Section 413
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382 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. CHAPTER II. The subsequent reverse. BUT the tyrant, unable to bear this state of things, an enemy of goodness, and as far as possible of good men, who we have already said was the sovereign of the parts in the east, did not suffer this course to hold out quite six months. And thus, whilst he was devising schemes in every possible way to destroy the peace, he first attempted to restrain us by a kind of pretext from assembling in the cemeteries.* Then he sent delegates to him self f against us, through the agency of some abandoned charac ters, stimulating the inhabitants of Antioch to request of him, as a very great favour, by no means to permit any of the Chris tians to dwell at Antioch, and suborned others to do the same thing. Of all which things, Theotecnus was the cause and prime mover at Antioch, a man of a violent, artful, and wicked charac ter, altogether the reverse of the name he bore. But he appears to have been the controller of that city. CHAPTER III. The new statue erected at Antioch. AFTER he had thus waged war against us by every means, and had caused our brethren with all diligence and care to be hunted up in their retreats, as thieves and malefactors, and had plotted against us by slander and accusation, and been the cause of death to vast numbers, he finally erected a certain statue of Jupiter Philius, with a variety of mummery and magic rites. And after reciting forms of initiation, and pronouncing dire in* See note, Book VII. ch. ii. f Our author here represents Maximinus in the odd predicament of sending an embassy to himself, by suborning his agents to have this done. The original is pronounced by Valesius, elegans locutio, to which we may add sale plena