Note 224 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

We still possess letters of this sort, addressed by the bishop of the city, at that time Dionysius († 265), to the members of the church shut off in the hostile half of the town (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 21, 22, comp. 32). When it is therein said: “one gets more easily from the West to the East than from Alexandria to Alexandria,” and ἡ μεσαιτάτη τῆς πόλεως ὁδός, consequently the street furnished with colonnades, running from the Lochias point right through the town (comp. Lumbroso, l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani, 1882, p. 137) is compared with the desert between Egypt and the promised land, it appears almost as if Severus Antoninus had carried out his threat of drawing a wall across the town and occupying it in a military fashion (Dio, lxxvii. 23). The razing of the walls after the overthrow of the revolt (Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15) would then have to be referred to this very building.