His first battles were against the Africans and Marmaridæ, who were in arms on the side of Cyrene, and he next took the field against the Palmyrenes and Saracens, who still claimed Egypt in the name of the family of Zenobia. He employed the leisure of his soldiers in many useful works; in repairing bridges, temples, and porticoes, and more particularly in widening the trenches and keeping open the canals, and in such other works as were of use in raising and forwarding the yearly supply of grain to Rome. Aurelian increased the amount of the Egyptian tribute, which was paid in glass, paper, linen, hemp, and grain; the latter he increased by one-twelfth part, and he placed a larger number of ships on the voyage to make the supply certain.
The Christians were well treated during this reign, and their patriarch Nero so far took courage as to build the Church of St. Mary in Alexandria. This was probably the first church that was built in Egypt for the public service of Christianity, which for two hundred years had been preached in private rooms, and very often in secret. The service was in Greek, as, indeed, it was in all parts of Egypt: for it does not appear that Christian prayers were publicly read in the Egyptian language before the quarrel between the two churches made the Kopts unwilling to use Greek prayers. The liturgy there read was probably very nearly the same as that afterwards known as the Liturgy of St. Mark. This is among the oldest of the Christian liturgies, and it shows its country by the prayer that the waters of the river may rise to their just measure, and that rain may be sent from heaven to the countries that need it.
We learn from the historians that eight months were allowed to pass between the death of Aurelian and the choice of a successor; and during this time the power rested in the hands of his widow. The sway of a woman was never openly acknowledged in Rome, but the Alexandrians and Egyptians were used to female rule, and from contemporary coins we learn that in Egypt the government was carried on in the name of the Empress Severina. The last coins of Aurelian bear the date of the sixth year of his reign, and the coins of Severina are dated in the sixth and seventh years. But after Tacitus was chosen emperor by his colleagues of the Roman senate, and during his short reign of six months (A.D. 276), his authority was obeyed by the Egyptian legions under Probus, as is fully proved by the Alexandrian coins bearing his name, all dated in the first year of his reign.
On the death of Tacitus, his brother Florian hoped to succeed to the imperial power, and was acknowledged in the same year by the senate and troops of Rome. But when the news reached Egypt it was at once felt by the legions that Probus, both by his own personal qualities and by the high state of discipline of the army under his command, and by his success against the Egyptian rebels, had a better claim to the purple than any other general. At first the opinion ran round the camp in a whisper, and at last the army spoke the general wish aloud; they snatched a purple cloak from a statue in one of the temples to throw over him, they placed him on an earthen mound as a tribunal, and against his will saluted him with the title of emperor. The choice of the Egyptian legions was soon approved of by Asia Minor, Syria, and Italy; Florian was put to death, and Probus shortly afterwards marched into Gaul and Germany, to quiet those provinces.
After a year or two, Probus was recalled into Egypt by hearing that the Blemmyes had risen in arms, and that Upper Egypt was again independent of the Roman power. Not only Koptos, which had for centuries been an Arab city, but even Ptolemais, the Greek capital of the Thebaid, was now peopled by those barbarians, and they had to be reconquered by Probus as foreign cities, and kept in obedience by Roman garrisons; and on his return to Rome he thought his victories over the Blemmyes of Upper Egypt not unworthy of a triumph.
By these unceasing wars, the Egyptian legions had lately been brought into a high state of discipline, and, confident in their strength, and in the success with which they had made their late general emperor of the Roman world, they now attempted to raise up a rival to him in the person of their present general Saturninus. Saturninus had been made general of the Eastern frontier by Aurelian, who had given him strict orders never to enter Egypt. “The Egyptians,” says the historian, meaning, however, the Alexandrians, “are boastful, vain, spiteful, licentious, fond of change, clever in making songs and epigrams against their rulers, and much given to soothsaying and augury.” Aurelian well knew that the loyalty of a successful general was not to be trusted in Egypt, and during his lifetime Saturninus never entered that province. But after his death, when Probus was called away to the other parts of the empire, the government of Egypt was added to the other duties of Saturninus; and no sooner was he seen there, at the head of an army that seemed strong enough to enforce his wishes, than the fickle Alexandrians saluted him with the title of emperor and Augustus. But Saturninus was a wise man, and shunned the dangerous honour; he had hitherto fought always for his country; he had saved the provinces of Spain, Gaul, and Africa from the enemy or from rebellion; and he knew the value of his rank and character too well to fling it away for a bauble. To escape from further difficulties he withdrew from Egypt, and moved his headquarters into Palestine. But the treasonable cheers of the Alexandrians could neither be forgotten by himself nor by his troops; he had withstood the calls of ambition, but he yielded at last to his fears; he became a rebel for fear of being thought one, and he declared himself emperor as the safest mode of escaping punishment. But he was soon afterwards defeated and strangled, against the will of the forgiving Probus.