nonia, Niger, who was then in the province of Syria, did
the same. Egypt and the Egyptian legions readily and heartily joined
his party, which made it unnecessary for him to stay in that part of
the empire; so he marched upon Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia. But there,
after a few months, he was met by the army of his rival, who also sent
a second army into Egypt; and he was defeated and slain at Cyzicus in
Mysia, after having been acknowledged as emperor in Egypt and Syria for
perhaps a year and a few months.

[Illustration: 139b.jpg PAINTING AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTH TOMB]

We find no Alexandrian coins of Niger, although we cannot allow a
shorter space of time to his reign than one whole year, together with
a few months of the preceding and following years. Within that time
Severus had to march upon Rome against his first rival, Julian, to
punish the praetorian guards, and afterwards to conquer Niger.

After the death of his rival, when Severus was the undisputed master of
the empire, and was no longer wanted in the other provinces, he found
leisure, in A.D. 196, to visit Egypt; and, like other active-minded
travellers, he examined the pyramids of Memphis and the temples at
Thebes, and laughed at the worship of Serapis and the Egyptian animals.
His visit to Alexandria wras marked by many new laws. Now that the
Greeks of that city, crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, had
lost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared by
their Roman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus. He
gave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege that
had hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freely
granted in other provinces where rebellion was less dreaded. He also
ornamented the city with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, which
was named after himself the Bath of Severus.

Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, forbidding anybody, under
a severe punishment, from becoming Jew or Christian. But he who gives
the blow is likely to speak of it more lightly than he who smarts under
it; and we learn from the historian of the Church that, in the tenth
year of this reign, the Christians suffered persecution from their
governors and their fellow-citizens. Among others who then lost their
lives for their religion was Leonides, the father of Origen. He left
seven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly celebrated
writer, was only sixte