and
without a leap-year. Paul the Alexandrian astrologer, on the other hand,
uses the Julian year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter,
and he dates from the era of Diocletian. His rules for telling the day
of the week from the day of the month, and for telling on what day of
the week each year began, teach us that our present mode of dividing
time was used in Egypt. Horapollo, the grammarian, was also then a
teacher in the schools of Alexandria. He wrote in the Koptic language a
work in explanation of the old hieroglyphics, which has gained a notice
far beyond its deserts, because it is the only work on the subject that
has come down to us.

The only Christian writings of this time, that we know of, are the
paschal letters of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, which were much
praised by Jerome, and by him translated into Latin. They are full of
bitter reproaches against Origen and his writings, and they charge him
with having treated Jesus more cruelly than Pilate or the Jews had done.
John, the famous monk of the Thebaid, was no writer, though believed to
have the gift of prophecy. He was said to have foretold the victory
of Theodosius over the rebel Maximus; and, when the emperor had got
together his troops to march against Eugenius, another rebel who
had seized the passes of the Julian Alps, he sent his trusty eunuch
Eutropius to fetch the holy Egyptian, or at least to learn from him what
would be the event of the war. John refused to go to Europe, but he
told the messenger that Theodosius would conquer the rebel, and soon
afterwards die; both of which came to pass as might easily have been
guessed.

On the death of Theodosius, in 395, the Roman empire was again divided.
Arcadius, his elder son, ruled Egypt and the East, while Honorius, the
younger, held the West; and the reins of government at once passed
from the ablest to the weakest hands. But the change was little felt
in Egypt, which continued to be governed by the patriarch Theophilus,
without the name but with very nearly the power of a prefect. He was
a bold and wicked man, but as his religious opinions were for the
Homoousians as against the Arians, and his political feelings were for
the Egyptians as against the Greeks, he rallied to his government the
chief strength of the province. As the pagans and Arians of Alexandria
were no longer worthy of his enmity, he fanned into a flame a new
quarrel which was then breaking out in the Egyptian ch