in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases, not under public orders indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long- as he could, and then discovered his real views by lenient cen- sure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates. He first, therefore, employed against the Christians of all parties and sects the policy of toleration, in hope of their de- stroying each other by internal controversies. He permitted the orthodox bishops and all other clergy, who had been banished under Constantius, to return to their dioceses, and left Arians, ApoUinarians, Novatians, Macedonians, Donatists, and so on, to themselves. He affected compassion for the "poor, blind, deluded Galileans, who forsook the most glorious privilege of man, the worship of the immortal gods, and instead of them worshipped dead men and dead men's bones." He once even suffered himself to be insulted by a blind bishop, Maris of Chalcedon, who, when reminded by him, that the Galilean God could not restore his eyesight, answered : " I thank my God for my blindness, which spares me the painful sight of such an impious apostate as thou." He afterwards, however, caused the bishop to be severely punished.^ So in Antioch, also, he bore with philosophic equanimity the ridicule of the Christian populace, but avenged himself on the in- habitants of the city by unsj)aring satire in the Misopogon. His whole bearing towards the Christians was instinct with bitter hatred and accompanied with sarcastic mockery.'' This betrays itself even in the contemptuous term, Galileans, which ' Socrates : H. E. iii. 12. " Gibbon well says, ch. xxiii. : "He affected to pity the unhappy Christians, . . . but his pity was degraded by contempt, his contempt was embittered by hatred ; and the sentiments of Julian were expressed in a style of sarcastic wit, which inflicts a deep and deadly wound whenever it issues from the mouth of a so%'ereign." ^ 52 THIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. he constantly applies to them after the fashion of the Jews, and which he probably also commanded to be given them by others.' He considered them a sect of fanatics contemptible to men and hateful to the gods, and as atheists in open war with all that was sacred and divine in the world." He some- times had representatives of different parties dispute in his presence, and then exclaimed : " 'No wild beasts are so fierce and irreconcilable as the Galilean sectarians." When he found that toleration was rather profitable than hurtful to the church, and tended to soften the vehemence of doctrinal con- troversies, he proceeded, for example, to banish Athanasius, who was particularly offensive to him, from Alexandria, and even from Egypt, calling this greatest man of his age an in- significant manikin,^ and reviling him with vulgar language, because through his influence many prominent heathens, espe-