eir rulers too weak either to guard them or to tyrannise over them,
and they sometimes formed themselves into small societies, and took
means for their own defence. The law had so far allowed this as in some
cases to grant a corporate constitution to a city. But in other cases a
city kept in its pay a courtier or government servant powerful enough to
guard it against the extortions of the provincial tax-gatherer, or would
put itself under the patronage of a neighbour rich enough and strong
enough to guard it. This, however, could not be allowed, even if not
used as the means of throwing off the authority of the provincial
government; and accordingly at this time we begin to find laws against
the new crime of _patronage_. These associations gave a place of refuge
to criminals, they stopped the worshipper in his way to the temple, and
the tax-gatherer in collecting the tribute. But new laws have little
weight when there is no power to enforce them, and the orders from
Constantinople were little heeded in Upper Egypt.

But this _patronage_ which the emperor wished to put down was weak
compared to that of the bishops and clergy, which the law allowed and
even upheld, and which was the great check to the tyranny of the civil
governor. While the emperor at a distance gave orders through his
prefect, the people looked up to the bishop as their head; and hence the
power of each was checked by the other. The emperors had not yet made
the terrors of religion a tool in the hands of the magistrate; nor had
they yet learned from the pontifex and augurs of pagan Rome the secret
that civil power is never so strong as when based on that of the
Church.

On the death of Constantius, in 361, Julian was at once acknowledged as
emperor, and the Roman world was again, but for the last time, governed
by a pagan. The Christians had been in power for fifty-five years under
Constantine and his sons, during which time the pagans had been made
to feel that their enemies had got the upper hand of them. But on the
accession of Julian their places were again changed; and the Egyptians
among others crowded to Constantinople to complain of injustice done by
the Christian prefect and bishop, and to pray for a redress of wrongs.
They were, however, sadly disappointed in their emperor; he put them off
with an unfeeling joke; he ordered them to meet him at Chalcedon on the
other side of the straits of Constantinople, and, instead of following
them accordi