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86 tion of the desolation caused by the tyrant in many provinces. When he came to Antioch he put a great many to the torture, and ordered a great many to be drowned, and sent off a very great multitude into exile, into Palestine, Arabia, Lybia, and many other provinces.

57. The holy solitaries of Syria and Egypt, by their lives and miracles, were the great upholders of the faith of the people, and were, on that account, particularly odious to Valens. He, therefore, issued a decree, directed against those champions of the faith, obliging them to enrol themselves among his troops, intending to punish them severely in case of disobedience, and knowing well that they would not do as he ordained. Full scope was given by this to the Arians, to gratify their malignity, at the expense of these innocent men, and especially against the monks of St. Basil. Phontonius, who usurped the see of Nicomedia, exercised horrible cruelties against the Catholics; but even he was surpassed by Lucius, the pretended Bishop of Alexandria, who obtained possession of that see by cruelty, and retained it by the same means. When the law of Valens—that the monks should bear arms—was promulgated, Lucius left Alexandria, and, accompanied by the commander of the troops in Egypt, placed himself at the head of three thousand soldiers, and went to the deserts of Nitria, where he found the monks, not, indeed, prepared to fight, but to die for the love of Jesus Christ, and he put whole companies of them to death; but five thousand of them escaped his fury, and fled to a place of safety, and concealed themselves. Wearied out with killing and torturing these holy men, Lucius now seized on their chiefs, Isidore, Heraclides, Macarius of Alexandria, and Macarius of Egypt, and banished them to a marshy island in Egypt, where all the inhabitants were idolaters; but when they arrived at the shore, a child possessed by the devil was thrown at their feet, and the devil cried out—"O, servants of the true God, why do you come to drive us from this place, which we have possessed so long?" They prayed over the child, cast forth the devil, and restored the infant to his parents, and were received with the greatest joy by the people, who threw down the old temple of the idols they previously adored, and began to build a church in honour of the true God. When the news of this transaction was told in Alexandria, the people all cried out against their impious bishop, Lucius, who, they said, was warring, not against man, but against God, and he was so terrified with the popular excitement, that he gave the solitaries permission to return again to their deserts.

58. Valens was overtaken by the Divine vengeance in 378. The Goths extended their ravages to the very gates of Constantinople, and he was so lost to shame, that he thought of nothing all