e vain imagining of fools and blind, and there is no god but
the God whose minister I am!"

"Whose Kingdom is everlasting, Amen!" chanted an old priest; and Cynegius
rose to explain that he should do nothing to hinder the total overthrow
of the temple and image.

Then the Comes spoke in defence of the Bishop's resolution to allow the
races to be held, as usual, on the morrow. He sketched a striking picture
of the shallow, unstable nature of the Alexandrians, a people wholly
given over to enjoyment. The troops at his command were few in number in
comparison with the heathen population of the city, and it was a very
important matter to keep a large proportion of the worshippers of Serapis
occupied elsewhere at the moment of the decisive onset. Gladiator-fights
were prohibited, and the people were tired of wild beasts; but races, in
which heathen and Christian alike might enter their horses for
competition, must certainly prove most attractive just at this time of
bitter rivalry and oppugnancy between the two religions, and would draw
thousands of the most able-bodied idolaters to the Hippodrome. All this
he had already considered and discussed with the Bishop and Cynegius;
nay, that zealous destroyer of heathen worship had come to Alexandria
with the express purpose of overthrowing the Serapeum; but, as a prudent
statesman, he had first made sure that the time and circumstances were
propitious for the work of annihilation. All that he had here seen and
heard had only strengthened his purpose; so, after suggesting a few
possible difficulties, and enjoining moderation and mercy as the guiding
principles of his sovereign, he commanded, in the Emperor's name, that
the sanctuary of Serapis should be seized by force of arms and utterly
destroyed, and that the races should be held on the morrow.

The assembled council bowed low; and when Theophilus had closed the
meeting with a prayer he withdrew to his ungarnished study, with his head
bent and an air of profound humility, as though he had met with a defeat
instead of gaining a victory.

.......................

The fate of the great god of the heathen was sealed, but in the wide
precincts of the Serapeum no one thought of surrender or of prompt
defeat. The basement of the building, on which stood the grandest temple
ever erected by the Hellenes, presented a smooth and slightly scarped
rampart of impregnable strength to the foe. A sloping way extended up
over a ha