occupations suited to their conditionBut the CHAP. people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks, with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute †, were, at any time, sufficient to kindle à sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable ‡. After the captivity of Valerian, and the insolence of his son, had relaxed the authority of the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage of their passions, and their unhappy country was the theatre of a civil war, which continued (with a few short and suspicious truces) bove twelve years §. All intercourse was cut off between the several quarters of the afflicted city, every street was polluted with blood, every building of strength converted into a citadel; nor did the tumults subside, till a considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably ruined. The spacious and magnificent district of Bruchion, with its palaces and musæum, the residence of the kings འོན་ན་ 2 *See a very curious letter of Hadrian, in the Augustan History, p. 245. + Such as the sacrilegious murder of a divine cat. See Diodor. Sicul. 1. i. Hist. August. p. 195. This long and terrible sedition was first occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman, about a pair of shoes. Dionysius apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vol. vii. p. 21, Ammian. xxii. 16. X.* Rebellion. Isaurians. CHA P. kings and philosophers of Egypt, is described above a century afterwards, as already reduced to its present state of dreary solitude*. #ob III. The obscure rebellion of Trebellianus, of the who assumed the purple in Isauria, a petty pro vince of Asia Minor, was attended with strange and memorable consequences. The pageant of royalty was soon destroyed by an officer of Gallienus; but his followers, despairing of mercy, resolved to shake off their allegiance, not only to the emperor, but to the empire, and suddenly returned to the savage manners, from which they had never perfectly been reclaimed. Their craggy rocks, a branch of the wide-extended Taurus, protected their inaccessible retreat. The tillage of some fertile vallies + supplied them with ne- # cessaries, and a habit of rapine with the luxuries of life. In the heart of the Roman monarchy, the Isaurians long continued a nation of wild barbarians. Succeeding princes, unable to reduce them to obedience, either by arms or policy, were compelled to acknowledge their weak! ness, by surrounding the hostile and independ-" ent spot, with a strong chain of fortifications 1, which often proved insufficient to restrain the incursions of these domestic foes. The Isaurians, gradually extending their territory to the sea-coast, subdued the western and mountainous part of Cilicia, formerly the nest of those daring pirates, * Scaliger. Animadver. ad Euseb. Chron. p. 258. Three dissertations of M. Bonamy, in the Mem. de l'Academie, tom. ix. + Strabo, 1. xii. p. 569. Hist. August. p. 197. X.X pestilence. pirates, against whom the republic had once been c H AP. obliged to exert its utmost force, under the con-d duct of the great Pompey to suede inwong t Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the Famine and order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies, fictitious or exaggerated t. But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence, of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and un wholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the barbarians, were entirely depopu lated t.. We have the knowledge of a very curious cir- Diminution cumstance, of some use perhaps in the melan- of the hu man spe choly cies. *See Cellarius, Geogr. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 137. upon the limits of Isaaria. Hist. August. p. 177. Rist August. p. 177. Zosimus, 1. i. p. 24. Zonaras, 1. xii. p. €23. Victor in Epitom. Orosius, vii. 21. Victor in CHAP. choly calculation of human calamities. An .X. exact register was kept at Alexandria of all the citizens entitled to receive the distribution of corn. It was found, that the ancient number of those comprised between the ages of forty and seventy, had been equal to the whole sum of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, who remained alive after the reign of Gallienus*. Applying this authentic fact to the most correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves, that above half the people of Alexandria had perished; and could we venture to extend the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect, that war, pestilence, and famine, had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the human speciest. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii. 21. The fact is taken from the Letters of Dionysius, who, in the time of those troubles, was bishop of Alexandria. + In a great number of parishes 11,000 persons were found between fourteen and eighty; 5365 between forty and seventy. See Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, tom. ii. p. 590. END OF THE FIRST VOLume. Printed by J. TURNBULL, Anchor Close, Edinburgh, |