The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: BOOK II 77
going en masse against the o⁄cials; when a military force wished to
prevent the riot, the people routed them using volleys of stones, besieged
them when they took refuge in the former temple of Serapis, and delivered
them alive to the £ames; 74 when the emperor learned of these
events, he dispatched 2,000 new recruits, and they chanced upon such a
favourable wind that they arrived at the great city of the Alexandrians
on the sixth day; 75 and thereafter, since the soldiers were drunkenly
abusive towards both the wives and the daughters of the Alexandrians,
the consequences were much worse than before; and later the people
gathered in the hippodrome and begged Florus, who was commander of
the military regiments as well as exercizing civil o⁄ce, to restore to them
the grain allowance of which he had deprived them, and the baths and
the shows and everything which had been terminated because of the
disorder caused by them; and so Florus, on Priscus’ advice, appeared to
the people, promised these things, and the riot ended quickly. 76
the Thebaid. This emendation has been questioned by Zuckerman, ‘Huns’ 178^9, because it
would imply that Priscus was returning from his period of service in the province with Maximinus
(who died in 453), which is too late for the riots described here. It is right to be cautious,
since we do not know what Priscus actually wrote, but it is not impossible that Priscus
visited Alexandria on various occasions during his time in the Thebaid; equally, Evagrius
may have inaccurately paraphrased Priscus’ account.
74 The temple of Serapis was destroyed under Theodosius I, c. 391; although much of it
had been burnt or dismantled, the £oor was too massive to be worth moving (Eunapius,
Lives of the Sophists vi.11), and it would appear that enough of the ruined building survived
to o¡er limited protection. Blockley, Historians II. 392 n. 127, wrongly doubted the possibility
of the Serapeum being used in this way (partly because he misinterpreted Evagrius as
referring to a temple of Isis).
75 Blockley, Historians II. 392 n. 123, dated the rioting to summer on the grounds that
the favourable winds must have been the Etesians, but it is more likely that these events
closely followed the appointment of Proterius in winter 451/2; the soldiers were doubly fortunate
to have a rapid voyage during the months when only emergency journeys were undertaken.
76 The date of this subsequent demonstration is uncertain, but might be as late as 453.
Florus’ civil position was praefectus Augustalis, his military one comes Aegypti; the joint
responsibility was a consequence of the continuing religious unrest in Alexandria, and/or
of the renewed threat to the Thebaid of invasion by the Blemmyes and Nobades which followed
the death of the commander there, Maximinus (Blockley, Historians II. 392 n. 126;
PLRE II. 481^2 s.v. Florus 2; Gregory, Vox 184).
For grain distributions at Alexandria, see Gregory, Vox 186^7; Durliat, Ville 323^49.
Theodore Lector 352 (Theophanes, 106:30^107:3) records that partisans of Dioscorus attempted
to interfere with grain bound for Constantinople; to avoid this, Marcian arranged