The effects of this restoration were soon felt by the Jews. John Chrysostom had been denouncing them in Antioch, and the preacher’s eloquence was translated into acts of violence by the people of the neighbouring town of Imnestar. ♦415♦ The occasion of the riot was the Feast of Purim, when the Jews celebrated their triumph over Haman by a carnival of intoxication and ribaldry accompanied with the crucifixion of their enemy in effigy. The merriment, it appears, was further accentuated by coarse jokes at the expense of Christianity. The Christians of the town, who had frequently complained of these orgies in vain, now accused the Jews of having crucified not a straw-Haman but a live Christian lad. The charge led to the severe punishment of the revellers.[36] The same year witnessed a persecution of the Jews on a far larger scale in Alexandria. In that city Jews and Christians had long lived on terms of mutual repugnance, which not rarely resulted in reciprocal outrage. An episode of this kind afforded Cyril, the dictatorial and bigoted Patriarch, an excuse for indiscriminate vengeance. Early one morning the pugnacious ecclesiastic led a rabble of zealots against the Jews’ quarter, demolished their synagogues, pillaged their dwellings, and hounded the inmates out of the city in which they had lived and prospered for seven centuries. Forty thousand of them, the most industrious and thrifty part of the population, were driven forth to join their brethren in exile. The Prefect Orestes, unable to prevent the assault, or to punish the culprits, was fain to express his disapproval of their conduct--an indiscretion for which he narrowly escaped being stoned to death by the monks. In the meantime the Christian inhabitants of Antioch volunteered to avenge the grievances of their brethren at Imnestar by ejecting their Jewish fellow-citizens from the synagogues. The Emperor Theodosius compelled them to restore the buildings to the owners. But this decision was denounced by Simeon the Stylites, who on ascending his column had renounced all worldly luxuries except Jew-hatred. From that lofty pulpit the hermit addressed an epistle to the Emperor, rebuking him for his sinful indulgence to the enemies of Heaven. The pious Emperor was not proof against reprimand from so eminent a saint. ♦423♦ He immediately revoked his edict and removed the Prefect who had pleaded the cause of the Jews. ♦425♦