[148]I have translated the Berlin editor’s reading here, as being the least unsatisfactory of those proposed. Others give a text which may be rendered: “I would this were all: for the things that befell us before drove us into many grievous troubles.” But the exact meaning is doubtful, however we take it. [149]This epithet for martyrs has already occurred on p. 64. [150]This is none other than a quotation from Pericles’s speech about the plague at Athens in Thucyd. ii. 64, though in Dionysius’s original phrase it sounds as if he meant some local minor historian. [151]The word Dionysius uses here is the same as S. Paul, uses (1 Cor. iv. 13: περίψηµα, offscouring). It is said to have been used at Athens of the human scapegoats thrown into the river in time of famine: “Be thou my expiation (περίψηµα).” Elsewhere it seems to have degenerated into a sort of extravagant compliment: “I am your humble servant (περίψηµα).” Dionysius suggests it might regain its more serious meaning in the present case. [152]Here again Dionysius uses an expression suggested by S. Paul in Phil. iii. 8. [153]It is not clear whether Dionysius actually alludes here to the well-protected harbours of Alexandria or (more loosely) to the Lake Mareotis: probably to the former, because the canal he refers to in the next sentence (though he calls it a river) was cut from the Nile into one of the harbours and passed at the back of the city between it and the Lake Mareotis. [154]Cf. Ps. lxxvii. 13, cxxxvi. 4, and Wisd. xi. 4. The whole passage, of course, refers to Exod. xiv. and xvii. [155]Cf. Exod. vii. 20, 21. [156]_i. e._ if the biggest river and the ocean itself, as he proceeds exaggeratedly to claim, cannot do so, what other cleansing can there be? [157]Cf. Gen. ii. 10 ff. Dionysius evidently adopts the later Jewish view that the Gihon was the Nile, Æthiopia (or Cush) being identified with Egypt. [158]The meaning of the phrase employed by Dionysius here (“hale old men”) comes from Homer, _Il._ xxiii. 791 (cf. Virg., _Æn._ vi. 304); but elsewhere a very similar phrase seems to suggest “a cruel, untimely old age.” [159]Evidently at Alexandria (the capital of that country which was the chief granary of Rome) either the necessitous citizens or perhaps all between forty and seventy were entitled to receive doles of corn; but now the relief was extended to all ages between fourteen and eighty. [160]Either the heathen are meant, who ought to tremble and be convinced, or the Christians, who were too courageous through trust in God to tremble. [161]The last sentence is involved and obscure. I am not sure that my paraphrase rightly expresses the thought. [162]I have adopted our modern mode of expression, but in the early Church Pascha was often used for the fast which receded Easter as well as for the feast itself, and that is how Dionysius uses it here.