[233] Already in the Delian inscriptions of the last century of the republic the Syrians predominate. The Egyptian deities had doubtless a much revered shrine there, but among the numerous priests and dedicators we meet only a single Alexandrian (Hauvette-Besnault, Bull. de corr. Hell. vi. 316 f.). Guilds of Alexandrian merchants are known to us at Tomi (I. 310, note) and at Perinthus (C. I. Gr. 2024).
[234] After Juvenal has described the wild drinking bouts of the native Egyptians in honour of the local gods of the several nomes, he adds that therein the natives were in no respect inferior to the Canopus, i.e. the Alexandrian festival of Sarapis, notorious for its unbridled licentiousness (Strabo, xvii. 1, 17, p. 801): horrida sane Aegyptus, sed luxuria quantum ipse notavi, barbara famoso non cedit turba Canopo (Sat. xv. 44).
[235] Ammianus, xxii. 16, 23: Erubescit apud (Aegyptios), si qui non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat.
[236] This was according to Juvenal Tentyra, which must be a mistake, if the well known Tentyra is meant; but the list of the Ravennate chronicler, iii. 2, names the two places together.
[237] Seneca, ad Helv. 19, 6: loquax et in contumelias praefectorum ingeniosa provincia ... etiam periculosi sales placent.
[238] Dio Chrysostom says in his address to the Alexandrians (Or. xxxii. p. 663 Reiske): “Because now (the intelligent) keep in the background and are silent, there spring up among you endless disputes and quarrels and disorderly clamour, and bad and unbridled speeches, accusers, aspersions, trials, a rabble of orators.” In the Alexandrian Jew-hunt, which Philo so drastically describes, we see these mob-orators at work.
[239] Dio Cassius, xxxix. 58: “The Alexandrians do the utmost in all respects as to daring, and speak out everything that occurs to them. In war and its terrors their conduct is cowardly; but in tumults, which with them are very frequent and very serious, they without scruple come to mortal blows, and for the sake of the success of the moment account their life nothing, nay, they go to their destruction as if the highest things were at stake.”
[240] The “pious Egyptians” offered resistance, as Macrobius, Sat. i. 7, 14, reports, but tyrannide Ptolemaeorum pressi hos quoque deos (Sarapis and Saturnus) in cultum recipere Alexandrinorum more, apud quos potissimum colebantur, coacti sunt. As they thus had to present bloody sacrifices, which was against their ritual, they did not admit these gods, at least into the towns; nullum Aegypti oppidum intra muros suos aut Saturni aut Sarapis fanum recepit.
[241] The often-quoted anonymous author of a description of the empire from the time of Constantius, a good heathen, praises Egypt particularly on account of its exemplary piety: “Nowhere are the mysteries of the gods so well celebrated as there from of old and still at present." Indeed, he adds, some were of opinion that the Chaldaeans—he means the Syrian cultus—worshipped the gods better; but he held to what he had seen with his own eyes—"Here there are shrines of all sorts and magnificently adorned temples, and there are found numbers of sacristans and priests and prophets and believers and excellent theologians, and all goes on in its order; you find the altars everywhere blazing with flame and the priests with their fillets and the incense-vessels with deliciously fragrant spices.” Nearly from the same time (not from Hadrian), and evidently also from a well-informed hand, proceeds another more malicious description (vita Saturnini, 8): “He who in Egypt worships Sarapis is also a Christian, and those who call themselves Christian bishops likewise adore Sarapis; every grand Rabbi of the Jews, every Samaritan, every Christian clergyman is there at the same time a sorcerer, a prophet, a quack (aliptes). Even when the patriarch comes to Egypt some demand that he pray to Sarapis, others that he pray to Christ.” This diatribe is certainly connected with the circumstance that the Christians declared the Egyptian god to be the Joseph of the Bible, the son of Sara, and rightfully carrying the bushel. The position of the Egyptian orthodox party is apprehended in a more earnest spirit by the author, belonging presumably to the third century, of the Dialogue of the Gods, preserved in a Latin translation among the writings attributed to Appuleius, in which the thrice-greatest Hermes announces things future to Asklepios: "Thou knowest withal, Asklepios, that Egypt is a counterpart of heaven, or, to speak more correctly, a transmigration and descent of the whole heavenly administration and activity; indeed, to speak still more correctly, our fatherland is the temple of the whole universe. And yet a time will set in, when it would appear as if Egypt had vainly with pious mind in diligent service cherished the divine, when all sacred worship of the gods will be without result and a failure. For the deity will betake itself back into heaven, Egypt will be forsaken, and the land, which was the seat of religious worships, will be deprived of the presence of divine power and left to its own resources. Then will this consecrated land, the abode of shrines and temples, be densely filled with graves and corpses. O Egypt, Egypt, of thy worships only rumours will be preserved, and even these will seem incredible to thy coming generations, only words will be preserved on the stones to tell of thy pious deeds, and Egypt will be inhabited by the Scythian or Indian or other such from the neighbouring barbarian land. New rights will be introduced, a new law, nothing holy, nothing religious, nothing worthy of heaven and of the celestials will be heard or in spirit believed. A painful separation of the gods from men sets in; only the bad angels remain there, to mingle among mankind" (according to Bernays’s translation, Ges. Abh. i. 330).
[242] When the Romans ask from the famous rhetor Proaeresios (end of the third and beginning of the fourth century) one of his disciples for a professorial chair, he sends to them Eusebius from Alexandria; “as respects rhetoric,” it is said of the latter (Eunapius, Proaer. p. 92 Boiss.), “it is enough to say that he was an Egyptian; for this people, no doubt, pursues versemaking passionately, but earnest oratory (ὁ σπουδαῖος Ἕρμης) is not at home among them.” The remarkable resumption of Greek poetry in Egypt, to which, e.g. the epic of Nonnus belongs, lies beyond the bounds of our narrative.