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 continue 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 himself against us, through the agency of some abandoned characters, stimulating the inhabitants of Antioch to request of him, as a very great favour, by no means to permit any of the Christians 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 character, altogether the reverse of the name he bore. But he appears to have been the controller of that city.