They were of the world, and the ways of the world they must
follow. Political life had no inherent sanctity or nobleness; why act
holily and nobly in it? Family life had no inherent sanctity or
nobleness; why act holily and nobly in it either, if there were no holy,
noble, and divine principle or ground for it? And thus grew up, both in
Egypt, Syria, and Byzantium, a chaos of profligacy and chicanery, in
rulers and people, in the home and the market, in the theatre and the
senate, such as the world has rarely seen before or since; a chaos which
reached its culmination in the seventh century, the age of Justinian and
Theodora, perhaps the two most hideous sovereigns, worshipped by the
most hideous empire of parasites and hypocrites, cowards and wantons,
that ever insulted the long-suffering of a righteous God.
But, for Alexandria at least, the cup was now full. In the year 640 the
Alexandrians were tearing each other in pieces about some Jacobite and
Melchite controversy, to me incomprehensible, to you unimportant,
because the fighters on both sides seem to have lost (as all parties do
in their old age) the knowledge of what they were fighting for, and to
have so bewildered the question with personal intrigues, spites, and
quarrels, as to make it nearly as enigmatic as that famous contemporary
war between the blue and green factions at Constantinople, which began
by backing in the theatre, the charioteers who drove in blue dresses,
against those wild drove in green; then went on to identify themselves
each with one of the prevailing theological factions; gradually
developed, the one into an aristocratic, the other into a democratic,
religious party; and ended by a civil war in the streets of
Constantinople, accompanied by the most horrible excesses, which had
nearly, at one time, given up the city to the flames, and driven
Justinian from his throne.
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