n the Hellespontine
district, so that he could not revisit the East till the summer of 371.
Meanwhile there was not much to be done. Athanasius had been formally
restored to his church during the Procopian panic by Brasidas the notary
(February 366), and was too strong to be molested again. Meletius also
and others had been allowed to return at the same time, and Valens was
too busy to disturb them. Thus there was a sort of truce for the next
few years. Of Syria we hear scarcely anything; and even in Pontus the
strife must have been abated by the famine of 368. The little we find to
record seems to belong to the year 367. On one side, Eunomius the
Anomoean was sent into exile, but soon recalled on the intercession of
the old Arian Valens of Mursa. On the other, the Semiarians were not
allowed to hold the great synod at Tarsus, which was intended to
complete their reconciliation with the Western Nicenes. These years form
the third great break in the Arian controversy, and were hardly less
fruitful of results than the two former breaks under Constantius and
Julian. Let us therefore glance at the condition of the churches.

[Sidenote: New Nicene party in Cappadocia]

The Homoean party was the last hope of Arianism within the Empire. The
original doctrine of Arius had been decisively rejected at Nicaea; the
Eusebian coalition was broken up by the Sirmian manifesto; and if the
Homoean union also failed, the fall of Arianism could not be long
delayed. Its weakness is shown by the rise of a new Nicene party in the
most Arian province of the Empire. Cappadocia is an exception to the
general rule that Christianity flourished best where cities were most
numerous. The polished vice of Antioch or Corinth presented fewer
obstacles than the rude ignorance of _pagi_ or country villages. Now
Cappadocia was chiefly a country district. The walls of Caesarea lay in
ruins since its capture by the Persians in the reign of Gallienus, and
the other towns of the province were small and few. Yet Julian found it
incorrigibly Christian, and we hear but little of heathenism from Basil.
We cannot suppose that the Cappadocian boors were civilized enough to be
out of the reach of heathen influence. It seems rather that the
_paganismus_ of the West was partly represented by Arianism. In
Cappadocia the heresy found its first great literary champion in the
sophist Asterius. Gregory and George were brought to Alexandria from
Cappadocia, and afterwards A