It will be of some interest to review here the machinery of officers and deputies, civil as well as military, by which Egypt was governed under the successors of Constantine. The whole of the Eastern empire was placed under two prefects, the pretorian prefect of the East and the pretorian prefect of Illyricum, who, living at Constantinople, like modern secretaries of state, made edicts for the government of the provinces and heard the appeals. Under the prefect of the East were fifteen consular provinces, together with Egypt, which was not any longer under one prefect. There was no consular governor in Egypt between the prefect at Constantinople and the six prefects of the smaller provinces. These provinces were Upper Libya or Cyrene, Lower Libya or the Oasis, the Thebaid, Ægyptiaca or the western part of the Delta, Augustanica or the eastern part of the Delta, and the Heptanomis, now named Arcadia, after the late emperor. Each of these was under an Augustal prefect, attended by a Princeps, a Cornicula-rius, an Adjutor, and others, and was assisted in civil matters by a Commentariensis, a corresponding secretary, a secretary ab actis, with a crowd of numerarii or clerks.
The military government was under a count with two dukes, with a number of legions, cohorts, troops, and wedges of cavalry, stationed in about fifty cities, which, if they had looked as well in the field as they do upon paper, would have made Theodosius II. as powerful as Augustus. But the number of Greek and Roman troops was small. The rest were barbarians who held their own lives at small price, and the lives of the unhappy Egyptians at still less. The Greeks were only a part of the fifth Macedonian legion, and Trajan’s second legion, which were stationed at Memphis, at Parembole, and at Apollinopolis; while from the names of the other cohorts we learn that they were Franks, Portuguese, Germans, Quadri, Spaniards, Britons, Moors, Vandals, Gauls, Sarmati, Assyrians, Galatians, Africans, Numid-ians, and others of less known and more remote places. Egypt itself furnished the Egyptian legion, part of which was in Mesopotamia, Diocletian’s third legion of Thebans, the first Maximinian legion of Thebans which was stationed in Thrace, Constantine’s second Flavian legion of Thebans, Valens’ second Felix legion of Thebans, and the Julian Alexandrian legion, stationed in Thrace. Beside these, there were several bodies of native militia, from Abydos, Syênê, and other cities, which were not formed into legions. The Egyptian cavalry were a first and second Egyptian troop, several bodies of native archers mounted, three troops on dromedaries, and a body of Diocletian’s third legion promoted to the cavalry. These Egyptian troops were chiefly Arab settlers in the Thebaid, for the Kopts had long since lost the use of arms. The Kopts were weak enough to be trampled on; but the Arabs were worth bribing by admission into the legions. The taxes of the province were collected by a number of counts of the sacred largesses, who wrere under the orders of an officer of the same title at Constantinople, and were helped by a body of counts of the exports and imports, prefects of the treasury and of the mints, with an army of clerks of all titles and all ranks. From this government the Alexandrians were exempt, living under their own military prefect and corporation, and, instead of paying any taxes beyond the custom-house duties at the port, they received a bounty in grain out of the taxes of Egypt.
Soon after this we find the political division of Egypt slightly altered. It is then divided into eight governments; the Upper Thebaid with eleven cities under a duke; the Lower Thebaid with ten cities, including the Great Oasis and part of the Heptanomis, under a general; Upper Libya or Cyrene under a general; Lower Libya or Parastonium under a general; Arcadia, or the remainder of the Heptanomis, under a general; Ægyptiaca, or the western half of the Delta, under an Augustalian prefect; the first Augustan government, or the rest of the Delta, under a Corrector; and the second Augustan government, from Bubastis to the Red Sea, under a general. We also meet with several military stations named after the late emperors: a Maximianopolis and a Dioclesianopolis in the Upper Thebaid; a Theodosianopolis in the Lower Thebaid, and a second Theodosianopolis in Arcadia. But it is not easy to determine what villages were meant by these high-sounding names, which were perhaps only used in official documents.
The empire of the East was gradually sinking in power during this long and quiet reign of Theodosius II.; but the empire of the West was being hurried to its fall by the revolt of the barbarians in every one of its widespread provinces. Henceforth in the weakness of the two countries Egypt and Rome are wholly separated. After having influenced one another in politics, in literature, and in religion for seven centuries, they were now as little known to one another as they were before the day when Fabius arrived at Alexandria on an embassy from the senate to Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Theological and political quarrels, under the name of the Homoousian and Arian controversy, had nearly separated Egypt from the rest of the empire during the reigns of Constantius and Valens, but they had been healed by the wisdom of the first Theodosius, who governed Egypt by means of a popular bishop; and the policy which he so wisely began was continued by his successors through weakness. But in the reign of Marcian (450—457) the old quarrel again broke out, and, though it was under a new name, it again took the form of a religious controversy. Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, died in the last reign; and as he had succeeded his uncle, so on his death the bishopric fell to Dioscorus, a relation of his own, a man of equal religious violence and of less learning, who differed from him only in the points of doctrine about which he should quarrel with his fellow-Christians. About the same time Eutyches, a priest of Constantinople, had been condemned by his superiors and expelled from the Church for denying the two natures of Christ, and for maintaining that he was truly God, and in no respect a man. This was the opinion of the Egyptian church, and therefore Dioscorus, the Bishop of Alexandria, who had no right whatever to meddle in the quarrels at Constantinople, yet, acting on the forgotten rule that each bishop’s power extended over all Christendom, undertook of his own authority to absolve Eutyches from his excommunication, and in return to excommunicate the Bishop of Constantinople who had condemned him. To settle this quarrel, a general council was summoned at Chalcedon; and there six hundred and thirty-two bishops met and condemned the faith of Eutyches, and further explained the Nicene creed, to which Eutyches and the Egyptians always appealed. They excommunicated Eutyches and his patron Dioscorus, who were banished by the emperor; and they elected Proterius to the then vacant bishopric of Alexandria.
In thus condemning the faith of Eutyches, the Greeks were excommunicating the whole of Egypt. The Egyptian belief in the one nature of Christ, which soon afterwards took the name of the Jacobite faith from one of its popular supporters, might perhaps be distinguished by the microscopic eye of the controversialist from the faith of Eutyches; but they equally fell under the condemnation of the council of Chalcedon. Egypt was no longer divided in its religious opinions. There had been a party who, though Egyptian in blood, held the Arian and half-Arian opinions of the Greeks, but that party had ceased to exist. Their religion had pulled one way and their political feelings another; the latter were found the stronger, as being more closely rooted to the soil; and their religious opinions had by this time fitted themselves to the geographical boundaries of the country. Hence the decrees of the council of Chalcedon were rejected by the whole of Egypt; and the quarrel between the Chalcedonian and Jacobite party, like the former quarrel between the Athanasians and the Arians, was little more than another name for the unwillingness of the Egyptians to be governed by Constantinople.
Proterius, the new bishop, entered Alexandria supported by the prefect Floras at the head of the troops.
But this was the signal for a revolt of the Egyptians, who overpowered the cohort with darts and stones; and the magistrates were driven to save their lives in the celebrated temple of Serapis. But they found no safety there; the mob surrounded the building and set fire to it, and burned alive the Greek magistrates and friends of the new bishop; and the city remained in the power of the rebellious Egyptians. When the news of this rising reached Constantinople the emperor sent to Egypt a further force of two thousand men, who stormed Alexandria and sacked it like a conquered city, and established Proterius in the bishopric. As a punishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for some time the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens, and only restored them after the return to peace and good order.