Cyril was not less tyrannical in his bishopric than his uncle had been before him.  His first care was to put a stop to all heresy in Alexandria, and his second to banish the Jews.  The theatre was the spot in which the riots between Jews and Christians usually began, and the Sabbath was the time, as being the day on which the Jews chiefly crowded in to see the dancing.  On one occasion the quarrel in the theatre ran so high that the prefect with his cohort was scarcely able to keep them from blows; and the Christians reproached the Jews with plotting to burn down the churches.  But the Christians were themselves guilty of the very crimes of which they accused their enemies.  The next morning, as soon as it was light, Cyril headed the mob in their attacks upon the Jewish synagogues; they broke them open and plundered them, and in one day drove every Jew out of the city.  No Jew had been allowed to live in Alexandria or any other city without paying a poll-tax, for leave to worship his God according to the manner of his forefathers; but religious zeal is stronger than the love of money; the Jews were driven out, and the tax lost to the city.

[Illustration:  258b.jpg Street and Mosque of Mahdjiar]

Orestes, the prefect of Alexandria, had before wished to check the power of the bishop; and he in vain tried to save the Jews from oppression, and the state from the loss of so many good citizens.  But it was useless to quarrel with the patriarch, who was supported by the religious zeal of the whole population.  The monks of Mount Nitria and of the neighbourhood burned with a holy zeal to fight for Cyril, as they had before fought for Theophilus; and when they heard that a jealousy had sprung up between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, more than five hundred of them marched into Alexandria to avenge the affronted bishop.  They met the prefect Orestes as he was passing through the streets in his open chariot, and began reproaching him with being a pagan and a Greek.  Orestes answered that he was a Christian, and he had been baptised at Constantinople.  But this only cleared him of the lesser charge, he was certainly a Greek; and one of these Egyptian monks taking up a stone threw it at his head, and the blow covered his face with blood.  They then fled from the guards and people who came up to help the wounded prefect; but Ammonius, who threw the stone, was taken and put to death with torture.  The grateful bishop buried him in the church with much pomp; he declared him to be a martyr and a saint, and gave him the name of St. Thaumasius.  But the Christians were ashamed of the new martyr:  and the bishop, who could not withstand the ridicule, soon afterwards withdrew from him the title.