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therefore drew upon themAmong the cultivators of

sympathized with the Jews, and selves the vengeance of Cyril. Platonic philosophy whom the times had left there was a beauHypatia. tiful young woman, Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by her expositions of the Neo-Platonic and Peripatetic doctrines, but was also honoured for the ability with which she commented on the writings of Apollonius and other geometers. Each day before her door stood a long train of chariots; her lectureroom was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria. Her aristocratic audiences were more than a rival to those attending upon the preaching of the archbishop, and perhaps contemptuous comparisons were instituted between the philosophical lectures of Hypatia and the incomprehensible sermons of Cyril. But if the archbishop had not philosophy, he had what on such occasions is more valuable-p -power. It was not to be borne that a heathen sorceress should thus divide such a metropolis with a prelate; it was not to be borne that the rich, and noble, and young should thus be carried off by the The city of black arts of a diabolical enchantress. Alexandria was too Alexandria. fair a prize to be lightly surrendered. It could vie with Constantinople itself. Into its streets, from the yellow sand-hills of the desert, long trains of camels and countless boats brought the abundant harvests of the Nile. A ship-canal connected the harbour of Eunostos with Lake Mareotis. The harbour was a forest of masts. Seaward; looking over the blue Mediterranean, was the great lighthouse, the Pharos, counted as one of the wonders of the world; and to protect the shipping from the north wind there was a mole three-quarters of a mile in length, with its drawbridges, a marvel of the skill of the Macedonian engineers. Two great streets crossed each other at right angles-one was three, the other one mile long. In the square where they intersected stood the mausoleum in which rested the body of Alexander. The city was full of noble edifices-the palace, the exchange, the Cæsareum, the halls of justice. Among the temples, those of Pan and Neptune were conspicuous. The visitor passed countless theatres, churches, temples, synagogues. There was a time before

at sea.

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Theophilus when the Serapion might have been approached
on one side by a slope for carriages, on the other by a flight
of a hundred marble steps. On these stood the grand portico
with its columns, its chequered corridor leading round a roofless
hall, the adjoining porches of which contained the library, and
from the midst of its area arose a lofty pillar, visible afar off
On one side of the town were the royal docks, on the
other the Hippodrome, and on appropriate sites the Necropolis,
the market-places, the gymnasium-its stoa being a stadium
long, the amphitheatre, groves, gardens, fountains, obelisks,
and countless public buildings with gilded roofs glittering in
the sun.
Here might be seen the wealthy Christian ladies
walking in the streets, their dresses embroidered with Scrip-
ture parables, the Gospels hanging from their necks by a
golden chain, Maltese dogs with jewelled collars frisking round
them, and slaves with parasols and fans trooping along. There
might be seen the ever-trading, ever-thriving Jew, fresh from
the wharves, or busy concocting his loans. But, worst of all,
the chariots with giddy or thoughtful pagans hastening to the
academy of Hypatia, to hear those questions discussed which
have never yet been answered, "Where am I?" "What am
I?" "What can I know ?"-to hear discourses on antenatal
existence, or, as the vulgar asserted, to find out the future by
the aid of the black art, soothsaying by Chaldee talismans
engraved on precious stones, by incantations with a glass and
water, by moonshine on the walls, by the magic mirror, the
reflection of a sapphire, a sieve, or cymbals; fortune-telling
by the veins of the hand, or consultations with the stars.

Cyril at length determined to remove this great reproach, Murder of Hypatia by and overturn what now appeared to be the only obstacle in his Cyril. way to uncontrolled authority in the city. We are reaching one of those moments in which great general principles embody themselves in individuals. It is Greek philosophy under the appropriate form of Hypatia; ecclesiastical ambition under that of Cyril. Their destinies are about to be fulfilled. As Hypatia comes forth to her academy, she is assaulted by Cyril's mob-an Alexandrian mob of many monks. Amid the fearful yelling of these barelegged and black-cowled fiends

Suppression of Al

science.

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she is dragged from her chariot, and in the public street stripped naked. In her mortal terror she is haled into an adjacent church, and in that sacred edifice is killed by the club of Peter the Reader. It is not always in the power of him who has stirred up the worst passions of a fanatical mob to stop their excesses when his purpose is accomplished. With the blow given by Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and, incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the righteous indignation of posterity.

Thus, in the 414th year of our era, the position of philosoexandrian phy in the intellectual metropolis of the world was determined; henceforth science must sink into obscurity and subordination. Its public existence will no longer be tolerated. Indeed, it may be said that from this period for some centuries it altogether disappeared. The leaden mace of bigotry had struck and shivered the exquisitely tempered steel of Greek philosophy. Cyril's acts passed unquestioned. It was now ascertained that throughout the Roman world there must be no more liberty of thought. It has been said that these events prove Greek philosophy to have been a sham, and, like other shams, it was driven out of the world when it was detected, and that it could not withstand the truth. Such assertions might answer their purposes very well, so long as the victors maintained their power in Alexandria, but they manifestly are of inconvenient application after the Saracens had captured the city. However these things may be, an intellectual stagnation settled upon the place-an invisible atmosphere of oppression, ready to crush down, morally and physically, whatever provoked its weight. And so for the next two dreary and weary centuries things remained, until oppression and force were ended by a foreign invader. It was well for the world that the Arabian conquerors avowed their true argument, the scimitar, and made no pretensions to superhuman

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wisdom. They were thus left free to pursue knowledge without involving themselves in theological contradictions, and were able to make Egypt once more illustrious among the nations of the earth-to snatch it from the hideous fanaticism, ignorance, and barbarism into which it had been plunged. On the shore of the Red Sea once more a degree of the earth's surface was to be measured, and her size ascertained-but by a Mohammedan astronomer. In Alexandria the memory of the illustrious old times was to be recalled by the discovery of the motion of the sun's apogee by Albategnius, and the third inequality of the moon, the variation, by Aboul Wefa; to be discovered six centuries later in Europe by Tycho Brahe. The canal of the Pharaohs from the Nile to the Red Sea, cleared out by the Ptolemies in former ages, was to be cleared from its sand again. The glad desert listened once more to the cheerful cry of the merchant's camel-driver instead of the midnight prayer of the monk.

Three attacks made upon the Byzantine system.

The Vandal attack.

I

CHAPTER XI.

PREMATURE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.

THE THREE ATTACKS, VANDAL, PERSIAN, ARAB.

HAVE now to describe the end of the age of Faith in the East. The Byzantine system, out of which it had issued, was destroyed by three attacks:-1st, by the Vandal invasion of Africa; 2nd, by the military operations of Chosroes, the Persian king; 3rd, by Mohammedanism.

Of these three attacks, the Vandal may be said, in a military sense, to have been successfully closed by the victories of Justinian; but, politically, the cost of those victories was the depopulation and ruin of the empire, particularly in the south and west. The second, the Persian attack, though brilliantly resisted in its later years by the Emperor Heraclius, left, throughout the East, a profound moral impression, which proved final and fatal in the Mohammedan attack.

No heresy has ever produced such important political results as that of Arius. While it was yet a vital doctrine, it led to the infliction of unspeakable calamities on the empire, and, though long ago forgotten, has blasted permanently some of the fairest portions of the globe. When Count Boniface, incited by the intrigues of the patrician Ætius, invited Genseric, the King of the Vandals, into Africa, that barbarian found Conquest in the discontented sectaries his most effectual aid. In vain would he otherwise have attempted the conquest of the country with the 50,000 men he landed from Spain, A.D. 429. Three hundred Donatist bishops, and many thousand priests,

of Africa.

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