[Sidenote:  New Nicene party in Cappadocia]

The Homoean party was the last hope of Arianism within the Empire.  The original doctrine of Arius had been decisively rejected at Nicaea; the Eusebian coalition was broken up by the Sirmian manifesto; and if the Homoean union also failed, the fall of Arianism could not be long delayed.  Its weakness is shown by the rise of a new Nicene party in the most Arian province of the Empire.  Cappadocia is an exception to the general rule that Christianity flourished best where cities were most numerous.  The polished vice of Antioch or Corinth presented fewer obstacles than the rude ignorance of pagi or country villages.  Now Cappadocia was chiefly a country district.  The walls of Caesarea lay in ruins since its capture by the Persians in the reign of Gallienus, and the other towns of the province were small and few.  Yet Julian found it incorrigibly Christian, and we hear but little of heathenism from Basil.  We cannot suppose that the Cappadocian boors were civilized enough to be out of the reach of heathen influence.  It seems rather that the paganismus of the West was partly represented by Arianism.  In Cappadocia the heresy found its first great literary champion in the sophist Asterius.  Gregory and George were brought to Alexandria from Cappadocia, and afterwards Auxentius to Milan and Eudoxius to Constantinople.  Philagrius also, the prefect who drove out Athanasius in 339, was another of their countrymen.  Above all, the heresiarch Eunomius came from Cappadocia, and had abundance of admirers in his native district.  In this old Arian stronghold the league was formed which decided the fate of Arianism.  Earnest men like Meletius had only been attracted to the Homoeans by their professions of reverence for the person of the Lord.  When, therefore, it appeared that Eudoxius and his friends were no better than Arians after all, these men began to look back to the decisions of ‘the great and holy council’ of Nicaea.  There, at any rate, they would find something independent of the eunuchs and cooks who ruled the palace.  Of the old conservatives also, who were strong in Pontus, there were many who felt that the Semiarian position was unsound, and yet could find no satisfaction in the indefinite doctrine professed at court.  Here then was one split in the Homoean, another in the conservative party.  If only the two sets of malcontents could form a union with each other and with the older Nicenes of Egypt and the West, they would sooner or later be the arbiters of Christendom.  If they could secure Valentinian’s intercession, they might obtain religious freedom at once.

[Sidenote:  Basil of Caesarea.]