OF THE R(3MAN EMPIIiE 135 lawyers, physicians, and sophists, who still cherished the super- stition of the Gi'eeks. They were sternly informed that they must choose without delay between the displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian, and that their aversion to the gospel could no longer be disguised under the scandalous mask of indifference or im- piety. The patrician Photius perhaps alone was resolved to live and to die like his ancestors ; he enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy the lifeless corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren submitted to their earthly monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and laboured, by their extraordinary zeal, to erase the suspicion, or to expiate the guilt, of idolatry. The native country of Homer, and the theatre of the Trojan war, still retained the last sparks of his mythology : by the care of the same bishop, seventy thousand Pagans were detected and converted in Asia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria ; ninety-six churches were built for the new proselytes ; and linen vest- ments, bibles and liturgies, and vases of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of Justinian.^*' The Jews, of Jews who had been gradually stripped of their immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled them to observe the festival of Easter the same day on which it was celebrated by the Christians.^'-' And they might complain with the more reason, since the Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical calculations of their sovereign ; the people of Con- stantinople delayed the beginning of their Lent a whole week after it had been ordained by authority ; and they had the pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed for sale by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine •' tans^"*"^' were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the pagans, by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as idolaters. The abomination of the cross had already been
- '* Theophan. Chron. p. 153 [a.m. 6022]. John the Monophysite, liishop of
.'sia, is a more authentic witness of tliis transaction, in which he was himself em- ployed by the emperor (Asseman. Bib. Orient, tom. ii. p. 85). [See the history of John of Ephesus, 3, 36, 37.] ^'^ Compare Procopius (Hist. Arcan. c. 28, and Alenian's Notes) with Theo- phanes (Chron. p. 190 [a.m. 6038]). The council of Nice has entrusted the patriarch, or rather the astronomers, of Alexandria with the annual proclamation of Easter ; and we still read, or rather we do not read, many of the Paschal epis- tles of St. Cyril. Since the reign of Monophytism [h-o; Monophysitisra] in Egypt, the Catholics were perplexed by such a foolish prejudice as that which so long opposed, among the Protestants, the reception of the Gregorian style. ■'"For the religion and history of the Samaritans, consult Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, a learned and impartial work.
