as anthropomorphites believing God was of human form like Jesus; but all warmly attached to the Mcene creed, denying the two natures of Christ, and hating the Arian Greeks of Alexandria and the other cities.  Gregory of Nazianzum remarks that Egypt was the most Christ-loving of countries, and adds with true simplicity that, wonderful to say, after having so lately worshipped bulls, goats, and crocodiles, it was now teaching the world the worship of the Trinity in the truest form.

The pagans, who were now no longer able to worship publicly as they chose, took care to proclaim their opinions indirectly in such ways as the law could not reach.  In the hippodrome, which was the noisiest of the places where the people met in public, they made a profession of their faith by the choice of which horses they bet on; and Christians and pagans alike showed their zeal for religion by hooting and clapping of hands.  Prayers and superstitious ceremonies were used on both sides to add to the horses’ speed; and the monk Hilarion, the pupil of Anthony, gained no little credit for sprinkling holy water on the horses of his party, and thus enabling Christianity to outrun paganism in the hippodrome at Gaza.

During these reigns of weakness and misgovernment, it was no doubt a cruel policy rather than humanity that led the tax-gatherers to collect the tribute in kind.  More could be squeezed out of a ruined people by taking what they had to give than by requiring it to be paid in copper coin.  Hence Valons made a law that no tribute throughout the empire should be taken in money; and he laid a new land-tax upon Egypt, to the amount of a soldier’s clothing for every thirty acres.

The Saracens* had for some time past been encroaching on the Eastern frontiers of the empire, and had only been kept back by treaties which proved the weakness of the Romans, as the armies of Constantinople were still called, and which encouraged the barbarians in their attacks.

* The name Saraceni was given by the Greeks and Romans to the nomadic Arabs who lived on the borders of the desert.  During the Middle Ages, the Muhammedans, coming from apparently the same localities, were also called Saracens.

On the death of their king, the command over the Saracens fell to their Queen Masvia, who broke the last treaty, laid waste Palestine and Phoenicia with her armies, conquered or gained over the Arabs of Petra, and pressed upon the Egyptians at the head of the Red Sea.  On this, Valens renewed the truce, but on terms still more favourable to the invaders.  Many of the Saracens were Christians, and by an article of the treaty they were to have a bishop granted them for their church, and for this purpose they sent Moses to Alexandria to be ordained.  But the Saracens sided with the Egyptians, in religion as well as policy, against the Arian Greeks.  Hence Moses refused to be ordained by Lucius, the patriarch of Alexandria,