one was exempt, and the power of levying special taxes besides the due proportion of the city land-tax, made every man liable to contribute. Characteristically the Hippodrome had its share in directing the work. The two factions of the Circus, the blues and the greens, were charged with the direction; and it is said that in 447 they furnished no less than sixteen thousand labourers for the work. The reign of Theodosius II. was the great age of the construction of defences. The walls of Anthemius were built in 413; in 439 the sea walls were extended to include the part of the city now enclosed. In 447, an earthquake, always the greatest enemy of the fortifications and responsible even now for more destruction than any other force, overthrew much of what had been so lately built, with fifty-seven towers. Attila was almost at the gates, and was dictating an ignominious treaty of peace. But, as an inscription which may be read to-day on the gate now called Yeni-Mevlevi Haneh Kapoussi tells-- "In sixty days, by order of the sceptre loving Emperor, Konstantinos the Eparch added wall to wall." A Latin inscription makes the same record almost in the words of the contemporary chronicler Marcellinus Comes-- "Theodosii jussis gemino nec mense peracto Constantinus ovans haec moenia firma locavit Tam cito quam stabilem Pallas vix conderet arcem." This addition was a new wall, in front of that of Anthemius, with 192 towers, and a moat without, forming tiers of defence. It was this magnificent series of bulwarks which, in the words of the historian of the walls, "so long as ordinary courage survived and the modes of ancient warfare were not superseded, made Constantinople impregnable, and behind which civilisation defied the assaults of barbarism for a thousand years."[5] Theodosius II. reigned till 450. The later part of his reign was disturbed by the Nestorian controversy, in which the bishop of Constantinople himself involved the Church. The denial by this prelate of the title Theotokos (Mother of God) to the Blessed Virgin Mary was no obscure attack upon the reality of the Incarnation as the Church had always received it; and the people of the city as well as the clergy received the new teaching with disgust. Eastern and Western bishops united against the heresy, and in 431 the third General Council of the Church at Ephesus condemned it and its author, and again defined the Catholic faith. The party of Nestorius was not suppressed, though he was himself deposed, and in the sixth century it became the great agent of Christian missions in the East.