nt the note struck on the lyre, and
the other the tone of the voice to be sung thereto. They thus imply
accord or harmony. The same signs are found in some manuscripts written
over the syllables of ancient poems; and thereby scholars, learned at
once in the Greek language, in the art of deciphering signs, and in the
science of music, now chant the odes of Pindar in strains not dissimilar
to modern cathedral psalmody.

Sopator succeeded Iamblichus as professor of platonism in Alexandria,
with the proud title of successor to Plato, For some time he enjoyed the
friendship of Constantine; but, when religion made a quarrel between
the friends, the philosopher was put to death by the emperor. The pagan
account of the quarrel was that, when Constantine had killed his son, he
applied to Sopator to be purified from his guilt; and when the platonist
answered that he knew of no ceremony that could absolve a man from such
a crime, the emperor applied to the Christians for baptism. This
story may not be true, and the ecclesiastical historian remarks that
Constantine had professed Christianity several years before the murder
of his son; but then, as after his conversion he had got Sopator to
consecrate his new city with a variety of pagan ceremonies, he may in
the same way have asked him to absolve him from the guilt of murder.

On the death of Constantine, in 337, his three sons, without entirely
dismembering the empire, divided the provinces of the Roman world into
three shares. Constantine II., the eldest son, who succeeded to the
throne of his father in Constantinople, and Constans, the youngest,
who dwelt in Rome, divided Europe between them; while Constantius,
the second son, held Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt, of which
possessions Antioch on the Orontes was at that time the capital. Thus
Alexandria was doomed to a further fall. When governed by Rome it had
still been the first of Greek cities; afterwards, when the seat of the
empire was fixed at Constantinople, it became the second; but on this
division of the Roman world, when the seat of government came still
nearer to Egypt, and Antioch rose as the capital of the East, Alexandria
fell to be the third among Greek cities. Egypt quietly received its
political orders from Antioch. Its opinions also in some cases followed
those of the capital, and it is curious to remark that the Alexandrian
writers, when dating by the era of the creation, were now willing to
consider