dria he
was received with the honour due to his religious zeal. But though
in Antioch his opinions had been too Egyptian for the Syrians, in
Alexandria they were too Syrian for the Egyptians. The Egyptians, who
said that Jesus had been crucified and died only in appearance, always
denied that his body was liable to corruption. Severus, however, argued
that it was liable to corruption before the resurrection; and this led
him into a new controversy, in which Timotheus, the Alexandrian bishop,
took part against his own more superstitious flock, and sided with
his friend, the Bishop of Antioch. Severus has left us, in the Syriac
language, the baptismal service as performed in Egypt. The priest
breathes three times into the basin to make the water holy, he makes
three crosses on the child's forehead, he adjures the demons of
wickedness to quit him, he again makes three crosses on his forehead
with oil, he again blows three times into the water in the form of a
cross, he anoints his whole body with oil, and then plunges him in the
water. Many other natives of Syria soon followed Severus to Alexandria;
so many indeed that as Greek literature decayed in that city, Syriac
literature rose. Many Syrians also came to study the religious life in
the monasteries of Egypt, and after some time the books in the library
of the monastery at Mount Nit-ria were found to be half Arabic and half
Syriac.

Justin, the new emperor, again lighted up in Alexandria the flames
of discord which had been allowed to slumber since the publication of
Zeno's peace-making edict. But in the choice of the bishop he was not
able to command without a struggle. In the second year of his reign, on
the death of Timotheus, the two parties again found themselves nearly
equal in strength; and Alexandria was for several years kept almost in a
state of civil war between those who thought that the body of Jesus had
been liable to corruption, and those who thought it incorruptible. The
former chose Gaianas, whom his adversaries called a Manichean; and the
latter Theodosius, a Jacobite, who had the support of the prefect; and
each of these in his turn was able to drive his rival out of Alexandria.

Those Persian forces which in the last reign overran the Delta were
chiefly Arabs from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. To make an end of
these attacks, and to engage their attention in another quarter, was the
natural wish of the statesmen of Constantinople; and for this