uts and execrations, which
degraded the episcopal gravity; but, on the formal accusation of the
legates, Dioscorus was compelled to descend from his throne to the
rank of a criminal, already condemned in the opinion of his judges. The
Orientals, less adverse to Nestorius than to Cyril, accepted the Romans
as their deliverers: Thrace, and Pontus, and Asia, were exasperated
against the murderer of Flavian, and the new patriarchs of
Constantinople and Antioch secured their places by the sacrifice of
their benefactor. The bishops of Palestine, Macedonia, and Greece, were
attached to the faith of Cyril; but in the face of the synod, in the
heat of the battle, the leaders, with their obsequious train, passed
from the right to the left wing, and decided the victory by this
seasonable desertion. Of the seventeen suffragans who sailed from
Alexandria, four were tempted from their allegiance, and the thirteen,
falling prostrate on the ground, implored the mercy of the council, with
sighs and tears, and a pathetic declaration, that, if they yielded, they
should be massacred, on their return to Egypt, by the indignant people.
A tardy repentance was allowed to expiate the guilt or error of the
accomplices of Dioscorus: but their sins were accumulated on his head;
he neither asked nor hoped for pardon, and the moderation of those
who pleaded for a general amnesty was drowned in the prevailing cry of
victory and revenge.

To save the reputation of his late adherents, some personal offences
were skilfully detected; his rash and illegal excommunication of the
pope, and his contumacious refusal (while he was detained a prisoner) to
attend to the summons of the synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove
the special facts of his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the fathers
heard with abhorrence, that the alms of the church were lavished on
the female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to the
prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pansophia, or Irene,
was publicly entertained as the concubine of the patriarch. [63]

[Footnote 62: The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Concil. tom. iv.
p. 761--2071) comprehend those of Ephesus, (p. 890--1189,) which again
comprise the synod of Constantinople under Flavian, (p. 930--1072;)
and at requires some attention to disengage this double involution.
The whole business of Eutyches, Flavian, and Dioscorus, is related by
Evagrius (l. i. c. 9--12, and l. ii. c. 1, 2, 3, 4,) and