ould not be more advantageously
placed, than in the two centuries which elapsed between the reigns of
Decius and of Theodosius the Younger. During this period, the seat of
government had been transported from Rome to a new city on the banks
of the Thracian Bosphorus; and the abuse of military spirit had been
suppressed by an artificial system of tame and ceremonious servitude.
The throne of the persecuting Decius was filled by a succession of
Christian and orthodox princes, who had extirpated the fabulous gods of
antiquity: and the public devotion of the age was impatient to exalt the
saints and martyrs of the Catholic church, on the altars of Diana and
Hercules. The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was
humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown Barbarians, issuing from the
frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over
the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.

[Footnote 43: The choice of fabulous circumstances is of small
importance; yet I have confined myself to the narrative which was
translated from the Syriac by the care of Gregory of Tours, (de Gloria
Martyrum, l. i. c. 95, in Max. Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. xi. p. 856,) to
the Greek acts of their martyrdom (apud Photium, p. 1400, 1401) and to
the Annals of the Patriarch Eutychius, (tom. i. p. 391, 531, 532, 535,
Vers. Pocock.)]

[Footnote 44: Two Syriac writers, as they are quoted by Assemanni,
(Bibliot. Oriental. tom. i. p. 336, 338,) place the resurrection of the
Seven Sleepers in the year 736 (A.D. 425) or 748, (A.D. 437,) of the
aera of the Seleucides. Their Greek acts, which Photius had read, assign
the date of the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Theodosius, which
may coincide either with A.D. 439, or 446. The period which had elapsed
since the persecution of Decius is easily ascertained; and nothing less
than the ignorance of Mahomet, or the legendaries, could suppose an
internal of three or four hundred years.]

[Footnote 45: James, one of the orthodox fathers of the Syrian church,
was born A.D. 452; he began to compose his sermons A.D. 474; he was made
bishop of Batnae, in the district of Sarug, and province of Mesopotamia,
A.D. 519, and died A.D. 521. (Assemanni, tom. i. p. 288, 289.) For the
homily de Pueris Ephesinis, see p. 335-339: though I could wish
that Assemanni had translated the text of James of Sarug, instead of
answering the objections of Baronius.]

[Footnote 46: See the Acta Sanctorum of