n on the side of their oppressors; who thought
their worship of the Trinity only a new form of polytheism, and jokingly
declared that they were not arithmeticians enough to understand it.
Olympius, who was the priest of Serapis when the temple was sacked, and
as such the head of the pagans of Alexandria, was a man in every
respect the opposite of the Bishop Theophilus. He was of a frank, open
countenance and agreeable manners; and though his age might have allowed
him to speak among his followers in the tone of command, he chose rather
in his moral lessons to use the mild persuasion of an equal; and few
hearts were so hardened as not to be led into the paths of duty by his
exhortations. Whereas the furious monks, says the indignant pagan, were
men only in form, but swine in manners. Whoever put on a black coat, and
was not ashamed to be seen with dirty linen, gained a tyrannical power
over the minds of the mob, from their belief in his holiness; and these
men attacked the temples of the gods as a propitiation for their own
enormous sins. Thus each party reproached the other, and often unjustly.
Among other religious frauds and pretended miracles of which the pagan
priests were accused, was that of having an iron statue of Serapis
hanging in the air in a chamber of the temple, by means of a loadstone
fixed in the ceiling. The natural difficulties shield them from this
charge, but other accusations are not so easily rebutted.

After this attack upon the pagans, their religion was no longer openly
taught in Alexandria. Some of the more zealous professors withdrew
from the capital to Canopus, about ten miles distant, where the ancient
priestly learning was still taught, unpersecuted because unnoticed; and
there, under the pretence of studying hieroglyphics, a school was opened
for teaching magic and other forbidden rites. When the pagan worship
ceased throughout Egypt, the temples were very much used as churches,
and in some cases received in their ample courtyard a smaller church of
Greek architecture, as in that of Medinet Abu. In other cases Christian
ornaments were added to the old walls, as in the rock temple of Kneph,
opposite to Abu Simbel, where the figure of the Saviour with a glory
round his head has been painted on the ceiling. The Christians, in order
to remove from before their eyes the memorials of the old superstition,
covered up the sculpture on the walls with mud from the Nile and white
plaster. This coating