secution
in that city and its environs, and carried it on with the most infernal
severity. He was assisted in his diabolical malice by Catophonius,
governor of Egypt; Sebastian, general of the Egyptian forces; Faustinus
the treasurer; and Herachus, a Roman officer.

The persecution now raged in such a manner, that the clergy were driven
from Alexandria, their churches were shut, and the severities practised
by the Arian heretics were as great as those that had been practised by
the pagan idolaters. If a man, accused of being a christian, made his
escape, then his whole family were massacred, and his effects
confiscated.

_Persecution under Julian the Apostate._

This emperor was the son of Julius Constantius, and the nephew of
Constantine the Great. He studied the rudiments of grammar under the
inspection of Mardomus, a eunuch, and a heathen of Constantinople. His
father sent him some time after to Nicomedia, to be instructed in the
christian religion, by the bishop of Eusebius, his kinsman, but his
principles were corrupted by the pernicious doctrines of Ecebolius the
rhetorician, and Maximus the magician.

Constantius dying in the year 361, Julian succeeded him, and had no
sooner attained the imperial dignity, than he renounced Christianity and
embraced paganism, which had for some years fallen into great disrepute.
Though he restored the idolatrous worship, he made no public edicts
against christianity. He recalled all banished pagans, allowed the free
exercise of religion to every sect, but deprived all christians of
offices at court, in the magistracy, or in the army. He was chaste,
temperate, vigilant, laborious, and pious; yet he prohibited any
christian from keeping a school or public seminary of learning, and
deprived all the christian clergy of the privileges granted them by
Constantine the Great.

Bishop Basil made himself first famous by his opposition to Arianism,
which brought upon him the vengeance of the Arian bishop of
Constantinople; he equally opposed paganism. The emperor's agents in
vain tampered with Basil by means of promises, threats, and racks, he
was firm in the faith, and remained in prison to undergo some other
sufferings, when the emperor came accidentally to Ancyra. Julian
determined to examine Basil himself, when that holy man being brought
before him, the emperor did every thing in his power to dissuade him
from persevering in the faith. Basil not only continued as firm as ever,