The Temples of Alexandria Torn Down

At the request of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, the emperor at this time issued an order for the pagan temples in that city to be torn down, and commanded that it be carried out under the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus did everything he could to expose the pagan mysteries to contempt. To begin with, he had the Mithraeum cleaned out and put on public display the evidence of its bloody mysteries. Then he destroyed the Serapeum. He publicly mocked the bloody rites of the Mithraeum; he showed the Serapeum, too, to be full of extravagant superstitions; and he had the phallic images of Priapus carried through the middle of the marketplace. [a]

The pagans of Alexandria, and especially the teachers of philosophy, could not contain their rage at this exposure, and in their savage revenge they went beyond even their outrages on an earlier occasion. With one accord, at a signal agreed on beforehand, they rushed furiously on the Christians and murdered everyone they could lay hands on. The Christians also tried to resist their attackers, and so the harm grew all the greater. This desperate fighting went on until they had had their fill of bloodshed. Then it was found that very few of the pagans had been killed, but a great number of Christians, while the wounded on each side were almost beyond counting. Then fear took hold of the pagans over what they had done, as they thought of the emperor’s displeasure. Having done what seemed right in their own eyes, and having spent their courage in bloodshed, some fled one way and some another, and many left Alexandria and scattered to various cities. Among these were the two grammarians Helladius and Ammonius, whose pupil I was in my youth at Constantinople. Helladius was said to be the priest of Jupiter, and Ammonius the priest of the Ape.

When this disturbance had been ended in this way, the governor of Alexandria and the commander of the troops in Egypt helped Theophilus tear down the pagan temples. So they were razed to the ground, and the images of their gods were melted down into pots and other useful vessels for the Alexandrian church, for the emperor had instructed Theophilus to give them away for the relief of the poor. So all the images were broken to pieces, except one statue of the god just mentioned, which Theophilus kept and set up in a public place. “So that,” he said, “at some future time the pagans may not deny that they ever worshiped such gods.” This action deeply offended Ammonius the grammarian in particular. To my knowledge he used to say that “the religion of the pagans had been grossly insulted, in that this one statue had not been melted down too, but kept in order to make that religion ridiculous.” Helladius, however, boasted in front of some people that in that desperate attack he had killed nine men with his own hand. Such were the events at Alexandria at that time.