After certain other bishops had met with a like fate, the Eusebii flew at higher game and attacked Athanasius. They had already entered into an understanding with the Meletian faction in Egypt, who carefully kept alive the charges against Athanasius, and now they again took up the cudgels on behalf of Arius. Eusebius wrote to the Patriarch asking him to restore Arius to communion on the ground that he had been grievously misrepresented. Athanasius bluntly refused. Arius, he said, had started a deadly heresy: he had been anathematised by an Œcumenical Council: how, then, could he be restored to communion? Eusebius and Arius appealed to the Emperor. Constantine, who had previously ordered Arius to attend at court and promised him signal proof of his regard and permission to return to Alexandria, sent a peremptory message to Athanasius bidding him admit Arius. When Athanasius, on the score of conscience, returned a steady refusal, the Emperor angrily threatened that, if he did not throw open his church doors to all who desired to enter, he would send an officer to turn him out of his church and expel him from Alexandria. “Now that you have full knowledge of my will,” he added, “see that you provide uninterrupted entry to all who wish to enter the church. If I hear that you have prevented any one from joining the services, or have shut the doors in their faces, I will at once despatch some one to deport you from Alexandria.” The threat did not terrify Athanasius, who declared that there could be no fellowship between heretics and true believers. Nor was the Imperial officer sent. Then began an extraordinary campaign of calumny against the Patriarch, who was accused of taxing Egypt in order to buy a supply of linen garments, called “sticharia,” for his church; of instigating one Macarius to upset a communion table and break a sacred chalice; of murdering a Meletian bishop named Arsenius, who was presently found alive and well; and of other crimes equally preposterous and unfounded. It was the Meletian irreconcilables in Egypt who brought these calumnies forward, but Athanasius had no doubt that the moving spirit was none other than Eusebius himself. And his enemies, whoever they were, were untiring and implacable. As soon as one calumny was refuted, they were ready with another, and all this time there was Eusebius at the Emperor’s side, continually suggesting that with so much smoke there needs must be some fire, and that Athanasius ought to be called upon to clear himself, lest the scandal should do injury to the Church. Constantine summoned a council to try Athanasius in 333, and fixed the place of meeting in Cæsarea,—a tolerably certain proof that the two Eusebii were acting in concert. For some reason not stated the bishops did not assemble until the following year, and then Athanasius refused to attend. Not until 335 did Athanasius stand before his episcopal judges at Tyre.