s or the
Persians.

II. The foundation of Alexandria was a noble design, at once conceived
and executed by the son of Philip. The beautiful and regular form
of that great city, second only to Rome itself, comprehended a
circumference of fifteen miles; it was peopled by three hundred thousand
free inhabitants, besides at least an equal number of slaves. The
lucrative trade of Arabia and India flowed through the port of
Alexandria, to the capital and provinces of the empire. * Idleness was
unknown. Some were employed in blowing of glass, others in weaving of
linen, others again manufacturing the papyrus. Either sex, and every
age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry, nor did even the blind or
the lame want occupations suited to their condition. But the people
of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and
inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the
Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh
or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of
precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any
time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose
resentments were furious and implacable. After the captivity of Valerian
and the insolence of his son had relaxed the authority of the laws,
the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage of their
passions, and their unhappy country was the theatre of a civil war,
which continued (with a few short and suspicious truces) above twelve
years. All intercourse was cut off between the several quarters of the
afflicted city, every street was polluted with blood, every building of
strength converted into a citadel; nor did the tumults subside till a
considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably ruined. The spacious
and magnificent district of Bruchion, * with its palaces and musaeum, the
residence of the kings and philosophers of Egypt, is described above a
century afterwards, as already reduced to its present state of dreary
solitude.

III. The obscure rebellion of Trebellianus, who assumed the purple in
Isauria, a petty province of Asia Minor, was attended with strange and
memorable consequences. The pageant of royalty was soon destroyed by an
officer of Gallienus; but his followers, despairing of mercy, resolved
to shake off their allegiance, not only to the emperor, but to the
empire, and suddenly returned to the savage manners from which th