On this he took a firm stand, to the end that, as this freedom increased their dissension, he might afterwards have no fear of a united populace, knowing as he did from experience that no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another. And he often used to say: Hear me, to whom the Alamanni and the Franks have given ear, thinking that in this he was imitating a saying of the earlier emperor Marcus. But he did not observe that the two cases were very different.

For Marcus, as he was passing through Palestine on his way to Egypt, being often disgusted with the malodorous and rebellious Jews, is reported to have cried: O Marcomanni, O Quadi, O Sarmatians, at last I have found a people more unruly than you.

At this same time, induced by sundry rumours, there cameTo Constantinople. a number of Egyptians, a contentious race of men, by custom always delighting in intricate litigation, and especially eager for excessive indemnification if they had paid anything to a collector of debts, either for the purpose of being relieved of the debt, or at any rate, to bring inI.e. pay. what was demanded of them more conveniently by postponing it; or eager to charge wealthy men with extortion and threaten them with court proceedings.

All these, crowding together and chattering like jays, unseasonably interrupted the emperor himself, as well as the praetorian prefects, demanding after almost seventy years moneys that they declared that they had paid, justly or otherwise, to many individuals.

And, since they prevented any other business from receiving attention, the emperor issued an edict, in which he bade them all go to Chalcedon; and he promised that he would himself also shortly come there, to settle all their claims.