Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief mark of the Gnostic sect. He thought much of the sacred power of numbers. Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot, which, when written in Greek numerals thus, IHT formed the sacred sign for the name of Jesus. Ten was a perfect number, and is that of the commandments given to Moses. Seven was a glorious number, and there are seven Pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week; and the two fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude were miraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egypt under Joseph. Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventh day, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus; but here there is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud of some zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found in the pagan poets.

During the reign of Pertinax, which lasted only three months (194 A.D.), we find no trace of his power in Egypt, except the money which the Alexandrians coined in his name. It seems to have been the duty of the prefect of the mint, as soon as he heard of an emperor's death, to lose no time in issuing coins in the name of his successor. It was one of the means to proclaim and secure the allegiance of the province for the new emperor.

During the reign of Commodus, Pescennius Niger had been at the head of the legion that was employed in Upper Egypt in stopping the inroads of their troublesome neighbours, who already sometimes bore the name of Saracens. He was a hardy soldier, and strict in his discipline, while he shared the labours of the field and of the camp with the men under him. He would not allow them the use of wine; and once, when the troops that guarded the frontier at Syene (Aswan) sent to ask for it, he bluntly answered, "You have got the Nile to drink, and cannot possibly want more." Once, when a cohort had been routed by the Saracens, the men complained that they could not fight without wine; but he would not relax in his discipline. "Those who have just now beaten you," said Niger, "drink nothing but water." He gained the love and thanks of the people of Upper Egypt by thus bridling the lawlessness of the troops; and they gave him his statue cut in black basalt, in allusion to his name Niger. This statue was placed in his Roman villa.



But on the death of Pertinax, when Septimus Severus declared himself emperor in Pannonia, Niger, who was then in the province of Syria, did the same. Egypt and the Egyptian legions readily and heartily joined his party, which made it unnecessary for him to stay in that part of the empire; so he marched upon Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia. But there, after a few months, he was met by the army of his rival, who also sent a second army into Egypt; and he was defeated and slain at Cyzicus in Mysia, after having been acknowledged as emperor in Egypt and Syria for perhaps a year and a few months.



We find no Alexandrian coins of Niger, although we cannot allow a shorter space of time to his reign than one whole year, together with a few months of the preceding and following years. Within that time Severus had to march upon Rome against his first rival, Julian, to punish the praetorian guards, and afterwards to conquer Niger.

After the death of his rival, when Severus was the undisputed master of the empire, and was no longer wanted in the other provinces, he found leisure, in A.D. 196, to visit Egypt; and, like other active-minded travellers, he examined the pyramids of Memphis and the temples at Thebes, and laughed at the worship of Serapis and the Egyptian animals. His visit to Alexandria wras marked by many new laws. Now that the Greeks of that city, crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, had lost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared by their Roman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus. He gave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege that had hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freely granted in other provinces where rebellion was less dreaded. He also ornamented the city with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, which was named after himself the Bath of Severus.

Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, forbidding anybody, under a severe punishment, from becoming Jew or Christian. But he who gives the blow is likely to speak of it more lightly than he who smarts under it; and we learn from the historian of the Church that, in the tenth year of this reign, the Christians suffered persecution from their governors and their fellow-citizens. Among others who then lost their lives for their religion was Leonides, the father of Origen. He left seven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly celebrated writer, was only sixteen years old, but was already deeply read in the Scriptures, and in the great writers of Greece. As the property of Leonides was forfeited, his children were left in poverty; but the young Origen was adopted by a wealthy lady, zealous for the new religion, by whose help he was enabled to continue his studies under Clemens. In order to read the Old Testament in the original, he made himself master of Hebrew, which was a study then very unusual among the Greeks, whether Jews or Christians.

In this persecution of the Church all public worship was forbidden to the Christians; and Tertullian of Carthage eloquently complains that, while the emperor allowed the Egyptians to worship cows, goats, or crocodiles, or indeed any animal they chose, he only punished those that bowed down before the Creator and Governor of the world. Of course, at this time of trouble the catechetical school was broken up and scattered, so that there was no public teaching of Christianity in Alexandria. But Origen ventured to do that privately which was forbidden to be done openly; and, when the storm had blown over, Demetrius, the bishop, appointed him to that office at the head of the school which he had already so bravely taken upon himself in the hour of danger. Origen could boast of several pupils who added their names to the noble list of martyrs who lost their lives for Christianity, among whom the best known was Plutarch, the brother of Heraclas. Origen afterwards removed for a time to Palestine, and fell under the displeasure of his own bishop for being there ordained a presbyter.

In Egypt Severus seems to have dated the years of his reign from the death of Niger, though he had reigned in Rome since the deaths of Pertinax and Julian. His Egyptian coins are either copper, or brass plated with a little silver; and after a few reigns even those last traces of a silver coinage are lost in this falling country. In tracing the history of a word's meaning we often throw a light upon the customs of a nation. Thus, in Rome, gold was so far common that avarice was called the love of gold; while in Greece, where silver was the metal most in use, money was called argurion. In the same way it is curiously shown that silver was no longer used in Egypt by our finding that the brass coin of one hundred and ten grains weight, as being the only piece of money seen in circulation, was named an argurion.

The latter years of the reign of Caracalla were spent in visiting the provinces of his wide empire; and, after he had passed through Thrace and Asia Minor, Egypt had the misfortune to be honoured by a visit from its emperor. The satirical Alexandrians, who in the midst of their own follies and vices were always clever in lashing those of their rulers, had latterly been turning their unseemly jokes against Caracalla. They had laughed at his dressing like Achilles and Alexander the Great, while in his person he was below the usual height; and they had not forgotten his murder of his brother, and his talking of marrying his own mother. Some of these dangerous witticisms had reached his ears at Rome, and they were not forgotten. But Caracalla never showed his displeasure; and, as he passed through Antioch, he gave out that he was going to visit the city founded by Alexander the Great, and to consult the oracle in the temple of Serapis.

The Alexandrians in their joy got ready the hecatombs for his sacrifices; and the emperor entered their city through rows of torches to the sound of soft music, while the air was sweetened with costly scents, and the road scattered with flowers. After a few days he sacrificed in the temple of Serapis, and then visited the tomb of Alexander, where he took off his scarlet cloak, his rings, and his girdle covered with precious stones, and dutifully laid them on the sarcophagus of the hero. The Alexandrians were delighted with their visitor; and crowds flocked into the city to witness the daily and nightly shows, little aware of the unforgiving malice that was lurking in his mind.

The emperor then issued a decree that all the youths of Alexandria of an age to enter the army should meet him in a plain on the outside of the city; they had already a Macedonian and a Spartan phalanx, and he was going to make an Alexandrian phalanx. Accordingly the plain was filled with thousands of young men, who were ranged in bodies according to their height, their age, and their fitness for bearing arms, while their friends and relations came in equal numbers to be witnesses of their honour.

The emperor moved through their ranks, and was loudly greeted with their cheers, while the army which encircled the whole plain was gradually closing round the crowd and lessening the circle. When the ring was formed, Caracalla withdrew with his guards and gave the looked-for signal. The soldiers then lowered their spears and charged on the unarmed crowd, of whom a part were butchered and part driven headlong into the ditches and canals; and such was the slaughter that the waters of the Nile, which at midsummer are always red with the mud from the upper country, were said to have flowed coloured to the sea with the blood of the sufferers. Caracalla then returned to Antioch, congratulating himself on the revenge that he had taken on the Alexandrians for their jokes; not however till he had consecrated in the temple of Serapis the sword with which he boasted that he had slain his brother Geta.

Caracalla also punished the Alexandrians by stopping the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens; and, to lessen the danger of their rebelling, he had the fortifications carried between the rest of the city and the great palace-quarter, the Bruchium, thus dividing Alexandria into two fortified cities, with towers on the walls between them. Hitherto, under the Romans as under the Ptolemies, the Alexandrians had been the trusted favourites of their rulers, who made use of them to keep the Egyptians in bondage. But under Caracalla that policy was changed; the Alexandrians were treated as enemies; and we see for the first time Egyptians taking their seat in the Roman senate, and the Egyptian religion openly cultivated by the emperor, who then built a temple in Rome to the goddess Isis.

On the murder of Caracalla in A.D. 217, Macrinus, who was thought to be the author of his death, was acknowledged as emperor; and though he only reigned for about two months, yet, as the Egyptian new year's day fell within that time, we find Alexandrian coins for the first and second years of his reign. The Egyptians pretended that the death of Caracalla had been foretold by signs from heaven; that a ball of fire had fallen on the temple of Serapis, which destroyed nothing but the sword with which Caracalla had slain his brother; and that an Egyptian named Serapion, who had been thrown into a lion's den for naming Macrinus as the future emperor, had escaped unhurt by the wild beasts.

Macrinus recalled from Alexandria Julian, the prefect of Egypt, and appointed to that post his friend Basilianus, with Marius Secundus, a senator, as second in command, who was the first senator that had ever held command in Egypt. He was himself at Antioch when Bassianus, a Syrian, pretending to be the son of Caracalla, offered himself to the legions as that emperor's successor. When the news reached Alexandria that the Syrian troops had joined the pretended Antoninus, the prefect Basilianus at once put to death the public couriers that brought the unwelcome tidings. But when, a few days afterwards, it was known that Macrinus had been defeated and killed, the doubts about his successor led to serious struggles between the troops and the Alexandrians. The Alexandrians could have had no love for a son of Caracalla; Basilianus and Secundus had before declared against him; but, on the other hand, the choice of the soldiers was guided by their brethren in Syria. The citizens flew to arms, and day after day was the battle fought in the streets of Alexandria between two parties, neither of whom was strong enough, even if successful, to have any weight in settling the fate of the Roman empire. Marius Secundus lost his life in the struggle. The prefect Basilianus fled to Italy to escape from his own soldiers; and the province of Egypt then followed the example of the rest of the East in acknowledging the new emperor.

For four years Rome was disgraced by the sovereignty of Elagabalus, the pretended son of Caracalla, and we find his coins each year in Alexandria. He was succeeded by the young Alexander, whose amiable virtues, however, could not gain for him the respect which he lost by the weakness of his government. The Alexandrians, always ready to lampoon their rulers, laughed at his wish to be thought a Roman; they called him the Syrian, the high priest, and the ruler of the synagogue. And well might they think slightly of his government, when a prefect of Egypt owed his appointment to the emperor's want of power to punish him. Epagathus had headed a mutiny of the praetorian guards in Rome, in which their general Ulpian was killed; and Alexander, afraid to punish the murderers, made the ringleader of the rebels prefect of Egypt in order to send him out of the way; so little did it then seem necessary to follow the cautious policy of Augustus, or to fear a rebellion in that province. But after a short time, when Epagathus had been forgotten by the Roman legion, he was removed to the government of Crete, and then at last punished with death.

In this reign Ammonius Saccas became the founder of a new and most important school of philosophy, that of the Alexandrian platonists. He is only known to us through his pupils, in whose writings we trace the mind and system of the teacher. The most celebrated of these pupils were Plotinus, Herennius, and Origen, a pagan writer, together with Longinus, the great master of the "sublime," who owns him his teacher in elegant literature. Ammonius was unequalled in the variety and depth of his knowledge, and was by his followers called heaven-taught. He aimed at putting an end to the triflings and quarrels of the philosophers by showing that all the great truths were the same in each system, and by pointing out where Plato and Aristotle agreed instead of where they differed; or rather by culling opinions out of both schools of philosophy, and by gathering together the scattered limbs of Truth, whose lovely form had been hewn to pieces and thrown to the four winds like the mangled body of Osiris.

Origen in the tenth year of this reign (A.D. 231) withdrew to Caesarea, 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 Caesarea, where Christianity was not yet so far removed from its early simplicity as in Egypt.

The Christians of Syria and Palestine highly prized his teaching when it was no longer valued in Alexandria. He died at Tyre in the reign of Gallus.



On the death of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had just before succeeded Origen in the charge of the Christian school, was chosen Bishop of Alexandria; and Christianity had by that time so far spread through the cities of Upper and Lower Egypt that he found it necessary to ordain twenty bishops under him, while three had been found enough by his predecessor. From his being the head of the bishops, who were all styled fathers, Heraclas received the title of Papa, pope or grandfather, the title afterwards used by the bishops of Rome.

Among the presbyters ordained by Heraclas was Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the platonic school; but he afterwards forsook the religion of Jesus; and we must not mistake him for a second Alexandrian Christian of the name of Ammonius, who can hardly have been the same person as the former, for he never changed his religion, and was the author of the Evangelical Canons, a work afterwards continued by Eusebius of Caesarea.

On the death of the Emperor Alexander, in A.D. 235, while Italy was torn to pieces by civil wars and by its generals' rival claims for the purple, the Alexandrians seem to have taken no part in the struggles, but to have acknowledged each emperor as soon as the news reached them that he had taken the title. In one year we find Alexandrian coins of Maximin and his son Maximus, with those of the two Gordians, who for a few weeks reigned in Carthage, and in the next year we again have coins of Maximin and Maximus, with those of Balbinus and Pupienus, and of Gordianus Pius.

The Persians, taking advantage of the weakness in the empire caused by these civil wars, had latterly been harassing the eastern frontier; and it soon became the duty of the young Gordian to march against them in person. Hitherto the Roman armies had usually been successful; but unfortunately the Persians, or, rather, their Syrian and Arab allies, had latterly risen as much as the Romans had fallen off in courage and warlike skill. The army of Gordian was routed, and the emperor himself slain, either by traitors or by the enemy. Hereafter we shall see the Romans paying the just penalty for the example that they had set to the surrounding nations. They had taught them that conquest should be a people's chief aim, that the great use of strength was to crush a neighbour; and it was not long before Egypt and the other Eastern provinces suffered under the same treatment. So little had defeat been expected that the philosopher Plotinus had left his studies in Alexandria to join the army, in hopes of gaining for himself an insight into the Eastern philosophy that was so much talked of in Egypt. After the rout of the army he with difficulty escaped to Antioch, and thence he removed to Rome, where he taught the new platonism to scholars of all nations, including Serapion, the celebrated rhetorician, and Eustochius, the physician, from Alexandria.



Philip, who is accused by the historians of being the author of Gordian's death, succeeded him on the throne in 244; but he is only known in the history of Egypt by his Alexandrian coins, which we find with the dates of each of the seven years of his reign, and these seem to prove that for one year he had been associated with Gordian in the purple. In the reign of Decius, which began in 249, the Christians of Egypt were again harassed by the zeal with which the laws against their religion were put in force. The persecution began by their fellow-citizens informing against them; but in the next year it was followed up by the prefect AEmilianus; and several Christians were summoned before the magistrate and put to death. Many fled for safety to the desert and to Mount Sinai, where they fell into a danger of a different kind; they were taken prisoners by the Saracens and carried away as slaves. Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, himself fled from the storm, and was then banished to the village of Cephro in the desert. But his flight was not without some scandal to the Church, as there were not a few who thought that he was called upon by his rank at least to await, if not to court, the pains of martyrdom. Indeed, the persecution was less remarkable for the sufferings of the Christians than for the numbers who failed in their courage, and renounced Christianity under the threats of the magistrate. Dionysius, the bishop, who had shown no courage himself, was willing to pardon their weakness, and after fit proof of sorrow again to receive them as brethren. But his humanity offended the zeal of many whose distance from the danger had saved them from temptation; and it was found necessary to summon a council at Rome to settle the dispute. In this assembly the moderate party prevailed; and some who refused to receive back those who had once fallen away from the faith were themselves turned out of the Church.

Dionysius had succeeded Heraclas in the bishopric, having before succeeded him as head of the catechetical school. He was the author of several works, written in defence of the trinitarian opinions, on the one hand against the Egyptian Gnostics, who said that there were eight, and even thirty, persons in the Godhead, and, on the other hand, against the Syrian bishop, Paul of Samosata, on the Euphrates, who said that Jesus was a man, and that the Word and Holy Spirit were not persons, but attributes, of God.

But while Dionysius was thus engaged in a controversy with such opposite opinions, Egypt and Libya were giving birth to a new view of the trinity. Sabellius, Bishop of Ptolemais, near Cyrene, was putting forth the opinion that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were only three names for the one God, and that the creator of the world had himself appeared upon earth in the form of Jesus. Against this opinion Dionysius again engaged in controversy, arguing against Sabellius that Jesus was not the creator, but the first of created beings.

The Christians were thus each generation changing more and more, sometimes leaning towards Greek polytheism and sometimes towards Egyptian mysticism. As in each quarrel the most mysterious opinions were thought the most sacred, each generation added new mysteries to its religion; and the progress was rapid, from a practical piety, to a profession of opinions which they did not pretend to understand.

During the reigns of Gallus, of AEmilius AEmilianus, and of Valerian (A.D. 251-260), the Alexandrians coined money in the name of each emperor as soon as the news reached Egypt that he had made Italy acknowledge his title. Gallus and his son reigned two years and four months; AEmilianus, who rebelled in Pannonia, reigned three months; and Valerian reigned about six years.

Egypt, as a trading country, now suffered severely from the want of order and quiet government; and in particular since the reign of Alexander Severus it had been kept in a fever by rebellions, persecutions, and this unceasing change of rulers. Change brings the fear of change; and this fear checks trade, throws the labourer out of employment, and leaves the poor of the cities without wages and without food. Famine is followed by disease; and Egypt and Alexandria were visited in the reign of Gallus by a dreadful plague, one of those scourges that force themselves on the notice of the historian. It was probably the same disease that in a less frightful form had been not uncommon in that country and in the lower parts of Syria. The physician Aretaeus describes it under the name of ulcers on the tonsils. It seems by the letters of Bishop Dionysius that in Alexandria the population had so much fallen off that the inhabitants between the ages of fourteen and eighty were not more than those between forty and seventy had been formerly, as appeared by old records then existing. The misery that the city had suffered may be measured by its lessened numbers.

During these latter years the eastern half of the empire was chiefly guarded by Odenathus of Palmyra, the brave and faithful ally of Rome, under whose wise rule his country for a short time held a rank among the empires of the world, which it never could have gained but for an union of many favourable circumstances. The city and little state of Palmyra is situated about midway between the cities of Damascus and Babylon. Separated from the rest of the world, between the Roman and the Parthian empires, Palmyra had long kept its freedom, while each of those great rival powers rather courted its friendship than aimed at conquering it. But, as the cause of Rome grew weaker, Odenathus wisely threw his weight into the lighter scale; and latterly, without aiming at conquest, he found himself almost the sovereign of those provinces of the Roman empire which were in danger of being overrun by the Persians. Valerian himself was conquered, taken prisoner, and put to death by Sapor, King of Persia; and Gallienus, his son, who was idling away his life in disgraceful pleasures in the West, wisely gave the title of emperor to Odenathus, and declared him his colleague on the throne.



No sooner was Valerian taken prisoner than every province of the Roman empire, feeling the sword powerless in the weak hands of Gallienus, declared its own general emperor; and when Macrianus, who had been left in command in Syria, gathered together the scattered forces of the Eastern army, and made himself emperor of the East, the Egyptians owned him as their sovereign. As Macrianus found his age too great for the activity required of a rebel emperor, he made his two sons, Macrianus, junior, and Quietus, his colleagues; and we find their names on the coins of Alexandria, dated the first and second years of their reign. But Macrianus was defeated by Dominitianus at the head of a part of the army of Aureolus, who had made himself emperor in Illyricum, and he lost his life, together with one of his sons, while the other soon afterwards met with the same fate from Odenathus.

After this, Egypt was governed for a short time in the name of Gallienus; but the fickle Alexandrians soon made a rebel emperor for themselves. The Roman republic, says the historian, was often in danger from the headstrong giddiness of the Alexandrians. Any civility forgotten, a place in the baths not yielded, a heap of rubbish, or even a pair of old shoes in the streets, was often enough to throw the state into the greatest danger, and make it necessary to call out the troops to put down the riots. Thus, one day, one of the prefect's slaves was beaten by the soldiers, for saying that his shoes were better than theirs. On this a riotous crowd gathered round the house of AEmilianus to complain of the conduct of his soldiers. He was attacked with stones and such weapons as are usually within the reach of a mob. He had no choice but to call out the troops, who, when they had quieted the city and were intoxicated with their success, saluted him with the title of emperor; and hatred of Gallienus made the rest of the Egyptian army agree to their choice.

This was in the year 265. The new emperor called himself Alexander, and was even thought to deserve the name. He governed Egypt during his short reign with great vigour. He led his army through the Thebaid, and drove back the barbarians with a courage and activity which had latterly been uncommon in the Egyptian army. Alexandria then sent no tribute to Rome. "Well! cannot we live without Egyptian linen?" was the forced joke of Gallienus, when the Romans were in alarm at the loss of the usual supply of grain. But AEmilianus was soon beaten by Theodotus, the general of Gallienus, who besieged him in the strong quarter of Alexandria called the Bruchium, and then took him prisoner and strangled him.

During this siege the ministers of Christianity were able to lessen some of the horrors of war by persuading the besiegers to allow the useless mouths to quit the blockaded fortress. Eusebius, afterwards Bishop of Laodicea, was without the trenches trying to lessen the cruelties of the siege; and Anatolius, the Christian peripatetic, was within the walls, endeavouring to persuade the rebels to surrender. Gallienus in gratitude to his general would have granted him the honour of a proconsular triumph, to dazzle the eyes of the Alexandrians; but the policy of Augustus was not wholly forgotten, and the emperor was reminded by the priests that it was unlawful for the consular fasces to enter Alexandria.

The late Emperor Valerian had begun his reign with mild treatment of the Christians; but he was overpersuaded by the Alexandrians. He then allowed the power of the magistrate to be used, in order to check the Christian religion. But in this weakness of the empire Gallienus could no longer with safety allow the Christians to be persecuted for their religion. Both their numbers and their station made it dangerous to treat them as enemies; and the emperor ordered all persecution to be stopped. The imperial rescript for that purpose was even addressed to "Dionysius, Pinna, Demetrius, and the other bishops;" it grants them full indulgence in the exercise of their religion, and by its very address almost acknowledges their rank in the state. By this edict of Gallienus the Christians were put on a better footing than at any time since their numbers brought them under the notice of the magistrate.



From the painting by Siefert

When the bishop Dionysius returned to Alexandria, he found the place sadly ruined by the late siege. The middle of the city was a vast waste. It was easier, he says, to go from one end of Egypt to the other than to cross the main street which divided the Bruchium from the western end of Alexandria. The place was still marked with all the horrors of last week's battle. Then, as usual, disease and famine followed upon war. Not a house was without a funeral. Death was everywhere to be seen in its most ghastly form. Bodies were left un-buried in the streets to be eaten by the dogs. Men ran away from their sickening friends in fear. As the sun set they felt in doubt whether they should be alive to see it rise in the morning. Cowards hid their alarms in noisy amusements and laughter. Not a few in very despair rushed into riot and vice. But the Christians clung to one another in brotherly love; they visited the sick; they laid out and buried their dead; and many of them thereby caught the disease themselves, and died as martyrs to the strength of their faith and love.

As long as Odenathus lived, the victories of the Palmyrenes were always over the enemies of Rome; but on his assassination, together with his son Herodes, though the armies of Palmyra were still led to battle with equal courage, its counsels were no longer guided with the same moderation.

[Illustraton: 159.jpg COINS OF ZENOBIA]

Zenobia, the widow of Odenathus, seized the command of the army for herself and her infant sons, Herennius and Timolaus; and her masculine courage and stern virtues well qualified her for the bold task that she had undertaken. She threw off the friendship of Rome, and routed the armies which Gallienus sent against her; and, claiming to be descended from Cleopatra, she marched upon Egypt, in 268 A.D., to seize the throne of her ancestors, and to add that kingdom to Syria and Asia Minor, which she already possessed.

Zenobia's army was led by her general, Zabda, who was joined by an Egyptian named Timogenes; and, with seventy thousand Palmyrenes, Syrians, and other barbarians, they routed the Roman army of fifty thousand Egyptians under Probatus. The unfortunate Roman general put an end to his own life; but nevertheless the Palmyrenes were unsuccessful, and Egypt followed the example of Rome, and took the oaths to Claudius. For three years the coins of Alexandria bear the name of that emperor.

On the death of Claudius, his brother Quintillus assumed the purple in Europe (A.D. 270); and though he only reigned for seventeen days the Alexandrian mint found time to engrave new dies and to issue coined money in his name.

On the death of Claudius, also, the Palmyrenes renewed their attacks upon Egypt, and this second time with success. The whole kingdom acknowledged Zenobia as their queen; and in the fourth and fifth years of her reign in Palmyra we find her name on the Alexandrian coins. The Greeks, who had been masters of Egypt for six hundred years, either in their own name or in that of the Roman emperors, were then for the first time governed by an Asiatic. Palmyra in the desert was then ornamented with the spoils of Egypt; and travellers yet admire the remains of eight large columns of red porphyry, each thirty feet high, which stood in front of the two gates to the great temple. They speak for themselves, and tell their own history. From their material and form and size we must suppose that these columns were quarried between Thebes and the Red Sea, were cut into shape by Egyptian workmen under the guidance of Greek artists in the service of the Roman emperors; and were thence carried away by the Syrian queen to the oasis-city in the desert between Damascus and Babylon.



Zenobia was a handsome woman of a dark complexion, with an aquiline nose, quick, piercing eyes, and a masculine voice. She had the commanding qualities of Cleopatra, from whom her flatterers traced her descent, and she was without her vices. While Syriac was her native tongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to have taught to her children; she carried on her government in Greek, and could speak Koptic with the Egyptians, whose history she had studied and written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of the Persian court to the self-denial and military virtues of a camp. With these qualities, followed by a success in arms which they seemed to deserve, the world could not help remarking, that while Gallienus was wasting his time with fiddlers and players, in idleness that would have disgraced a woman, Zenobia was governing her half of the empire like a man.

Zenobia made Antioch and Palmyra the capitals of her empire, and Egypt became for the time a province of Syria. Her religion like her language was Syriac. The name of her husband, Odenathus, means sacred to the goddess Adoneth, and that of her son, Vaballathus, means sacred to the goddess Baaleth. But as her troops were many of them Saracens or Arabs, a people nearly the same as the Blemmyes, who already formed part of the people of Upper Egypt, this conquest gave a new rank to that part of the population; and had the further result, important in after years, of causing them to be less quiet in their slavery to the Greeks of Alexandria.

But the sceptre of Rome had lately been grasped by the firmer hand of Aurelian, and the reign of Zenobia drew to a close. Aurelian at first granted her the title of his colleague in the empire, and we find Alexandrian coins with her head on one side and his on the other. But he lost no time in leading his forces into Syria, and, after routing Zenobia's army in one or two battles, he took her prisoner at Emessa. He then led her to Rome, where, after being made the ornament of his triumph, she was allowed to spend the rest of her days in quiet, having reigned for four years in Palmyra, though only for a few months in Egypt.

On the defeat of Zenobia it would seem that Egypt and Syria were still left under the government of one of her sons, with the title of colleague of Aurelian. The Alexandrian coins are then dated in the first year of Aurelian and the fourth of Vaballathus, or, according to the Greek translation of this name, of Athenodorus, who counted his years from the death of Odenathus.

The young Herodes, who had been killed with his father Odenathus, was not the son of Zenobia, but of a former wife, and Zenobia always acted towards him with the unkindness unfortunately too common in a stepmother. She had claimed the throne for her infant sons, Herennius and Timolaus; and we are left in doubt by the historians about Vaballathus; Vopiscus, who calls him the son of Zenobia, does not tell us who was his father. We know but little of him beyond his coins; but from these we learn that, after reigning one year with Aurelian, he aimed at reigning alone, took the title of Augustus, and dropped the name of Aurelian from his coins. This step was very likely the cause of his overthrow and death, which happened in the year 271.

On the overthrow of Zenobia's family, Egypt, which had been so fruitful in rebels, submitted to the Emperor Aurelian, but it was only for a few months. The Greeks of Alexandria, now lessened in numbers, were found to be no longer masters of the kingdom. Former rebellions in Egypt had been caused by the two Roman legions and the Greek mercenaries sometimes claiming the right to appoint an emperor to the Roman world; but Zenobia's conquest had raised the Egyptian and Arab population in their own opinion, and they were no longer willing to be governed by an Alexandrian or European master. In 272 A.D. they set up Firmus, a native of Seleucia, who took the title of emperor; and, resting his power on that part of the population that had been treated as slaves or barbarians for six hundred years, he aimed at the conquest of Alexandria.

Firmus was a man of great size and bodily strength, and, of course, barbarian manners. He had gained great riches by trade with India; and had a paper trade so profitable that he used to boast that he could feed an army on papyrus and glue. His house was furnished with glass windows, a luxury then but little known, and the squares of glass were fastened into the frames by means of bitumen. His chief strength was in the Arabs or Blemmyes of Upper Egypt, and in the Saracens who had lately been fighting against Rome under the standard of Zenobia. Firmus fixed his government at Koptos and Ptolemais, and held all Upper Egypt; but he either never conquered Alexandria, or did not hold it for many months, as for every year that he reigned in the Thebaid we find Alexandrian coins bearing the name of Aurelian. Firmus was at last conquered by Aurelian in person, who took him prisoner, and had him tortured and then put to death. During these troubles Rome had been thrown into alarm at the thoughts of losing the usual supply of Egyptian grain, as since the reign of Elagabalus the Roman granaries had never held more than was wanted for the year; but Aurelian hastened to send word to the Roman people that the country was again quiet, and that the yearly supplies, which had been delayed by the wickedness of Firmus, would soon arrive. Had Firmus raised the Roman legions in rebellion, he would have been honoured with the title of a rebel emperor; but, as his power rested on the Egyptians and Arabs, Aurelian only boasted that he had rid the world of a robber.



Another rebel emperor about this time was Domitius Domitiamis; but we have no certain knowledge of the year in which he rebelled, nor, indeed, without the help of the coins should we know in what province of the whole Roman empire he had assumed the purple. The historian only tells us that in the reign of Aurelian the general Domitianus was put to death for aiming at a change. We learn, however, from the coins that he reigned for part of a first and a second year in Egypt; but the subject of his reign is not without its difficulties, as we find Alexandrian coins of Domitianus with Latin inscriptions, and dated in the third year of his reign. The Latin language had not at this time been used on the coins of Alexandria; and he could not have held Alexandria for any one whole year, as the series of Aurelian's coins is not broken. It is possible that the Latin coins of Domitianus may belong to a second and later usurper of the same name.

Aurelian had reigned in Rome from the death of Claudius; and, notwithstanding the four rebels to whom we have given the title of sovereigns of Egypt, money was coined in Alexandria in his name during each of those years. His coinage, however, reminds us of the troubled and fallen state of the country; and from this time forward copper, or, rather, brass, is the only metal used.

Aurelian left Probus in the command of the Egyptian army, and that general's skill and activity found full employment in driving back the barbarians who pressed upon the province on each of the three sides on which it was open to attack.



His first battles were against the Africans and Marmaridae, who were in arms on the side of Cyrene, and he next took the field against the Palmyrenes and Saracens, who still claimed Egypt in the name of the family of Zenobia. He employed the leisure of his soldiers in many useful works; in repairing bridges, temples, and porticoes, and more particularly in widening the trenches and keeping open the canals, and in such other works as were of use in raising and forwarding the yearly supply of grain to Rome. Aurelian increased the amount of the Egyptian tribute, which was paid in glass, paper, linen, hemp, and grain; the latter he increased by one-twelfth part, and he placed a larger number of ships on the voyage to make the supply certain.

The Christians were well treated during this reign, and their patriarch Nero so far took courage as to build the Church of St. Mary in Alexandria. This was probably the first church that was built in Egypt for the public service of Christianity, which for two hundred years had been preached in private rooms, and very often in secret. The service was in Greek, as, indeed, it was in all parts of Egypt: for it does not appear that Christian prayers were publicly read in the Egyptian language before the quarrel between the two churches made the Kopts unwilling to use Greek prayers. The liturgy there read was probably very nearly the same as that afterwards known as the Liturgy of St. Mark. This is among the oldest of the Christian liturgies, and it shows its country by the prayer that the waters of the river may rise to their just measure, and that rain may be sent from heaven to the countries that need it.

We learn from the historians that eight months were allowed to pass between the death of Aurelian and the choice of a successor; and during this time the power rested in the hands of his widow. The sway of a woman was never openly acknowledged in Rome, but the Alexandrians and Egyptians were used to female rule, and from contemporary coins we learn that in Egypt the government was carried on in the name of the Empress Severina. The last coins of Aurelian bear the date of the sixth year of his reign, and the coins of Severina are dated in the sixth and seventh years. But after Tacitus was chosen emperor by his colleagues of the Roman senate, and during his short reign of six months (A.D. 276), his authority was obeyed by the Egyptian legions under Probus, as is fully proved by the Alexandrian coins bearing his name, all dated in the first year of his reign.



On the death of Tacitus, his brother Florian hoped to succeed to the imperial power, and was acknowledged in the same year by the senate and troops of Rome. But when the news reached Egypt it was at once felt by the legions that Probus, both by his own personal qualities and by the high state of discipline of the army under his command, and by his success against the Egyptian rebels, had a better claim to the purple than any other general. At first the opinion ran round the camp in a whisper, and at last the army spoke the general wish aloud; they snatched a purple cloak from a statue in one of the temples to throw over him, they placed him on an earthen mound as a tribunal, and against his will saluted him with the title of emperor. The choice of the Egyptian legions was soon approved of by Asia Minor, Syria, and Italy; Florian was put to death, and Probus shortly afterwards marched into Gaul and Germany, to quiet those provinces.

After a year or two, Probus was recalled into Egypt by hearing that the Blemmyes had risen in arms, and that Upper Egypt was again independent of the Roman power. Not only Koptos, which had for centuries been an Arab city, but even Ptolemais, the Greek capital of the Thebaid, was now peopled by those barbarians, and they had to be reconquered by Probus as foreign cities, and kept in obedience by Roman garrisons; and on his return to Rome he thought his victories over the Blemmyes of Upper Egypt not unworthy of a triumph.

By these unceasing wars, the Egyptian legions had lately been brought into a high state of discipline, and, confident in their strength, and in the success with which they had made their late general emperor of the Roman world, they now attempted to raise up a rival to him in the person of their present general Saturninus. Saturninus had been made general of the Eastern frontier by Aurelian, who had given him strict orders never to enter Egypt. "The Egyptians," says the historian, meaning, however, the Alexandrians, "are boastful, vain, spiteful, licentious, fond of change, clever in making songs and epigrams against their rulers, and much given to soothsaying and augury." Aurelian well knew that the loyalty of a successful general was not to be trusted in Egypt, and during his lifetime Saturninus never entered that province. But after his death, when Probus was called away to the other parts of the empire, the government of Egypt was added to the other duties of Saturninus; and no sooner was he seen there, at the head of an army that seemed strong enough to enforce his wishes, than the fickle Alexandrians saluted him with the title of emperor and Augustus. But Saturninus was a wise man, and shunned the dangerous honour; he had hitherto fought always for his country; he had saved the provinces of Spain, Gaul, and Africa from the enemy or from rebellion; and he knew the value of his rank and character too well to fling it away for a bauble. To escape from further difficulties he withdrew from Egypt, and moved his headquarters into Palestine. But the treasonable cheers of the Alexandrians could neither be forgotten by himself nor by his troops; he had withstood the calls of ambition, but he yielded at last to his fears; he became a rebel for fear of being thought one, and he declared himself emperor as the safest mode of escaping punishment. But he was soon afterwards defeated and strangled, against the will of the forgiving Probus.

On the death of Probus, in A.D. 283, the empire fell to Carus and his sons, Numerianus and Carinus, whose names are found on the Alexandrian coins, but whose short reigns have left no other trace in Egypt.



At this time also we find upon the coins the name of Trajan's second Egyptian legion, which was at all times stationed in Egypt, and which, acting upon an authority that was usually granted to the Roman legions in the various provinces, coined money of several kinds for their own pay.

The reign of Diocletian, beginning in A.D. 285, was one of suffering to the Egyptians; and in the fourth year the people rose against the Roman government, and gave the title of emperor to Achilleus, their leader in the rebellion. Galerius, the Roman general, led an army against the rebels, and marched through the whole of the Thebaid; but, though the Egyptians were routed whenever they were bold enough to meet the legions in battle, yet the rebellion was not very easily crushed. The Romans were scarcely obeyed beyond the spot on which their army was encamped. In the fourth year of the rebellion, A.D. 292, Diocletian came to Egypt, and the cities of Koptos and Busiris were besieged by the emperor in person, and wholly destroyed after a regular siege.

When Diocletian reached the southern limits of Egypt he was able to judge of the difficulty, and indeed the uselessness, of trying to hold any part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there was less than the cost of the troops required to collect it. He therefore made a new treaty with the Nobatae, as the people between the first and second cataracts were now called. He gave up to them the whole of Lower Ethiopia, or the province called Nubia. The valley for seventy miles above Syene, which bore the name of the Dodecaschonos, had been held by Augustus and his successors, and this was now given up to the original inhabitants. Diocletian strengthened the fortifications on the isle of Elephantine, to guard what was thenceforth the uttermost point of defence, and agreed to pay to the Nobatae and Blemmyes a yearly sum of gold on the latter promising no longer to harass Upper Egypt with their marauding inroads, and on the former promising to forbid the Blemmyes from doing so. What remains of the Roman wall built against the inroads of these troublesome neighbours runs along the edge of the cultivated land on the east side of the river for some distance to the north of the cataract. But so much was the strength of the Greek party lessened, and so deeply rooted among the Egyptians was their hatred of their rulers and the belief that they should then be able to throw off the yoke, that soon afterwards Alexandria declared in favour of Achilleus, and Diocletian was again called to Egypt to regain the capital. Such was the strength of the rebels that the city could not be taken without a regular siege. Diocletian surrounded it with a ditch and wall, and turned aside the canals that supplied the citizens with water. After a tedious siege of eight months, Alexandria was at last taken by storm in 297, and Achilleus was put to death. A large part of the city was burnt at the storming, nor would the punishment of the citizens have there ended, but for Diocletian's humane interpretation of an accident. The horse on which he sat stumbled as he entered the city with his troops, and he had the humanity to understand it as a command from heaven that he should stop the pillage of the city; and the citizens in gratitude erected near the spot a bronze statue of the horse to which they owed so much. This statue has long since been lost, but we cannot be mistaken in the place where it stood. The lofty column in the centre of the temple of Serapis, now well known by the name of Pompey's Pillar,* once held a statue on the top, and on the base it still bears the inscription of the grateful citizens, "To the most honoured emperor, the saviour of Alexandria, the unconquerable Diocletian."

* See Volume X., page 317.

This rebellion had lasted more than nine years, and the Egyptians seemed never in want of money for the purposes of the war. Diocletian was struck with their riches, and he ordered a careful search to be made through Egypt for all writings on alchemy, an art which the Egyptians studied together with magic and astrology. These books he ordered to be burnt, under a belief that they were the great sources of the riches by which his own power had been resisted. Want and misery no doubt caused this rebellion, but the rebellion certainly caused more want and misery. The navigation of the Nile was stopped, the canals were no longer kept cleared, the fields were badly tilled, trade and manufactures were ruined. Since the rebellions against the Persians, Egypt had never suffered so much. It had been sadly changed by the troubles of the last sixty years, during which it had been six times in arms against Rome; and when the rebellion was put down by Diocletian, it was no longer the same country that it had been under the Antonines. The framework of society had been shaken, the Greeks had lessened in numbers, and still more in weight. The fall of the Ptolemies, and the conquest by Rome, did not make so great a change. The bright days of Egypt as a Greek kingdom began with the building of Alexandria, and they ended with the rebellions against Gallienus, Aurelian and Diocletian. The native Egyptians, both Kopts and Arabs, now rise into more notice, as the Greek civilisation sinks around them. And soon the upper classes among the Kopts, to avoid the duty of maintaining a family of children in such troubled times, rush by thousands into monasteries and convents, and further lessen the population by their religious vows of celibacy. In the twelfth year of the reign, that in which Alexandria rebelled and the siege was begun, the Egyptian coinage for the most part ceased. Henceforth, though money was often coined in Alexandria as in every other great city of the empire, the inscriptions were usually in Latin, and the designs the same as those on the coins of Rome. In taking leave of this long and valuable series of coins with dates, which has been our guide in the chronology of these reigns, we must not forget to acknowledge how much we owe to the labours of the learned Zoega. In his Numi AEgypti Imperatorii, the mere descriptions, almost without a remark, speak the very words of history.

The reign of Diocletian is chiefly remarkable for the new law which was then made against the Christians, and for the cruel severity with which it was put into force. The issuing of this edict in 304 A.D., which was to root out Christianity from the world, took place in the twentieth year of the reign, according to the Alexandrians, or in the nineteenth year after the emperor's first installation as consul, as years were reckoned in the other parts of the empire. The churches, which since the reign of Gallienus had been everywhere rising, were ordered to be destroyed and the Bibles to be burnt, while banishment, slavery, and death were the punishments threatened against those who obstinately clung to their religion. In no province of the empire was the persecution more severe than in Egypt; and many Christians fled to Syria, where the law, though the same, was more mildly carried into execution. But the Christians were too numerous to fly and too few to resist. The ecclesiastical writers present us with a sad tale of tortures and of death borne by those who refused to renounce their faith,—a tale which is only made less sad by the doubt how far the writers' feelings may have misled their judgment, and made them overstate the numbers.

But we may safely rely upon the account which Eusebius gives us of what he himself saw in Egypt. Many were put to death on the same day, some beheaded and some burnt. The executioners were tired, and the hearts of the pagan judges melted by the unflinching firmness of the Christians. Many who were eminent for wealth, rank, and learning chose to lay down their lives rather than throw a few grains of wheat upon the altar, or comply with any ceremony that was required of them as a religious test. The judges begged them to think of their wives and children, and pointed out that they were the cause of their own death; but the Christians were usually firm, and were beheaded for the refusal to take the test. Among the most celebrated of the Egyptian martyrs were Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, with Faustus, Dius, and Ammonius, presbyters under him; the learned Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, Hesychius, the editor of the Septuagint, and the Bishops Pachomius and Theodorus; though the pagans must have been still more surprised at Philoromus, the receiver-general of the taxes at Alexandria. This man, after the prefect of Egypt and the general of the troops, was perhaps the highest Roman officer in the province. He sat in public as a judge in Alexandria, surrounded by a guard of soldiers, daily deciding all causes relating to the taxes of Egypt. He was accused of no crime but that of being a Christian, which he was earnestly entreated to deny, and was at liberty indirectly to disprove by joining in some pagan sacrifice. The Bishops of Alexandria and Thmuis may have been strengthened under their trials by their rank in the church, by having themselves urged others to do their duty in the same case, but the receiver-general of the taxes could have had nothing to encourage him but the strength of his faith and a noble scorn of falsehood; he was reproached or ridiculed by all around him, but he refused to deny his religion, and was beheaded as a common criminal.

The ready ministers of this persecution were Culeianus, the prefect of the Thebaid, and Hierocles, the prefect of Alexandria. The latter was peculiarly well chosen for the task; he added the zeal of the theologian to the ready obedience of the soldier. He had written against the Christians a work named Philalethes (the lover of truth), which we now know only in the answer by Eusebius of Caesarea. In this he denounced the apostles as impostors, and the Christian miracles as trifling; and, comparing them with the pretended miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, he pronounced the latter more numerous, more important, and better authenticated than the former by the evangelists; and he ridiculed the Christians for calling Jesus a god, while the pagans did not raise Apollonius higher than a man beloved by the gods.

This persecution under Diocletian was one of the most severe that the Christians ever underwent from the Romans. It did not, however, wholly stop the religious services, nor break up the regular government of the Church. In the catechetical school, Pierius, whom we have before spoken of as a man of learning, was succeeded by Theognostus and then by Serapion, whose name reminds us that the Egyptian party was gaining weight in the Alexandrian church. It can hardly have been for his superior learning, it may have been because his opinions were becoming more popular than those of the Greeks, that a professor with an Egyptian name was placed at the head of the catechetical school. Serapion was succeeded by Peter, who afterwards gained the bishopric of Alexandria and a martyr's crown. But these men were little known beyond their lecture-room. In the twentieth year of the reign, on the death of Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria, who lost his life as a martyr, the presbyters of the church met to choose a successor. Among their number was Arius, whose name afterwards became so famous in ecclesiastical history, and who had already, even before he was ordained a priest, offended many by the bold manner in which he stated his religious opinions. But upon him, if we may believe a partial historian, the majority of votes fell in the choice of a patriarch of Alexandria, and had he not himself modestly given way to the more ambitious Alexander, he might perhaps have been saved from the treatment which he afterwards suffered from his rival.

When, in the year 305, Diocletian and his colleague, Valerius Maximian, resigned the purple, Egypt with the rest of the East was given to Galerius, who had also as Caesar been named Maximian on his Egyptian coins, while Constantius Chlorus ruled the West. Galerius in 307 granted some slight indulgence to the Christians without wholly stopping the persecution. But all favour was again withdrawn from them by his successor Maximin, who had indeed misgoverned Egypt for some years, under the title of Caesar, before the rank of Augustus was granted to him. He encouraged private informers, he set townsman against townsman; and, as the wishes of the emperor are quickly understood by all under him, those who wished for his favour courted it by giving him an excuse for his cruelties. The cities sent up petitions to him, begging that the Christians might not be allowed to have churches within their walls. The history of these reigns indeed is little more than the history of the persecutions; and when the Alexandrian astronomers, dropping the era of Augustus, began to date from the first year of Diocletian, the Christian writers in the same way dated from the Era of the Martyrs.

It can be no matter of surprise to us that, in a persecution which threatened all classes of society, there should have been many who, when they were accused of being Christians, wanted the courage to undergo the pains of martyrdom, and escaped the punishment by joining in a pagan sacrifice. When the storm was blown over, these men again asked to be received into the Church, and their conduct gave rise to the very same quarrel that had divided the Christians in the reign of Decius. Meletius, a bishop of the Thebaid, was at the head of the party who would make no allowance for the weakness of their brethren, and who refused to grant to the repentant the forgiveness that they asked for. He had himself borne the same trials without bending, he had been sent as a criminal to work in the Egyptian mines, and had returned to Alexandria from his banishment, proud of his sufferings and furious against those who had escaped through cowardice. But the larger part of the bishops were of a more forgiving nature; they could not all boast of the same constancy, and the repentant Christians were re-admitted into communion with the faithful, while the followers of Meletius were branded with the name of heretics.

In Alexandria, Meletius soon found another and, as it proved, a more memorable occasion for the display of his zeal. He has the unenviable honour of being the author of the great Arian quarrel, by accusing of heresy Arius, at that time a presbyter of the church of Baucala near Alexandria, and by calling upon Alexander, the bishop, to inquire into his belief, and to condemn it if found unsound. Arius frankly and openly acknowledged his opinions: he thought Jesus a created being, and would speak of him in no higher terms than those used in the New Testament and Apostles' Creed, and defended his opinions by an appeal to the Scriptures. But he soon found that his defence was thought weak, and, without waiting to be condemned, he withdrew before the storm to Palestine, where he remained till summoned before the council of Nicaea in the coming reign.

It was during these reigns of trouble, about which history is sadly silent, when Greek learning was sinking, and after the country had been for a year or two in the power of the Syrians, that the worship of Mithra was brought into Alexandria, where superstitious ceremonies and philosophical subtleties were equally welcome. Mithra was the Persian god of the sun; and in the system of two gods, one good and the other wicked, he was the god of goodness.



The chief symbol in his worship was the figure of a young hero in Phrygian cap and trousers, mounted on a sinking bull, and stabbing it in sacrifice to the god. In a deserted part of Alexandria, called the Mithrium, his rites were celebrated among ruins and rubbish; and his ignorant followers were as ignorantly accused of there slaying their fellow-citizens on his altars.

It was about the same time that the eastern doctrine of Manicheism was said to have been brought into Egypt by Papus, and Thomas or Hernias. This sect, if sect it may be called, owed its origin to a certain Majus Mani, banished from Persia under the Sassanides; this Mani was a talented man, highly civilised through his studies and voyages in distant lands. In his exile he conceived the idea of putting himself forward as the reformer of the religions of all the peoples he had visited, and of reducing them all to one universal religion. Banished by the Christians, to whom he represented himself as the divinely inspired apostle of Jesus, in whom the Comforter had appeared, he returned to Persia, taking with him a book of the Gospels adorned by extraordinary paintings. Here he obtained at first the favour of the king and the people, till finally, after many changes of fortune, he was pursued by the magi, and convicted in a solemn disputation of falsifying religion; he was condemned to the terrible punishment of being flayed alive, after which his skin was to be stuffed and hung up over the gates of the royal city. His teaching consisted in a mixture of Persian and Christian-Gnostic views; its middle final point was the dualism of good and evil which rules in the world and in the human breast.

According to Mani's creed, there were originally two principles, God in His kingdom of light, and the demon with his kingdom of darkness, and these two principles existed independently of each other. The powers of evil fell into strife with each other, until, hurled away by their inward confusion, they reached the outermost edge of their own kingdom, and from there beheld the kingdom of light in all its glory. Now they ceased their strife among themselves and united to do battle to the kingdom of light. To meet them, God created the "original man" who, armed with the five pure elements, light, fire, air, water, and earth, advanced to meet the hostile powers. He was defeated, though finally saved; but a part of his light had thus made its way into the realm of darkness. In order gradually to regain this light, God caused the mother of life to create the visible world, in which that light lies hidden as a living power or world-soul awaiting its deliverance from the bonds of matter. In order to accomplish this redemption, two new beings of light proceed from God, viz.: Christ and the Holy Ghost, of whom the former, Christus Mithras, has his abode in the sun and moon, the latter in the ether diffused around the entire world. Both attract the powers of light which have sunk into the material world in order to lead them back, finally, into the everlasting realm of light. To oppose them, however, the demons created a new being, viz.: man, after the example of the "original man," and united in him the clearest light and the darkness peculiar to themselves, in order that the great strife might be renewed in his breast, and so man became the point of union of all the forces in the universe, the microcosm in which two principles ever strive for the mastery. Through the enticements of the material and the illusions of the demon, the soul of light was held in bondage in spite of its indwelling capacity for freedom, so that in heathenism and Judaism the "son of everlasting light," as the soul of the universe, was chained to matter. In order to accomplish this work of redemption more quickly, Christ finally leaves his throne at God's right hand, and appears on earth, truly in human form, but only with an apparent body; his suffering and death on the cross are but illusions for the multitude, although historical facts, and they serve at the same time as a symbol of the light imprisoned in matter, and as a typical expression of the suffering, poured out over the whole of nature (especially in the plant-world), of the great physical weltschmerz. Christ, through his teaching and power of attraction, began the deliverance of the light, so that one can truly say that the salvation of the world proceeds from rays which stream from the Cross; as, however, his teachings were conceived by the apostles in a Jewish sense, and the Gospels were disfigured, Mani appeared as the comforter promised by Christ to accomplish the victory. In his writings only is the pure truth preserved. Finally there will be a complete separation of the light from the darkness, and then the powers of darkness will fall upon each other again.

The ignorant in all ages of Christianity seem to have held nearly the same opinion in one form or other, thinking that sin has arisen either from a wicked being or from the wickedness of the flesh itself. The Jews alone proclaimed that God created good and God created evil. But we know of few writers who have ever owned themselves Manicheans, though many have been reproached as such; their doctrine is now known only in the works written against it. Of all heresies among the Christians this is the one most denounced by the ecclesiastical writers, and most severely threatened by the laws when the law makers became Christian; and of all the accusations of the angry controversialists this was the most reproachful. We might almost think that the numerous fathers who have written against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory when the enemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcely answered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view would lead us to remark how much the writers, as well as the readers, must have felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, since men have run into such wild opinions to explain it.

Another heresy, which for a time made even as much noise as the last, was that of Hieracas of Leontopolis. Even in Egypt, where for two thousand years it had been the custom to make the bodies of the dead into mummies, to embalm them against the day of resurrection, a custom which had been usually practised by the Christians, this native Egyptian ventured to teach that nothing but the soul would rise from the dead, and that we must look forward to only a spiritual resurrection. Hieracas was a man of some learning, and, much to the vexation of those who opposed his arguments, he could repeat nearly the whole Bible by heart.

The Bishop Hesychius, the martyr in the late persecution, was one of the learned men of the time. He had published a new edition of the Septuagint Old Testament, and also of the New Testament. This edition was valued and chiefly used in Egypt, while that by Lucianus, who suffered in the same persecution, was read in Asia Minor from Constantinople to Antioch, and the older edition by Origen remained in use in Palestine. But such was the credit of Alexandria, as the chief seat of Christian learning, that distant churches sent there for copies of the Scriptures, foreign translations were mostly made from Alexandrian copies, and the greater number of Christians even now read the Bible according to the edition by Hesychius. We must, however, fear that these editors were by no means judicious in their labours.



From the text itself we can learn that the early copiers of the Bible thought those manuscripts most valuable which were most full. Many a gloss and marginal note got written into the text. Their devotional feelings blinded their critical judgment; and they never ventured to put aside a modern addition as spurious. This mistaken view of their duty had of old guided the Hebrew copiers in Jerusalem; and though in Alexandria a juster criticism had been applied to the copies of Homer, it was not thought proper to use the same good sense when making copies of the Bible. So strong was the habit of grafting the additions into the text that the Greek translation became more copious than the Hebrew original, as the Latin soon afterwards became more copious than the Greek.

It was about this time, at least after Theodotion's translation of Daniel had received the sanction of the Alexandrian church, and when the teachers of Christianity found willing hearers in every city of Egypt, that the Bible was translated into the language of the country. We have now parts of several Koptic versions. They are translated closely, and nearly word by word from the Greek; and, being meant for a people among whom that language had been spoken for centuries, about one word in five is Greek. The Thebaic and Bashmuric versions may have been translated from the edition by Hesychius; but the Koptic version seems older, and its value to the Biblical critic is very great, as it helps us, with the quotations in Origen and Clemens, to distinguish the edition of the sacred text which was then used in Alexandria, and is shown in the celebrated Vatican manuscript, from the later editions used afterwards in Constantinople and Italy, when Christian literature flourished in those countries.

The Emperor Maximin died at Tarsus in A.D. 313, after being defeated by Licinius, who like himself had been raised to the rank of Augustus by Galerius, and to whom the empire of Egypt and the East then fell, while Constantine, the son of Constantius, governed Italy and the West. Licinius held his empire for ten years against the growing strength of his colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a single emperor. The growing strength of his colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a single emperor.



CHAPTER II.—THE CHRISTIAN PERIOD IN EGYPT

The Ascendency of the new religion: The Arian controversies: The Zenith of monasticism: The final struggle of Paganism: The decline of Alexandria.

Coming under the Roman sway, the Greek world underwent, not only politically but also intellectually, a complete change. As the Roman conquest had worn away all political differences and national divergences, and, by uniting the various races under the rule of the empire was bringing to its consummation the work begun by the Macedonian conqueror, it could not fail to influence the train of thought. On the one hand the political and ideal structure of Greek life was crumbling and bringing down the support and guiding principle supplied by the duties of citizenship and the devotion to the commonwealth. Man was thrown upon himself to find the principles of conduct. The customary morality and religion had been shaken in their foundations. The belief in the old gods and the old religion was undermined. Philosophy endeavoured to occupy the place left vacant by the gradual decay of the national religion. The individual, seeking for support and spiritual guidance, found it, or at least imagined he had found it, in philosophy. The conduct of life became the fundamental problem, and philosophy assumed a practical aspect. It aimed at finding a complete art of living. It had a thoroughly ethical stamp, and became more and more a rival of and opposed to religion. Such were the tendencies of the Stoic and Epicurean schools. The Roman rule was greatly favourable to such a development of thought. The Romans were a practical nation, had no conception of nor appreciation for purely theoretical problems, and demanded practical lessons and philosophical investigations which would serve as a guide for life. Thus the political tendency of the time towards practical wisdom had imparted a new direction to philosophical thought. Yet, as time went on, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction seized the ancient world in the midst of all the glories of the Roman rule. This huge empire could offer to the peoples, which it had welded into one mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national independence; it offered them no inner worth nor outer fortune. There was a complete discord running through the entire civilisation of the Graeco-Roman world. The social condition of the empire had brought with it extreme contrasts in the daily life. The contrasts had become more pronounced. Abundance and luxury existed side by side with misery and starvation. Millions were excluded from the very necessaries of existence. With the sense of injustice and revolt against the existing inequality of the state of society, the hope for some future compensation arose. The millions excluded from the worldly possessions turned longingly to a better world. The thoughts of man were turned to something beyond terrestrial life, to heaven instead of earth. Philosophy, too, had failed to give complete satisfaction. Man had realised his utter inability to find knowledge in himself by his unaided efforts. He despaired to arrive at it without the help of some transcendental power and its kind assistance. Salvation was not to be found in man's own nature, but in a world beyond that of the senses. Philosophy could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its ethical ideal of life, could not secure for him the promised happiness. Philosophy, therefore, turned to religion for help. At Alexandria, where, in the active work of its museum, all treasures of Grecian culture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowded together in the great throng of the commercial metropolis to seek a scientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed within them. The cosmopolitan spirit and broad-mindedness which had brought nations together under the Egyptian government, which had gathered scholars from all parts in the library and the museum, was favourable also to the fusion and reconciliation in the evolution of thought.

If Alexandria was the birthplace of that intellectual movement which has been described, this was not only the result of the prevailing spirit of the age, but was due to the influence of ideas; salvation could only be found in the reconciliation of ideas. The geographical centre of this movement of fusion and reconciliation was, however, in Alexandria. After having been the town of the museum and the library, of criticism and literary erudition, Alexandria became once again the meeting-place of philosophical schools and religious sects; communication had become easier, and various fundamentally different inhabitants belonging to distinct social groups met on the banks of the Nile. Not only goods and products of the soil were exchanged, but also ideas and thoughts. The mental horizon was widened, comparisons ensued, and new ideas were suggested and formed. This mixture of ideas necessarily created a complex spirit where two currents of thought, of critical scepticism and superstitious credulity, mixed and mingled. Another powerful factor was the close contact in which Occidentalism or Greek culture found itself with Orientalism. Here it was where the Greek and Oriental spirit mixed and mingled, producing doctrines and religious systems containing germs of tradition and science, of inspiration and reflection. Images and formulas, method and ecstasy, were interwoven and intertwined. The brilliant qualities of the Greek spirit, its sagacity and subtlety of intelligence, its lucidity and facility of expression, were animated and vivified by the Oriental spark, and gained new life and vigour. On the other hand, the contemplative spirit of the Orient, which is characterised by its aspiration towards the invisible and mysterious, would never have produced a coherent system or theory had it not been aided by Greek science. It was the latter that arranged and explained the Oriental traditions, loosed their tongues, and produced those religious doctrines and philosophical systems which culminated in Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, the Judaism of Philo, and the Polytheism of Julian the Apostate.

It was the contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greece with her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave rise to the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during the first centuries of our era. It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic, and yet speculative and scientific colours. Hence the religious spirit in philosophy and the philosophic tendency in the religious system that are the characteristic features. "East and West," says Baldwin,* "met at Alexandria." The co-operative ideas of civilisations, cultures, and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the farther East found themselves in juxtaposition. Hence arose a new problem, developed partly by Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration. Religion and philosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrines consequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnesses of an attempt at combining both.

* Baldwin: Dictionary of Philosophy.

These efforts naturally came from two sides. On the one hand, the Jews tried to accommodate their faith to the results of Western culture, in which Greek culture predominated. On the other hand, thinkers whose main impulse came from Greek philosophy attempted to accommodate their doctrines to the distinctively religious problems which the Eastern nations had brought with them. From whichever side the consequences be viewed, they are to be characterised as theosophical rather than purely philosophical, purely religious, or purely theological.

The reign of Constantine the Great, who became sole ruler of the East and West in 323, after ten years' joint government with Licinius, is remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and philosophy of the empire by the emperor's embracing the Christian faith. His conversion occurred in 312, and on his coming to the united sovereignty 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 minister 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, and the Egyptian Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already begun to designate the Jewish.

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 of Alexandria they had been smitten with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the temples of Serapis and Mithra, 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 further shaken by the platonists; and Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the Egyptians. Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian church had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular episcopal government. Till the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the bishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as the archdeacons 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.

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 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 early religions held different opinions, but distinguished themselves apart only by outward 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 disciples wrere 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 speculative and mystical.