r the bodies of martyrs.

[Illustration: 225.jpg A YOUNG EGYPTIAN WEARING THE ROYAL LOCK]

When the news of this outrage against the laws was brought to the
philosophical emperor, he contented himself with threatening by an
imperial edict that if the offence were repeated, he would visit it with
severe punishment. But in every act of Julian we trace the scholar
and the lover of learning. George had employed his wealth in getting
together a large library, rich in historians, rhetoricians, and
philosophers of all sects; and, on the murder of the bishop, Julian
wrote letter after letter to Alexandria, to beg the prefect and
his friend Porphyrius to save these books, and send them to him in
Cappadocia. He promised freedom to the librarian if he gave them up, and
torture if he hid them; and further begged that no books in favour of
Christianity should be destroyed, lest other and better books should be
lost with them.

There is too much reason to believe that the friends of Athanasius
were not displeased at the murder of the Bishop George and their Arian
fellow-Christians; at any rate they made no effort to save them, and the
same mob that had put to death George as an enemy to paganism now joined
his rival, Athanasius, in a triumphal entry into the city, when, with
the other Egyptian bishops, he was allowed to return from banishment.
Athanasius could brook no rival to his power; the civil force of the
city was completely overpowered by his party, and the Arian clergy were
forced to hide themselves, as the only means of saving their lives. But,
while thus in danger from their enemies, the Arians pro-hooded to elect
a successor to their murdered bishop, and they chose Lucius to that post
of honour, but of danger. Athanasius, however, in reality and openly
filled the office of bishop; and he summoned a synod at Alexandria, at
which he re-admitted into the church Lucifer and Eusebius, two bishops
who had been banished to the Thebaid, and he again decreed that the
three persons in the Trinity were of one substance.

Though the Emperor Julian thought that George, the late bishop, had
deserved all that he suffered, as having been zealous in favour of
Christianity, and forward in putting down paganism and in closing
the temples, yet he was still more opposed to Athanasius. That able
churchman held his power as a rebel by the help of the Egyptian mob,
against the wishes of the Greeks of Alexandria and against the orders of
the l