in each quarrel the most mysterious opinions
were thought the most sacred, each generation added new mysteries to
its religion; and the progress was rapid, from a practical piety, to a
profession of opinions which they did not pretend to understand.

During the reigns of Gallus, of AEmilius AEmilianus, and of Valerian (A.D.
251-260), the Alexandrians coined money in the name of each emperor as
soon as the news reached Egypt that he had made Italy acknowledge his
title. Gallus and his son reigned two years and four months; AEmilianus,
who rebelled in Pannonia, reigned three months; and Valerian reigned
about six years.

Egypt, as a trading country, now suffered severely from the want
of order and quiet government; and in particular since the reign
of Alexander Severus it had been kept in a fever by rebellions,
persecutions, and this unceasing change of rulers. Change brings the
fear of change; and this fear checks trade, throws the labourer out of
employment, and leaves the poor of the cities without wages and without
food. Famine is followed by disease; and Egypt and Alexandria were
visited in the reign of Gallus by a dreadful plague, one of those
scourges that force themselves on the notice of the historian. It was
probably the same disease that in a less frightful form had been not
uncommon in that country and in the lower parts of Syria. The physician
Aretaeus describes it under the name of ulcers on the tonsils. It seems
by the letters of Bishop Dionysius that in Alexandria the population had
so much fallen off that the inhabitants between the ages of fourteen
and eighty were not more than those between forty and seventy had been
formerly, as appeared by old records then existing. The misery that the
city had suffered may be measured by its lessened numbers.

During these latter years the eastern half of the empire was chiefly
guarded by Odenathus of Palmyra, the brave and faithful ally of Rome,
under whose wise rule his country for a short time held a rank among the
empires of the world, which it never could have gained but for an union
of many favourable circumstances. The city and little state of Palmyra
is situated about midway between the cities of Damascus and Babylon.
Separated from the rest of the world, between the Roman and the Parthian
empires, Palmyra had long kept its freedom, while each of those great
rival powers rather courted its friendship than aimed at conquering it.
But, as the cause of Rome gr