ce to the north of the
cataract. But so much was the strength of the Greek party lessened, and
so deeply rooted among the Egyptians was their hatred of their rulers
and the belief that they should then be able to throw off the yoke,
that soon afterwards Alexandria declared in favour of Achilleus, and
Diocletian was again called to Egypt to regain the capital. Such was
the strength of the rebels that the city could not be taken without
a regular siege. Diocletian surrounded it with a ditch and wall, and
turned aside the canals that supplied the citizens with water. After a
tedious siege of eight months, Alexandria was at last taken by storm in
297, and Achilleus was put to death. A large part of the city was burnt
at the storming, nor would the punishment of the citizens have there
ended, but for Diocletian's humane interpretation of an accident. The
horse on which he sat stumbled as he entered the city with his troops,
and he had the humanity to understand it as a command from heaven that
he should stop the pillage of the city; and the citizens in gratitude
erected near the spot a bronze statue of the horse to which they owed so
much. This statue has long since been lost, but we cannot be mistaken in
the place where it stood. The lofty column in the centre of the temple
of Serapis, now well known by the name of Pompey's Pillar,* once held a
statue on the top, and on the base it still bears the inscription of
the grateful citizens, "To the most honoured emperor, the saviour of
Alexandria, the unconquerable Diocletian."

* See Volume X., page 317.

This rebellion had lasted more than nine years, and the Egyptians seemed
never in want of money for the purposes of the war. Diocletian was
struck with their riches, and he ordered a careful search to be made
through Egypt for all writings on alchemy, an art which the Egyptians
studied together with magic and astrology. These books he ordered to be
burnt, under a belief that they were the great sources of the riches by
which his own power had been resisted. Want and misery no doubt caused
this rebellion, but the rebellion certainly caused more want and misery.
The navigation of the Nile was stopped, the canals were no longer kept
cleared, the fields were badly tilled, trade and manufactures were
ruined. Since the rebellions against the Persians, Egypt had never
suffered so much. It had been sadly changed by the troubles of the last
sixty years, during which it had been si