198 THE DECLINE AXD FALL 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 tumult- uous 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.^** A small number of temples Avas 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 ; ^^ and a similar consecration has pre- served inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon at Romc*^ But, in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and Mithout 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. The temple of 111 this widc and various prospect of devastation, the spectator AJex^dria may distinguish the ruins of the temple of Serapis, at Alex- andria.^ Serapis does not appear to have been one of the native gods, or monsters, who sprung fi*om the fruitful soil of super- s^Libanius pro Templis, p. 10-13. He rails at these black-garbed men, the Christian monks, who eat more than elephants. Poor elephants ! tfuy are temperate animals. S Prosper Aquitan. 1. iii. c. 38, apud Baronium ; Annal. Eccles. A.D. 389, No. 58, (Sc. 'J"he temple had been shut some time, and the access to it was overgrown with brambles. •"> Donatus, Roma Antiqua et Nova, 1. iv. c. 4, p. 468. This consecration was performed by Pope Boniface IV. I am ignorant of the favourable circumstances
hich had preserved the Pantheon above two hundred years after the reign of
Theodosius. ■*! Sophronius composed a recent and separate history (Jerom, m Script. Eccies. tom. i. p. 303), which had furnished materials to Socrates (1. v. c. 16), Theodoret (1. V. c. 22), and Rufinus (1. ii. c. 22). Yet the last, who had been at Alexandria before and after the event, may deserve the credit of an original witness.
