Catholics of Alexandria and Egypt were abandoned to a
tyrant, qualified, by nature and education, to exercise the office
of persecution; but he oppressed with an impartial hand the various
inhabitants of his extensive diocese. The primate of Egypt assumed the
pomp and insolence of his lofty station; but he still betrayed the vices
of his base and servile extraction. The merchants of Alexandria were
impoverished by the unjust, and almost universal, monopoly, which he
acquired, of nitre, salt, paper, funerals, &c.: and the spiritual father
of a great people condescended to practise the vile and pernicious arts
of an informer. The Alexandrians could never forget, nor forgive,
the tax, which he suggested, on all the houses of the city; under an
obsolete claim, that the royal founder had conveyed to his successors,
the Ptolemies and the Caesars, the perpetual property of the soil. The
Pagans, who had been flattered with the hopes of freedom and toleration,
excited his devout avarice; and the rich temples of Alexandria were
either pillaged or insulted by the haughty prince, who exclaimed, in a
loud and threatening tone, "How long will these sepulchres be permitted
to stand?" Under the reign of Constantius, he was expelled by the
fury, or rather by the justice, of the people; and it was not without a
violent struggle, that the civil and military powers of the state
could restore his authority, and gratify his revenge. The messenger who
proclaimed at Alexandria the accession of Julian, announced the downfall
of the archbishop. George, with two of his obsequious ministers, Count
Diodorus, and Dracontius, master of the mint were ignominiously dragged
in chains to the public prison. At the end of twenty-four days, the
prison was forced open by the rage of a superstitious multitude,
impatient of the tedious forms of judicial proceedings. The enemies of
gods and men expired under their cruel insults; the lifeless bodies of
the archbishop and his associates were carried in triumph through
the streets on the back of a camel; [120] and the inactivity of the
Athanasian party [121] was esteemed a shining example of evangelical
patience. The remains of these guilty wretches were thrown into the
sea; and the popular leaders of the tumult declared their resolution to
disappoint the devotion of the Christians, and to intercept the future
honors of these martyrs, who had been punished, like their predecessors,
by the enemies of their religion.