In the fourth century, such illustrious men as Eusebius of Emesa, Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Martin of Tours, Chrysostom of Constantinople, and Augustine of Hippo, and sundry other great men whose writings swayed the human mind until the Reformation, advocated equally high-church pretensions.

This victim, on becoming aware of the presence of his assassins, murdered them by night and likewise put out of the way all his own enemies at Emesa, his native town.

Now Mæsa at home in Emesa her life

but upon what was said to him by some one, viz., that an Alexander would come from Emesa to succeed him, and again on what took place in upper Moesia and in Thrace.

He had, in fact, lived in stormy times, agitated by frightful disorders, under Caracalla, under Macrinus, under the astonishing High Priest of Emesa, Elagabalus, and he tranquilly prepared his sermons, his dogmatic writings, his pleadings, his homelies, while the Roman Empire shook on its foundations, while the follies of Asia, while the ordures of paganism were full to the brim.