Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/46

 26 THE DECLINE AND FALL Oeatb of Athanasliu. A.D. 373, May 2 JuEt idea of his perse- cution the last years of his venerable age ; and his temporary retreat to his father's sepulchre has been celebrated as a fifth exile. But the zeal of a great people who instantly flew to arms, intimi- dated the praefect ; and the archbishop was permitted to end his life in peace and in gory, after a reign of forty-seven years. The death of Athanasius was the signal of the persecution of Egypt ; and the Pagan minister of ^alens, who forcibly seated the worthless Lucius on the archiepiscopal throne, purchased the favour of the reigning party by the blood and sufl^erings of their Christian brethren. The free toleration of the heathen and Jewish worship was bitterly lamented, as a circumstance which aggravated the misery of the catholics and the guilt of the impious t3'rant of the East."** The triumph of the orthodox party has left a deep stain of persecution on the memory of Valens ; and the character of a prince who derived his virtues, as well as his vices, from a feeble understanding and a pusillanimous temper scarcely deserves the labour of an apology. Yet candour may discover some reasons to suspect that the ecclesiastical ministers of Valens often exceeded the orders, or even the intentions, of their master ; and that the real measure of facts has been very liberally magnified by the vehement declamation and easy credulity of his antagonists.'^ 1. The silence of Valentinian may suggest a probable argu- ment, that the partial severities, which were exercised in the name and provinces of his colleague, amounted only to some obscure and inconsiderable deviations from the established system of religious toleration : and the judicious historian, who has praised the equal temper of the elder brother, has not thought himself obliged to contrast the tranquillity of the West with the cruel persecution of the East.~- 2. Whatever credit may be allowed to vague and distant reports, the character, or at least the behaviour, of Valens may be most distinctly seen in his pereonal transactions with the eloquent Basil, archbishop of Caesarea, who had succeeded Athanasius in the management of 7" This sketch of the ecclesiastical government of Valens is drawn from Socrates (1. iv.), Sozomen (1. vi.), Theodoret (1. iv.), and the immense compilations of Tillemont (particularly torn. vi. viii. and ix.). ^ Dr. Jortin (Remarks on Ecclesiastical Historj', vol. iv. p. 78) has already conceived and intimated the same suspicion. "-This reflection is so otjvious and forcible that Orosius (1. vii. c. 32, 33) delays the persecution till after the death of Valentinian. Socrates, on the other hand, supposes (1. iii. [/e^. iv.] c. 32) that it was appeased by a philosophical oration, which Themistius pronounced in the year 374 (Oral. xii. p. 154, in Latin only [Greek in Dindorfs ed.]). Such contradictions diminish the evidence, and reduce the term, of the persecution of Valens.