art and
learning. Magic and witchcraft hedged it in with a maze of mystical and
symbolical secrets, and philosophy had woven a tissue of speculation
round the person of the god. The sanctuary was indeed the centre of
Hellenic culture in the city of Alexander; what marvel then, that the
heathen should believe that with the overthrow of Serapis and his temple,
the earth, nay the universe itself must sink into the abyss?

Anxious spirits and throbbing hearts were those that now sought shelter
in the Serapeum, fully prepared to perish with their god, and yet eager
with enthusiasm to avert his fall if possible.

A strange medley indeed of men and women had collected within these
sacred precincts! Grave sages, philosophers, grammarians, mathematicians,
naturalists, and physicians clung to Olympius and obeyed him in silence.
Rhetoricians with shaven faces, Magians and sorcerers, whose long beards
flowed over robes embroidered with strange figures; students, dressed
after the fashion of their forefathers in the palmy days of Athens; men
of every age, who dubbed themselves artists though they were no more than
imitators of the works of a greater epoch, unhappy in that no one at this
period of indifference to beauty called upon them to prove what they
could do, or to put forth their highest powers. Actors, again, from the
neglected theatres, starving histrions, to whom the stage was prohibited
by the Emperor and Bishop, singers and flute-players; hungry priests and
temple-servitors expelled from the closed sanctuaries; lawyers, scribes,
ships' captains, artisans, though but very few merchants, for
Christianity had ceased to be the creed of the poor, and the wealthy
attached themselves to the faith professed by those in authority.

One of the students had contrived to bring a girl with him, and several
others, seeing this, went back into the streets by the secret way and
brought in damsels of no very fair repute, till the crowd of men was
diversified by a considerable sprinkling of wreathed and painted girls,
some of them the outcast maids of various temples, and others priestesses
of higher character, who had remained faithful to the old gods or who
practised magic arts.

Among these women one, a tall and dignified matron in mourning robes, was
a conspicuous figure. This was Berenice, the mother of the young heathen
who had been ridden down and wounded in the skirmish near the Prefect's
house, and whose eyes Eusebius had after