Diophantus[262] perhaps Jews or Chaldeans? Now, the Christians also felt themselves from the outset as a nation of the Magian cast, and, moreover, the others, Greeks (“heathen”) and Jews alike, regarded them as such. Quite logically the latter considered their secession from Judaism as high treason, and the former their missionary infiltration into the Classical cities as an invasion and conquest, while the Christians, on their side, designated people of other faiths as τὰ ἔθνη.[263] When the Monophysites and the Nestorians separated themselves from the Orthodox, new nations came into being as well as new Churches. The Nestorians since 1450 have been governed by the Mar Shimun,[264] who was at once prince and patriarch of his people and, _vis-à-vis_ the Sultan, occupied exactly the same position as, long before, the Jewish Resh Galutha had occupied in the Persian Empire.[265] This nation-consciousness, derived from particular and defined world-feeling and therefore self-evident with an _a priori_ sureness, cannot be ignored if we are to understand the later persecutions of the Christians. The Magian State is inseparably bound up with the concept of orthodoxy. Caliphate, nation, and Church form an intimate unit. It was as _states_ that Adiabene went over to Judaism, Osrhoene about 200 (so soon!) from Greekdom to Christendom, Armenia in the sixth century from the Greek to the Monophysite Church. Each of these events expresses the fact that the State was identical with the orthodox community as a juridical person.[266] If Christians lived in the Islamic State, Nestorians in the Persian, Jews in the Byzantine, they did not and could not as unbelievers belong to it, and consequently were thrown back upon their own jurisdictions.[267] If by reason of their numbers or their missionary spirit they became a threat to the continuance of the identity of state and creed-community, persecution became a national duty. It was on this account that first the “orthodox” (or “Greek”) and then the Nestorian Christians suffered in the Persian Empire. Diocletian also, who as “Caliph”[268] (_Dominus et Deus_) had linked the Imperium with the pagan cult-Churches and saw himself in all sincerity as Commander of _these_ Faithful, could not evade the duty of suppressing the second Church. Constantine changed the “true” Church _and in that act changed the nationality_ of the Byzantine Empire. From that point on, the Greek name slowly passed over to the Christian nation, and specifically to that Christian nation which the Emperor as Head of the Faithful recognized and allowed to sit in the Great Councils. Hence the uncertain lines of the picture of Byzantine history--in 290 the organization that of a Classical Imperium, but the substance already a Magian national state; in 312 a change of nationality without change of name. Under this name of “Greeks,” first Paganism as a nation fought the Christians, and then Christianity as a nation fought Islam.