Considerable excitement had been caused in Antioch in 350 by the ordination of Aetius as deacon, by the patriarch Leontius. This man, the most odious of the extreme Arians, had gone through many changes of life, as a vinedresser's slave, a goldsmith, a medical man, a guest and pupil of Arian bishops, and a professor of that disputatious logic in which the heresy was at first embodied. He was the first to affirm openly that the Son was essentially unlike the Father. Leontius intended his diaconate to be a means of propagating Arianism. But Flavian and Diodorus, the pillars of Catholicism in Antioch, had threatened formally to renounce his communion; and he thought it best to depose Aetius. Now Leontius was dead, and his throne was filled by Eudoxius, the intriguing and thoroughly irreligious bishop of Germanicia. He gained his promotion by fraud, and the aid of court eunuchs; and he openly patronized Aetius, whose views he had imbibed. The state of confusion and discord had become intolerable, and a General Council was resolved upon. Consultations were held as to the best place; and Constantius the emperor lent his ear to the mischievous counsel of Acacius and his party, which recommended the breaking the single council into two, in the hopes of being able thereby to "divide and govern." Constantius agreed, and Ancyra and Ariminum were named as the two places. But Ancyra was afterwards thought unsuitable, and it was decided that one portion of the council should meet at Seleucia instead of Ancyra. The ultra-Arian Valens was governing in the West. Both councils met in 359. Four hundred bishops of the West, including some from Britain, assembled at Ariminum. About eighty were Arians, for the most part of the advanced school. The Easterns met at Seleucia, and numbered one hundred and sixty; of these the great majority, one hundred and five, were semi-Arians, and of the rest a party were shifty followers of Acacius. Only one small party of Egyptians were loyal to the faith of Nicæa; nevertheless the council of Seleucia restored S. Cyril to his see, annulled his deposition decreed by Acacius, and deposed Acacius himself, and Eudoxius of Antioch.