n the hippodrome, which was the noisiest of
the places where the people met in public, they made a profession of
their faith by the choice of which horses they bet on; and Christians
and pagans alike showed their zeal for religion by hooting and clapping
of hands. Prayers and superstitious ceremonies were used on both
sides to add to the horses' speed; and the monk Hilarion, the pupil of
Anthony, gained no little credit for sprinkling holy water on the horses
of his party, and thus enabling Christianity to outrun paganism in the
hippodrome at Gaza.

During these reigns of weakness and misgovernment, it was no doubt a
cruel policy rather than humanity that led the tax-gatherers to collect
the tribute in kind. More could be squeezed out of a ruined people by
taking what they had to give than by requiring it to be paid in copper
coin. Hence Valons made a law that no tribute throughout the empire
should be taken in money; and he laid a new land-tax upon Egypt, to the
amount of a soldier's clothing for every thirty acres.

The Saracens* had for some time past been encroaching on the Eastern
frontiers of the empire, and had only been kept back by treaties which
proved the weakness of the Romans, as the armies of Constantinople were
still called, and which encouraged the barbarians in their attacks.

* The name _Saraceni_ was given by the Greeks and Romans to
the nomadic Arabs who lived on the borders of the desert.
During the Middle Ages, the Muhammedans, coming from
apparently the same localities, were also called Saracens.

On the death of their king, the command over the Saracens fell to
their Queen Masvia, who broke the last treaty, laid waste Palestine and
Phoenicia with her armies, conquered or gained over the Arabs of Petra,
and pressed upon the Egyptians at the head of the Red Sea. On this,
Valens renewed the truce, but on terms still more favourable to the
invaders. Many of the Saracens were Christians, and by an article of the
treaty they were to have a bishop granted them for their church, and
for this purpose they sent Moses to Alexandria to be ordained. But
the Saracens sided with the Egyptians, in religion as well as policy,
against the Arian Greeks. Hence Moses refused to be ordained by Lucius,
the patriarch of Alexandria, and chose rather to receive his appointment
from some of the Homoousian bishops who were living in banishment in the
Thebaid. After this advance of the barbarians the i