By this success of the Nubians, Christianity was largely driven out of Upper Egypt; and about seventy years after the law of Thedosius L, by which paganism was supposed to be crushed, the religion of Isis and Serapis was again openly professed in the Thebaid, where it had perhaps always been cultivated in secret. A certain master of the robes in one of the Egyptian temple came at this time to the temple of Isis in the island of Philæ, and his votive inscription there declares that he was the son of Pachomius, a prophet, and successor by direct descent from a yet more famous Pachomius, a prophet, who we may easily believe was the Christian prophet who gathered together so many followers in the island of Tabenna, near Thebes, and there founded an order of Christian monks. These Christians now all returned to their paganism. Nearly all the remains of Christian architecture which we meet with in the The-baid were built during the hundred and sixty years between the defeat of the Nubians by Diocletian, and their victories in the reign of Marcian.

The Nubians were far more civilised than their neighbours, the Blemmyes, whom they were usually able to drive back into their native deserts. We find an inscription in bad Greek, in the great temple at Talmis, now the village of Kalabshe, which was probably written about this time. A conqueror of the name of Silco there declares that he is king of the Nubians and all the Ethiopians; that in the upper part of his kingdom he is called Mars, and in the lower part Lion; that he is as great as any king of his day; that he has defeated the Blemmyes in battle again and again; and that he has made himself master of the country between Talmis and Primis. While such were the neighbours and inhabitants of the Thebaid, the fields were only half-tilled, and the desert was encroaching on the paths of man. The sand was filling up the temples, covering the overthrown statues, and blocking up the doors to the tombs; but it was at the same time saving, to be dug out in after ages, those records which the living no longer valued.

On the death of the Emperor Marcian, the Alexandrians, taking advantage of the absence of the military prefect Dionysius, who was then fighting against the Nubades in Upper Egypt, renewed their attack upon the Bishop Proterius, and deposed him from his office. To fill his place they made choice of a monk named Timotheus Ælurus, who held the Jacobite faith, and, having among them two deposed bishops, they got them to ordain him Bishop of Alexandria, and then led him by force of arms into the great church which had formerly been called Caesar’s temple. Upon hearing of the rebellion, the prefect returned in haste to Alexandria; but his approach was only the signal for greater violence, and the enraged people murdered Proterius in the baptistery, and hung up his body at the Tetrapylon in mockery. This was not a rebellion of the mob. Timotheus was supported by the men of chief rank in the city; the Honorati who had borne state offices, the Politici who had borne civic offices, and the Navicularii, or contractors for the freight of the Egyptian tribute, were all opposed to the emperor’s claim to appoint the officer whose duties were much more those of prefect of the city than patriarch of Egypt. With such an opposition as this, the emperor would do nothing without the greatest caution, for he was in danger of losing Egypt altogether. But so much were the minds of all men then engrossed in ecclesiastical matters that this political struggle wholly took the form of a dispute in controversial divinity, and the emperor wrote a letter to the chief bishops in Christendom to ask their advice in his difficulty. These theologians were too busily engaged in their controversies to take any notice of the danger of Egypt’s revolting from the empire and joining the Persians; so they strongly advised Leo not to depart from the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, or to acknowledge as Bishop of Alexandria a man who denied the two natures of Christ. Accordingly, the emperor again risked breaking the slender ties by which he held Egypt; he banished the popular bishop, and forced the Alexandrians to receive in his place one who held the Chalcedonian faith.

On the death of Leo, he was succeeded by his grandson, Leo the Younger, who died in 473, after a reign of one year, and was succeeded by his father Zeno, the son-in-law of the elder Leo. Zeno gave himself up at once to debauchery and vice, while the empire was harassed on all sides by the barbarians, and the provinces were roused into rebellion by the cruelty of the prefects. The rebels at last found a head in Basilicus, the brother-in-law of Leo. He declared himself of the Jacobite faith, which was the faith of the barbarian enemies, of the barbarian troops, and of the barbarian allies of the empire, and, proclaiming himself emperor, made himself master of Constantinople without a battle, and drove Zeno into banishment in the third year of his reign.

The first step of Basilicus was to recall from banishment Timotheus Ælurus, the late Bishop of Alexandria, and to restore him to the bishopric (A.D. 477). He then addressed to him and the other recalled bishops a circular letter, in which he repeals the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and re-establishes the Nicene creed, declaring that Jesus was of one substance with the Father, and that Mary was the mother of God. The march of Timotheus to the seat of his own government, from Constantinople whither he had been summoned, was more like that of a conqueror than of a preacher of peace. He deposed some bishops and restored others, and, as the decrees of the council of Chalcedon were the particular objects of his hatred, he restored to the city of Ephesus the patriarchal power which that synod had taken away from it. Basilicus reigned for about two years, when he was defeated and put to death by Zeno, who regained the throne.

As soon as Zeno was again master of the empire, he re-established the creed of the council of Chalcedon, and drove away the Jacobite bishops from their bishoprics. Death, however, removed Timotheus Ælurus before the emperor’s orders were put in force in Alexandria, and the Egyptians then chose Peter Mongus as his successor, in direct opposition to the orders from Constantinople. But the emperor was resolved not to be beaten; the bishopric of Alexandria was so much a civil office that to have given up the appointment to the Egyptians would have been to allow the people to govern themselves; so he banished Peter, and recalled to the head of the Church Timotheus Salophaciolus, who had been living at Canopus ever since his loss of the bishopric.

But, as the patriarch of Alexandria enjoyed the ecclesiastical revenues, and was still in appearance a teacher of religion, the Alexandrians, in recollection of the former rights of the Church, still claimed the appointment. They sent John, a priest of their own faith and dean of the church of John the Baptist, as their ambassador to Constantinople, not to remonstrate against the late acts of the emperor, but to beg that on future occasions the Alexandrians might be allowed the old privilege of choosing their own bishop. The Emperor Zeno seems to have seen through the ambassador’s earnestness, and he first bound him by an oath not to accept the bishopric if he should even be himself chosen to it, and he then sent him back with the promise that the Alexandrians should be allowed to choose their own patriarch on the next vacancy. But unfortunately John’s ambition was too strong for his oath, and on the death of Timotheus, which happened soon afterwards, he spent a large sum of money in bribes among the clergy and chief men of the city, and thereby got himself chosen patriarch. On this, the emperor seems to have thought only of punishing John, and he at once gave up the struggle with the Egyptians. Believing that, of the two patriarchs who had been chosen by the people, Peter Mongus, who was living in banishment, would be found more dutiful than John, who was on the episcopal throne, he banished John and recalled Peter; and the latter agreed to the terms of an imperial edict which Zeno then put forth, to heal the disputes in the Egyptian church, and to recall the province to obedience. This celebrated peace-making edict, usually called the Henoticon, is addressed to the clergy and laity of Alexandria, Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, and is an agreement between the emperor and the bishops who countersigned it, that neither party should ever mention the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, which were the great stumbling-block with the Egyptians.

But in all other points the Henoticon is little short of a surrender to the people of the right to choose their own creed; it styles Mary the mother of God, and allows that the decrees of the council of Nicæa and Constantinople contain all that is important of the true faith. John, when banished by Zeno, like many of the former deposed bishops, fled to Rome for comfort and for help. There he met with the usual support; and Felix, Bishop of Rome, wrote to Constantinople, remonstrating with Zeno for dismissing the patriarch. But this was only a small part of the emperor’s want of success in his attempt at peace-making; for the crafty Peter, who had gained the bishopric by subscribing to the peace-making edict, was no sooner safely seated on his episcopal throne than he denounced the council of Chalcedon and its decrees as heretical, and drove out of their monasteries all those who still adhered to that faith. Nephalius, one of these monks, wrote to the emperor at Constantinople in complaint, and Zeno sent Cosmas to the bishop to threaten him with his imperial displeasure, and to try to re-establish peace in the Church. But the arguments of Cosmas were wholly unsuccessful; and Zeno then sent an increase of force to Arsenius, the military prefect, who settled the quarrel for the time by sending back the most rebellious of the Alexandrians as prisoners to Constantinople.

Soon after this dispute Peter Mongus died, and fortunately he was succeeded in the bishopric by a peacemaker. Athanasius, the new bishop, very unlike his great predecessor of the same name, did his best to heal the angry disputes in the Church, and to reconcile the Egyptians to the imperial government.

Hierocles, the Alexandrian, was at this time teaching philosophy in his native city, where his zeal and eloquence in favour of Platonism drew upon him the anger of the Christians and the notice of the government.

He was sent to Constantinople to be punished for not believing in Christianity, for it does not appear that, like the former Hierocles, he ever wrote against it. There he bore a public scourging from his Christian torturers, with a courage equal to that formerly shown by their forefathers when tortured by his. When some of the blood from his shoulders flew into his hand, he held it out in scorn to the judge, saying with Ulysses, “Cyclops, since human flesh has been thy food, now taste this wine.” After his punishment he was banished, but was soon allowed to return to Alexandria, and there he again taught openly as before. Paganism never wears so fair a dress as in the writings of Hierocles; his commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans is full of the loftiest and purest morality, and not less agreeable are the fragments that remain of his writings on our duties, and his beautiful chapter on the pleasures of a married life. In the Facetiæ of Hierocles we have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from the wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning; the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone will not make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer is always called a man of learning.

Ætius, the Alexandrian physician, has left a large work containing a full account of the state of Egyptian medicine at this time. He describes the diseases and their remedies, quoting the recipes of numerous authors, from the King Nechepsus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Hioscorides, down to Archbishop Cyril. He is not wholly free from superstition, as when making use of a green jasper set in a ring; but he observes that the patients recovered as soon when the stone was plain as when a dragon was engraved upon it according to the recommendation of Nechepsus. In Nile water he finds every virtue, and does not forget dark paint for the ladies’ eyebrows, and Cleopatra-wash for the face.

Anastasius, the next emperor, succeeding in 491, followed the wise policy which Zeno had entered upon in the latter years of his reign, and he strictly adhered to the terms of the peace-making edict. The four patriarchs of Alexandria who were chosen during this reign, John, a second John, Dioscorus, and Timotheus, were all of the Jacobite faith; and the Egyptians readily believed that the emperor was of the same opinion. When called upon by the quarrelling theologians, he would neither reject nor receive the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and by this wise conduct he governed Egypt without any religious rebellion during a long reign.

The election of Dioscorus, however, the third patriarch of this reign, was not brought about peaceably. He was the cousin of a former patriarch, Timotheus Ælurus, which, if we view the bishopric as a civil office, might be a reason for the emperor’s wishing him to have the appointment. But it was no good reason with the Alexandrians, who declared that he had not been chosen according to the canons of the apostles; and the magistrates of the city were forced to employ the troops to lead him in safety to his throne. After the first ceremony, he went, as was usual at an installation, to St. Mark’s Church, and there the clergy robed him in the patriarchal state robes. The grand procession then moved through the streets to the church of St. John, where the new bishop went through the communion service. But the city was much disturbed during the whole day, and in the riot Theodosius, the son of Calliopus, a man of Augustalian rank, was killed by the mob. The Alexandrians treated the affair as murder, and punished with death those who were thought guilty; but the emperor looked upon it as a rebellion of the citizens, and the bishop was obliged to go on an embassy to Constantinople to appease his just anger.

Anastasius, who had deserved the obedience of the Egyptians by his moderation, pardoned their ingratitude when they offended; but he was the last Byzantine emperor who governed Egypt with wisdom, and the last who failed to enforce the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. It may well be doubted whether any wise conduct on the part of the rulers could have healed the quarrel between the two countries, and made the Egyptians forget the wrongs that they had suffered from the Greeks.

In the tenth year of the reign of Anastasius, A.D. 501, the Persians, after overrunning a large part of Syria and defeating the Roman generals, passed Pelusium and entered Egypt. The army of Kobades laid waste the whole of the Delta up to the very walls of Alexandria. Eustatius, the military prefect, led out his forces against the invaders and fought many battles with doubtful success; but as the capital was safe the Persians were at last obliged to retire, leaving the people ruined as much by the loss of a harvest as by the sword. Alexandria suffered severely from famine and the diseases which followed in its train; and history has gratefully recorded the name of Urbib, a Christian Jew of great wealth, who relieved the starving poor of that city with his bounty. Three hundred persons were crushed to death in the church of Arcadius on Easter Sunday in the press of the crowd to receive his alms. As war brought on disease and famine, they also brought on rebellion. The people of Alexandria, in want of grain and oil, rose against the magistrates, and many lives were lost in the attempt to quell the riots.

In the early part of this history we have seen ambitious bishops quickly disposed of by banishment to the Great Oasis; and again, as the country became more desolate, criminals were sufficiently separated from the rest of the empire by being sent to Thebes. Alexandria was then the last place in the world in which a pretender to the throne would be allowed to live. But Egypt was now ruined; and Anastasius began his reign by banishing, to the fallen Alexandria, Longinus, the brother of the late king, and he had him ordained a presbyter, to mark him as unfit for the throne.

Julianus, who was during a part of this reign the prefect of Egypt, was also a poet, and he has left us a number of short epigrams that form part of the volume of Greek Anthology which was published at Constantinople soon after this time. Christodorus of Thebes was another poet who joined with Julianus in praising the Emperor Anastasius. He also removed to Constantinople, the seat of patronage; and the fifth book of the Greek Anthology contains his epigrams on the winners in the horse-race in that city and on the statues which stood around the public gymnasium.

The poet’s song, like the traveller’s tale, often related the wonders of the river Nile. The overflowing waters first manured the fields, and then watered the crops, and lastly carried the grain to market; and one writer in the Anthology, to describe the country life in Egypt, tells the story of a sailor, who, to avoid the dangers of the ocean, turned husbandman, and was then shipwrecked in his own meadows.

The book-writers at this time sometimes illuminated their more valuable parchments with gold and silver letters and sometimes employed painters to ornament them with small paintings. The beautiful copy of the work of Dioscorides on Plants in the library at Vienna was made in this reign for the Princess Juliana of Constantinople. In one painting the figure of science or invention is holding up a plant, while on one side of her is the painter drawing it on his canvas, and on the other side is the author describing it in his book. Other paintings are of the plants and animals mentioned in the book. A copy of the Book of Genesis, also in the library at Vienna, is of the same class and date. A large part of it is written in gold and silver; and it has eighty-eight small paintings of various historical subjects. In these the story is well told, though the drawing and perspective are bad and the figures crowded. But these Alexandrian paintings are better than those made in Rome or Constantinople at this time.

With the spread of Christianity theatrical representations had been gradually going out of use. The Greek tragedies, as we see in the works of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, those models of pure taste in poetry, are founded on the pagan mythology; and in many of them the gods are made to walk and talk upon the stage. Hence they of necessity fell under the ban of the clergy. As the Christians became more powerful the several cities of the empire had one by one discontinued these popular spectacles, and horse-races usually took their place. But the Alexandrians were the last people to give up a favourite amusement; and by the end of this reign Alexandria was the only city in the empire where tragic and comic actors and Eastern dancers were to be seen in the theatre.

The tower or lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the work of days more prosperous than these, had latterly been sadly neglected with the other buildings of the country. For more than seven hundred years, the pilot on approaching this flat shore after dark had pointed out to his shipmate what seemed a star on the horizon, and comforted him with the promise of a safe entrance into the haven, and told him of Alexander’s tower. But the waves breaking against its foot had long since carried away the outworks, and laid bare the foundations; the wall was undermined and its fall seemed close at hand. The care of Anastasius, however, surrounded it again with piles and buttresses; and this monument of wisdom and science, which deserved to last for ever, was for a little while longer saved from ruin. An epigram in the Anthology informs us that Ammonius was the name of the builder who performed this good work, and to him and to Neptune the grateful sailors then raised their hands in prayer and praise.

In 518 Justin I. succeeded Anastasius on the throne of Constantinople, and in the task of defending the empire against the Persians. And this task became every year more difficult, as the Greek population of his Egyptian and Asiatic provinces fell off in numbers. For some years after the division of the empire under the sons of Constantine, Antioch in Syria had been the capital from which Alexandria received the emperor’s commands. The two cities became very closely united; and now that the Greeks were deserting Antioch, a part of the Syrian church began to adopt the more superstitious creed of Egypt. Severus, Bishop of Antioch, was successful in persuading a large party in the Syrian church to deny the humanity of Christ, and to style Mary the mother of God. But the chief power in Antioch rested with the opposite party. They answered his arguments by threats of violence, and he had to leave the city for safety. He fled to Alexandria, and with him began the friendship between the two churches which lasted for several centuries. In Alexandria he was received with the honour due to his religious zeal. But though in Antioch his opinions had been too Egyptian for the Syrians, in Alexandria they were too Syrian for the Egyptians. The Egyptians, who said that Jesus had been crucified and died only in appearance, always denied that his body was liable to corruption. Severus, however, argued that it was liable to corruption before the resurrection; and this led him into a new controversy, in which Timotheus, the Alexandrian bishop, took part against his own more superstitious flock, and sided with his friend, the Bishop of Antioch. Severus has left us, in the Syriac language, the baptismal service as performed in Egypt. The priest breathes three times into the basin to make the water holy, he makes three crosses on the child’s forehead, he adjures the demons of wickedness to quit him, he again makes three crosses on his forehead with oil, he again blows three times into the water in the form of a cross, he anoints his whole body with oil, and then plunges him in the water. Many other natives of Syria soon followed Severus to Alexandria; so many indeed that as Greek literature decayed in that city, Syriac literature rose. Many Syrians also came to study the religious life in the monasteries of Egypt, and after some time the books in the library of the monastery at Mount Nit-ria were found to be half Arabic and half Syriac.

Justin, the new emperor, again lighted up in Alexandria the flames of discord which had been allowed to slumber since the publication of Zeno’s peace-making edict. But in the choice of the bishop he was not able to command without a struggle. In the second year of his reign, on the death of Timotheus, the two parties again found themselves nearly equal in strength; and Alexandria was for several years kept almost in a state of civil war between those who thought that the body of Jesus had been liable to corruption, and those who thought it incorruptible. The former chose Gaianas, whom his adversaries called a Manichean; and the latter Theodosius, a Jacobite, who had the support of the prefect; and each of these in his turn was able to drive his rival out of Alexandria.

Those Persian forces which in the last reign overran the Delta were chiefly Arabs from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. To make an end of these attacks, and to engage their attention in another quarter, was the natural wish of the statesmen of Constantinople; and for this purpose Anastasius had sent an embassy to the Homeritæ on the southern coast of Arabia, to persuade them to attack their northern neighbours. The Homeritæ held the strip of coast now called Hadramout. They were enriched, though hardly civilised, by being the channel along which much of the Eastern trade passed from India to the Nile, to avoid the difficult navigation of the ocean. They were Jewish Arabs, who had little in common with the Arabs of Yemen, but had frequent intercourse with Abyssinia and the merchants of the Red Sea. Part of the trade of Solomon and the Tyrians was probably to their coast. To this distant and little tribe the Emperor of Constantinople now sent a second pressing embassy. Julianus, the ambassador, went up the Nile from Alexandria, and then crossed the Red Sea, or Indian Sea as it was also called, to Arabia. He was favourably received by the Homeritæ. Arethas, the king, gave him an audience in grand barbaric state. He was standing in a chariot drawn by four elephants; he wore no clothing but a cloth of gold around his loins; his arms were laden with costly armlets and bracelets; he held a shield and two spears in his hands, and his nobles stood around him armed, and singing to his honour. When the ambassador delivered the emperor’s letter, Arethas kissed the seal, and then kissed Julianus himself. He accepted the gifts which Justin had sent, and promised to move his forces northward against the Persians as requested, and also to keep the route open for the trade to Alexandria.

Justinian, the successor of Justin in 527, settled the quarrel between the two Alexandrian bishops by summoning them both to Constantinople, and then sending them into banishment. But this had no effect in healing the divisions in the Egyptian church; and for the next half-century the two parties ranged themselves, in their theological or rather political quarrel, under the names of their former bishops, and called themselves Gaianites and Theodosians. Nor did the measures of Justinian tend to lessen the breach between Egypt and Constantinople. He appointed Paul to the bishopric, and required the Egyptians to receive the decrees of the council of Chalcedon.

After two years Paul was displaced either by the emperor or by his flock; and Zoilus was then seated on the episcopal throne by the help of the imperial forces. He maintained his dangerous post for about six years, when the Alexandrians rose in open rebellion, overpowered the troops, and forced him to seek safety in flight; and the Jacobite party then turned out all the bishops who held the Greek faith.

When Justinian heard that the Jacobites were masters of Egypt he appointed Apollinarius to the joint office of prefect and patriarch of Alexandria, and sent him with a large force to take possession of his bishopric. Apollinarius marched into Alexandria in full military dress at the head of his troops; but when he entered the church he laid aside his arms, and putting on the patriarchal robes began to celebrate the rites of his religion. The Alexandrians were by no means overawed by the force with which he had entered the city; they pelted him with a shower of stones from every corner of the church, and he was forced to withdraw from the building in order to save his life. But three days afterwards the bells were rung through the city, and the people were summoned to meet in the church on the following Sunday, to hear the emperor’s letter read. When Sunday came the whole city flocked to hear and to disobey Justinian’s orders. Apollinarius began his address by threatening his hearers that, if they continued obstinate in their opinions, their children should be made orphans and their widows given up to the soldiery; and he was as before stopped with a shower of stones. But this time he was prepared for the attack; this Christian bishop had placed his troops in ambush round the church, and on a signal given they rushed out on his unarmed flock, and by his orders the crowds within and without the church were put to rout by the sword, the soldiers waded up to their knees in blood, and the city and whole country yielded its obedience for the time to bishops who held the Greek faith.

Henceforth the Melchite or royalist patriarchs, who were appointed by the emperor and had the authority of civil prefects, and were supported by the power of the military prefect, are scarcely mentioned by the historian of the Koptic church. They were too much engaged in civil affairs to act the part of ministers of religion. They collected their revenues principally in grain, and carried on a large export trade, transporting their stores to those parts of Europe where they would bring the best price. On one occasion we hear of a small fleet belonging to the church of Alexandria, consisting of thirteen ships of about thirty tons burden each, and bearing ten thousand bushels of grain, being overtaken by a storm on the coast of Italy. The princely income of the later patriarchs, raised from the churches of all Egypt under the name of the offerings of the pious, sometimes amounted to two thousand pounds of gold, or four hundred thousand dollars. But while these Melchite or royalist bishops were enjoying the ecclesiastical revenues, and administering the civil affairs of the diocese and of the great monasteries, there was a second bishop who held the Jacobite faith, and who, having been elected by the people according to the ancient forms of the Church, equally bore the title of patriarch, and administered in his more humble path to the spiritual wants of his flock. The Jacobite bishop was always a monk. At his ordination he was declared to be elected by the popular voice, by the bishops, priests, deacons, monks, and all the people of Lower Egypt; and prayers were offered up through the intercession of the Mother of God, and of the glorious Apostle Mark. The two churches no longer used the same prayer-book. The Melchite church continued to use the old liturgy, which, as it had been read in Alexandria from time immemorial, was called the liturgy of St. Mark, altered however to declare that the Son was of the same substance with the Father. But the Koptic church made use of the newer liturgies by their own champions, Bishop Cyril, Basil of Cæsaræ, and Gregory Nazianzen. These three liturgies were all in the Koptic language, and more clearly denied the two natures of Christ. Of the two churches the Koptic had less learning, more bigotry, and opinions more removed from the teachings of the New Testament; but then the Koptic bishop alone had any moral power to lead the minds of his flock towards piety and religion. Had the emperors been at all times either humane or politic enough to employ bishops of the same religion as the people, they would perhaps have kept the good-will of their subjects; but as it was, the Koptic church, smarting under its insults, and forgetting the greater evils of a foreign conquest, would sometimes look with longing eyes to the condition of their neighbours, their brethren in faith, the Arabic subjects of Persia.

The Christianity of the Egyptians was mostly superstition; and as it spread over the land it embraced the whole nation within its pale, not so much by purifying the pagan opinions as by lowering itself to their level, and fitting itself to their corporeal notions of the Creator. This was in a large measure induced by the custom of using the old temples for Christian churches; the form of worship was in part guided by the form of the building, and even the old traditions were engrafted on the new religion. Thus the traveller Antonius, after visiting the remarkable places in the Holy Land, came to Egypt to search for the chariots of the Egyptians who pursued Moses, petrified into rocks at the bottom of the Red Sea, and for the footsteps left in the sands by the infant Jesus while he dwelt in Egypt with his parents. At Memphis he enquired why one of the doors in the great temple of Phtah, then used as a church, was always closed, and he was told that it had been rudely shut against the infant Jesus five hundred years before, and mortal strength had never since been able to open it.

The records of the empire declared that the first Cæsars had kept six hundred and forty-five thousand men under arms to guard Italy, Africa, Spain, and Egypt, a number perhaps much larger than the truth; but Justinian could with difficulty maintain one hundred and fifty thousand ill-disciplined troops, a force far from large enough to hold even those provinces that remained to him. During the latter half of his reign the eastern frontier of this falling empire was sorely harassed by the Persians under their king Chosroes. They overran Syria, defeated the army of the empire in a pitched battle, and then took Antioch. By these defeats the military roads were stopped; Egypt was cut off from the rest of the empire and could be reached from the capital only by sea. Hence the emperor was driven to a change in his religious policy. He gave over the persecution of the Jacobite opinions, and even went so far in one of his decrees as to call the body of Jesus incorruptible, as he thought that these were the only means of keeping the allegiance of his subjects or the friendship of his Arab neighbours, all of whom, as far as they were Christians, held the Jacobite view of the Nicene creed, and denied the two natures of Christ.

As the forces of Constantinople were driven back by the victorious armies of the Persians, the emperors had lost, among other fortresses, the capital of Arabia Nabataæ, that curious rocky fastness that well deserved the name of Petra, and which had been garrisoned by Romans from the reign of Trajan till that of Valens. On this loss it became necessary to fortify a new frontier post on the Egyptian side of the Elanitic Gulf. Justinian then built the fortified monastery near Mount Sinai, to guard the only pass by which Egypt could be entered without the help of a fleet; and when it was found to be commanded by one of the higher points of the mountain he beheaded the engineer who built it, and remedied the fault, as far as it could be done, by a small fortress on the higher ground. This monastery was held by the Egyptians, and maintained out of the Egyptian taxes. When the Egyptians were formerly masters of their own country, before the Persian and Greek conquests, they were governed by a race of priests, and the temples were their only fortresses.

The temples of Thebes were the citadels of the capital, and the temples of Elephantine guarded the frontier. So now, when the military prefect is too weak to make himself obeyed, the emperor tries to govern through means of the Christian priesthood; and when it is necessary for the Egyptians to defend their own frontier, he builds a monastery and garrisons it with monks.

Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through the islands of Ceylon and Socotra; but it was chiefly in the hands of uneducated Arabs of Ethiopia, who were little able to communicate to the world much knowledge of the countries from which they brought their highly valued goods. At Ceylon they met with traders from beyond the Ganges and from China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans had formerly thought a product of Arabia. At Ceylon was a Christian church, with a priest and a deacon, frequented by the Christians from Persia, while the natives of the place were pagans. The coins there used were Roman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so many centuries carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was lately turned more strongly into this channel because a war had sprung up between the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumitæ of Abyssinia on the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritæ who dwelt in Arabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. The Homeritæ had quarrelled with the Alexandrian merchants in the Indian trade, and had killed some of them as they were passing their mountains from India to the country of the Hexumitae.

Immediately after these murders the Hexumitæ found the trade injured, and they took up arms to keep the passage open for the merchants. Hadad their king crossed the Red Sea and conquered his enemies; he put to death Damianus, the King of the Homeritse, and made a new treaty with the Emperor of Constantinople. The Hexumitæ promised to become Christians. They sent to Alexandria to beg for a priest to baptise them, and to ordain their preachers; and Justinian sent John, a man of piety and high character, the dean of the church of St. John, who returned with the ambassadors and became bishop of the Hexumitae.

It was possibly this conquest of the Homeritae by Hadad, King of the Hexumitae, which was recorded on the monument of Adule, at the foot of the inscription set up eight centuries earlier by Ptolemy Euergetes. The monument is a throne of white marble. The conqueror, whose name had been broken away before the inscription was copied, there boasts that he crossed over the Red Sea and made the Arabians and Sabaaans pay him tribute. On his own continent he defeated the tribes to the north of him, and opened the passage from his own country to Egypt; he also marched eastward, and conquered the tribes on the African incense coast; and lastly, he crossed the Astaborus to the snowy mountains in which that branch of the Nile rises, and conquered the tribes between that stream and the Astapus. This valuable inscription, which tells us of snowy mountains within the tropics, was copied by Cosmas, a merchant of Alexandria, who passed through Adule on his way to India.

Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies to these nations at the southern end of the Red Sea; to the Homeritae, to persuade them to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to the Hexumitae, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent an embassy to the Homeritae under Abram; and, as he was successful in his object, he entrusted a second embassy to Abram’s son. Nonnosus landed at Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteen days to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; it had gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nile between Egypt and Meroë. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wild elephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand. After delivering his message to Elesbaas, then King of Auxum, he crossed the Red Sea to Caisus, King of the Homeritæ, a grandson of that Arethas to whom Justin had sent his embassy. Notwithstanding the natural difficulties of the journey, and those arising from the tribes through which he had to pass, Nonnosus performed his task successfully, and on his return home wrote a history of his embassies.

The advantage gained to the Hexumitæ by their invasion of the Homeritæ was soon lost, probably as soon as their forces were withdrawn. The trade through the country of the Homeritae was again stopped; and such was the difficulty of navigation from the incense coast of Africa to the mouths of the Indus, that the loss was severely felt at Auxum. Elesbæs therefore undertook to repeat the punishment which had been before inflicted on his less civilised neighbours, and again to open the trade to the merchants from the Nile. It was while he was preparing his forces for this invasion that Cosmas, the Alexandrian traveller, passed through Adule; and he copied for the King of Auxum the inscription above spoken of, which recorded the victories of his predecessor over the enemies he was himself preparing to attack.

The invasion by Elesbæs, or Elesthæus as he is also named, was immediately successful. The Homeritæ were conquered, their ruler was overthrown; and, to secure their future obedience, the conqueror set over these Jewish Arabs an Abyssinian Christian for their king. Esimaphæus was chosen for that post; and his first duty was to convert his new subjects to Christianity. Political reasons as well as religious zeal would urge him to this undertaking, to make the conquered bear the badge of the conqueror. For this purpose he engaged the assistance of Gregentius, a bishop, who was to employ his learning and eloquence in the cause. Accordingly, in the palace of Threlletum, in the presence of their new king, a public dispute was held between the Christian bishop and Herban, a learned Jew. Gregentius has left us an account of the controversy, in which he was wholly successful, being helped, perhaps, by the threats and promises of the king. The arguments used were not quite the same as they would be now. The bishop explained the Trinity as the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Mind or Father, and resting on the Word or Son, which was then the orthodox view of this mysterious doctrine. On the other hand, the Jew quoted the Old Testament to show that the Lord their God was one Lord. It is related that suddenly the Jews present were struck blind. Their sight, however, was restored to them on the bishop’s praying for them; and they were then all thereby converted and baptised on the spot. The king stood godfather to Herban, and rewarded him with a high office under his government.

Esimaphasus did not long remain King of the Homeritæ. A rebellion soon broke out against him, and he was deposed. Elesbaas, King of Auxum, again sent an army to recall the Homeritæ to their obedience, but this time the army joined in the revolt; and Elesbæ then made peace with the enemy, in hopes of thus gaining the advantages which he was unable to grasp by force of arms. From a Greek inscription on a monument at Auxum we learn the name of Æizanas, another king of that country, who also called himself, either truly or boastfully, king of the opposite coast. He set up the monument to record his victories over the Bougoto, a people who dwelt between Auxum and Egypt, and he styles himself the invincible Mars, king of kings, King of the Hexumito, of the Ethiopians, of the Saboans, and of the Homerito. These kings of the Hexumito ornamented the city of Auxum with several beautiful and lofty obelisks, each made of a single block of granite like those in Egypt.

Egypt in its mismanaged state seemed to be of little value to the empire save as a means of enriching the prefect and the tax-gatherers; it yielded very little tribute to Constantinople beyond the supply of grain, and that by no means regularly. To remedy these abuses Justinian made a new law for the government of the province, with a view of bringing about a thorough reform. By this edict the districts of Menelaites and Mareotis, to the west of Alexandria, were separated from the rest of Egypt, and they were given to the prefect of Libya, whose seat of government was at Parotonium, because his province was too poor to pay the troops required to guard it. The several governments of Upper Egypt, of Lower Egypt, of Alexandria, and of the troops were then given to one prefect. The two cohorts, the Augustalian and the Ducal, into which the two Boman legions had gradually dwindled, were henceforth to be united under the name of the Augustalian Cohort, which was to contain six hundred men, who were to secure the obedience and put down any rebellion of the Egyptian and barbarian soldiers. The somewhat high pay and privileges of this favoured troop were to be increased; and, to secure its loyalty and to keep out Egyptians, nobody was to be admitted into it till his fitness had been inquired into by the emperor’s examiners. The first duty of the cohort was to collect the supply of grain for Constantinople and to see it put on board the ships; and as for the supply which was promised to the Alexandrians, the magistrates were to collect it at their own risk, and by means of their own cohort. The grain for Constantinople was required to be in that city before the end of August, or within four months after the harvest, and the supply for Alexandria not more than a month later. The prefect was made answerable for the full collection, and whatever was wanting of that quantity was to be levied on his property and his heirs, at the rate of one solidus for three artabo of grain, or about three dollars for fifteen bushels; while in order to help the collection, the export of grain from Egypt was forbidden from every port but Alexandria, except in small quantities. The grain required for Alexandria and Constantinople, to be distributed as a free gift among the idle citizens, was eight hundred thousand artabo, or four millions of bushels, and the cost of collecting it was fixed at eighty thousand solidi, or about three hundred thousand dollars. The prefect was ordered to assist the collectors at the head of his cohort, and if he gave credit for the taxes which he was to collect he was to bear the loss himself. If the archbishop interfered, to give credit and screen an unhappy Egyptian, then he was to bear the loss, and if his property was not enough the property of the Church was to make it good; but if any other bishop gave credit, not only was his property to bear the loss, but he was himself to be deposed from his bishopric; and lastly, if any riot or rebellion should arise to cause the loss of the Egyptian tribute, the tribunes of the Augustalian Cohort were to be punished with forfeiture of all property, and the cohort was to be removed to a station beyond the Danube.

Such was the new law which Justinian, the great Roman lawgiver, proposed for the future government of Egypt. The Egyptians were treated as slaves, whose duty was to raise grain for the use of their masters at Constantinople, and their taskmasters at Alexandria. They did not even receive from the government the usual benefit of protection from their enemies, and they felt bound to the emperor by no tie either of love or interest. The imperial orders wrere very little obeyed beyond those places where the troops were encamped; the Arabs were each year pressing closer upon the valley of the Nile, and helping the sands of the desert to defeat the labours of the disheartened husbandmen; and the Greek language, which had hitherto followed and marked the route of commerce from Alexandria to Syênê, and to the island of Socotra, was now but seldom heard in Upper Egypt. The Alexandrians were sorely harassed by Haephasstus, a lawyer, who had risen by court favour to the chief post in the city. He made monopolies in his own favour of all the necessaries of life, and secured his ill-gotten gains by ready loans of part of it to Justinian. His zeal for the emperor was at the cost of the Alexandrians, and to save the public granaries he lessened the supply of grain which the citizens looked for as a right. The city was sinking fast; and the citizens could ill bear this loss, for its population, though lessened, was still too large for the fallen state of Egypt.

The grain of the merchants was shipped from Alexandria to the chief ports of Europe, between Constantinople in the east and Cornwall in the west. Britain had been left by the Romans, as too remote for them to hold in their weakened condition; and the native Britons were then struggling against their Saxon invaders, as in a distant corner of the world, beyond the knowledge of the historian. But to that remote country the Alexandrian merchants sailed every year with grain to purchase tin, enlightening the natives, while they only meant to enrich themselves. Under the most favourable circumstances they sometimes performed the voyage in twenty days. The wheat was sold in Cornwall at the price of a bushel for a piece of silver, perhaps worth about twenty cents, or for the same weight of tin, as the tin and the silver were nearly of equal worth. This was the longest of the ancient voyages, being longer than that from the Red Sea to the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean; and it had been regularly performed for at least eight centuries without ever teaching the British to venture so far from their native shores.

The suffering and riotous citizens made Alexandria a very unpleasant place of abode for the prefect and magistrates. They therefore built palaces and baths for their own use, at the public cost, at Taposiris, about a day’s journey to the west of the city, at a spot yet marked by the remains of thirty-six marble columns, and a lofty tower, once perhaps a lighthouse. At the same time it became necessary to fortify the public granaries against the rebellious mob. The grain was brought from the Nile by barges on a canal to the village of Chaereum, and thence to a part of Alexandria named Phialæ, or The Basins, where the public granaries stood. In all riots and rebellions this place had been a natural point of attack; and often had the starving mob broken open these buildings, and seized the grain that was on its way to Constantinople. But Justinian surrounded them with a strong wall against such attacks for the future, and at the same time he rebuilt the aqueduct that had been destroyed in one of the sieges of the city.

In civil suits at law an appeal had always been allowed from the prefect of the province to the emperor, or rather to the prefect of the East at Constantinople; but as this was of course expensive, it was found necessary to forbid it when the sum of money in dispute was small. Justinian forbade all Egyptian appeals for sums less than ten pounds weight of gold, or about two thousand five hundred dollars; for smaller sums the judgment of the prefect was to be final, lest the expense should swallow up the amount in dispute.

In this reign the Alexandrians, for the first time within the records of history, felt the shock of an earthquake. Their naturalists had very fairly supposed that the loose alluvial nature of the soil of the Delta was the reason why earthquakes were unknown in Lower Egypt, and believed that it would always save them from a misfortune which often overthrew cities in other countries. Pliny thought that Egypt had been always free from earthquakes. But this shock was felt by everybody in the city; and Agathias, the Byzantine historian, who, after reading law in the university of Beirut, was finishing his studies at Alexandria, says that it was strong enough to make the inhabitants all run into the street for fear the houses should fall upon them.

The reign of Justinian is remarkable for another blow then given to paganism throughout the empire, or at least through those parts of the empire where the emperor’s laws were obeyed.