“This result would be attained if their impious rites were forbidden and suppressed by your divine and eternal decree, and if they were compelled to practise the cult of the gods, your congeners, and pray to them on behalf of your eternal and incorruptible Majesty. This would clearly be to the advantage and profit of all your subjects.” Eusebius records two replies of the Emperor to petitions of this character. One is contained in a letter to his præfect, Sabinus, and relates to Nicomedia. The other is a document copied by Eusebius from a bronze tablet set up on a column in Tyre. Maximin expatiates at great length on the debt, which men owe to the gods, and especially to Jupiter, the presiding deity of Tyre, for the ordered succession of the seasons, and for keeping within their appointed bounds the overwhelming forces of Nature. If there have been calamities and cataclysms, to what else, he asks, can they be attributed than to the “vain and pestilential errors of the villainous Christians?” Those who have apostatised and have been delivered from their blindness are like people who have escaped from a furious storm or have been cured of some deadly malady. To them life offers once more its bounteous blessings. Then the Emperor continues: “But if they still persist in their detestable errors, they shall be banished, in accordance with your petition, far from your city and your territory, that so this city of Tyre, completely purified, as you most properly desire it to be, may yield itself wholly to the worship of the gods. “But that you may know how agreeable your petition has been to us, and how, even without petition on your part, we are disposed to heap favours upon you, we grant you in advance any favour you shall ask, however great, in reward for your piety. “Ask, therefore, and receive, and do so without hesitation. The benefit which shall accrue to your city will be a perpetual witness of your devotion to the gods.” Evidently the Christians had not yet come to the end of their troubles. Those who read this circular letter, for it seems to have been sent round from city to city, must have expected the persecution to break out anew at any moment. We do not know to what extent the edict was observed. If it had been generally acted upon, we should certainly have heard more of it, inasmuch as it must have entailed a widespread exodus from the provinces of Maximin. But of this there is no evidence. We imagine rather that this circular was merely a preliminary sharpening of the sword in order to keep the Christians in a due state of apprehension.