numerous troop of soldiers and gladiators marched under the episcopal
banner, and he successively attacked the villages and country temples
of the diocese of Apamea. Whenever any resistance or danger was
apprehended, the champion of the faith, whose lameness would not allow
him either to fight or fly, placed himself at a convenient distance,
beyond the reach of darts. But this prudence was the occasion of his
death: he was surprised and slain by a body of exasperated rustics; and
the synod of the province pronounced, without hesitation, that the holy
Marcellus had sacrificed his life in the cause of God. In the support of
this cause, the monks, who rushed with tumultuous fury from the desert,
distinguished themselves by their zeal and diligence. They deserved the
enmity of the Pagans; and some of them might deserve the reproaches of
avarice and intemperance; of avarice, which they gratified with holy
plunder, and of intemperance, which they indulged at the expense of the
people, who foolishly admired their tattered garments, loud psalmody,
and artificial paleness. [32] A small number of temples was protected
by the fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence, of the civil and
ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage,
whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was
judiciously converted into a Christian church; [33] and a similar
consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon
at Rome. [34] But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army
of fanatics, without authority, and without discipline, invaded
the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of
antiquity still displays the ravages of those Barbarians, who alone had
time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.

[Footnote 24: Libanius (Orat. pro Templis, p. 10, Genev. 1634, published
by James Godefroy, and now extremely scarce) accuses Valentinian and
Valens of prohibiting sacrifices. Some partial order may have been
issued by the Eastern emperor; but the idea of any general law
is contradicted by the silence of the Code, and the evidence of
ecclesiastical history. Note: See in Reiske's edition of Libanius, tom.
ii. p. 155. Sacrific was prohibited by Valens, but not the offering of
incense.--M.]

[Footnote 25: See his laws in the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. x. leg.
7-11.]

[Footnote 26: Homer's sacrifices are not accompanied with any
inquisition o