The arrival of new settlers in Alexandria had been very much checked by the less prosperous state of the country since the reign of Diocletian.  We still find, however, that many of the men of note were not born in Egypt.  Paulus, the physician, was a native of AEgina.  He has left a work on diseases and their remedies.  The chief man of learning was Synesius, a platonic philosopher whom the patriarch Theophilus persuaded to join the Christians.  As a platonist he naturally leaned towards many of the doctrines of the popular religion, but he could not believe in a resurrection; and it was not till after Theophilus had ordained him Bishop of Ptolemais near Cyrene that he acknowledged the truth of that doctrine.  Nor would he then put away or disown his wife, as the custom of the Church required; indeed, he accepted the bishopric very unwillingly.  He was as fond of playful sport as he was of books, and very much disliked business.  He has left a volume of writings, which has saved the names of two prefects of Cyrene; the one Anysius, under whose good discipline even the barbarians of Hungary behaved like Roman legionaries, and the other Poonius, who cultivated science in this barren spot.  To encourage Pasonius in his praiseworthy studies he made him a present of an astrolabe, to measure the distances of the stars and planets, an instrument which was constructed under the guidance of Hypatia.

Trade and industry were checked by the unsettled state of the country, and misery and famine were spreading over the land.  The African tribes of Mazices and Auxoriani, leaving the desert in hope of plunder, overran the province of Libya, and laid waste a large part of the Delta.  The barbarians and the sands of the desert were alike encroaching on the cultivated fields.  Nature seemed changed.  The valley of the Nile was growing narrower.  Even within the valley the retreating wraters left behind them harvests less rich, and fever more putrid.  The quarries were no longer worth working for their building stone.  The mines yielded no more gold.

On the death of Arcadius, his son Theodosius was only eight years old, but he was quietly acknowledged as Emperor of the East in 408, and he left the government of Egypt, as heretofore, very much in the hands of the patriarch.  In the fifth year of his reign Theophilus died; and, as might be supposed, a successor was not appointed without a struggle for the double honour of Bishop of Alexandria and Governor of Egypt.

[Illustration:  257.jpg QUARRIES AT TOORAH ON THE NILE]

The remains of the Greek and Arian party proposed Timotheus, an archdeacon in the church; but the Egyptian party were united in favour of Cyril, a young man of learning and talent, who had the advantage of being the nephew of the late bishop.  Whatever were the forms by which the election should have been governed, it was in reality settled by a battle between the two parties in the streets; and though Abundantius, the military prefect, gave the weight of his name, if not the strength of his cohort, to the party of Timotheus, yet his rival conquered, -and Cyril was carried into the cathedral with a pomp more like a pagan triumph than the modest ordination of a bishop.