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 chap, xxxvii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 95 usurpation of the Barbarous heretics. During an interval of peace and friendship, Hunneric restored the cathedral of Carthage, at the intercession of Zeno, who reigned in the East, and of Placidia, the daughter and relict of emperors, and the sister of the queen of the Vandals. 111 But this decent regard was of short duration ; and the haughty tyrant displayed his contempt for the religion of the Empire by studiously ar- ranging the bloody images of persecution in all the principal streets through which the Roman ambassador must pass in his way to the palace. 11 ' 2 An oath was required from the bishops, who were assembled at Carthage, that they would support the succession of his son Hilderic, and that they would renounce all foreign or transmarine correspondence. This engagement, consistent as it should seem with their moral and religious duties, was refused by the more sagacious members 113 of the assembly. Their refusal, faintly coloured by the pretence that it is unlawful for a Christian to swear, must provoke the sus- picions of a jealous tyrant. The Catholics, oppressed by royal and military force, were catholic far superior to their adversaries in numbers and learning. With the same weapons which the Greek 114 and Latin fathers had already provided for the Arian controversy, they repeatedly silenced, or vanquished, the fierce and illiterate successors of Ulphilas. The consciousness of their own superiority might have raised them above the arts and passions of religious war- fare. Yet, instead of assuming such honourable pride, the orthodox theologians were tempted, by the assurance of impunity, to compose fictions, which must be stigmatized with the epithets of fraud and forgery. They ascribed their own polemical works to the most venerable names of Christian antiquity ; the char- 111 Victor, ii. 1, 2, p. 22. 112 Victor, v. 7, p. 77. He appeals to the ambassador himself, whose name was Uranius. 113 Astutiores, Victor, iv. 4, p. 70. He plainly intimates that their quotation of the Gospel, " Non jurabitis in toto," was only meant to elude the obligation of an inconvenient oath. The forty-six bishops who refused were banished to Corsica ; the three hundred and two who swore werejdistributed through the provinces of Africa. H4 Fulgentius, bishop of Euspse, in the Byzacene province, was of a senatorial family, and had reoeived a liberal education. He could repeat all Homer and Menander before he was allowed to study Latin, his native tongue (Vit. Fulgent, c. 1). Many African bishops might understand Greek, and many Greek theologians were translated into Latin.