The dispute with Anthimus was little more than a personal quarrel, so that it was soon forgotten. The old Semiarian Eustathius of Sebastia was able to give more serious annoyance. He was a man too active to be ignored, too unstable to be trusted, too famous for ascetic piety to be lightly made an open enemy. His friendship was compromising, his enmity dangerous. We left him professing the Nicene faith before the council of Tyana. For the next three years we lose sight of him. He reappears as a friend of Basil in 370, and heartily supported him in his strife with Valens. Eustathius was at any rate no time-server. He was drawn to Basil by old friendship and a common love of asceticism, but almost equally repelled by the imperious orthodoxy of a stronger will than his own. And Basil for a long time clung to his old teacher, though the increasing distrust of staunch Nicenes like Theodotus of Nicopolis was beginning to attack himself. His peacemaking was worse than a failure. First he offended Theodotus, then he alienated Eustathius. The suspicious zeal of Theodotus was quieted in course of time, but Eustathius never forgave the urgency which wrung from him his signature to a Nicene confession. He had long been leaning the other way, and now he turned on Basil with all the bitterness of broken friendship. To such a man the elastic faith of the Homoeans was a welcome refuge. If they wasted little courtesy on their convert, they did not press him to strain his conscience by signing what he ought not to have signed. [Sidenote: Apollinarius of Laodicea.]