In other words, the prisons were to be emptied and the mad sectaries to be let alone. The bigot was obliged to bow, however reluctantly, to the wishes and commands of the senior Augustus, even though Galerius was a broken and dying man. Nevertheless, within six months we find Maximin devising new schemes for troubling the Christians. Eusebius tells us with what joy the edict of toleration had been welcomed, with what triumph the Christians had quitted their prisons, and with what enthusiastic exultation the bands of Christian confessors, returning from the mines to their own towns and villages, were received by the Christian communities in the places through which they passed. Those whose testimony to their faith had not been so sure and clear, those who had bowed the knee to Baal under the shadow of torture and death, humbly approached their stouter-hearted brethren and implored their intercession. The Church rose from the persecution proudly and confidently, and with incredible speed renewed its suspended services and repaired its broken organisation. Maximin issued an order forbidding Christians to assemble after dark in their cemeteries, as they had been in the habit of doing, in order to celebrate the victory of their martyrs over death. Such assemblies, the Emperor said, were subversive of morality: they were to be allowed no more. This must have warned the Christians how little reliance was to be placed in the promises of Maximin, and shortly afterwards they had another warning. Maximin made a tour through his provinces and in several cities received petitions in which he was urged to give an order for the absolute expulsion of all Christians. No doubt it was known that such a request would be well pleasing to Maximin, but at the same time it undoubtedly points to the existence of a strong anti-Christian feeling. At Antioch, which was under the governorship of Theotecnus, the petitioners, according to Eusebius, said that the expulsion of the Christians would be the greatest boon the Emperor could confer upon them, but the full text of one of these petitions has been found among the ruins of a small Lycian township of the name of Aricanda. It runs as follows: “To the Saviours of the entire human race, to the august Cæsars, Galerius Valerius Maximinus, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, Valerius Licinianus Licinius, this petition is addressed by the people of the Lycians and the Pamphylians. “Inasmuch as the gods, your congeners, O divine Emperor, have always crowned with their manifest favours those who have their religion at heart and offer prayers to them for the perpetual safety of our invincible masters, we have thought it well to approach your immortal Majesty and to ask that the Christians, who for years have been impious and do not cease to be so, may be finally suppressed and transgress no longer, by their wicked and innovating cult, the respect that is owing to the gods.