be of little value to the empire but as the means of enriching the prefect Justinian, tax-gatherers ; it yielded very little tribute to Edict, xui. Constantinople beyond the supply of grain, and that by no means regularl}^ 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 Mareotes, 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 w^as at Parse- tonium, 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 w^hich the two Koman legions had gradually dwindled, w^ere 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 already 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 Augustalian cohort was to collect the supply of corn for Constantinople and to see it put on board the ships ; and as for the supply which w^as promised to the Alexandrians, the magistrates were to collect it at their own risk, and by means of their owai cohort. The corn 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 answer- able for the full collection, and wiiatever was Wanting of that quantity w^as to be levied on his property and his heirs, at the rate of one solidus for three artabce of corn, or about fifteen CHAP. XXI. j THE NEW EDICT. 359 shillings for fifteen bushels ; while in order to help the col- lection, the export of corn from Egypt was forbidden from every port but Alexandria, except in small quantities. The corn required for Alexandria and Constantinople, to be dis- tributed as a free gift among the idle citizens, was eight hundred thousand artabcdy or four millions of bushels, and the cost of collecting it was fixed at eighty thousand solidi, or about sixty thousand pounds. 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 bishoprick ; 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. (19) Such was the new law which Justinian, the great Roman law-giver, proposed for the future government of Egypt. The welfare of the Egyptians was wholly forgotten. They were to be treated as slaves, whose only duty was to raise corn 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 were 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 husbandman ; and the Greek Ian- Cosmas guage, which had hitherto followed and marked the ^^^q^^II^ route of commerce from Alexandria to Syene, and to l^^- ii^- the island of Dioscorides in the Indian Ocean, was now but 360 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528— 5G6. [chap. XXI. Procopius, little heard in Upper Egj^pt. The Alexandrians were Arcana, 26. gorely harassed by Haephgestus, 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 wealth 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 corn 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. Leontius ^^^^ '^^^^ ^^^'^ merchants was shipped from ActaSanct. Alexandria to the chief ports of Europe, between Jan. xxiii. 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 corn 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 ten pence, 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. Knowledge and science, with their accompanying arts, had not yet settled in our island ; and the Britons had not then learned that the same wind which safely carried back the Alexandrian ships on their homeward voyage could carry British ships to Alex- andria. (21) The suffering and riotous citizens made Alexandria a CHAP. XXI,] TRADE IN CORN. 361 Ml li ui.'£.'if± p very unpleasant place of abode for the prefect and pj.ocopiug^ magistrates. They therefore built palaces and baths peaedificiis, o ^ ^ Jib. VI. 1. 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. (See Fig. 124.) At the same time it became necessary to fortify the public granaries against the rebellious mob. The corn was brought from the Nile by barges on a canal to the village of Chaereum, and thence to a part of Alexandria named Phial£e, 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 corn that was on its way to Constanti- nople. But Justinian surrounded them Fig, 124. 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. (22) 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 forbad Constitut. all Egj^ptian appeals for sums less than ten pounds weight of gold, or about five hundred pounds sterling; for smaller sums the judgment of the prefect was to be final, lest the expense should swallow up the amount in dispute. (23) In this reign the Alexandrians, for the first Agathias. 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 cause 362 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528—566. [chap. XXI. of earthquakes not being known in Lower Egj^^t, and believed that it would alwaj^s save them from a misfortune which often overthrew^ cities in other countries. Pliny thought that Egypt had been always free from earthquakes. But this Lib. ii. 82. ^ . . AT- shock was felt by everybody in the city; and Agathias, the Byzantine historian, who, after reading law in the univer- sity of Beiroot, 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. (24) 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. Though Constantine the first Christian emperor had discouraged it, though Theodosius had closed the temples, and forbidden the public worship of the Greek and Egjqotian gods, nevertheless the teachers of philosophy and science still clung to the old religion as to one branch of their learning, and many of them openly taught its doctrines. Justinian either made a new law, or enforced an old one, against all such teaching, and threatened the disobedient with severe punish- ment ; and many of the learned men of Alexandria then fled into Syria, to claim protection of the Persians, and to avoid the persecution without wounding their consciences. The philo- sophical school, through the works of Plotinus and Porphyry and their successors, had altered the face of paganism, and, through the writings of Clemens, Origen, and other Alex- andrian fathers, had worked no little change on the opinions of the Christian world ; but it had been closed when Suidas. IP 111^ Sopater the professor was put to death by Constantme. Since that time the laws against the philosophers had been less strictly enforced ; but under Justinian the pagan schools were again and for ever brought to a close. Isidorus the Platonist and Salustius the Cynic were among the learned men of greatest note wdio then withdi^ew 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 ; CHAP. XXT.j PAGAN SCHOOLS CLOSED. 363 but he had left the Athenian school to Zenodotus, a pnpil of Proclus, and had removed to Alexandria. Salustiiis D^mascius the Cj'nic was a Syrian, who had removed with Isi- apud Pho- 1 • XX • tium. doriis 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 when they soon after- wards made a treaty of peace with Justinian, generously bar- gained that these men, the last teachers of paganism, should be allowed to return home, and pass the rest of their days in quiet. (25) On the flight of the pagan philosophers, very little learning was left in Alexandria. Themistius, a deacon, n 1 P K I PhotiuS. was at the head of the sect of Agnoet£e, who were so called because they taught that Jesus was not infinite in wisdom, and might possibly have been ignorant of some tilings. Theodorus, a monk, took the other side in this controversy, but was nevertheless thought equally heretical with Themistius, as he equally denied the two natures of Christ, and said that divinity itself had suffered on the cross. 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 quitted 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 364 JUSTINIAN. A.D. 528-566. [chap. XXI. 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 Topo- graphy, and he is himself usually called Cosmas Indicopleustes, from the country which he visited. (26) The arguments employed by Cosmas were unfortunately but too often used by the Christian world in general, who were even willing to see learning itself fall with the overthrow of paganism. The great poets were forbidden because they had written about their gods. Statues were no longer admired because they had been made to be worshipped. Among the Eg3^ptians in particular, mathematics, astronomy, history, and indeed all learning had been in the hands of the priests ; so when knowledge was divided into sacred and profane, w^hatever was not drawn from the Scriptures was slighted and neglected ; and this perhaps was one of the chief causes of the darkness which overspread the world during the middle ages. But we must confine ourselves to what took place in Egypt. When Christianity was first preached in Alexandria, the converts saw no opposition between religion on the one hand and philosophy and science on the other, while many thought that the spread of the gospel truths might be aided by learning. Hence they founded the catechetical school, which, though micountenanced and unendowed by emperors, brought forth Christian scholars, who at the time threw the well-paid jDagan professors of the Alexandrian Museum into the shade. The troubled and rebel- lious state of Egypt during the fifty years which began with the persecution of Decius and ended with that of Diocletian, mark an important break and change in the history of Christianity. Before that time the Christian may trace with unmixed pleasure the silent struggle between Christianity and paganism, and, watching the action and reaction of these systems on one another, may note with pride, as far as the scanty annals allow, the influence of Christianity on manners, philosoph}^, and pagan literature. But no sooner were the Christians numerous enough to be divided into sects, and enough at ease to quarrel CHAP. XXI.] FALL OF LEARNING. 365 about their opinions, than we find, unfortunately, ignorance and the more popular opinions ranged on one side, against learning with the less popular opinions on the other. We then find creeds and fetters placed on the mind ; the catechetical school is closed under the persecution of the Homoousian party, and the opinions of the unlettered monks are quoted as of greater weight than those of Clemens and Origen. Soon afterwards the pagan philosophers are forbidden to teach ; and lastl}^ even the more certain truths of mathematics and astro- nomy are disbelieved, because they are not found in the Bible. Such were the steps by which learning fell in Alexandria, hastened by the fall of the Greek power, and by the Eg3^ptians gaining strength in their own country, and no doubt by many other causes too deep for our search. (27) During the latter j^ears of the government of Apolli- narius, such was his unpopularity as a spiritual Theophanes, bishop, that both the rival parties, the Gaianites and Chronogr. 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 Eg}^t to put down this rebellion, and heal the quarrel in the church. Apolli- narius 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 Mani- chsean ; 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 Coptic 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 died in the same year with the emperor. 3G6 MAUEICIUS. A.D. 682—602. [chap. XXI. Do Saulcy, (^^) Under Justinian we again find some small Monet.Byz. -t^r^^j^g national coinage in Egypt. Ever since tlie 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 IB for 12, showing that they were on a different system of weights from those of Constanti- nople. On these the head of the emperor is in profile. (See Fig. 125.) But later in his reign the style was changed, the Fig. 125. Fig. 126. coins were made larger, and the head of the emperor had a front face. On these larger coins the numeral letters are Ar 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. (See Fig. 126.) Chronicon (29) Justin 11. reigned twelve years, Tiberius reigned Aiexandr. years, and Mauricius his son-in-law twenty : and A.D. 566. *^ ^ A.D. 578. under these sovereigns the empire gained a little rest A.D. 582. from its enemies by a rebellion among the Persians, which at last overthrew their kinsf Chosroes. He fled to CHAP. XXI.] THE WRITERS. 3G7 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. (30) Eulodus, the author of some homilies still Nicephorus, ^ ^ ^ . ' • . . Eccl. Hist. extant, was bishop of Alexandria ; and an epigram iib.xviiL26. upon the hospital which he founded to give a home to poor travellers, whether they came by land or by ch. xii. 1. water, has recorded his piety. He was succeeded by Peter before the end of the reign. To these writers we may add Anastasius, a monk of the monastery of Mount Sinai, who has left a few theological works ; as also John Climacus, who lived in the valley of Thola on the side of the same mountain, and who has left a work in praise of the monastic life, under the name of the Ladder to Paradise, which has thirty steps, because Jesus was thirty years old when he began his ministry. (31) But the most remarkable man of Alexandria was John the grammarian, who from his love of laborious learning took the name of Philoponus. In religion he was a tritheist, which was a common opinion among the Egj^ptians, and he lost his rank in the church for denjdng the unity of the Godhead in the Trinity. He has left a treatise written against the opinions of Proclus on the eternity of the world, and also some volu- minous commentaries on Aristotle's philosophy, which was rising upon the fall of Platonism and of learning. But while the writings of the great Platonic Christians, Justin, Athen- agoras, Origen, and Clemens, are still valued most highl}^, nobody removes the • dust off the Aristotelian writings of Olympiodorus and John Philoponus. (33) Theophylactus Simocatta was also a native of photius Egypt, but he removed to Constantinople. There he wrote the life of Mauricius, giving an account of his wars against the Persians, both before and after he was made emperor. But we learn nothing from Theophylactus about his own unfortunate country, except that superstition, taking advantage of the cloud of ignorance that overspread the land, had advanced from the cells in the desert into the capital. He 3C8 HERACLIUS. A.D. 611—640. [chip. XXI. mentions Egypt only to say that a half-human monster rose out of the Nile to frighten the archbishop Peter, and to foretell the death of the emperor ; and that on the night that Mauricius died at Constantinople the statues came down from their pedestals in Alexandria. It was in this reign, let us remark, while such was the state of Egypt, that the Roman monk Augustin landed in Kent to preach Christianity to the Saxons. As darkness was closing over one quarter of the world, light was dawning in another. Eutychii ^'^'^^ '^^^^ cmperor Mauricius was murdered by Phocas, Annales. -^ho then succeeded him on the throne of Constantinople. A.D. 602. . . . 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 Chronicon Phocas alike prepared his subjects for a revolt. In the Alexandr. ggyenth year Alexandria rebelled in favour of the young Heraclius, son of the late prefect of Cyrene ; and the Eutychii patriarch of Egypt was slain in the struggle. Soon Annales. afterwards Heraclius entered the port of Constantinople with his fleet, and Phocas was put to death after an A.D. 610. . . . unfortunate reign of eight years, in which he had lost every province of the empire. (84) During the first three years of the reign of Heraclius, Theodorus was bishop of Alexandria; but upon his Leontius, apud Ba- death the wishes of the Alexandrians so strongly ronium. p^^j-^^g^j John, the son of the prefect of Cyprus, that the emperor, yielding to their request, appointed him to the bishoprick. 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 CHAP. XXL] JOHN THE ALMSGIVER. 369 free supply of corn. 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 yeai*s 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, and particularly in opposing Peter Gnapheus, who had ventured to say that the Son of God was crucified for us ; and the patriarch succeeded in convincing him that Christ had not died, and was unsufi'ering. If man were a creature only of understanding, without habits, without feelings of love and hatjred, the sciences of morals, politics, and religion, might be studied, like problems in pure mathematics, without uncertainty and without quarrels. But experience has amply proved that, with the close union between our wishes and our belief, between our feelings and our judgment, no logical arguments are so convincing as an act of kindness; and the only conversions among the Christians that are to be found in this history are those brought about by John the Almsgiver. (35) The first years of the reign of HeracHus are ^^^j chiefly marked by the successes of the Persians. While ?^arag. Chosroes their king was himself attackmg Constan- tinople, one general was besieging Jerusalem and a second overrunning Lower Egj^pt. Crowds fled before the Lgojj|.-^g invading army to Alexandria as a place of safety, and Vit. Johan- 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 370 THE PERSIANS. A.D. 618—627. [chap. XXI. seasons seemed to assist the enemy in tlie destruction of Egypt. Tlie patriarch John, who had been sending money, corn, and Egyptian workmen to assist in the pious work of rebuilding the church of Jerusalem which the Persians had destro3^ed, immediately found all his means needed, and far from enough, for the poor of Alexandria. On his appointment to the bishop- rick 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 eight hundred thousand pounds sterling had all been spent in deeds of gene- rosity or charity, and the bishop had no resource but borrow- ing, to relieve the misery with w^hich he was surrounded. In the fifth year the unbelievers were masters of Jerusalem, and A.D. 618. in the eighth they entered Alexandria, and soon held Chronicon ^11 the Delta ; and in that year the corn which had Alexandr. j^i^i^gj^^o 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 stopt. (36) When the Persians entered Egypt, the patrjcian Nicetas, Eutychii having no forces with which he could withstand their Annaies. advance, and knowing that no succour was to be looked for from Constantmople, and finding that the Alexandrians were unwilling to support him, fled with the patriarch John the Almsgiver to Cj^prus, 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 unhke those of the Egyptians ; but as he was appointed to the bishoprick by Chronicon the emperor, though at the request of the people, he is Onentale. j^^^ counted among the patriarchs of the Coptic 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. (37) The troops with which Chosroes conquered and held Egypt were no doubt in part Syrians and Arabs, people with CHAP. XXI.] SYRIAN SCHOLARS. 371 whom tlie 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 Eoman forces were defeated. But hence also arose the w^eakness 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. (38) At this time Thomas a Syrian bishop came to ^gggj^ani Alexandria to correct the Syriac version of the New Bib. Orient. 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 ^Yiukeiman Syriac manuscript of the New Testament written by Hist.deFArt. Alexandrian penmen in the sixth year of Heraclius, is now to be seen in the library of the Augustan friars in Eome. At the same time another S3Tian scholar, Eichborn, Paul of Tela, in Mesopotamia, w^as busy in the Alex- ^iu^f °" andrian monastery of St. Zacchseus 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 pre- ferred it both to the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and to the earlier manuscripts of the New. Another ^^^^ work of this time wxre the medical writings of Aaron Pi^arag. . . . . . Dyu. viii. the physician of Alexandria, which wxre written m Syriac, and afterwards much valued by the Arabs. The Syrian monks very much settled in the monastery of Mount Nitria ; and in that out of the way spot there remained a colony of them for several centuries, kept up by the occasional arrival of new comers from the churches on the eastern side of the Euphrates. B h '2l 372 HERACLIUS. A.D. 611—640. [chap. XXI. (39) For ten jea,YS the Egyptians were governed by the Persians, and had a patriarch of their own religion and of their own choice ; and the buikling of the Persian palace in Alex- andria proves how quietly the}^ lived under their new masters. But Heraclius was not idle under his misfortunes. The Eutychii Persians had been weakened by the great revolt of Anuales. 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 Per- sians; and Heraclius appointed George to the bishoprick, which was declared to have been empty since John the Alms- giver fled to Cyprus. (40) The revolt of the Arabs, which overthrew the power of the Persians in their w^estern 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 Mahomet, from which the Arabic historians count their lunar years, took place in 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 Chronicon Persians whom they had overthrown; and, after a Orientaie. gj^ort struggle of Only two years, Heraclius was forced to pay a tribute to the Moslems for their forbearance in not conquering Eg}^t. For eight years he was willing to pmxhase 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 Mahomedan reHgion ; and they then began on their western frontier that rapid career of conquests which they had already begun against their late masters the Persians on the east. CHAP. XXI.] THE ARABS. 373 (41) The Arabs were a hardy race, among whom every man was a soldier, equally brave and regardless of discipline, and too jealous of his personal liberty to give up a tittle of it but when led by the hope of plunder or religious zeal. They were grave in their deportment though of lively imagination and full of poetic fire; jealous, hasty, revengeful, just in their dealings though robbers by profession. Hospitality was their highest virtue, as became the natives of the desert ; and the first few strokes of the Arab's pump sometimes filled the basin piously placed in front of his cottage to quench the thirst of the traveller ; the cistern within, for his own use, was only fiUed by the overflow from the stranger's basin. Their spears, swords, shields, and miUtary science were far inferior to those of the Greeks, perhaps not better than those of the Egyptians ; but then they were urged forward with religious enthusiasm, heroic courage, and a national zeal for plunder emboldened by continued success. Such were the people who were now threatening every province of the Byzantine empire, and who looked upon the worn-out government of Alexandria, and the degraded Egyptians as then- easiest and richest prey. They marched out of Arabia every man a hero, like Europe to the Crusades or Greece to the Trojan war, so moved with one wish and one feeling that in their armies the energy and activity of the whole was little less than that of any one man in the ranks. (42) When the news reached Alexandria that the Roman armies were defeated in Palestine, and that the Mos- EutycMi lems had taken Jerusalem and Damascus, and were -^"^^^^s. marching upon Egypt, the patriarch George, either through cowardice or treachery, fled from Alexandria by sea, and the emperor appointed Cyrus to the bishoprick. Cyrus was of the Marouite faith, neither believing with George and his Melchite predecessors that Christ had two natures and two wills, nor with the Eg3^ptian Jacobites that he had one nature and one will, but he believed with the emperor Heraclius, who appointed him, that Christ had two natures and only one will ; and it was many a year, says the mournful historian, before Egypt 871 HERACLIUS. A.D. 611—640. [OHAP, XXI. saw another Melchite patriarch. But whatever had been the religion of the bishop, it was too late to win the willing obedience of the Egyptians, who heard of the approach of the Moslems without alarm, unwisely fancying that they might gain by a change, and that their church would thereby be left free ; and, in the vexation that they felt at being insulted by a handful of their own countrymen, they wholly forgot the greater tyranny they were to suffer from the conqueror. (43) Amrou the son of Asi entered Egypt from Palestine at the head of four thousand Arabs, burning for the conquest of a country which when governed by a Ptolemy had sent seventy-three thousand men to meet the invading army of Antiochus. But before Amrou had crossed the border of the two countries, while he was near Eaphia, the very place where Antiochus had been defeated by Ptolemy Philopator, a messenger reached his camp, bearing a sealed packet from the caliph Omar. Amrou guessed the contents of the letter, and refused to receive it from the messenger till he had moved his little army a few miles further and stood upon Egyptian soil ; he then called together his officers and opened the letter to read to them the orders of the caliph. The cautious Omar commanded that, as his force was hardly great enough for what he was undertaking, he should return to Arabia if he had not abeady entered Egypt; but if he had already begun the invasion, the caliph promised to send him a larger force to support him. (44) On this permission and promise of support Amrou marched forward ; but he was delayed for a month before the city of Pelusium. Though there was no Greek garrison in the place it was defended by its native and barbarian troops ; and he only made himself master of it after a regular siege. But after this first success the whole of Egypt was open to him. He might have marched from Magdolus to Syene without meeting with any opposition, except from the two or three cities that were garrisoned by Greeks. The Egyptians would not take so much part in the struggle as to withhold the CHAP. XXI.] THE ARABS. 375 supplies of food from the invaders. Like the ass in the fable they would not fight to save themselves from a change of masters. He marched towards Memphis, and met with no hindrance to his little army till he came to Babylon, a strong Koman fortress Fig. 127. on the Nile, a few miles below Memphis (see Fig. 127), and where the river was crossed b}^ a bridge of boats to that great city. From the Mokattam hills behind Bab3don the Arabs, looking over the most beautiful and richest plain in Egypt, Fig. 128. could just see the great city of Memphis towards which they were in march. (See Fig. 128.) The blue river is there divided by the sycamore trees of the little island of Rhoda, so named after its rose-gardens. The valley is dotted with groves and villages and canals sparkling in the sun. On the western hills, on the further side of the plain about nine miles 376 HERACLIUS. A.D. 611—640. [chap, XXI. off, are clejirly to be seen the three great pyramids, the wonder of the world. Looking up the valley, towards the south, the river and the line of western hills nearly meet in the distance, hut between them might be seen the wished-for prize, the white tops of the citadel and great temples of Memphis, lighted up by the sunshine, and glittering through the dark groves of palm- trees and acacias on tliat side of the river. The Arabs on their arrival laid siege to the castle of Babylon in due form. This castle was of the usual form and strength of the fixed Roman eamps, a four- sided plot of ground enclosed by strong and lofty walls above thirty feet high with round towers yet higher at the corners and along the sides. The Greeks defended themselves bravely behind these fortifications, and during a blockade of sev^en months Amrou met with several repulses. But as his camp was well supplied with necessaries by the Egyptians, the loss of time was no injury to him. He wrote to Omar for reinforcements, axid the caliph, well pleased with what he had done, sent him four thousand more men. But even with this force of eight thousand men Amrou would not soon have overcome the garrison had he not been helped by the treachery of the Egyptians. Makoukas the governor of Memphis, the prefect of the Egyptian taxes, only concealed his hatred of the Greeks through fear of punishment. He had, either through treachery or negligence, withheld the Egyptian tribute ever since the armies of Constantinople had been too much engaged with- the Persians and Moslems to reduce Egypt to its usual obedience. Makoukas pointed out to the garrison the difficulty of any longer defending Babylon against the increased force of the Moslems, and he persuaded most of them, together with the chief men of the Egyptians, to quit the citadel by the southern gate and withdraw with him into the small island of Rhoda in the Nile ; and they then broke down the bridge behind them. By this folly on the part of the Greeks the citadel was left with only half a garrison, and the Mahomedans, putting their scaling-ladders against the walls, and raising the encouraging shout of ' God is great,' made themselves masters of one of the CHAP. XXI.] THE ARABS. 377 strongest fortifications in Egj^pt, while the rest of the garrison flying to their boats joined their countrymen on the little island. (45) Amrou had before offered to the city and garrison their choice of three conditions ; either to pay tribute to the caliph, to embrace the Mahomedan religion, or battle without quarter ; and the Egyptians of Memphis had already privately and traitorously agreed to the first. But the Greeks, even if their courage had wholly failed them, hated the Arabs too EutycLii much to think of anything but the last ; therefore -^^^^^l^^- seeing the city in, the hands of the enemy, they took to their boats and quitted the island to march towards Alexandria, leaving Memphis unguarded. In the mean time INIakoukas undertook, on behalf of the Egj^ptians, to settle the terms of surrender for the whole country. The Arabs were to leave them undisturbed in their religion, on condition of their paying a tribute to the caliph of two pieces of gold, perhaps one pound sterling, for every male within the military age ; and the mistake of the historian, or perhaps the insolence of the conqueror, fixed the number who were liable to this poll-tax at four millions, a number more than equal to the whole popu- lation of Egypt. The Egyptians further undertook to feed the IMahomedan army, to make bridges over the Nile for them in their march to Alexandria, and to furnish them with every- thing that was necessary in their attack upon the Greeks. (4G) Amrou then marched in pursuit of the garrison, whom he overtook at Cera Shoraic^ on the west bank of the Canobic branch, about forty-five miles below the point of the Delta. Here the Greeks bravely defended themselves for three days ; but, being conquered in every battle, they^ fled hastily to St. Salstamus. From thence they retreated regularly for nineteen days with a skill and courage worthy of the pen of a Xenophon, bravely giving battle each day to their pursuers. At Chereum, about twenty miles from the end of their journey, the two armies fought a pitched battle, when the Greeks were again routed and fled to Alexandria, having in about three weeks 378 HERACLIUS. A.D. 611— G40. [chap. XXI. made good their retreat of one hundred and fifty miles in the face of a conquering army. (47) The garrison of Alexandria, now joined by the garrisons of Babylon and Memphis, strengthened the fortifications, and got ready for a brave defence, while the Mahomedans prepared for a regular siege. The Greeks made daily salHes from the gates, which the Mahomedans as bravely repulsed ; and on one occasion the Arabs followed so closely upon the heels of the retreating Greeks that the foremost of them entered the city with the fugitives, and when the gates closed Amrou the son of Asi found himself a prisoner with a handful of brave followers. * Now that 3^ou are wholly in our power,' said the patrician of Alexandria when they were brought before him, ' what would you that we should do with you ? ' The haughty Mahomedan speaking as conqueror rather than as a prisoner, replied, ' You must either pay us a tribute, or embrace our religion, or one of us must die,' and from his lofty bearing the Greeks began to guess his rank. But Amrou was saved by the presence of mind of one of his followers, who, slapping his general rudely on the face, ordered him to hold his peace before his betters ; and he then persuaded the patrician to make use of them as messengers to carry proposals for a truce to the besiegers. The prisoners were accordingly sent away by the patrician with letters to Amrou, and when they reached the Mahomedan camp in safety and the air rung with the joyous cries of ' God is great,' the Greeks at last found out their mistake, that they had had their greatest enemy in their power, an^ had released him to their own destruction. (48) The next assault was fatal to the besieged. The Mahomedans again entered the city, but ui greater numbers ; the garrison fled, some to their ships and some along the shore ; and after a siege of fourteen months the Mahomedans were masters of Alexandria. Amrou then hastily and incautiously marched in pursuit of those who had quitted the city by land ; when the ships, which had scarcely got out of the harbour, relanded the troops, and the Greeks again gained possession of CHAP. XXI.] ALEXANDRIA TAKEN. 373 the city and put to death the few Arabs that were left EutycLii to guard it. But Ainrou as hastily returned from the ^^^i^aies. pursuit of the fagitives, a second time stormed the walls after a severe struggle, and a second time drove the Greek garrison to their ships. (49) Thus, on a Fridaj'-, the first day of the month of Moharra, being the new-year's day of the twentieth year of the 22 Decemb. Hegira, Egypt ceased to be a Greek, or, as it was still called, a Roman province. Amrou wrote word to the caliph Omar, boasting that he had taken a city which beggared all description, in which he found foui' thousand palaces, four thousand public baths, four hundred theatres, twelve thousand sellers of herbs ; and having a thievish eye for Jewisli industry, he added that there were forty thousand Jews paying tribute. Such was the store of wheat which he sent on camels' backs to Medina that the Ai'abic historian declares, in tlie usual style of eastern poetry, that the first of an unbroken line of camels entered the holy city before the last camel had left Egypt. (50) The Arabs may well have been startled at the beauty and wealth of their new conquest, which, notwithstanding the ruin brought on by its sieges and civil wars, was still crowded with wonders of art, the fruits of long civilisation. But to the mind of a Greek well stored with history Alexandria in its fall must have been viewed with a melancholy interest, strabo, To a traveller arriving by sea the first object to strike ™- his eye was the lighthouse on the low island of Pharos, that monument of the science and humanity of the first two Ptole- mies, that has since been copied in every quarter of the habitable globe. Near it was the Heptastadium, a causeway of three quarters of a mile in length, that joined the island to the land, and divided the enclosed waters into two harbours. There were bridges over the passages which joined the two harbours ; but the aqueduct which once brought fresh water to the island was in ruins. On landing and entering by j, Malala, the gate of the sun, the gate of the moon might be Ackiiies seen at the further side of the city, at the end of a Tatius, v. 380 THE ARABS. A.D. 640. [chap. xxr. straight street with a row of columns on each side. In this street stood the Soma, the mausoleum which held the hody of Alexander, from whose death so many Greek cities and empires dated their rise, and of which Alexandria was the last to fall. A second street, crossing the former at the Tetrapylon, ran east and west from the Canobic gate to the gate of the Necropolis, and had also once been ornamented with columns through its whole length, till half of it had been ruined by the fortifications and sieges of the Bruchium. The new Museum, which had been built to replace that of the Ptolemies, had been very much deserted since the fall of paganism, its schools and spacious halls were empty ; but in vain the traveller would seek for the humble building which once held the famed catechetical school of the Christians, and which contributed so largely to the desertion of its prouder neighbour. On the outside of the western gate was the Necropolis, whose memo- rials of the dead, both pagan and Christian, lined the road side and sea coast for two miles, and harmonized most truly with Descript.de the faded glories of the city ; while the Jews had a I'Egypte. liumble burial-place of their own, beyond the eastern gate. Near the western gate also, but within the walls, stood the famed temple of Serapis, second to no building in the world but the Roman Capitol, a monument of the rise and fall of religions, once the very citadel of paganism, now the cathedral of a Christian patriarch. In the centre of it stood, and indeed still stands, the lofty column of Diocletian, with an equestrian statue on the top, raised to record the conquering emperor's Pliny, lib. humanity and the gratitude of the citizens. Second xxxvi. 14. among the larger buildings was the Sebaste, or Caesar's temple, with two obelisks in front, which latter, having during the last two thousand years seen the downfall of the Egyptian superstition, and then been removed to Alexandria in honour of Greek polytheism, remained to ornament a Christian church. Among the other churches the chief were those of St. Mark, of St. Mary, of John the Baptist, of Theodosius, of Arcadius, and the temple of Bacchus. Along CHAP. XXI.] ALEXANDRIA DESCRIBED. 381 the sea shore to the east lay the ruined Hippodrome ; and on the same side, where the canal from the Nile reached the city, were the fortified granaries, a little citadel by itself ; and not far off were the old mounds that marked out what was once the camp of the legionaries, with here and there an idle column, brought in the time of Augustus for his proposed city of Nicopolis. The inhabitants were no longer numerous enough to use the whole space which the city, with its gardens, once covered. The Bruchium, with its fortifications, once a city of Eutycliu itself, was in ruins ; and the Jews' quarter was nearly -^^^^^^s- a desert, inhabited only by a despised few, from w^hom their persecutors wrung a tribute ; the Jews bought of the Christians that leave to worship the God of their fathers which the Christians were thenceforth to buy of the Moslems. (51) But great as was the ruin which had come upon Alexandria during the misrule of the Koman emperors, it was small to what afterwards befel it under the Arabs. As the city shrunk Descript.de in size the Arabs surrounded ^'^s^P*®- it with a new fortification of a smaller circuit, which does not even include Diocletian's column ; and the popula- tion has since that time again so much lessened, that the whole of the modern city now stands on the widened Hepta- stadium, the causeway that joins to the main land what was once the island of Pharos. When the traveller, in order to gain a better view of this celebrated spot, now climbs the hill on which the temple of Pan once stood, he sees the town wholly at a distance ; and the only ancient monuments standing are Dio- cletian's column (see Fig. 129), and an obelisk which orna- mented the temple of the Caesars, now called Cleopatra's needle. (See Fig. 130.) At the same time the cultivated soil A Fig. 129. Fig. 130. 3S2 THE LIBRARY. [chap. xxr. of tlie countiy, tlie fields whicli are watered either by the natural overflow of the river or by canals and pumps, is no more than three millions of acres, or less than one third of what it was in the time of its great kings. (52) The fate of the Alexandrian library still requires our attention. The first great library of that name, collected by the Ptolemies and placed in the Museum, in the quarter of the city called the Bruchium, was burnt by the soldiers of Julius Csesar. The second, which was formed round the library from Pergamus presented to Cleopatra by Mark Antony, was placed in the temple of Serapis ; and, though that temple was twice burnt or at least injured by fire, once in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and again in the reign of Commodus, the library was unhurt in the reign of Julian, when Ammianus was in Egypt ; and it then amounted to seven hundred thousand volumes. But when the pagan worship was put down by Theodosius I., and the temple of Serapis was sacked by the Christians, the library was either dispersed or destroyed, and when Orosius was in Egypt, in the reign of Theodosius IL, he saw the empty book-shelves. There were other large libraries in Alexandria, although we have no particular account of them. The Museum of the Bruchium was rebuilt, but again destroyed with that part of the city in the reign of Gallienus. The Sebaste or Caesar's temple had a library. The emperor Claudius built a second college called the Claudian Museum, which no doubt had a library. As the public schools of pagan philosophy con- tinued open until the reign of Justinian, as the astronomers continued to make their observations in Alexandria, and as the Christians wrote largely, though perhaps to little purpose, on controversial divinity, we can hardly believe that in a city so famed for its libraries, the Museum should 1 have been without one. The Arabic historian tells us Abul- Piiarag. that when Alexandria was conquered by Amrou he set his seal upon the public library, together with the other public property of the city. But John Philoponus begged that the books might be spared, as being of no use to CHAP, XXI.] CONCLUSION. 383 the conquerors ; and Amrou would have granted the request at once if he had not thought it necessary to ask leave of the caliph. He therefore wrote to Medina for orders, and the caliph Omar answered him that, if the books in the Alexandrian library were the same as the Koran, they were useless, and if not the same they were worse than useless, and that in either case they were to be burnt. Amrou obeyed this order, Abdaiiatif, and sent the books, most of which were of papyrus, to ^^p- the public baths of the city, and the Arabic historian, in the poetic style of his nation, says that the baths were heated by them for the space of six months. (53) In these pages we have carefully followed the last faint traces of the old Egyptian arts and religion, and henceforth the very language begins to fall into disuse. The Arabic portion of the population at once rose into importance, as we before saw the Greek portion rise on the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great. The Coptic manuscripts of the Bible soon had an Arabic translation added on the same page, that while the services of the church were conducted in the ancient language the people might understand it by the help of the Arabic. Greek civilisation and literature, which had flourished in Egj'pt for nine hundred years, at once came to an end ; and the annals of science, of the Coptic church, and of the govern- ment, are henceforth to be found only in the Arabic historians. Alexandria then ceased to be an European colon}^ As for the Komans, they left no traces of their ever having ruled in the country ; for, even before the seat of government was removed from Rome, Egypt was always governed as a Greek province ; and afterwards, while the emperors dwelt at Constantinople, they were Eoman in nothing but in name, and in the language of the laws and coins. On the fall of Alexandria, Egypt became a part of the great kingdom of the caliphs, and its history a part of the history of Arabia and the Arabs. (54) It is worth remarking that of the temples and palaces and castles built with so much care in the earlier ages of the world, more have been destroyed by the industrious hand of the 384 CONCLUSION. [chap. xxr. stonemason than have fallen to pieces through neglect. Long before this conquest by the Arabs, the Thebaid was going to decay, its population was lessened in numbers, and therefore its temjiles, though plundered and ill-treated, were left majestic in their ruins to tell their tale to the wondering traveller. Lower Egypt was not so neglected either by its own people or by its conquerors, and therefore far worse has been the fate of the equally grand buildings of that part of the country. The eastern half of the Delta had always been full of Asiatics ; and there the Phoenician shepherd kings had of old fixed the seat of their garrison, when they made the frightened Egyptians pay them tribute ; and there also, and probably nearly on the same spot, the Moslem Arabs now chose a site for their new capital. The Arabic city of Musr was built close upon the city of Babylon, half way between Memphis and Heliopolis. It w^as also called Cairo. But a little later a new capital, still called Cairo, was built on a spot yet nearer to Heliopolis ; and then Musr received the name of Old Cairo. And as Sais and Naucratis had before been cruelly rifled by Alexandria for building stones, so the temples of Alexandria and Memphis and Heliopolis were one by one pulled to pieces to make the mosques and graceful minarets and citadel walls of Old and New Cairo. There we may count four hundred Greek columns from Alexandria, ornamenting a Tm'kish mosque. There we may see a slab carved with praises of Thothmosis, sawn in half to form a door-step, while another with an inscription by the sun-worshipping Thaomra, forms j)art of a garden wall. The door-posts of the mosques are often columns from a temple of Pthah or Serapis. Even the streets in the few places where paving is used are paved with stones which were once most holy. The granite obelisk of Bameses, and the head-stone of the temple portico carved with the winged sun and sacred asps, together pave the city gateway, and are worn smooth by the busy feet of the iVrab's donkey, and the silent tread of his camel. (55) Thus has been pulled to pieces and levelled with the CHAP. XXI.] MEMPHIS— THE PYRMIIDS. 385 ground every building of the city of Memphis. The founda- tions of its walls and the lines of its streets may be traced in the cultivated fields ; but little or nothing rises above the plain but the one colossus of Rameses II., so huge that as it lies with its face upon the ground its back may be seen high above the standing corn with wliich it is surrounded. (See Fig. 131.) ^ R.M 1 w L. £ R, Fig. 131. No works of man's hands now remain to us to prove that on this cornfield once stood a crowded city teeming with life, except its tombs upon the neighbouring hiUs. There the pyramids still stand, scarcel}" lessened in size and not the least in grandeur, by the loss of the stone casing which was canied off to Cairo. From Cairo the traveller sees them like specks on the horizon. As he rides towards them over the plain, which was once the city of Memphis, they rise in height, and their outline becomes more marked : and when he reaches tlie base of the nearest, he looks up in astonishment and awe. He has had his wonder raised higher every step as he approached it, and when he arrives at its foot he feels no disappointment, his expectations are fully satisfied. The sublime in ai*t can hardly do more. (56) AMien he has climbed to the top of the lofty pile, by means of the steps which remain now that the casing stones have been removed, he looks round upon a landscape as cheerful on one side as it is dreary on the other. On the east he sees a cultivated plain dotted with villages and palm trees. Through this winds the blue river, and beyond it lies the range of Mokattam hills, tipped at one end with the citadel of Cairo. VOL. II. 0 0 386 CONCLUSION. [chap. XXI. On the west side there is nothing but the dry desert, every- where the same to the eye and dreadfully glaring. There are no signs of the once great city of Memphis. There is no longer to be seen a row of priests in mournful procession carrying out a bull, the deceased Apis, embalmed for its burial, nor a troop of dancers and singers following a new Apis, that is being brought into the rejoicing city. There is no army of Fis. 132. Theban war-chariots entering the southern gate, sent by Eameses to recall the city to obedience ; nor Alexander the Great with his light armed troops returning from the Oasis aftet he has been proclaimed a child of the sun. No signs of life are now to be seen at the foot of the pyramid but such as have belonged to the valley as long as the Nile has been known to man, whether governed by a Pharaoh, a Ptolemy, a Caesar, or a Caliph. You will see nothing more important than a string of camels with their Arab drivers (see Fig. 132) winding over the sands, such as brought Joseph there to be sold as a slave, or, if the fields are at the time covered by the Nile's overflow, a herd of buffaloes coming up out of the water, such as Pharaoh saw in his dream. (See Fig. 133.) CHAP. XXI.] THE liACES OF MEN. 387 (57) The children of the men whose doings we have ijj(,]j.ej,ijjg'g been studying are still to be traced among their i^aces of • 11 Men. rumed monmnents. The country is governed by a handful of Turks from Constantinople, who are of the same race as the Scythians that overran Palestine and frightened Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus L, and against whom Rameses II. had before fought. Under them are the Moslem Arabs, who marched from Medina under Amrou, and wrested the province from the Greeks. They have ornamented their beautiful Cairo with mosques and minarets ; and among them Fig. 133. are gentlemen, soldiers, and scholars. In the ill-paid Fellahs (see Fig. 134) who cultivate the soil and work the boats and water- wheels, who live in mud hovels, wearing very little clothing, we see the unprivileged class, that has laboured under various masters from the earliest times, unnoticed by the historian. These were probably the earliest inhabitants of the valley. They receive the same ill-treatment as of old, and suffer under the same plagues of boils and blains, of lice and of flies, as in the time of Moses. Their bodies are painted with various colours, pricked into their skin, as they were when the Israelites were forbidden to make any marks upon the flesh. In the indus- trious Copts, the Christians of the villages, the counting-house, and the monastery, with skull and features half European and half Eastern, we have the old Egyptian race of the Delta, the ruHng class, such as it was in the days of Psammeticus and Shishank. Between Silsilis and the second cataract we find, under the name of Nubians, the same old Egyptian race, but less mixed with Greeks or Arabs. Such were the Nabatse who fought against Diocletian, and such in features were the kings 388 CONCLUSION. [chap. XXI. of Thebes, Rameses and Thotlimosis, and tlie kings of Ethiopia, Sabacothph and Ergamenes. We know them by their likeness to the mummies and statues, and by their proud contempt of the Fellahs. These two races, the Copts and Nubians, are the men who built the pyramids and temples, made the mummies, and carved the hieroglyphics. When they reached the valley of the Nile, it had no doubt been long peopled by the Fellahs. They were both zealous Christians under Athanasius ; but chiistianity has only remained among the mixed race of Copts. To the east of the Nile near Cosseir, and again throughout the whole of Ethiopia from Abou Simbel to Meroe, are the Ababdeh Arabs, brave and lawless. These were the southern enemy conquered by Rameses, and they often fought against the Romans. They are the owners of the camels now, as they used to be ; and are the carriers across the sands of the desert. To the south of Syene, in the desert between Ethiopia and the Red Sea, are the less civilised marauding Bishareen Arabs, the Blemmyes and Troglodytse of the Greeks. These Arabs seem to be less at home on the banks of the Nile than the Copts and Nubians. They no doubt reached the valley at some later period, when the others were already settled there ; and reached not by passing through Egypt, but by crossing over from the Arabian side of the Red Sea. In Abj^ssinia we find a people in features and in language more Hebrew than Arabic ; the people whom Frumentius found there in the reign of Constantine, and the people for whom the Ethiopic version of the Bible was made, whose forefathers reached the country in the trading vessels from Ezion Geber in the reign of Bartlett's Solomon or earlier. Among the various Bedouins of fn the De-^ northern Arabia the Tor Arabs of Sinai are probably se^*- the friendly tribe, perhaps miscalled Midianites, who guided Moses as far as Ezion Geber on the gulf of Akaba; and the Alawin are the hostile Edomites who would not allow him to pass through Petra. Alexandria is still peopled "with sullen Copts, clever Greeks, shabby-looking Jews, with here and there a glossy negro in a white dress. The Christian monks CHAP. XXI.] THE RACES OF MEN. 389 live in peace among the Moslem dervishes. The ruling class who v/alk along the street with proudest and firmest step are the Turks in gay many- coloured clothing, while the poor of the city, as of old, are the half-naked brown-skinned Fellahs. Fig. IS 4. Fig. 135.— Date Palm of Lower Egypt. FIRST INDEX; NAMES OF PEESONS. The Numbers arc those of the Chapters and Sections. Aaron (physician), xxi. 38. Abraham, i. 32. Abram (ambassador), xxi. 13. Abuadantius (prefect), xix. 23. Achsemenes, v. 18. Achillas, xii. 2. Achilles Tatius, xviii. 14. AcHiLLEUs, xvii. 38. AcHORis, V. 37. ACHTHOES, i. 12. Adicran of Libya, iv. 20. ^disius (martyr), xvii. 46. ^Emilianus, ^milius, xvii. 5. ^MTLiANus, Alexander, xvii. 9. ^milianus (prefect), xvii. 1. ^milius Rectus, xiii. 31, -Slsehylus, vi. 11. ^tius (Arian), xviii. 36. (physician), xx. 22. Aeizanas, xxi. 16. Africanns (chronologer), xvi. 24. Agatharcides, x. 67. Agathias (historian), xxi. 23. Agathoclea, ix. 52. Agathocles, ix. 52. son of Lysimachus, vii. 79. Agesilaus of Sparta, v. 42. Agrippa, King, xiii. 32. Agrippina, xiii, 60. Alexander the Great, vi. 1; Alexander ^gus, vii. 6. Alexander Balas, x. 44. Zabbineus, x. 64. Helius, xii. 36. Jannseus, xi. 11. Alexander Severtjs, xvi. 32. Alexander (bishop), xvii. 48. Allienus, xii. 28. Alypius, xviii, 13. Amasis, iv. 21. Amasis (satrap), v. 8 ; iv. 20. Ambrose, Saint, xv. 23. Ambrosius (deacon), xvi, 38. Ames-athori, i. 38. Ammeres, iv. 2. Ammon (monk), xviii. 31, 59. Ammonius of Barce, ix, 40. Ammonias (builder), xx. 31. (grammarian), x. 35. (Syrian), x. 45, (priest), xvii. 45. ■ (grammarian), xix. 2. (monk), xix. 14, 25. Ammonius Saccas, xvi. 33. Amon Aseru, iv. 2. Amosis, i. 35. Amrou son of Asi, xxi. 43. Amunmai Thor, i. 24. Amcjnmai Thor IT., i. 24. Amunmai Thor III,, i. 24. Amunothph, i. 37. Amunothph II., ii, 8. Amunothph III., ii. 23. Amyntas, viii. 63. Amyrt^us, v. 21. Ananias, xi. 7. Anastasius, XX, 23. Anastasius (monk), xxi. 30. Anatolius (bishop), xvii. 11. Anaxagoras, v. 22 ; x. 67. Andrgeus, viii. 57. Androclus (slave), xiii. 39. Andromachus, ix 40. Anemneb, ii. 26. Annianus (bishop), xiii, 63. Anniceris of Cyrene, vii, 66. Annius Plocamus, xiii, 46. Anthony, Saint, xviii. 31. Antigone, vii. 76. Antigonus, vii. 20. son of Demetrius, vii. 73. of Macedon, ix. 14. Antinous, xv. 14. Antiochus Soter, vii, 60, Theos, viii. 70. Hierax, ix. 5. the Great, ix. 35. Epiphanes, x. 3. Cyzicenus, xi. 3. Grypus, xi. 3. 392 FIRST INDEX Antiochus of Athens, xi. 27. Autipater of Macedon, vii. 73. of Syria, xii. 14. Antipator of Sidon, x. 49. Antiphilus (painter), vii. 69. Antoninus Pius, xv. 32. Antoninus (philosopher), xviii. 48. (traveller), xxi. 8. Antony, Mark, xi. 57. son of Mark, xii. 37. Anuph (monk), xviii, 56. Anysis, of Memphis, iii. 18. Anysius (prefect), xix. 21. Apachnas, i. 34. Apelles (painter), vii. 55. ((rnostic), XV. 24. (monk), xviii. 56. Aphthonius, xviii. 36. Apime, wife of Magas, viii. 17. Apion (grammarian), xiii. 39. Apolaustus, xvi. 3. Apollinarius (bishop), xxi. 6, 27. Apollodorus Geloiis, viii. 44. (Sicilian), xii. 6. Apollonides (general), vi. 9. Horapis, xvi. 6. Apollonius (prefect), vi. 11. of Perga, ix. 25, son of Mnestheus, x. 2. of Citium, xi. 65. (critic), xiii. 21. of Tyana, xiv. 8. (monk), xviii, 59, Apollonius Rhodius, ix, 21, 87. • Dyscolus, XV. 16, Apollus (monk), xviii. 56. Apophis, i. 34. Appian (historian), xv. 16. Apries, iv. 13. Aratus (poet), viii. 42. of Sicyon, viii. 53. Arcadius, xix. 14. Arces, v. 56. Arcesilaus of Barca, v. 8. (philosopher), x. 73. Archelaus, xi, 58. Archias, x, 44. Archibius, xiii. 1, 21. Archimedes, ix. 25. AretDSUs (physician), xvii, 6. Arete, vii, 67. Arethas (Ai-ab), xxi. 3, ArgEBus, vii. 80 ; viii. 19. Ariarathes, x. 44. Aristseus, viii. 57. Aristarchus (critic), x. 33. of Samos, viii. 41. Aristides (orator), xvi. 2. Aristillus, viii, 40. Aristippus, vii. 65. Ariston, xi. 27. Aristobulus (Peripatetic), x. 72. Aristobulus, son of Hyrcanus, xi. 11. Aristocrates, xii. 45. Aristomencs, ix, 65. Aristonicus, ix. 82. ■ (grammarian), xiii. 21, Aristophanes (critic), ix. 15. Aristus of Athens, xi, 27. Arius philosopher), xii. 50. (Homeric poet), xv. 46. (presbyter), xvii. 48. Arrian, xv. 37. Arridseus, vii. 8. Arsenius (prefect), xx. 15. Arsinoe Philadelphus, vii. 79. Philopator, ix. 41. mother of Soter, vi. 18. daughter of Lysimachus, viii. 63. daughter of Auletes, xii. 7. Artavasdes of Armenia, xii. 41. Artaxerxes Longimanus, v. 19. Artaxerxes Mnemon, v. 35. Artaxerxes Ochus, v. 50. Artemius (prefect), xviii. 42. Arxanes (pi-efect), v. 34. Aryandes, v. 7. Asclepiades, xv. 38. Boxer, xvi. 3. Asclepiodotus, xix. 43. Asenath, i. 42. AsYCHis, iv. r. Asseth, i. 34. Athanasius (bishop), xviii. 6. II. (bishop), XX. 16. AthenjBUS, xv. 45. Athenagoras (Platonist), xv. 30. Athenion, ix. 11. Athenodorus, xvii, 25. Athenodorus (Stoic), xii. 30. Athinis, ix. 85. Atilius Calatinus, viii. 28. Attains of Pergamus, x. 40. Augustus, xiii, 1. AuRELiAN, xvii. 24. Aurelius CJotta, xi. 49. Avidius Cassius, xv. 41. Avienus, viii. 42. Balacrus, vi. 11. Badres, v. 8. Bagoas (eunuch), v. 53. Balbilla (poet), xv. 19, Balbillus (prefect), xiii. 57. Balbinus, xvi, 42. Barce, vii, 42. Baruch, iv. 15. Basilianus (prefect), xvi. 31. Basilicus, XX. 10. Basilides (freedman), xiv. 11. • (Gnostic), XV, 23. Bassianus, xvi, 31. Batis, vi. 2. Battus, iv. 20, NAMES OF PERSONS. 393 Battus, iv. 27. Benjamin (monk), xviii. 56. (bishop), xxi. 39. Beon, i. 34. Berenice Soter, vii. 76, Euergetis, ix. 30. daughter of Philadelplius, viii. 63. daughter of Aiiletes, xi. 54, Bibulus, xii. 19. Bion (poet), x. 33, BoccHORis, iii. 16. Bytis (priest), xviii. 13. Cadmus, ii. 27. Caecinna Tuscus, xiii. 60. Caesar, xii. 1. Caesarion, xii. 15. Caisus (Arab), xxi. 13. Caligula, xiii. 32. Callimachus, vii. 57 ; viii. 36. (prefect), xii. 35. Callixenes, viii. 9. Cambyses, iv. 30. Candace, Queen, xiii. 16. Canidius Crassus, xi. 53. Carneades, ix, 20. Caracalla, xvi, 26. Carinus, xvii, 37. Carpocrates (Gnostic), xv. 24. Cards, xvii. 37. Cassander, vii, 19. Cassianus, xvi. 11. (monk), xix, 31. Cassius, xii. 28. Cassius Longinus, x. 15. Cato (Censor), x. 54. of Utica, xi. 52. Celsus (Epicurean), xv, 52. Cerinthus (Grnostic), xv. 22. Chabrias, v. 44. Chaereas, xi, 19. Chaeremon, xiii, 61. Chebros-Amosis, i. 34, Cheiron (historian), xv. 50. Chelcias, xi. 7. Chemi, iv. 1. Chemren, iv. 1. Cheops, i, 28, Chesuphus, ix. 85. Christodorus (poet), xx. 28. Chosroes, xxi. 29. son of Hormuz, xxi, 33. Chrysippus, v, 42. of Rhodes, viii. 63. Cicero, xi, 56. Cimon, v. 21. Cineas, x, 6. Claudian (poet), xix. 20, Claudius, xiii. 41. Claudius Gothious, xvii. 19. Clemens Alexandrinus, xvi. 13. Cleobulus, iv. 24. Cleombrotus of Cos, viii. 72. Cleomenes (prefect), vi. 11. of Sparta, ix. 14, Cleopatra, xii. 1, Cleopatra Cocce, x, 53. Cleopatra Berenice, xi. 23. Cleopatra daughter of Philip, vii. 44. Epiphanes, ix. 71. Philometor, x, 1, daughter of Philometor, x. 1. daughter of Euergetes II., xi. 1. Tryphsena, xi, 54. Selene, xii, 36. Cline, viii. 55, Clitarchus, viii, 27, Cneius Capito, xiii. 42, Cnopias, ix, 40, Colotes, viii. 48, Coluthus (poet), XX. 19. Comanus, x. 6. COMMODUS, xvi. 1, Conon, V. 36, Conon (astronomer), ix. 4. Constans, xviii. 16, CoNSTANTiKE, xvii. 57 ; xviii. 1. CONSTANTINE II,, Xviii, 16, Constantius Chlorus, xvii, 49. CoNSTANTius, xviii. 16. Cornelia, x. 17. Cosmas ludicopleustes, xxi. 14, 25, Crates of Pergamus, x. 33. Croesus, iv. 29. Ctesibius, viii, 34. Ctesidemus (painter), vii. 69. Culeianus (prefect), xvii. 47. Cyaxares, iv. 5. Cynegius (prefect), xix. 1. Cyril (bishop), xix. 23. Cyrus, iv, 29. Cyrus the Younger, v. 35. Cyrus (bishop), xxi. 42. Damascius (Platonist), xxi. 24. Damianus (Arab), xxi, 11, Damis (philosopher), xvii, 47. Danaus, ii, 27. Darius Hystaspes, v, 7, Darius Nothus, v. 34. Darius Codojianus, v. 56. David, ii, 59 ; iii, 4, Decius, xvii, 1. Dellius, xii. 29. Demetrius son of Antigonus, vii, 25. • Phalereus, viii, 3 1 . Soter, X, 14. Nicator, x, 45. Demetrius (Platonist), xi. 48. of Tarsus, xii, 30. (alabarch), xiii, 41, (bishop), XV, 52 ; xvii. 12, Cythras, xviii, 39. Democritus, v, 34. 394 FIRST INDEX: Didymus (grammarian), xii. 23. the blind, xviii. 34, Dinarchus (prefect), xv. 39. Dinochares, viii. 68. Dinon (general), ix. 38. Dinocrates, vi. 7. Dion, xi. 27, 54. Diocletian, xvii. 38. Diodorus (poet), viii, 67. (Christian), xviii. 43. Diodorus Cronus, vii. 57. Siculus, xi. 35. Diogenes, xviii. 23. Diogenianus, xx. 21. Dion Chrysostome, xiv. 8 ; xvi. 2. Dionysius (traveller), viii, 26. ■ Periegetes, xiii. 62. of Miletus, XV. 15. (bishop), xvii, 1. (prefect), xx. 8. Dionysus, ix, 40. Diophantus (mathematician), xix. 10. Dioscorides, xii. 4, 24. Dioscorus (musician), xviii. 48. (bishop), xix. 14 ; xx. 23. Dius (priest), xvii. 45. Doloaspis, vi. 11. Dolobella, xii. 28, DoMiTiAN, xiv, 21. DoMiTius DoMiTiANTJS, xvii. 8, 29. Dorotheus, xviii, 56. Dositheus, x. 27. ■ (astronomer), xv. 32. Dracontius, xviii, 43. Drusilla, xiii. 40. Ecdicius (prefect), xviii. 48. Echecrates, ix. 40. Elagabalus, xvi. 32. Eleazar, viii, 57. Elesbaas, or Elesthseus, xxi. 13. Eliakim, iv. 9. Elias (monk), xviii. 56, < Epagathus (prefect), xvi. 32, Ephippus, vi, 11. Ephorus, X. 67. Epiphanes (Gnostic), xv. 24. Epiphanius (bishop), xix. 14. Erasistratus, vii, 60. Eratosthenes, ix. 16, 56. Erectheus, ii. 27. Ergamenes, viii. 69. Eros (tax-gatherer), xiii. 12. Esimaphseus, xxi. 15. Euclid, vii, 56; viii. 33. Euctemon (astronomer), xv, 32. Eudoxus, V, 42, Cyzicenus, x. 70 ; xi. 6. Eugnostus, vi. 11. Eulaius, X. 3. Eulogius (bishop), xxi. 30. Eumenes of Bithynia, ix. 5. Eumenes of Pergamus, x. 75, Euphranor, xii. 13. Euphrates (philosopher), xiv, 8. Euripides, v, 42. Eurydice, vii, 73, Eurylochus, ix. 40. Eusebius of Laodicea, xvii, 11. of Csesarea, xvii. 45. Emisenus, xviii. 17. (bishop), xviii, 45. (monk), xix. 14. Eustatius (prefect), xx, 26. Eustochius, xvi. 43. Euthalius (bishop), xx. 20. Euthymius (monk), xix, 14. Eutropius (eunuch), xix. 13. Eutyches, xx. 1. Evagoras of Salamis, v. 37. Evagrius (monk), xviii. 58. (prefect), xix. 9. Ezekiel (prophet), iv. 5. (poet), XV. 11, Fabius Pictor, viii. 13, Faustus (priest), xvii. 45. Felix, xiii, 40. FiRMUS, xvii. 27. Flaccus Avillius, xiii. 31. Flokian, xvii. 34. Florus (prefect), xx. 3. Frumentius (bishop), xviii. 28. Fulvia, xii. 34. Gabinius, xi. 57. Gaianas (bishop), xxi. 2. Gains, v. 37. Galea, xiv. 1. Galbrius, xvii. 38, 49, Gallienus, xvii. 7. Galltjs, xvii, 5. Gallus, xii, 49. • Julius, xiii. 14. Cornelius, xiii. 12. Ganimedes, xii. 9, Germanicus, xiii. 24. George (bishop), xviii. 26. (bishop), xxi. 39. Geta, xvi. 28, GoRDiAN, xvi. 42. Gregentius (bishop), xxi. 15. Gregory (bishop), xviii. 17. — — of Nazianzum, xviii. 57. Hadad of Edom, iii. 4. of Auxum, xxi, 11. Hadrian, xv. 14. Hsephiestus, xxi. 19. Hanes, iii. 6. Hanes-Vaphra, iv. 27. Hanno (navigator), iv, 7. Harpocrates (oculist), xv, 3. Harpocration, ^Elius, xv. 48. NAMES OF Harpocratian Valerius, xv. 47. Hecatseus of Miletus, iv. 24. of Abdera, vii. 36. Hegesias, vii. 63 ; viii. 49. Hegelochus, x. 64. Helena, viii. 54. Helladius (grammarian), xix. 2. Hellanicus, v. 22. Hellas (monk), xviii. 56. Hellesthseus of Abyssinia, xxi. 15. Hephjestion (general), vi. 17. (grammarian), xv. 49. Heraclas (bishop), xvi. 24. Heraclides Lembus, x. 12. Heraclitus, xi. 27. Heraclius (prefect), xx. 9. Heraclitjs, xxi. 33. Herban (Jew), xxi. 15. Hercules of I\Iacedon, vii. 42. Herennius (Platonist), xvi, 33. of Palmyra, xvii. 18. Hermapion (priest), xviii. 12. Hermas (Manichaean), xvii. 53. Hermes Trismegistus, xvi. 7. Hermophantus, viii. 49. Hero (mathematician), x. 42 ; xix. 42. Herod, xii. 38. Herodes of Palmyra, xvii. 26. Herodian (historian), xvi. 41. Herodotus, v. 23, Herophilus, vii. 57. Hesychius (bishop), xvii, 45. (grammarian), xx. 21, Hezekiah of Judtea, iii. 23. (high priest), vii. 40. Hieracas (Christian), xvii. 54. Hierax, x. 62. Hiero of Syracuse, ix, 48. Hierocles (prefect), xvii. 47. (Platonist), xx. 17. Hilarion (monk), xviii. 62. Hippalus (pilot), xiii. 45. Hipparchus, x. 41. Hiram of Tyre, ii. 61. Homer, ii. 56 ; iii. 15. the younger, x. 73. HOPHRA, iv. 13. Hor (monk), xviii. 56. Horapollo (grammarian), xix. 11. Hormisdas, xix. 8. Hoshea, iii. 20. Hypatia, xix. 21. Hyrcanus, son of Joseph, ix. 51. xi. 59. lamblichus (Platonist), xviii. 13. Iberus (prefect), xiii. 31. Ichonuphys, v. 42. Inarus, v. 19. Iphicrates of Athens, v. 39. Irene, x. 53. Irobashtus, ix. 85. PERSONS. 395 Isaac of Armenia, xix. 35. Isaiah, iv. 7. Isidorus (Gnostic), xv. 24. (presbyier), xix, 16. of Pelusium, xix. 36. (Platonist), xxi. 24, Jacob, i. 41. Jambres, ii. 15. Janias, i, 34. Jannes, ii. 15. Jason, XV. 54. Jason of Gyrene, x. 59. Jehoahaz, iv. 9. Jehoiakim, iv. 9. Jehosophat, iii. 11. Jeremiah, iv. 15. Jeroboam, iii. 4. Jerom, Saint, xviii. 35. Jesus son of Sirach, x. 60. Johanan, iv. 15. John (high priest), xiv. 13. John (monk), xviii. 59. (bishop), XX. 14, 23; xxi. 11, 27. Chrysostome, xix. 17. Climacus, xxi. 30. Philoponus, xxi. 31. Almsgiver, xxi. 34. Joseph, i. 41. nephew of Onias, ix. 12. Joseph us (historian), xiv. 13. Josiah, iv. 5. Jovian, xviii. 51. Juba of Mauritania, xiii. 40. Judas Maccabaeus, x. 13. Julian, xviii. 42. Julian (prefect), xvi. 19. Julianus (ambassador), xxi. 3. Julianus (poet and prefect), xx. 28. Julius (pope), xviii. 20. Julius Demetrius, xiv. 2. Firmicus, xviii. 38. Pollux, XV. 50. Africanus, xvi. 24. Justin, xxi. 1, Justin II., xxi. 29. Justin Martyr, xv. 27. Justinian, xxi. 4. Juvenal (poet), xiv. 21. Kobades of Persia, xx. 26. Labaris, i. 14. Labienus, xii. 34. Lacrates, v. 51. Ladica, iv. 27. Lagus, vi. 18. son of Soter, vii. 72. Laodice, viii. 70. Lausus, xix. 29. Leneus, x. 3. Lentulus Marcellinus, xi. 49. 396 FIRST INDEX: Lentulus Spintlier, xi. 55. Leo, XX. 8. Leo IL, xx. 10. Leonas (rhetorician), xix. 42. Leonides (poet), xiii. 61. (martyr), xvi. 22. Leontiscus, vii. 46. Lepidus, ix. 70. Licidas, vi. 11, LiciNics, xvii. 57. Longinus (critic), xvi. 33, 34. (presbyter), xx. 27. Lucian, xv. 51. Lucianus (critic), xvii. 55. Lucifer (bishop), xviii. 45. Lucius (bishop), xviii. 45. Lucuas, XV. 12. Lucullus, xi. 27. Lupus (prefect), xiv. 13 ; xv. 12. Lycon of Troas, ix. 19. Lycophron, ix, 23. Lysandra, vii. 75. Lysimachus of Thrace, vii. 19. son of Philadelphus, viii. 63. Macarius of Egypt, xviii. 58. Macarius of Alexandria, xviii. 58. Maori ANUS, xvii. 8. Macrinus, xvi. 30. Mascianus, xv. 41. Mas via, (Saracen), xviii. 64. Magas, vii. 22, 76. son of Euergetes, ix. 30. Makoukas, xxi. 44. Malichus, xii. 39. Mandothph, v. 16. Manetho, vii. 16 ; viii. 45. MaRCIAN, XX. 1. Marcus Aurelius, xv. 40. Mardoch Empadus^ iii. 27. Maria (Jewess), v. 34. ■ daughter of Mauricius, xxi. 33. Marius Secundus, xvi. 31. Mark (evangelist), xiii. 63. Marsyas, x. 63. Martial (poet), xv. 45. Massala (Roman), xiii. 3. Mauricius, xxi. 29. Mautmes, ii. 22, IVIaximian, xvii. 49. Maximin, xvi. 42. Maximin, xvii, 49. Maximinus (general), xx. 4. Maximus, xvi. 42. Maximus (prefect), xviii. 23. (philosopher), xvii. 47. Mazakes (satrap), vi. 4. Megabazus, v. 20. Melanthius, viii. 53, Meletius (bishop), xvii. 50 ; xviii, 22, Memphites, x, 63. Menander (poet), viii, 37. Menedemus, viii. 57. Menelaus son of Lagus, vii. 46. Menes, i. 9. Menophres, ii. 6. Meropius, xviii. 28. Mesaphra, i. 39; iv. 1. Mesrobes of Armenia, xix. 35. Meton (astronomer), xv, 32. Metrodidactus, vii. 67. Mithridates of Pontus, xi. 27. of Pergamus, xi. 49. Moeris, iv. 1. Moschus (poet), x. 33. Moses, ii. 7. (bishop), xviii. 64 ; xix. 29. (monk), xviii. 56. Moses Chorenensis, xix, 35. Mosollam, vii, 40. ]\Iucianu.s, xiv. 5. MuTHis, V. 38. Mycera, ii. 2. Nabopolassar, iv. 8. Neacles, viii. 53. Nebuchadnezzar, iv. 10. Nechepsus, iv. 3. Necho, iv. 3. Necho II., iv. 7. Nectanebo, v. 39. Nectanebo II., v. 45. Nectanebo (priest), xvii. 17. Nef-chofo, i. 28. Nephalius (monk), xx. 15. Nepherites, v. 35. Nepherites II., V. 38. Nephra (satrap), v. 12. Nepos (bishop), xvii. 16. Nero, xiii. 56. Nero (bishop), xvii. 32. NeRVA, XV. 1. Nestor (grammarian), xx. 18. of Tarsus, xii. 30. Nestorius (bishop), xix. 30. Nicander, x. 40. Nicanor, vii. 9. Nicetas (patrician), xxi. 36. Nicias (painter), xiii. 11. Nicocreon, vii. 23. Nileus (philosopher), viii. 30. Nilus (monk), xix. 37. Nitocris, i. 46 : ii. 2. Nonnosus (ambassador), xxi. 13. Nonnus (poet), xix. 36. Numerianus, xvii. 37. Obsidius, xiii. 50, Octavianus, xii. 18. Odenathus of Palmyra, xvii. 7, (Enanthe, ix. 52. (Enopides, x. 67. (Enuphis of Heliopolis, iv, 25. Ogulnius, viii. 11. NAMES OF PERSONS. 397 OlMKNEPTHAH, I'i. 29. OlMENEPTHAH II., ii. 46, Olympiodorus (Peripatetic), xix, 41. Olympius (priest), xix. 5, Omar (caliph), xxi. 43. Onias (high priest), ix. 11. of Onion, x. 25. Oppian, XV. 45. Oresiesis (monk), xix. 31. Orestes (prefect), xix. 25. Origen, xv. 53 ; xvi. 22. Pagan, xvi. 33. Orion (grammarian), xix. 42. Orosius (monk), xix. 4. OsiRiTA Ramerer, ii. 46. OsiRTESEN, i. 7, 24. OSIRTESEN IL, i. 24. OsiRTESEN III., i. 24. OSORCHON, iii. 7. OsoRCHON II., iii. 12. Ostanes, v. 34. Otho, xiv. 5. Pachomius (monk), xviii. 56. (bishop, xvii. 45. (prophet), XX. 6. PsGonius (prefect), xix. 21. Palladius, xviii. 58 ; xix. 29. Pammenes, v. 34. Pamphila of Cos, vii. 53. • writer), xiii. 61. Pamphilus (physician), x. 39. (painter), viii. 53. Pampretius (critic), xix. 43. Panaretus, x. 73. Pan^tius, x. 54. Pancrates (poet), xv. 15. Pantsenus (Stoic), xvi. 14. Pantaleon, vi. 11. Papiscus, XV. 54. Pappus (mathematician), xix. 10. Papus (Manichasan), xvii. 53. Parnasius (prefect), xviii. 39. Patarbemis, iv. 20. Paul of Samosata, xvii. 2. of Tela, xxi. 38. (apostle), xiv. 8. (monk), xviii. 56. astrologer, xix. 1 0. (physician), xix. 21. (bishop), xxi. 4. Pausanias, xv. 18. Pausiras, ix. 85. Pausiris (satrap), v. 32. Pedius, X. 57. Perdiccas, vi. 20 ; vii. 35, Pertinax, xvi. 17. Pescennius Niger, xvi. 18. Peter (bishop), xvii. 45. (bishop), xviii. 55 ; xix. 16 ; xxi. 27, 30. Peter Mongus, xx. 13. Peter Gnapheus, xxi. 34. Petisis, vi. 11. Petosiris, viii. 46. Petronius (prefect), xiii. 12. Peucestes, vi. 11. Phanes, iv. 31. Pharnabazus, v. 39. Pherendates, v. 54. Pheretima, v. 8. Philammon, ix. 52. Phileas (bishop), xvii. 45. Philsetas (poet), viii. 1, 37. Philemon (prefect), viii. 68. Philip, xvi. 44. Philip Arrid^eus, vi. 19 ; vii. 1. Philip father of Magas, vii. 76. IV., of Macedonia, ix. 35. Philip Amyntas, vi. 1. Philiscus (poet), viii. 4. Philo (academician), xi. 27. Philo Judseus, xiii. 36. Philoromxis, xvii. 45. Philostephanus, vii. 64. Philotas (physician), xii. 34. Philotera, vii. 81. Phocas, xxi. 33. Photinus (mathematician), xii. 22. (abbot), xxi, 27. Phoxidas, ix. 40. Pierius (presbyter), xvii, 15, 48. Pinna (bishop), xvii, 12, Plancus, xii, 32. Plato, V. 42, Pliny elder, xiii. 49 ; xv. 3. younger, xv. 3. Plotina, XV, 8. Plotinus, xvi. 33, 35, Plutarch, xiv. 24. (martyr), xvi. 23. Polemon, vi. 11. (orator), xv. 15. Polybius (historian), ix. 91. Polyclitus, xiii, 5. Polycrates, iv. 28, ix, 40, Polysperchon, vii. 42. Pompey, xi. 49, Pompeius, Sextus, xii. 18. Pomponius Mela (geographer), xiii. 53. Popilius, X, 11. Poppsea, Empress, xiii. 61, Porphyrins, xvii, 17 ; xviii. 44. Posidippus (poet), ix. 4. Posidouius (Stoic), x. 76. Potamo (philosopher), xvi. 33. Potiphar, i. 41. Potipherah, i. 42, Probatus (general), xvii, 19. Pro BUS, xvii. 31, 34, Proclus (Platonist), xix. 42. - — • (Sophist), xvi, 21, 1 Proterius (bishop), xx. 3. 398 FIRST INDEX: PSAMMENITUS, iv. 35. PSAMMETICHUS, iv. 3. PSAMMETICIIUS II., iv. 4. Psammo (philosopher), vi. 13. Psammuthis, v. 38. Pthahmen, ii. 46. Pothinus (eunuch), xii. 1. Ptolemy Soter, vi. 18 ; vii. 1. Philadelphus, viii 1. Euergetes, ix. 1. Philopator, ix. 32. Epiphanes, ix. 62. Philometor, X. 1. Euergetes II., x. 5. Soter II., xi. 2. • Alexander, xi. 10. < Alexander II., xi. 30. Neus Dionysus, xi. 34. Ptolemy son of Thaseas, ix. 40. son of Agesarchus, ix. 56. nephew of Antigonus, vii. 43. of Megalopolis, ix. 77. of Cyprus, xi. 29. two sons of Auletes, xi. 66. son of Antony, xii. 36. son of Juba, xiii. 40. son of Grlaucias, x. 31, Ptolemy Ceraunus, vii. 73. Eupator, x. 50. Macron, x. 8. Apion, X. 77. Cbennus, xv. 16. Ptolemy, Claudius, xv. 35. Publius Octavius, xiii. 19. Pul, iii. 21. PupiENUs, xvi. 42. Pyrrhus, vii 51 ; viii. 11. Pythagoras, iv. 25. Python, vii. 7. Quietus, xvii. 8. QuiNTiLLUS, xvii. 20. Rabirius Posthumus, xi. 48. Rameses, ii. 28. Rameses II., ii. 34. Rameses III., ii. 47. Rameses IV., V., VL, ii. 51. Rehoboam, iii. 4. Rhodon (professor), xii. 50 ; xix. 12. Roxana, vii. 41. Rufinus, xviii. 59. Rutilius (prefect), xv. 8. Sabaces (satrap), vi. 4. Sabacothph, iii. 18. Sabellius (bishop), xvii. 3. Sarin A, xv. 18. Salatis, i. 33. Salustius (Cynic), xxi. 24. Samson, ii. 37. Sapor of Persia, xvii. 7. Saturninus, xvii. 36. Satyrius, viii. 67. Satyrus, vii. 16 ; viii. 66. SCEMIOPHRA, i. 24. Scipio Africanus, x. 54. Scopas, vii. 43. ix. 68. Scylax, X. 69. Sebastianus (prefect), xviii. 26. Secundus, xvi. 31. Selene, x. 77. Seleucus, vii. 19, 60. Callinicus, viii. 70. ■ Cybiosactes, xi. 58. Seleucus (general), xii. 48. Selius, xi. 27. Sennacherib, iii. 24. Sensuphis, i. 28. Septimius Severus, xvi. 19. Septimius, Lucius, xii. 2. Serapion (physician), xii. 4, 25. (rhetorician), xvi. 43. (bishop), xvii. 48 ; xviii. 34. (monk), xviii. 56. of Cyprus, xii. 28. Servianus (consul), xv. 20. Sesostris, ii. 38 ; iii. 5 ; ix. 10 ; xi. 36. Sethon, iii. 24. Sevechus, iii. 20. Severina, xvii. 33. Severus (bishop), xxi. 1. Shalmanezer, iii. 20. Shishank, iii. 1. Shishank II., iii. 12. Silco (Nubian), xx. 7. Simon (high-priest), xiv. 13. Simon Maccabaeus, x. 58. Simon Magus, xv. 22. Smerdis, v. 6. So, iii. 20. Socrates of Boeotia, ix. 40. Sogdianus, v. 34. Solomon, ii. 60 ; iii. 2. Solon, iv. 23. Sopater (Platonist), xviii. 15. Sosibius, ix. 32, the younger, ix. 67. (philosopher), viii. 43. Sosigenes (astronomer), xii. 21. Sositheus (poet), x. 73. Sosius, xii. 38. Sostratus (architect), viii. 22. Sotades, viii. 50. Sotion, xiii. 21. Sphserus, ix. 55. Stephinathis, iv. 3. Stilpo, vii. 58. Strabo, xiii. 14. Strato, viii. 38. Straton (wrestler), xi. 48. Sulpicius (prefect), xv. 8. SuPHis, i. 28. NAMES OF PERSONS. 399 Sylla, xi. 27. Syiiesius (bishop), xix. 21. Syrianus (general), xviii. 19. (Platonist), xix. 40. TACELOTnis, iii. 11. Tachos, v. 44. Tacitus, xvii. 33. Tahpenes, iii. 6. Taia, ii. 25. Tamos, v. 35. Tartan, iv. 4. Tatius, Achilles, xviii, 14. Tennes, v. 51. Tetrilius, xi. 27. Thais, vii. 72. Thales, iv. 23. Thannyras, v. 32. Thaumasius, St., xix. 25. Thecla, xix. 32. Themistius (deacon), xxi. 25. Theocritus, viii. 35. Theodorus of Gyrene, iv. 28. Atheos, vii. 68. (bishop), xvii. 45. (monk), xix. 31 ; xxi. 25. Theodosius, xix. 1. Theodosius II., xix. 23. Theodosius, son of Calliopus, xx. 2 4. (bishop), xxi. 2. Theodotion, xvii. 56. Theodotus, ix. 39. of Chios, xii. 2. (general), xvii. 10. Theognostus, xvii. 48. Theon (mathematician), xix. 10. (monk), xviii. 59. Theophilus (monk), xviii. 28. Theophilus of Antioch, xiv. 16. (bishop), xix. 2. (writer), xix. 34. Theophylactus Simocatta, xxi. 32. Theopompus, v. 50 ; vii. 59. Thermus, x. 50. Thessalonica, vii. 44. Thomas (Manichsean), xvii. 53. (critic), xxi. 38. Thothmosis, i. 39. Thothmosis II., i. 46. Thothmosis III., ii. 2. Thothmosis IV., ii.22. Tiberius, xiii. 22. Tiberius, xxi. 29. Tiberius Nero, xii. 13. Tiberius Alexander, xiii. 56. Tiberius Julius Alexander, xiv. 2. Tibullus (poet), xiii. 3. Tiglath-Pileser, iii. 21. Tigranes, xii. 41. ^, Timageues, xi. 62. Timocharis, viii. 39. Timogenes (general), xvii. 19. Timolaus of Palmyra, xvii. 18. Timon, viii. 51. Timosthenes, viii. 47. Tiraotheus, vii. 16. Timotheus (bishop), xix. 23 ; xx. 23. Timotheus 511urus, xx. 8. Salophaciolus, xx. 8. Tinnius Rufus, xv. 17. Tirhakah, iii. 24. Tissaphernes, v. 35. Titus, xiii. 65 ; xiv. 20. Tlepolemus, ix. 53. Tnephactus, iii. 16. Trajan, xv. 2. Ti-yphsena, x. 77. Tryphiodorus (poet), xx. 18. Tryphon (Jew), xv. 29. Tryphon, (grammarian), xiii. 21. Tyrrhus, xi. 19. Uchora, iv. 1. Ulpian, xvi. 32. Urbib (Jew), xx. 26. Vaballathus, xvii. 23. Valens, xviii. 53. Valentinian, xviii. 53. Valentinus, xv. 24. Valerian, xvii. 5. Valerius, x. 2. Valerius Pollio, xv. 16. Diodorus, xv. 16. Venephres, i. 18. Vespasian, xiii. 65 ; xiv. 6. Vetrasius Pollio, xiii. 31. ViTELLius, xiv. 5. Vopiscus (historian), xvii. 26. Xenophanes, iv. 25. Xerxes, v. 17. Xerxes II. v. 34. Zabbineus, x. 64. Zabda (general), xvii. 19. Zedekiah, iv. 13. Zeno, XX. 10. Zeno (physician), xviii. 48. Zbnobia, xvii. 18. Zenodotus, viii. 32. (Platonist), xxi. 24. Zerah, iii. 9. Zoilus (critic), viii. 50. (bishop), xxi. 5. Zopyrus, xi. 65. SECOND INDEX: QUOTATIONS EEOM THE BIBLE. The Numbers are those of the Chapters and Sections. Genesis. ch. i. ii. 16, xi. 39 ch. ii. 13 xiii. 48 ck X. 7 i. 2 ch. X. 13, 14 i. 34, ii. 4 ch. xi. i. 32 ch. xii. i. 32 ch. xxxvii i. 41 ch. xxxvii, 25 i, 25 ch. xl. i. 41 ch. xli. i. 42 ch. xliii. 32 i. 45 ch. xliv. 5 ii. 17 ch. xlvi. i. 44 ch. xlvi. 34 i. 6 ch. xlvii. i. 43, iv. 47 ch. 1. i. 45 Exodus. ch. i. 11 ii. 8 ch. vii. 11 ii. 17 ch. xii. 2 ii. 20 ch. xii. 40 viii. 58 ch. xiii. ii. 9 ch. xiii. 4 ii. 20 ch. xiv. ii. 9 ch. XV. 22 ii. 10 ch. XV. 27 ii. 10 ch. xvi. 3 ii. 15 ch. xvi. 13 ii. 10 ch. xvii. 1 ii. 10 ch. xvii. 8 ii. 10 ch. xvii. 15 ii. 11 ch. XX. 4 ii. 16 ch. xxi. 16 ii, 16 ch. XXV. 20 ii. 18 ch. XXX, 13 viii, 65, ix. 11, xv. 1 ch. xxxii. ii. 18 ch. xxxvii ii. 18 LEVITICtJS, ch. xix. 28 ii. 16 ch. xix. 31 xiv. 9 ch. XX. 27 ii. 17 ch. xxi. 5 ii. 16 Leviticus — contii ch. XXV. 13 ii. 15 ch. xxvii. 30 ii. 15 Numbers, ch. X. 29 ii, 12 ch. xiii. 2 ii. 12 ch. xiii. 22 iii, 10 ch, xiii. 26 ii. 12 ch, xiv. 33 ii. 12 ch. xix. 2 ii. 16 ch. XX. 14 ii. 12 cli. xxi, 9 ii. 18 ch. xxxiii ii. 12 ch. xxxiii. 10 ii. 10 Deuteronomy. ch. vi. 4 viii. 59 ch. vi. 9 ii. 18 ch. xi. 10 ii. 15 ch. xi. 20 ii. 18 ch. xi. 29 X. 26 ch. xvi, 21 ii. 16 ch, xxiii, 7 iii. 25 ch. xxvi. 13 ii, 16 ch. xxvi, 14 ii. 16, x, 31 ch, xxvii. 12 X. 26 ch. xxvii. 4 X. 26 Joshua. ch. viii. 30 x. 26 ch. xvi. 10 iii. 2 Judges. ch. XV. ii. 37 1 Samuel. ch. xiii. 19 ii. 48 ch. xiv. 47 ii. 60 ch. XXX. 11 ii. 48 2 Samuel. ch. viii. 14 ii. 60 ch. xxiii, 21 ii, 48 SECOND INDEX : QUOTATIONS FROM THE BIBLE. 401 1 Kings. ch. iii. 1 ch. vi. 1 ch. ix. X. ch. ix. 16 ch. ix. 2S ch. X. 23 ch. xi. 19 ch. xi. 40 ch. xxii. 2 Kings. ch. yiii. 20 ch. xvii. 4 ch. xviii. 4 ch. xviii. 10 ch. xix. 9 ch. xix. 23 ch. xxiv. ch. XXV. 1 Chronicles. ch. iii. 23 2 Chronicles. ch. xi. 10 ch. xii. 2 ch. xii. 3 ch. xiv. ch. xvii. 11 ch. XXXV. ch. xxxvi. NeheImiah. ch. xii. 16 Esther. ch. xi. 1 Psalms. xlv. xlviii. 7 Ixviii. 31 Ixix. civ. 4 cxxiv. cxxxix. Isaiah. 111. z viii. 58 ii. 60 iii. 2 ii. 61 ii. 39; iii. 2 iii. 4 iii. 4 ch. ii. 18 iii. 11 ch, xxxvii. ch. XX xix. ch. xlii. 15 iii. 11 ch. xliii. iii. 20 ch. xliii. 9 iii. 3 ch. xliv. iii. 22 ch. xlvi. 2 iii. 24 ch. xlvi. 9 iii. 25 ch. xlvii. iv. 9 iv. 9 Lamentations. vii. 40 iii. 10 iii. 4 i. 2 iii. 9 iii. 11 iv. 8 iv. 9 vii. 40 X. 2T . iii. 2 . iii. 25 . iii. 11 . iv. 16 .viii. 59 . iv. 16 . xi. 39 ch. xi. 15 ii. 9 ; iv, 7 ch. x\-iii, iii. 23 ch, xix. 2 iii. 10 ch. xix. 4 iii. 18 ch. xix. 5 iii. 16 ch, xix. 18 iv. 15 ch. xix, 19 X. 25 ch, xix. 24 iii, 22 ch. XX. 1 iii. 25 ch. xxi. 13 ii, 60 ch. xxiii. iii. 13 ch. xxvii. 12 iv. 17 ch. XXX. 4 iii. 6 Isaiah — continued. ch. xxxvii. 3( ch. xxxix. ch. xliii. 3 ch. xlv. 14 ch. i. 1 ch. iv. 54 EZERIEL. ch. xvii. ch, xxvii. ch, xxvii 7 ch, xxix. ch. XXX. ch. xl. 5 Daniel. ch. ix. 25 Hosi Joel. ch. ix. 6 ch. iii. 19 Nahum. ch, iii. 8 Zephaniah. ch. iii. 10 Zechariah. ch. xiv. 18 Wisdom of Solomon. ch. iii. 14 ECCLESIASTICUS. ch. i. 1 ch. vii. 14 1 Maccabees. ch. iv. 5 ch. X. iii. 24 iii. 27 iv. 30 iv. 30 ch. xliv. 25 viii. 46 Jeremiah. iv. 17 iv. 13 iv. 13 iv. 15 iv. 15, 16 iii, 6 iv. 16 iv, 9 ii. 4 iv. 13 iv. 16 iv, 16 iv, 14 iv, 14 iii. 13 iv, 14 ch, xxix. 11 iv, 5 iv. 33 iv, 46 i. 61 iii, 22 iii. 17 iii, 12 iii. 23 iv, 18 .xiv. 16 60 25 X. 13 X. 44 ch. xiv, XV X, 58 D D 402 SECOxND INDEX : QUOTATIONS FROM THE BIBLE. 2 Maccabees. eh. i 7 X. 58 eh. i. 10 X. 13, 72 ch. ii. 13, 14 X. 61 ch. ii. 23 X. 59 ch. X. 13 X. 8 , Matthew, ! ch. V. 41 xiii. 42 ch, xvii. 24 ix. 11 ; xr, i Mark, ch. xiv. 3 xii. 34 Luke. ch, xxii. 25 x. 77 Acts. I ch. Ti. 9 xiii. 8 ; ch. viii. 9 XV. 22 j ch. viii. 27 xiii. 17 ' ch. xxi. 38 xiii. 56 i Acts — continued. ch. xxiii. 8 v, 43 ch. xxiv, 24 xiii 40 ch, xxvii. xiii. 58 ch. :3^xviii. 7 xiii. 59 2 Thessaloniaks. ch. ii. 3, 4 xiv. 8 1 Timothy. ch. vi, 20 XV. 22 2 Peter. ch. iii. 5 xi, 39 Revelation. ch. vi. 5 XV. 23 ch. xi. 3 xiv. 13 ch. xiii. 11 xiii. 65 ch. xix. 8 xix. 7 ch. xix, 20 xiv. 8 THIRD INDEX: OF SUBJECTS. The Xumbars are those of the Chapters and Sections. Abraxas, its meaning, xv. 21. Abyssinia, visited by Solomon's ships, ii. 61 ; Jews settle there, iii. 23 ; Christianity preached there, xviii. 28. See Adule and Auxum. Adule, the monument at, ix. 10 ; its second inscription, xxi, 12 ; visited by Cosmas, xxi. 25. Accents invented, ix. 15 ; set right, xiii. 38. Age, end of, with the Jews, xv, 10 ; with the Egyptians, xv. 32 ; Ages or ^ons, XV. 22. Alchemy, its name, xiii. 49 ; studied, xvii. 41 ; xix. 41. Alexandria, founded, vi. 7 ; its market opened, vi. 14; its privileges, vii. 13; is described, vii. 15, xiii. 14 ; the lighthouse planned, vi. 17 ; built, viii. 22 ; Hephoestion its god, vi. 17 ; Ptolemy and Berenice its gods, viiL 22 ; the Museum, vii. 17, viii. 30 ; the city attacked by Antiochus, x. 7 ; the Claudian Museum, xiii. 42 ; new buildings, xv. 39 ; rebels against Dio- cletian, xvii. 40 ; is conquered by the Persians, xxi. 36 ; by the Arabs, xxi. 48. Alexandrians, called Macedonians, vii. 34, ix. 62, xiii. 55 ; their literature, ix. 27 ; their character, xv. 6, xvii. 36, 42 ; their satire, xiii. 32, xiv. 17, xvi. 26. Ammonia made, vi. 9. Anatomy studied, vii. 61. Animals worshipped, i. 17, v. 27, xi. 40. Antioch built, vii, 26 ; rises over Alex- andria, xviii. 16 ; its changes in the creed, xviii. 18, Apis, the bull, worshipped, i. 17 ; its spots, V. 5 ; its miraculous birth, v. 5 ; its temple, v. 25 ; killed by Cam- byses, v. 5 ; honoured by Darius, V. 9 ; consulted by Endoxus, v. 42 ; killed by Ochus, v. 53 ; honoured by Alexander, vi. 6 ; its funeral under Ptolemy, vii. 11 ; its tombs, vii. 11 ; its funeral under Auletes, xi. 40 ; its birthday, xi. 40 ; slighted by Augus- tus, xiii. 7 ; consulted by Germani- cus, xiii. 24 ; honoured by Titus, xiv. 18 ; worshipped imder Julian, xviii. 49. Arabia, South, visited by Solomon's ships, ii. 61 ; seat of Nazarene Christians, xviii. 10 ; of Jewish Arabs, xviii. 28 ; xxi. 3. See Hadramaut. Arabia invaded by Grallus, xiii. 15. Ai-abs, defeated by Rameses III., ii. 46 ; part of the Egyptian population, v, 13 ; numerous in Egypt, xiii. 16 ; rebel, XV, 41 ; attack Upper Egypt, xvi. 18 ; hold Egypt, xvii, 28 ; regain Petra, xviii, 64 ; overthrow the Persians, xxi, 39 ; conquer Egypt, xxi, 44, Arch used in buildings, ii. 8, iv. 19. Architecture, early, i. 18 ; style de- scribed, ii. 24 ; of temple, x, 30, xiii. 23, xiv. 19. Arian controversy, xvii. 51, xviii. 3. Arians, declared heretics, xviii. 6 ; triumph, xviii. 19, 27; defeated, xviii. 45 ; persecuted, xix. 8 ; restorsd, xx. 1 ; again deposed, xx. 11 ; again re- stored, XX. 13 ; again deposed, xx. 14 ; again restored, xxi. 6 ; deposed by the Persians, xxi. 36 ; are said to Grsecize, xviii. 47. Armenian learning, xix. 35. Army, under Rameses, ii. 43, 46 ; under Shishank, iii. 5 ; under Hophra, iv. 20 ; fight in phalanx, iv. 29 ; under Tacbos, V. 44 ; under Philadelphus, viii. 74 ; under Philopator, ix. 40 ; under Archelaus and Berenice, xi. 59 ; under Antony, xii. 45 ; under Theo- dosius, xix. 44 ; under Justinian, xxi. 9, 18 ; its privileges, iii. 5, iv. 20 ; the size needed among the Greeks, vii. 25. 404 THIRD INDEX: Ashdod taken by the Assyrians, iii. 25; by Psammetichus, iv. 4. Astrology, works on, viii. 45, 46 ; on the coins, xv. 32; studied, xv. 34; forbidden, xviii. 39. Astronomy, under Rameses II., ii. 34 ; studied, v. 42, viii. 39, 40, 41 ; its progress, x. 41, xv. 35 ; Berenice's hair, ix. 4. Assyria, its extent and history, iii, 21, 22 ; its fall, iv. 8. Auxum, conquered by Euergetes I., ix. 10 ; Christianity preached there, xviii. 28 ; the Bible translated for it, xviii. 28 ; the obelisk, xxi. 17. Babylon, its rise, iv. 8 ; conquered by Antigonus, vii. 20 ; its fall under Antioch, vii.- 26. Baptismal service, xxi. 1. Basalt used for statues, iv. 54. Bible, Hebrew genealogies closed, vii. 40 ; translated into Greek, viii. 57 ; quarrels about the Samaritan version, X. 26 ; end of the book of Esther added, x. 27 ; book of Maccabees ad- ded, X. 59 ; Wisdom of the son of Sirach added, x. 60 ; Wisdom of Solo- mon added, xiv. 16 ; mystic method of interpreting, xiii. 36 ; edited by Origen, Hesychius, and Lucianus, xvii. 56 ; three Coptic versions, xvii. 56 ; Ethiopic version, xviii. 28 ; Greek MSS. made for the Roman church, xviii. 35 ; the Alexandrian, Paris, and Vatican MSS,, xix. 32 ; Latin version, xix. 33 ; Armenian version, xix. 35 ; Syriac versions corrected, xxi. 38. Bishops in Egypt, xiii. 62 ; their num- ber increased, xv. 52; again increased, xvi. 39 ; their rank allowed, xvii. 12 ; mode of electing, xviii. 2 ; of rival churches, xviii. 45, xxi. 7. Blemmyes rebel, xvii. 35 ; attack the Oasis, xix. 30 ; conquer Upper Egypt, XX. 4 ; are Bishareen Arabs, xxi, 67. Books of Thoth, xvi. 6, xvii. 17 ; of the gods, xvi. 6 ; of Hermes Trismegistus, X. 39, xvi. 8. Britain described by Hecatseus, vii. 36 ; visited by Demetrius, xii. 30 ; trade with, xxi. 20, Bubastis, i, 42, iii. 1 ; its rise, i. 23 ; described, iii. 6 ; its fall, iv. 22, Camelopards in Ethiopia, ii, 4, iii, 8 ; in Rome, xii, 16. Camels not mentioned by the Egyptians, V. 13. Canal dug by Necho, iv. 7 ; by Darius, v. 14 ; by Philadelphus, viii. 25 ; used under Cleopatra, xii. 45 ; dug by Tra- jan, XV, 9 ; used in ninth century, XV. 9. Canals cleared by the Romans, xiii. 13. Calendar arranged, i. 21, ii. 6 ; in reign of Rameses II., ii. 34 ; of Rameses III., ii. 48 ; in the time of Herodotus, v. 30 ; reformed by Julius Cissar, xiii. 4. Canopus, city of, its name, iii. 16, vii. 37 ; its trade stopped, vi. 14 ; its superstitions, xvi. 4, xviii. 48, xix. 6. Caricatures, xi. 45. Caravans from Gilead, i. 25 ; from Per- sian Gulf, ii. 60 ; from Berenice, viii. 23. Castes, their origin, i. 3 ; a cause of political weakness, ii. 51 ; of skUl in trade, iv. 45. Catechetical school, its first professors, xvi. 14 ; its professor an Egyptian, xvii. 48 ; is closed, xix. 12. Cats worshipped, i. 17, v. 27, xi. 41. Celibacy praised in the Wisdom of Solo- mon, xiv. 16 ; in the Gospel according to the Egyptians, xvi. 10 ; by the christian monks, xviii. 31, xviii. 60. Ceylon discovered, xiii. 45. Chemistry studied, xiv. 49. Christianity, introduced, xiii. 49 ; cor- rupted, XV. 21, xvi. 10, 11 ; its spread, xv. 27 ; attacked by Celsus, XV. 52 ; sometimes discouraging to learning, xvi. 14 ; forbidden by Seve- rus, xvi. 22 ; less corrupted in Syria, xvi. 38 ; persecuted by Decius, xvii. 1 ; allowed by Gallienus, xvii. 12 ; per- secuted by Diocletian, xvii. 44 ; at- tacked by Hierocles, xvii. 47 ; cor- rupted by paganism, xix. 7, 1 7 ; driven out of Nubia, xx, 6, Church, the first in Alexandria, xvii. 32. Cisterns under Alexandria, vii. 15, xii. 9. Cleopatra's needle, made by Thothmosis III., ii. 7 ; carved by Rameses II., and removed to Alexandria bv Tiberius, xiii. 22. Climate, i. 4; unfavourable to Europeans, xi. 63, xviii. 11. Clothing, iv. 43 ; of ladies, vii, 53. Coinage, its standard of weight, vii. 54 ; its use to the historian, vii. 54, xvii. 43 ; its large size, viii. 65 ; is used for proclamations, xvi. 17 ; is debased, xiii, 29, xviii, 25 ; with Latin inscrip- tions, xvii. 29, 43 ; is discontinued, xvii. 43, Coins, Alexandrian, of Soter, vii, 54 ; of Arsinoe, viii, 65 ; of Philadelphus, viii, 65 ; of Euergetes L, ix, 29 ; of Philopator, ix, 59 ; of Epiphanes, ix. 88 ; of Philometor, x. 43 ; of Alex- OF SUBJECTS. 405 ander I., xi. 21 ; of Cleopatra Cocce, xi. 21 ; of Soter II., xi. 29 ; of Selene, xi. 29 ; of Nens Dionysus, xi. 66 ; of Antony and Cleopatra, xii. 43, 44 ; of Augustus, xiii. 18 ; of Tiberius, xiii. 30 ; of Claudius, xiii. 43 ; of Nero, xiii. 59 ; of Galba, xiv. 4; of Domitian, xiv. 27 ; of Trajan, xv. 2 ; of Hadrian, XV. 31 ; of Antoninus, xv. 33 ; of Aurelius, xv. 40 ; of Severus, xvi. 19; of Zenobia, xvii. 21 ; of Vaballathus, xvii. 25 ; of Domitius, xvii. 29 ; of Severina, xvii. 33 ; of 2nd Legion, xvii. 37 ; of Justinian, xxi. 28. Coins of Cyprus, v. 11. Coins of Malta, xiii. 58. Coins, Persian, of Aryandes, v. 10. Coins, Roman, of Fabius Pictor, viii. 13 ; of Atilius Calatinus, viii. 28 ; of M. Lepidus, ix. 70 ; of Lentulus Marcel- linus, xi. 49 ; of Aurelius Cotta, xi. 49 ; of Canidius Crassus, xi. 53 ; of Sosius, xii. 44 ; of Nerva, xv. 1 ; of Constantius, xviii. 37. Coins, Syrian, of Alexander Balas, of Demetrius Nicator, of Antiocbus VI., X. 46. Colchis colonised, ii. 38. Conic sections, ix. 25. Constantinople built, xviii. 11. Controversy, of Justin with Trypho the Jew, XV. 28 ; of Jason with Papiscus, XV. 54 ; with Unitarians and Sabel- lians, xvii. 3 ; on the Millenium, xvii. 16 ; on Arianism, xvii. 51 ; xviii. 3 ; of Herban and Gregentius, xxi. 15. Coptic language, i. 22 ; its dialects, i. 22; xvii. 56; its alphabet, xvi. 13; is no longer spoken, xxi. 54. Coptos, its trade, viii, 23; xiii. 16; becomes an Arabic city, xiii. 16, xvii. 35. Corn, stored by government, i. 43 ; sent to Athens, v. 19 ; taxed by Tachos, v. 44 ; by Cleomenes, vi. 16 ; supplied to the Alexandrians, ix. 53 ; sent to Cyprus, X. 22 ; stored in Rome, xv. 4 ; supply stopt, xvii. 10 ; supply in- creased, xvii. 42 ; supplied to Constan- tinople, xxi. 18. Cos, island of, taken by Soter, vii. 43 ; its silk manufacture, vii. 53 ; Phila- delphus born there, viii. 1, 36 ; royal treasure sent there, xi. 13 ; taken by Mithridates, xi. 30. Cost, of building the Pyramids, i. 30 ; of labourers' wages, i. 30 ; of a child's maintenance, iv. 47 ; of funeral for Apis, vii. 11 ; xi. 40. Cotton used in Egypt, iv. 42 ; grown in Upper Egypt, xiii. 48. Creation, The, opinion about, xi. 39. Criticism, its three kinds, x. 35 ; on Homer, viii. 32, ix. 15, x. 33, xiii. 39 ; by Ammonius Saccas, xvi. 33 : on the Scriptures, see Bible. Crocodiles, buried in Crocodilopolis, v. 27 ; fed on lake Moeris, xiii. 14 ; seen in the Delta, xiii. 56. Crucifixion, The, its date, xiv. 13. Cyprus, described, iii. 14, vii. 23 ; con- quered by Shalmaneser, iii. 22 ; by Hophra, iv. 13 ; by Nebuchadnezzar, iv. 13 ; by Amasis, iv. 26 ; by Cyrus, iv. 30 ; rebels against Persia, v. 37 ; coaquered by Artaxerxes, v. 37 ; by Ptolemy, vii. 23 ; given to Ptolemy Alexander, xi. 6 ; given up to Rome, xi. 53. Cyrene, the Greeks helped by Amasis, iv. 27 ; is attacked by the Libyans, v. 8 ; conquered by Ptolemy, vii. 4- ; rebels, vii. 22 ; is given to Magas, vii. 22 ; Magas rebels, viii. 15 ; its school of philosophy, vii. 65 ; is given to Euergetes II., x. 15 ; is given up to Rome, xi. 32. Damascus, taken from Philopator, ix. 38. Daniel, book of, the Weeks explained, xi. 61 ; otherwise explained, xv. 10 ; its translations, xvii. 56. Daphiiae, Tahpenes, or Hanes, iii. 6 ; visited by Jeremiah, iv. 16. Dates fixed, by the calendar, ii. 6, 20 ; by generations, ii. 20 ; by astronomy, iii. 27, viii. 39, xv. 35 ; by astrologi- cal record, xv. 34 ; by coins, xiii. 43, xvii. 43. Dioscorides or Socotara, island of, x. 71. Disease of quinsey, its symptoms, xvii. 6 ; plague, xvii. 13. Docetse, sect of, xvi. 11. Doorkeeper of heaven, xix. 7. Drachma, Alexandrian, its weight, vii. 54 ; compared with the sliekel, ix, 11. Eagles, two on coins for two sovereigns, xi. 21. Ebony, Ethiopian, ii. 1, ii. 61, iii. 8. Eclipses, observed in Babylon, iii. 27 ; in Alexandria, viii. 39 ; the records saved, xv. 35. Edomites, oppose Moses, ii. 12 ; their trade, ii. 60 ; history of, iii. 4. Elephantine, kingdom of, i. 11 ; it sinks, i. 36. Elephants, used in battle, vii. 25, vii. 74 ; their number in an army, vii. 48, ix. 40 ; brought from Ethiopia, viii. 28 ; these smaller than the Asiatic, ix. 41. 40G THIRD INDEX Emerald mines, viii. 24, xix. 41. Engineering, i. 47. Enoch, book of, quoted, xv, 10 ; found in Ethiopia, xxi. 17. Era of the Egyptian monarchy, i. 8 ; of Menophra, i. 21, ii. 6 ; of Alexander's death, vi. 21 ; of Diocletian, or the Martyrs, xvii. 49 ; of the Creation, xviii. 16. Ethiopia, is joined to Egypt, i. 37 ; its temples and arts, i. 40 ; is conquered by Rameses, ii. 36, 44 ; is visited by the Greek Gods, ii. 56 ; by the Egyp- tian Gods, xi. 40 ; is described, iii. 8 ; invades Judsea, iii. 9 ; conquers Egypt, iii. 18 ; resists Cambyses, v. 1 ; its tribute to Persia, v. 15 ; is conquered by Egypt, ix. 10 ; fights against the Romans, xiii. 16, 63 ; is given up to the natives, xvii. 39 ; not the seat of the Ethiopia language, xviii. 28. Eunuchs, Egyptian, v. 53 ; employed at court, ix. 82, xii. 2. Etymology of Ham, i. 2 ; Menes, i. 9 ; Mnevis, i. 17 ; Week, i. 21 ; Pyramid, i. 29 ; Pharaoh, i. 32, vii. 54 ; Philis- tines, i. 34 ; Zepli-net Phoenich, i. 42 ; Shem, i. 44 ; Moses, ii. 15 ; Egyptian months, ii. 6, 20 ; Succoth or Scenoe, ii. 9 ; Migdol, ii. 9 ; Pi- hahiroth, ii. 9 ; Kadesh, ii. 12 ; Dionysus, ii. 11 ; names of Hebrew Letters, ii. 19; Nubia, ii. 44; Canopy, ii. 47 ; Bubastis, iii. 1 ; Urim and Thummim, iii. 4 ; Zerah, iii. 9 ; Nile, iv. 17 ; nitre, natron, alabaster, syenite, topaz, sapphire, ammonia, emerald, iv. 45 ; iSerapis, v. 25, vii. 16 ; Thebes, Memnon, Abydos, Cano- pus, vii. 37 ; Philte, viii. 29 ; Oden- athus, Yaballathus, xvii. 23 ; paper, parchment, x. 75 ; helm, galley, xii. 10 ; Cleopatra, xii. 52 ; chemistry, naphtha, anthracite, obsidian, xiii. 49 ; Phoenix, xiii. 53 ; Abraxas, xv.21. Famine, under Cleopatra, xii. 35 ; under Trajan, xv. 4 ; under Gallus, xvii. 6 ; under Diocletian, xvii. 41 ; under Anastasius, xx. 27. Fighting cocks, xv. 6 ; the champion killed, xiii. 12. Fishes worshipped, xiv. 22, 23. Fools at court, ix. 52. Forgeries of books, x. 76, xv. 57 ; speeches against Demosthenes, x. 76 ; "VVisdom of Solomon, xiv. 16 ; Testa- ments of the XII. Patriarchs, xv. 10 ; Sibylline verses, xv. 55 _; Recognitions of Clemens, xv. 56 ; Life of St. An- thony, xviii. 31. Funeral ceremonies, i. 37 ; the trial of the dead, ii. 32 ; it becomes a mere form, xi. 43. Gauls in Egypt under Philadelpbus, viii. 16 ; under Philopator, ix. 40 ; under Cleopatra, xiii. 6 ; in Syria under Antiochus, ix. 5. Geography improved, iv. 7, viii. 26, ix. 16, X. 67, 70, 71, XV. 35 ; the roads surveyed, xiii. 5, xv. 36. Glass windows, xvii. 28. Gnosticism, xv. 22 ; on tlie coins, xiv. 10, XV. 31 ; explained by Clemens, xvi. 15 ; opposed by Plotinus, xvi. 35 ; appears again in Manicheism, xvii. 53. God, use of the word, x. 43, xi. 43 ; by Clemens, xvi. 15 ; Son of God, a title, xiii. 18. Gods, described, i. 8, ii. 53, 54, vii. 16 ; their journey to Ethiopia, ii. 56, xi. 40 ; new introduced, iv. 19, vii. 16, xiii. 25, xiv. 24 ; infant god, xiv. 25. Gog, or the Scythians invade Palestine, iv. 5. Gothen, land of, ii. 9, iv. 15. Gospel, according to the Egyptians, xvi. 10 ; St. Matthew in Hebrew, xvi. 14. Gospels, quoted by Justin, xv. 27 ; by Celsus, XV. 54. Government, mixed in Upper Egypt, more despotic in Lower Egypt, i. 43 ; under Rameses, ii. 46 ; \inder Alex- ander, vi. 1 1 ; under Augustus, xiii. 2 ; under Theodosius, xix. 44 ; under Justinian, xxi. 18. Greek letters, their origin, ii. 27 ; their early forms, iv. 4 ; their changes, xii. 61. Guttural in the language, i. 22, 24, 46, 11. 20. Hadramaut, embassy to, xxi. 3, 13 ; con- quered by the Hexumitse, xxi. 11. Hecate, a name for Isis, xv. 15. Heliopolis, Moses dwells there, ii. 8 ; its school, iv. 17, viii. 45 ; visited by Plato, V. 42 ; by Strabo, xiii. 14. Heroopolis, bay of, crossed by Moses, ii. 9 ; its head cut off, iv. 7 ; united by Trajan's canal, xv. 9. Hieroglyphics, their progress, i. 19 ; not native in Ethiopia, i. 39 ; the origin of the Hebrew letters, i. 62 ; of the Greek, ii. 27 ; of the Phenician, iv. 26 ; translated to Herodotus, v. 26 ; written on by Democrisus, v. 34 ; neglected by Greeks, viii. 25, ix. 18 ; translated to Germanicus, xiii. 24 ; written on by Chseremon, xiii. 61 ; OF SUBJECTS. 407 still used under Commodus, xvi. 4; the origin of some Coptic letters, xvi. 12 ; written on by Clemens, xvi. 13 ; by Herraapion, xviii. 12; by Hora- pollo, xix. 11. Homer, mentions Egypt, ii. 56, ill. 15 ; IS read in public, viii. 49 ; a temple to, ix. 58, X. 39 ; his editors, x. 35 ; his Frogs and Mice, x. 37. Horoscope of nativity, xv. 34. Homeric poets, xv, 46. Horse-races, in Alexandria, xv. 6 ; be- tween pagans and Christians, xviii. 62 ; in Antinoopolis, xv. 14. Immortality of the soul, i. 37, v. 29 ; the two forms of belief, v. 43 ; the belief shown in the mummies, xix. 7. India, visited by Dionysius, viii. 26 ; reached by the sea, x. 70 ; the route to, through Egypt, xiii. 44 ; a name for Ethiopia, xiii. 47. Iron, near Thebes, i. 10 ; in Cyprus, iii. 14. Isis, her lament for Osiris, v. 31, viii, 14 ; her pictures and temple in Eome, xiv, 26. Jerusalem conquered by Shishank, iii, 4 ; by Nebuchadnezzar, iv. 10 ; insulted by Philopator, ix. 43 ; falls under Syria, ix. 68 ; freed by the Maccabees, x. 58 ; taken by Pompey, xi, 51. Jews in Goshen, i. 44 ; their route through the desert, ii, 9, x. 12; their laws compared with the Egyptian, ii. 16 ; progress of their nation, ii. 59, 61 ; conquered by Necho, iv. 8 ; flee to Egypt under Johanan, iv, 15 ; again in Goshen, iv. 15 ; send up to Jerusalem at the feast, iv. 18 ; settle in Alex- andria, vii. 39 ; the temple at Onion, X. 27 ; their importance, xi, 7 ; still numerous in Goshen, xii. 14 ; their citizenship disputed, xii, 35 ; the Therapeut£e, xiii. 26 ; their perse- cutions, xiii. 33 ; their privileges con- firmed, xiii. 40 ; their persecutions, xiii. 55 ; the temple at Onion closed, but privileges confirmed, xiv. 14 ; they rebel against Trajan, xv. 18 ; against Hadrian, xv. 30, Jews, temple tax, its amount, ix, 11 ; remitted by Nerva, xv, 1 ; again im- posed, XV. 13 ; still levied, xxi. 49. Judges, their number, iv. 40 ; their oath, ix. 31 ; their books, xi. 44 ; under Augustus, xiii. 2. Labyrinth near Crocodilopolis, i. 14 ; described, v. 26. Lake of Moeris embanked, i. 13 ; de- stroyed, xiii. 52 ; Bitter Lake, iv. 7 ; iv. 11, viii. 25 ; Lake Serbonis, iv. 11 ; Crocodile Lake, iv. 7, iv. 11, v. 14 ; Lo.ke Mareotis, xiii. 14 ; Natron Lake, xviii. 56. Land, its rent and tenure, i. 43 ; the acres once cultivated, iv. 47 ; now cultivated, xxi, 51. Language, Coptic, its dialects, i. 22. Laws, iv. 40 ; Jewish, ii. 16 ; of Augus- tus, xiii. 3 ; above the will of the emperor, xv. 3 ; of Justinian, xxi. 18. Length of a stadium, vii. 15, ix, 16 ; of a schsenus, xiii. 16 ; of a cubit, xiii. 13. Letters invented, i. 19 ; B, D, R, the same as P, T, L, i. 22 ; the guttural, i. 22, 24 ; B, used for M, v, 33 ; NT, used for D, v. 8, Lexicon, Greek, written, xx. 21. Librarians, viii. 31, ix, 15, 56, xiii. 61. Library of the Memnonium, ii, 34, vii. 37. Library of the Museum, founded, vii. 17 ; enlarged by Philadelphus, viii, 30 ; by Euergetes IL, x. 75 ; burnt by Julius Caesar, xii. 7. Library of the Serapeum, xii. 40 ; its contents, xv. 43 ; scattered under Theo- dosius, xix. 4 ; burnt by the Arabs, xxi. 52. Library of Bishop George, xviii. 44. Linen, clothes, iv. 42 ; breastplate, iv. 42 ; whole armour, ix. 10 ; grown in the Delta, xiii. 49. Liturgy of St. Mark, xvii. 32 ; of the Coptic church, xxi. 7. Macedonians of Alexandria, vii. 2. 34. Magic studied, ii, 17 ; forbidden by the Jews, ii. 17; still studied, xv. 15; again forbidden, xviii. 39. Malta, its monuments and people, xiii. Manicheism, xvii. 53. Manuscripts, their materials, vii. 18, X, 75, xiii. 48 ; how written, xv. 44 ; illuminated, xx, 29. Marriage with only one wife, i. 27 ; be- tween Greek and Egyptian, vii, 14 ; between brother and sister, v. 6, x. 9, xi. 1, xii. 1 ; with several wives, xi. 44 ; marriage settlements, xiv. 3. Mathematics, geometry, viii. 33 ; hydro- statics, viii. 34 ; conic sections, ix. 25; pneumatics and steam, x, 42 ; algebra and Diophantine problems, xix. 10. Measures of length, iv. 46, ix. 16, xiii, 13. Meats forbidden, pork, ii. 16 ; beef, v. 408 THIRD INDEX Mechanical knowledge, i. 47. Medicine, of Pamphilus, x. 39 ; of Aetius, XX. 22 ; of Aaron, xxi. 38. jMemnonium, of Abydos, ii. 30; of Thebes, ii. 34. Memphis, kingdom of, i. 15, 28 ; its chief kings, iv. 1 ; city described, v. 25 ; the residence of Euergetes, ix. 12 ; held by the Persians, v. 19. Millennium of the Egyptians, v. 29 ; taught by Virgil, xiii. 20 ; by the Gnostics, XV. 21, xvii. 16 ; by the Church, xvii. 16. Mines, of gold and silver, ii. 5, x. 66 ; their produce, ii. 44 ; near Berenice in Nubia, iii. 19, v. 4, xi. 47 ; of copper near Sinai, i. 28, ii. 7, 45 ; in Cyprus, iii. 14, vii. 23 ; of emeralds, viii. 24, xix. 41. Miracles, pretended, ii. 17 ; by Apollo- nius, xiv. 8; by Vespasian, xiv. 10; St, Jerome's opinion of, xiv. 9 ; not quoted to support Christianity, xv. 54 ; by the monks, xviii. 31 ; the be- lief explained, xviii. 33. Mistakes, of Herodotus, v. 24 ; of the Greeks, viii. 37 ; of Diodorus, xi. 36. Mithra worshipped in Alexandria, xvii. 52 ; his worship stopped, xviii. 43. Monks, pagan, viii, 29, x. 31, xi. 39, xiii. 28 ; Jewish, xiii. 26 ; Christian, xvi. 11, xviii. 29, xxi. 25 ; visited by Rufinus, xviii. 59 ; from Italy, xix. 31 ; of Mount Sinai, xix, 37 ; from SjTia, xxi. 1. Months, their names, i. 21, ii. 20 ; the month Hadrian, xv. 15. Mother and Child worshipped, xiv. 25 ; in Rome, xiv. 26. Mummies, early made, i. 37 ; with mineral pitch from the Dead Sea, i. 3 ; their physical characters, i. 3, vii. 1 4 ; pledged for debt, xi. 43 ; blamed by Hieracas, xvii. 54 ; by St. Antony, xviii. 7 ; praised by St. Augustin, xviii. 7 ; furnish Christian relics, xix. 17. Music, work on, by Ptolemy, xv. 35 ; by Alypius, xviii. 13 ; taught by Dios- corus, xviii. 48. Mysticism of Philo, xiii, 37 ; of the Egyp- tians, XV. 16,^21 ; of Origen, xvi. 37. Napata, capital of Ethiopia, i. 39, iii. 8 ; ornamented by Amunothph, ii. 23 ; by Tirhakah, iii, 26 ; by Amun Aseru, iv. 2. Naucratis, its trade, iv. 22 ; its temples iv, 22 ; its writers, xv. 45, 50 ; its school closed, xvi. 21. Nicene creed, xviii. 6 ; repealed, xviii. 18 ; re-enacted, xx. 11 ; repealed by the Henoticon, xx. 14, 15. Nile, its overflow, i. 4 ; its winds and navigation, i, 5 ; isa god, i. 8, ii. 53 ; its tributaries, iii. 8 ; the Canopic branch is the god, iii, 16 ; its mouths shallow, vi. 7 ; fordable below Mem- phis, vii. 7 ; opinions as to its over- flow, X. 67 ; its sources unknown, x. 67; height of its rise, xiii. 13, xv. 33, xvi. 2 ; supposed to rise in India, xiii. 47 ; its waters sacred, xiv. 26 ; coloured at Midsummer, xvi. 28 ; wor- shipped in the fifth century, xix. 43. Nineveh, iii. 21 ; copies the Egyptian fashions, ii. 17, iii, 21 ; its fall, iv. 8. Nubia, iii. 8, xiii. 16 ; explored, xiii. 63 ; given up to the Nobatce, xvii. 39. Nubians, the old Egyptian race, xvii. 39, XX. 5. Numbers, their properties among the Jews, xiii. 26 ; among the Gnostics, xvi. 16; used for initial letters, xv. 55. Oasis of Ammon, v. 13, vi. 9. Oasis, "Western, xiii. 65. Oasis, the Great, v. 13; a place of banishment, xix. 30 ; its fertility, xix. 41. Oath, by Osiris, viii. 29 ; by Isis, xiv. 22 ; Cleopatra's, xii. 45. Obelisks removed to Alexandria, xiii. 22 ; to Constantinople, xviii. 12 ; to Rome, xiii. 11, xviii. 12 ; at Auxum, xxi. 17. Offerings for the dead, ii. 16, x. 31. Ogdoad worshipped, xv. 22. Olives grow wild, xiii. 52. Ophir, or the Golden Berenice, ii. 44, ii. 61, viii, 27, x, 66, xi. 47. Osiris, his family, i. 8, ii. 54 ; his burial places, ii, 54, iv. 33, viii. 29 ; his two natures ridiculed, iv. 25 ; divided into two persons, vii. 16. Paganism, revived, xviii. 42 ; expiring, xviii. '49 ; persecuted, xix. 5 ; imitated, xix, 7 ; suppressed, xxi. 24. Paintings, in tombs, i. 37, ii. 4, viii. 54; in Alexandria, vii. 55, 69 ; xx, 29 ; by Apelles, vii. 65, 69 ; the Egyptian, viii. 54. Palmyra, its rise, xvii. 7. Papyrus, vii, 18, x. 75 ; copied in archi- tecture, viii, 29 ; its kinds and uses, xiii. 48 ; thin papyrus or paper, xix. 34. Parchment invented, x. 75. Pay, of a labourer, i. 30 ; of a king's tutor, viii. 38 ; of a painter, viii. 53 ; of a physician, viii. 72 ; of a general, OF SQBJECTS. 409 ix. 78 ; of a commander in chief, ix. 78 ; of a professor, x. 73 ; of a sophist, xvi. 21 ; soldiers' prize money, xii. 50. Payment to the Athenians, v. 19; to the Achaians, viii. 61 ; to Cleomenes, ix. 14; royal bribe, xi. 54, 60, xiii. 1 Pelusium, its Asiatic population, iii. 24 ; a station for the fleet, iv. 4, v. 44 ; its people sailors, xiii. 62. Persecution of the Christians, under Severus, xvi. 22 ; under Decius, xvii. 1 ; under Diocletian, xvii. 44. Persians, their rise under Cyrus, iv. 29 ; conquer Asia ]\Iiuor, iv. 29 ; conquer Cyprus, iv. 30 ; conquer Egypt, iv. 35 ; are defeated by the Greeks, v. 56 ; defeat the Romans, xvi. 43 ; invade Egypt, XX. 26 ; conquer Egypt, xxi. 36 ; are defeated by the Arabs, xxi, 39. Petra described, vii. 29 ; resists Deme- trius, vii. 31 ; conquered by Trajan, XV. 7 ; lost under Valens, xviii. 64. Phalanx, employed by the Egyptians, iv. 29 ; described, ix. 75 ; defeated by the Romans, ix. 74. Pharos island, a shelter for ships, iii. 15 ; forms the harbour of Alexandria, vi. 7 ; its lighthouse, vi. 17, viii. 22 ; is repaired, xx. 31 ; no longer an island, xxi. 51. Phenicians, in the Delta, i. 32, 33, xiii. 62 ; are expelled, i, 34. Phcenix explained, xiii. 53 ; returns to earth in the year of Rome, 800, xiii. 53 ; at the end of the Sothic period, XV. 32 ; in the year of Rome, 1100, xviii. 37. Philse island, viii. 29 ; temple of Isis, viii. 29 ; temple of Athor, x. 53 ; Obelisk, x, 65 ; its population, xiii. 14. Philistines, in the time of Rameses II., ii. 37 ; of Rameses III., ii. 48. Physicians, vii. 60, xv. 3 ; in the army XV. 38. Pistis-Sophia, xix. 32. Platonism in Son of Sirach, x. 60 ; in Philo, xiii. 37 ; in Justin, xv. 26 ; in Athenagoras, xv. 29 ; in Clemens, xvi, 15 ; in Ammonius and Plotinus, xvi. 35. Plurality in unity, ii. 50, 54, xv. 22, xvi. 7 ; denied by the Jews, viii. 59 ; and by Athenagoras, xv. 29. Population of Egypt, ii. 43, iv. 47 ; under Auietes, xi. 46 ; under Valerian, xvii. 6 ; under Heraclius, xxi. 45. Porphyry, quarries, viii. 24 ; for statues, xiii. 49 ; columns, xvii. 21. Price of a horse, of a chariot, ii. 39 ; of corn, xxi. 20 ; of tin, xxi. 20. Pricks on the skin forbidden by the Jews, ii. 16 ; used by the kings, ix. 45, xi. 2. Processi®n, under Thothmosis III., ii. 4 ; under Philadelphus, viii. 3, &c. Prophecy forbidden, xviii. 39. Proverbs, vii. 29, xi. 41, xiii. 16, 37, xiv. 24, XX. 5. Provinces, under Theodosius , xix. 44, 45 ; under Justinian, xxi. 18. Ptolemais built, vii. 13 ; its size, xiii. 14 ; its church, xix. 27. Pyramids, at Cochome, i. 18 ; at Mem- phis, i. 15, 29, 30, ii. 2, v. 26, xi. §7 ; at Napata, i. 39. Queen regent, ii. 21 ; regnant, i. 26, xi. 1, 30, 58, xii. 1 ; consort, her main- tenance, iv. 27. Races of men, i. 3, vii. 14, xi. 7, xxi. 57. Religion, described, i. 8, ii. 54, v. 28, xi. 39 ; attacked by the Persians, v. 33, 53 ; allowed by Alexander, vi. 12 ; restored under Ptolemy, vii. 12 ; copied by the Romans, xiii. 20, xiv. 26 ; becomes more refined, xiv. 24 ; becomes monotheistic, xv. 20, xvi. 7; Religious books, xi. 44, xvi. 6, 8, xvii. 17, xviii. 13. Religious wars, about the bull, xv. 14 ; about the crocodiles, xiv. 22 ; about the dogs and fish, xiv. 23 ; continue in the fourth century, xviii. 49. Rent of land, i. 43. Revelation, Book of, the beast, xiii. 64, xiv. 9 ; the second beast, xiii. 64 ; the false prophet, xiv. 9 : the two witnesses, xiv. 13 ; the number of the beast, xv. 55 ; the millennium, xvii. 16 ; its authorship disputed, xvii. 16. Revenue, under Darius, v. 15 ; under Philadelphus, viii. 75 : under Auietes, xi. 46 ; of an archbishop, xxi. 7. Rhoda, island, xxi. 44. Rhodes besieged, vii. 49. Rings used for money, ii. 5 ; as tokens of authority, i. 42 ; used in marriage, xv. 25. Roads, measured by Julius Caesar, xiii. 5 ; from Heliopolis to Petra, ii. 9 ; from Alexandria to Palestine, xiv. 12; of the Itinerary, ii. 9 ; xv. 36. Romans become known to Egypt, viii. 11 ; offer to help Euergetes, ix. 3 ; protect Epiphanes, ix. 70 ; refuse pay from Egypt, ix. 84 ; govern Egypt, x. 15 ; their ambassadors are paid by Egypt, xi. 28 ; their lawlessness in Egypt, xi. 59, 63 ; become masters of VOL. II. 410 THIRD INDEX Egypt, xii. 53 ; Greeks of Constanti- nople, so called, xviii. 64 ; wholly cut off from Egypt, xix. 46. Roses cultivated, xiv, 26. Eosetta stone, ix. SO. Sabbath, Jewish, forbidden, xviii. 30. Sabellian controversy, xvii. 3. Salt pits near Pelusium, iv. 11. Sais described, iv. 33 ; its rise, iii. 16 ; its prosperity under Amasis, iv. 33. Samaritans settle in Egypt, vi. 13 ; quar- rel with the Jews, x. 26. Scientific poems : astronomical, viii. 42. astrological, viii. 45 ; medical, x. 40 ; geographical, xiii. 62. Sculpture, the styles described, iv. 48 ; false style, ix. 8. Scythian invasion, iv. 5. Serapis, his temple at Memphis, v. 25 ; his worship in Alexandria, vii. 16, xviii. 50 ; is monotheistic, xv. 20 ; temple at Canopus, xvi. 4 ; temple at Alexandria burnt, xvi. 3 ; again burnt, xix. 4. Serbonian bog, iv. 11. Serpent worshipped by the Egyptians, i. 17 ; by the Jews, ii. 18 ; by the Christians, xv. 24 ; its war with the human race, ii. 14 ; its conquest, ii. 31, xi. 36 ; in a catalepsy, ii. 17. Sesostris, Sesoosis, or Sesonchosis, the deeds given to him by Aristotle, iii. 5 ; by Herodotus, v. 24 ; by Strabo, ix. 10 ; by Diodorus, xi. 36. Shepherds, enter Egypt, i. 32 ; are ex- pelled, i. 34 ; are hated, i. 44. Ships invented, i. 5 ; of Tarsus, Tyre, and Sidon, ii. 61 ; iii. 13 ; unusually large, ix. 48 ; of war, xii. 10 ; of burden, xiii. 57 ; the rate of sailing, xiii. 57. Slaves, negroes under Thothmosis III., ii. 4 ; under Amunothph III., ii. 2o ; under Darius, v. 15 ; their price, when captives, viii. 56; when native, x. 32; not kept by the Therapeutae, xiii. 26. Sothic period, begins, ii. 6 ; ends, xv. 32. Sphinx near the pyramid is carved, i. 31 ; is worshipped, ii. 22. Statue, the oldest known, i. 31 . Statue of Amunothph III., ii. 23 ; called the son of Aurora by Hesiod, ii. 56 ; is overthrown, v. 3 ; is musical at sun- rise, xiii. 14, 62; is restored, xv. 17; stiU musical, xvi. 5. Steel used, i. 23 ; made in Cyprus, iii. 14. Sun worship, v. 33. Sun-dial, xiii. 22. Surgery, viL 61 ; xi. 65 ; xii. 25. Syene on the borders of Ethiopia, iv. 14; its astronomical well, xiii. 14, xvi. 2. Syrian sovereigns of Egypt, xvii. 21, 28 ; intercourse with Egypt, xxi. 1 ; pro- tection to the philosophers, xxi. 24 ; versions of the Bible, xxi. 38 ; physi- cian, xxi. 38. Tablet, of Kamak, i. 4 ; of Abydos, ii. 34 ; of Rosetta, ix. 80. Tanis, its rise, iii. 10, 13 ; its trade, iii. 15 ; is conquered, iii. 26 ; its fall under Sais, iv. 22. Tarsus, its trade and ships, iii. 13 ; xii. 30 ; its philosophers, xii. 30. Taxes, under Joseph, i, 43 ; under Darius, v, 15 ; under Tachos, v. 44 ; under Philadelphus, viii. 75 ; under Auletes, xi. 46 ; under Augustus, xiii. 18 ; under Yalens, xvui. 63 ; under Justinian, xxi. 18. Taxes of Coele-Syria, Phenicia, and Sa- maria, ix. 12. Temple, rock hewn, i. 25, ii. 41, 42, xv. 7 ; imitated by the builder, ii. 24 ; architecture, ii. 24, x. 30, xii. 26, xiii. 52 ; the screen added, ii. 47. Thebes, its situation, i. 10, 36 ; described, ii. 52 ; overthrown by Lower Egypt, ii. 51, iii. 1 ; again by Cambyses, v. 1 ; described by Hecataeus, vii. 36 ; overthrown by Lathyrus, xi. 26. This or Abydos, its situation, i. 9 ; its genealogical tablet, ii. 34. Tin in the coins, vii. 54 ; its value, xxi. 20. Tombs, of Thebes, i. 37, ii. 4, 31, 52 ; are opened, vii. 36 ; of Beni Hassan, i. 18 ; of Napata, i. 40 ; of Memphis, i. 29, iv. 1, V. 25 ; of the Bulls, vii. 11 ; of Alexandria, xiii. 14. Tonsure, of the priests, i. 42, v. 27, xiv. 24 ; used by the emperor, xvi. 1. Trade wind discovered, x. 71, xiii. 45. Travellers in Egypt : Thales, Solon, iv. 23 ; Cleobiilus, Hecatfeus of ]\Iiletus, iv. 24 ; Pythagoras, Xenophanes, iv. 25 ; Hellanicus, Herodotus, v. 22 ; Eudoxus, Chrysippus, Plato, v. 42 ; Hecatreus of Abdera, vii. 36 ; Diodoms, xi. 35 ; Strabo, xiii. 14 ; Dion, xvi. 2 ; Rufinus, xviii. 59 ; Antoninus, xxi. 8. Tree, the sacred, bestows life, ii. 55 ; oracular, among the pagans, xiv. 8, XV. 34 ; among the Christians, xix. 18. Trench on eastern frontier, iv. 11 ; v. 39. Trial of the dead, ii. 32 ; xL 43. OF SUBJECTS. 411 Trinity of the Egyptians, ii. 50, 54 ; of Philo, xiii. 37 ; of the Book of Wis- dom, and of Theophilus, xiv. 16 ; under the form of a triangle, xiv. 24 ; thought heretical, xv. 56 ; attributed to Plato, xvi. 15 ; of the Platonists, xvi, 35 ; defended by Dionysius, xvii. 2 ; explained by Sabellius, xvii. 3 ; tritheism, xxi, 31. Troglodytse, ii. 4, 58 ; iii. 4 ; xxi. 57. Tyre, its trade with Egypt, iii. 13. Value of money lower than in other places, ii, 44 ; no longer so, xiii. 30. See Cost, Pay, Payment, Pnce, Re- tenue, Mines, Taxes. Vehiculation complained of, x. 65 ; xiii. 41. Ventriloquism, viii. 46 ; xiv. 9. Voyage, fi-om Ezion-geber to Zanzibar, ii. 61 ; round Africa, iv. 7 ; of Hanno, iv. 7 ; to India, x. 70 ; xiii. 18, 44 ; to Ceylon, xiii. 45 ; to Italy, xiii. 57 ; to England, xxi. 20. Voyage of Paul and Josephus, xiii. 57. Wall, Roman, at the frontier, xvii. 39, Water, the source of all things, xi. 39. Week used, i. 21 ; the days of, v. 27 ; xix. 10. Wells, on the road to Berenice, viii. 23 ; dug in Alexandria, xU. 9 ; in the Oasis, xix. 41. Wine, its early use, i. 41 ; its several kinds, viii. 44 ; those of Egypt, viii. 44, xiii. 50 ; those imported, xiii. 51. Women, their treatment, i. -6 ; are priestesses, i. 27 ; are queens regnant, i. 26 ; xi. 1, 30, 58 ; xii. 1 ; xvii. 21 ; xvii. 33. Writing, its kinds, Egyptian, xvi. 13 ; Greek, xv. 44 ; Mith illuminations, XX. 29 ; of Mount Sinai, xix. 37. Year, its three seasons, i. 21 : its length, i. 21 ; X. 41 ; its hieroglyphic, xiii. 53 ; how used in dates, xiv. 4 ; xvi. 30 ; how by the astronomers, xix. 10 ; (See Calendar, Months, Week) ; copied by the Babylonians, iii. 21. ZoAN, See Tanis. Zodiac of the Memnonium, ii. 34, v, 3 ; of Deudera, iv. 17, xiii. 23 ; of Lato- polis, xiv. 19. THE END. BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. DT83 .S54 V.2 The history of Egypt from the earliest Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1012 00051 4242