Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/142

 120 THE DECLINE AND FALL of the islands of the Libyan desert. ^^ Secluded from the church and from the world, the exile was still pursued by the rage of bigotry and war. A wandering ti'ibe of the Blemmyes, or Nu- bians, invaded his solitary prison ; in their retreat they dismissed a crowd of useless captives ; but no sooner had Nestorius reached the banks of the Nile than he would gladly have es- caped from a Roman and orthodox city to the milder servitude of the savages. His flight was punished as a new crime ; the soul of the patriarch inspired the civil and ecclesiastical powers of Egypt ; the magistrates, the soldiers, the monks, devoutly tortured the enemy of Christ and St. Cyril ; and, as far as the confines of ^Ethiopia, the heretic was alternately dragged and recalled, till his aged body was broken by the hardships and accidents of these reiterated journeys. Yet his mind was still independent and erect ; the president of Thebais was awed by his pastoral letters ; he survived the Catholic tyrant of Alex- andria, and, after sixteen years' banishment, the synod of Chalce- don would perhaps have restored him to the honours, or at least to the communion, of the church. The death of Nestorius prevented his obedience to their welcome summons ; -'■' and his disease might afford some colour to the scandalous report that his tongue, the organ of blasphemy, had been eaten by the worms. He was buried in a city of Upper Egypt, known by the names of Chemnis, or Panopolis, or Akmim ; ^'' but the immortal malice of the Jacobites has persevered for ages to cast stones against his sepulchre, and to propagate the foolish tradition that it was never watered by the rain of heaven, which equally •■■'•^ The metaphor of islands is applied by the grave civilians (Pandect. 1. xlviii. tit. 22, leg. 7) to those happy spots which are discriminated by water and verdure from the Libyan sands. Three of these under the common name of Oasis, or Alvahat : i. The temple of Jupiter Amnion [Oasis of Siwah]. 2. The middle Oasis [el Kasr], three days' journey to the west of Lycopolis. 3. The southern, where Nestorius was banished, in the first climate and only three days' journey from the confines of Nubia [Great Oasis, or Wah el Khargeh]. See a learned Note of Michaelis (ad Descript. Egypt. Abulfed^, p. 21, 34). 55 The invitation of Nestorius to the Synod of Chalcedon is related by Zacharias, bishop of Melitene [Mytilene] (Evagrius, 1. ii. c. 2 ; Asseman. Bibliot. Orient, torn, ii. p. 55), and the famous Xenaias or Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient, tom. ii. p. 40, &c.), denied by Evagrius and Asseman, and stoutly maintained by La Croze (Thesaur. Epistol. tom. iii. p. 181, &c.). The fact is not improbable ; yet it was the interest of the Monophysites to spread the invidious report ; and Eutychius (torn. ii. p. 12) affirms that Nestorius died after an exile of seven years, and consequently ten years before the synod of Chalcedon. ^ Consult d'Anville (M6moire sur I'Egypte, p. 191), Pocock (Description of the East, vol. i. p. 76), Abulfeda (Descript. Egypt, p. 14) and his commentator Michaelis (Not. p. 78-83), and the Nubian Geographer (p. 42), who mentions, in the xiith century, the ruins and the sugar-canes of Akmim,