ror. He proposed to the emperor to lay a house-tax on
Alexandria, thereby to repay the expense incurred by Alexander the Great
in building the city; and he made the imperial government more unpopular
than it had ever been since Augustus landed in Egypt. He used the army
as the means of terrifying the Homoousians into an acknowledgment of the
Arian opinions. He banished fifteen bishops to the Great Oasis,
besides others of lower rank. He beat, tortured, and put to death; the
persecution was more cruel than any suffered from the pagans, except
perhaps that in the reign of Diocletian; and thirty Egyptian bishops are
said to have lost their lives while George was patriarch of Alexandria.
Most of these accusations, however, are from the pens of his enemies. At
this time the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea were becoming
a little more known to Alexandria. Meropius, travelling in the reign of
Constantine for curiosity and the sake of knowledge, had visited Auxum,
the capital of the Hexumito, in Abyssinia. His companion Frumentius
undertook to convert the people to Christianity and persuade them
to trade with Egypt; and, as he found them willing to listen to his
arguments, he came home to Alexandria to tell of his success and ask
for support. Athanasius readily entered into a plan for spreading the
blessings of Christianity and the power of the Alexandrian church. To
increase the missionary's weight he consecrated him a bishop, and sent
him back to Auxum to continue his good work. His progress, however, was
somewhat checked by sectarian jealousy; for, when Athanasius was deposed
by Constantius, Frumentius was recalled to receive again his orders and
his opinions from the new patriarch. Constantius also sent an embassy to
the Homeritse on the opposite coast of Arabia, under Theophilus, a monk
and deacon in the Church. The Homerito were of Jewish blood though of
gentile faith, and were readily converted, if not to Christianity, at
least to friendship with the emperor. After consecrating their churches,
Theophilus crossed over to the African coast, to the Hexumito, to carry
on the work which Frumentius had begun. There he was equally successful
in the object of his embassy. Both in trade and in religion the
Hexumito, who were also of Jewish blood, were eager to be connected with
the Europeans, from whom they were cut off by Arabs of a wilder race. He
found also a little to the south of Auxum a settlement of Syrians, who