CHAPTER XXII

FLIGHT OF PETER TO ROME. MASSACRE OF THE SOLITARIES AT THE INSTIGATION OF THE ARIANS

OF the outrages perpetrated upon the instalment of Lucius, and the treatment of those who were ejected, both by judicial authority and otherwise, some being subjected to a variety of tortures, and others sent into exile even after this excruciating process, Sabinus takes not the slightest notice. In fact being half disposed to Arianism himself, he purposely veils the atrocities of his friends. Peter however has exposed them, in the letters he addressed to all the churches, when he had escaped from prison, and fled to Damasus bishop of Rome. The Arians though not very numerous, becoming thus possessed of the Alexandrian churches, soon after obtained an imperial edict directing the governor of Egypt to expel not only from Alexandria but even out of the country, the favourers of the Homoousian doctrine, and all such as were obnoxious to Lucius. After this they assailed the monastic institutions in the desert; armed men rushing in the most ferocious manner upon those who were utterly defenceless, and who would not lift an arm to repel their violence: so that numbers of unresisting victims were in this manner slaughtered with a degree of wanton cruelty beyond description.