OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

395

boards.' 1 The novatians of Constantinople , andthe adjacent country, by their firm attachment,to the homoousian standard, deserved to be con-founded with the catholics themselves. Mace-donius was informed, that a large district ofPaphlagonia r was almost entirely inhabited bythose sectaries. He resolved either to convertor to extirpate them; and as he distrusted, onthis occasion, the efficacy of an ecclesiasticalmission, he commanded a body of four thousandlegionaries to march against the rebels, and toreduce the territory of Mantinium under hisspiritual dominion. The novatian peasants,animated by despair and religious fury, boldlyencountered the invaders of their country ; andthough many of the Paphlagonians were slain,the Roman legions were vanquished by an ir-regular multitude, armed only with scythes andaxes; and, except a few who escaped by anignominious flight, four thousand soldiers wereleft dead on the field of battle. The successorof Constantius has expressed, in a concise butlively manner, some of the theological calami-ties which afflicted the empire, and more espe-cially the East, in the reign of a prince who was

i Socrates, 1. ii, c. 27,38. Sozomen , I. iv, c. 21. The principal assis-tants of Macedonia, in the work of persecution, were the two bishopsof Nicomedia and Cyzicus , who were esteemed for their virtues, andespecially for their charity. I cannot forbear reminding the reader,that the difference between the homoousion and homoiousiou is almostinvisible to the nicest theological eye.

' We are ignorant of the precise situation of Mantinium. In speak-ing of these four bands of legionaries, Socrates, Sozomen , and the au-thor of the acts of St. Paul, use the indefinite terms of ajifl.uoirayftaTtt, which Nicephorus very properly translates thousands. Vales,ad Social. 1. ii, c. 38.

CHAP.

XXI.