statues, and blocking up the doors to the tombs;
but it was at the same time saving, to be dug out in after ages, those
records which the living no longer valued.

On the death of the Emperor Marcian, the Alexandrians, taking advantage
of the absence of the military prefect Dionysius, who was then fighting
against the Nubades in Upper Egypt, renewed their attack upon the Bishop
Proterius, and deposed him from his office. To fill his place they made
choice of a monk named Timotheus AElurus, who held the Jacobite faith,
and, having among them two deposed bishops, they got them to ordain him
Bishop of Alexandria, and then led him by force of arms into the great
church which had formerly been called Caesar's temple. Upon hearing
of the rebellion, the prefect returned in haste to Alexandria; but
his approach was only the signal for greater violence, and the enraged
people murdered Proterius in the baptistery, and hung up his body at the
Tetrapylon in mockery. This was not a rebellion of the mob. Timotheus
was supported by the men of chief rank in the city; the _Honorati_ who
had borne state offices, the _Politici_ who had borne civic offices,
and the _Navicularii_, or contractors for the freight of the Egyptian
tribute, were all opposed to the emperor's claim to appoint the officer
whose duties were much more those of prefect of the city than patriarch
of Egypt. With such an opposition as this, the emperor would do nothing
without the greatest caution, for he was in danger of losing Egypt
altogether. But so much were the minds of all men then engrossed in
ecclesiastical matters that this political struggle wholly took the form
of a dispute in controversial divinity, and the emperor wrote a
letter to the chief bishops in Christendom to ask their advice in
his difficulty. These theologians were too busily engaged in their
controversies to take any notice of the danger of Egypt's revolting from
the empire and joining the Persians; so they strongly advised Leo not to
depart from the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, or to acknowledge
as Bishop of Alexandria a man who denied the two natures of Christ.
Accordingly, the emperor again risked breaking the slender ties by
which he held Egypt; he banished the popular bishop, and forced the
Alexandrians to receive in his place one who held the Chalcedonian
faith.

On the death of Leo, he was succeeded by his grandson, Leo the Younger,
who died in 473, after a reign of one year, and