her most
secret chamber, and watched over his safety with the tenderness of a
friend and the assiduity of a servant. As long as the danger continued,
she regularly supplied him with books and provisions, washed his feet,
managed his correspondence, and dexterously concealed from the eye of
suspicion this familiar and solitary intercourse between a saint whose
character required the most unblemished chastity, and a female whose
charms might excite the most dangerous emotions. [142] During the six
years of persecution and exile, Athanasius repeated his visits to his
fair and faithful companion; and the formal declaration, that he saw the
councils of Rimini and Seleucia, [143] forces us to believe that he
was secretly present at the time and place of their convocation. The
advantage of personally negotiating with his friends, and of observing
and improving the divisions of his enemies, might justify, in a prudent
statesman, so bold and dangerous an enterprise: and Alexandria
was connected by trade and navigation with every seaport of the
Mediterranean. From the depth of his inaccessible retreat the intrepid
primate waged an incessant and offensive war against the protector
of the Arians; and his seasonable writings, which were diligently
circulated and eagerly perused, contributed to unite and animate the
orthodox party. In his public apologies, which he addressed to the
emperor himself, he sometimes affected the praise of moderation;
whilst at the same time, in secret and vehement invectives, he exposed
Constantius as a weak and wicked prince, the executioner of his family,
the tyrant of the republic, and the Antichrist of the church. In the
height of his prosperity, the victorious monarch, who had chastised the
rashness of Gallus, and suppressed the revolt of Sylvanus, who had taken
the diadem from the head of Vetranio, and vanquished in the field the
legions of Magnentius, received from an invisible hand a wound, which he
could neither heal nor revenge; and the son of Constantine was the
first of the Christian princes who experienced the strength of those
principles, which, in the cause of religion, could resist the most
violent exertions [144] of the civil power.

[Footnote 137a: These princes were called Aeizanas and Saiazanas.
Athanasius calls them the kings of Axum. In the superscription of his
letter, Constantius gives them no title. Mr. Salt, during his first
journey in Ethiopia, (in 1806,) discovered, in the rui