Let us now take a glance at the new Emperor of the East.  Constantius had something of his father’s character.  In temperance and chastity, in love of letters and in dignity of manner, in social charm and pleasantness of private life, he was no unworthy son of Constantine; and if he inherited no splendid genius for war, he had a full measure of soldierly courage and endurance.  Nor was the statesmanship entirely bad which kept the East in tolerable peace for four-and-twenty years.  But Constantius was essentially a little man, in whom his father’s vices took a meaner form.  Constantine committed some great crimes, but the whole spirit of Constantius was corroded with fear and jealousy of every man better than himself.  Thus the easy trust in unworthy favourites, which marks even the ablest of his family, became in Constantius a public calamity.  It was bad enough when the uprightness of Constantine or Julian was led astray, but it was far worse when the eunuchs found a master too weak to stand alone, too jealous to endure a faithful counsellor, too easy-tempered and too indolent to care what oppressions were committed in his name, and without the sense of duty which would have gone far to make up for all his shortcomings.  The peculiar repulsiveness of Constantius is not due to any flagrant personal vice, but to the combination of cold-blooded treachery with the utter want of any inner nobleness of character.  Yet he was a pious emperor, too, in his own way.  He loved the ecclesiastical game, and was easily won over to the Eusebian side.  The growing despotism of the Empire and the personal vanity of Constantius were equally suited by the episcopal timidity which cried for an arm of flesh to fight its battles.  It is not easy to decide how far he acted on his own likings and superstitions, how far he merely let his flatterers lead him, or how far he saw political reasons for following them.  In any case, he began with a thorough dislike of the Nicene council, continued for a long time to hold conservative language, and ended after some vacillation by adopting the vague Homoean compromise of 359.

[Sidenote:  Second exile of Athanasius, Lent, 339.]

Eusebian intrigue was soon resumed.  Now that Constantine was dead, a schism could be set on foot at Alexandria; so the Arians were encouraged to hold assemblies of their own, and provided with a bishop in the person of Pistus, one of the original heretics deposed by Alexander.  No fitter consecrator could be found for him than Secundus of Ptolemais, one of the two bishops who held out to the last against the council.  The next move was the formal deposition of Athanasius by a council held at Antioch in the winter of 338.  But there was still no charge of heresy—­only old and new ones of sedition and intrigue, and a new argument, that after his deposition at Tyre he had forfeited all right to further justice by accepting a restoration from the civil power.  This last was quite a new claim on behalf of the church,