and treasonable wishes of the populace. The tumult was almost
immediately suppressed by the arrival of a body of archers: and
Antioch had leisure to reflect on the nature and consequences of her
crime. According to the duty of his office, the governor of the
province despatched a faithful narrative of the whole transaction:
while the trembling citizens intrusted the confession of their crime,
and the assurances of their repentance, to the zeal of Flavian, their
bishop, and to the eloquence of the senator Hilarius, the friend, and
most probably the disciple, of Libanius; whose genius, on this
melancholy occasion, was not useless to his country. But the two
capitals, Antioch and Constantinople, were separated by the distance
of eight hundred miles; and, notwithstanding the diligence of the
Imperial posts, the guilty city was severely punished by a long and
dreadful interval of suspense. Every rumor agitated the hopes and
fears of the Antiochians, and they heard with terror, that their
sovereign, exasperated by the insult which had been offered to his own
statues, and more especially, to those of his beloved wife, had
resolved to level with the ground the offending city; and to massacre,
without distinction of age or sex, the criminal inhabitants; many of
whom were actually driven, by their apprehensions, to seek a refuge in
the mountains of Syria, and the adjacent desert. At length,
twenty-four days after the sedition, the general Hellebicus and
Cæsarius, master of the offices, declared the will of the emperor, and
the sentence of Antioch. That proud capital was degraded from the rank
of a city; and the metropolis of the East, stripped of its lands, its
privileges, and its revenues, was subjected, under the humiliating
denomination of a village, to the jurisdiction of Laodicea. The baths,
the Circus, and the theatres were shut: and, that every source of
plenty and pleasure might at the same time be intercepted, the
distribution of corn was abolished, by the severe instructions of