There had been a party who, though Egyptian in blood, held the Arian and half-Arian opinions of the Greeks, but that party had ceased to exist.  Their religion had pulled one way and their political feelings another; the latter were found the stronger, as being more closely rooted to the soil; and their religious opinions had by this time fitted themselves to the geographical boundaries of the country.  Hence the decrees of the council of Chalcedon were rejected by the whole of Egypt; and the quarrel between the Chalcedonian and Jacobite party, like the former quarrel between the Athanasians and the Arians, was little more than another name for the unwillingness of the Egyptians to be governed by Constantinople.

Proterius, the new bishop, entered Alexandria supported by the prefect Floras at the head of the troops.

But this was the signal for a revolt of the Egyptians, who overpowered the cohort with darts and stones; and the magistrates were driven to save their lives in the celebrated temple of Serapis.  But they found no safety there; the mob surrounded the building and set fire to it, and burned alive the Greek magistrates and friends of the new bishop; and the city remained in the power of the rebellious Egyptians.  When the news of this rising reached Constantinople the emperor sent to Egypt a further force of two thousand men, who stormed Alexandria and sacked it like a conquered city, and established Proterius in the bishopric.  As a punishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for some time the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens, and only restored them after the return to peace and good order.

In the weak state of the empire, the Blemmyes, and Nubades, or Nobatae, had latterly been renewing their inroads upon Upper Egypt; they had overpowered the Romans, as the Greek and barbarian troops of Constantinople were always called, and had carried off a large booty and a number of prisoners.  Maximinus, the imperial general, then led his forces against them; he defeated them, and made them beg for peace.  The barbarians then proposed, as the terms of their surrender, never to enter Egypt while Maximinus commanded the troops in the Thebaid; but the conqueror was not contented with such an unsatisfactory submission, and would make no treaty with them till they had released the Roman prisoners without ransom, paid for the booty that they had taken, and given a number of the nobles as hostages.  On this Maximums agreed to a truce of a hundred years.

The people now called the Nubians, living on both sides of the cataract of Syene, declared themselves of the true Egyptian race by their religious practices.  They had an old custom of going each year to the temple of Isis on the isle of Elephantine, and of carrying away one of the statues with them and returning it to the temple when they had consulted it.  But as they were now being driven out of the province, they bargained with Maximums for permission to visit