OF THE HOMAN EMPIRE.

want occupations suited to their condition/But the people of Alexandria, a various mixture^of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy ofthe Greeks, with the superstition and obstinacyof the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion,a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neg-lect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake ofprecedency in the public baths, or even a reli-gions dispute , 1 were at any time sufficient tokindle a sedition among that vast multitude,whose resentments were furious and implaca-ble ." 1 After the captivity of Valerian and theindolence of his son had relaxed the authorityof the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned them-selves to the ungoverned rage of their passions,and their unhappy country was the theatre of acivil war, which continued (with a few shortand suspicious truces) above twelve years." Allintercourse was cut off between the severalquarters of the afflicted city, every street waspolluted with blood, every building of strengthconverted into a citadel; nor did the tumultssubside, till a considerable part of Alexandriawas irretrievably ruined. The spacious andmagnificent district of Bruchion, with its palaces

k See a very curious letter of Hadrian in the Augustan History ,p. 245.

1 Such as the sacrilegious murder of a divine cat. See I>iodor.Sicul. 1. i.

m Hist. August, p. 195. This long and terrible sedition was firstoccasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about apair of shoes.

“ Dionysius apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vol. vii, p. 21. Aminiumxxii, 16.

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