small part of the
emperor's want of success in his attempt at peace-making; for the crafty
Peter, who had gained the bishopric by subscribing to the peace-making
edict, was no sooner safely seated on his episcopal throne than he
denounced the council of Chalcedon and its decrees as heretical, and
drove out of their monasteries all those who still adhered to that
faith. Nephalius, one of these monks, wrote to the emperor at
Constantinople in complaint, and Zeno sent Cosmas to the bishop to
threaten him with his imperial displeasure, and to try to re-establish
peace in the Church. But the arguments of Cosmas were wholly
unsuccessful; and Zeno then sent an increase of force to Arsenius, the
military prefect, who settled the quarrel for the time by sending back
the most rebellious of the Alexandrians as prisoners to Constantinople.

Soon after this dispute Peter Mongus died, and fortunately he was
succeeded in the bishopric by a peacemaker. Athanasius, the new bishop,
very unlike his great predecessor of the same name, did his best to heal
the angry disputes in the Church, and to reconcile the Egyptians to the
imperial government.

Hierocles, the Alexandrian, was at this time teaching philosophy in his
native city, where his zeal and eloquence in favour of Platonism drew
upon him the anger of the Christians and the notice of the government.

He was sent to Constantinople to be punished for not believing in
Christianity, for it does not appear that, like the former Hierocles,
he ever wrote against it. There he bore a public scourging from his
Christian torturers, with a courage equal to that formerly shown by
their forefathers when tortured by his. When some of the blood from
his shoulders flew into his hand, he held it out in scorn to the judge,
saying with Ulysses, "Cyclops, since human flesh has been thy food, now
taste this wine." After his punishment he was banished, but was soon
allowed to return to Alexandria, and there he again taught openly as
before. Paganism never wears so fair a dress as in the writings of
Hierocles; his commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans is
full of the loftiest and purest morality, and not less agreeable are the
fragments that remain of his writings on our duties, and his beautiful
chapter on the pleasures of a married life. In the Facetiae of Hierocles
we have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from the
wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state