rade of Arabia and India flowed through the port of
Alexandria, to the capital and provinces of the empire. [1711] Idleness was
unknown. Some were employed in blowing of glass, others in weaving of
linen, others again manufacturing the papyrus. Either sex, and every
age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry, nor did even the blind or
the lame want occupations suited to their condition. [172] But the people
of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and
inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the
Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh
or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of
precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, [173] were
at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude,
whose resentments were furious and implacable. [174] After the captivity
of Valerian and the insolence of his son had relaxed the authority of
the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage
of their passions, and their unhappy country was the theatre of a civil
war, which continued (with a few short and suspicious truces) above
twelve years. [175] All intercourse was cut off between the several
quarters of the afflicted city, every street was polluted with blood,
every building of strength converted into a citadel; nor did the tumults
subside till a considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably ruined.
The spacious and magnificent district of Bruchion, [1751] with its palaces
and musaeum, the residence of the kings and philosophers of Egypt, is
described above a century afterwards, as already reduced to its present
state of dreary solitude. [176]

[Footnote 170: Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 10.]

[Footnote 171: Diodor. Sicul. l. xvii. p. 590, edit. Wesseling.]

[Footnote 1711: Berenice, or Myos-Hormos, on the Red Sea, received the
eastern commodities. From thence they were transported to the Nile, and
down the Nile to Alexandria.--M.]

[Footnote 172: See a very curious letter of Hadrian, in the Augustan
History, p. 245.]

[Footnote 173: Such as the sacrilegious murder of a divine cat. See
Diodor. Sicul. l. i. * Note: The hostility between the Jewish and
Grecian part of the population afterwards between the two former and the
Christian, were unfailing causes of tumult, sedition, and massacre. In
no place were the religious disputes, after the establishment of
Christianity, more freque