317 PREFACE TO THE BENEDICTINE EDITION. 1. Among the events which occurred in the time of John Chrysostom,968 there is none more memorable than that sedition of the inhabitants of Antioch, in which the Statues of the Emperor Theodosius and Flacilla his wife were thrown down and dragged about the city, at which Theodosius was so exasperated, as even to think of destroying the city entirely. This afforded ample matter for our Chrysostom to exercise his powers of preaching. For as the people of Antioch were fluctuating between hope and fear (sudden accidents offering of course daily some fresh cause for hope or alarm) Chrysostom, compelled as he was to adapt his style to circumstances as they arose, almost always without preparation, delivered on the spur of the occasion these Homilies, which are certainly well deserving of admiration. At one time his object here is to console a people struggling with present distress; at another, to strengthen minds that were sinking under the extremity of danger; and above all, by re- peated admonition, to persuade the people of Antioch, on occasion of the threatened calamities, to correct the vices and to wipe away the crimes that had thus provoked God’s wrath; which endeavour on the part of Chrysostom certainly ended in results agreeable to his desire, as he sometimes acknowledges. 2. But the cause of this great sedition was, according to the testimony of Zosimus, excess of taxation, which was daily inventing new imposts; an exaction required either for the cel- ebration of the fifth year upon which Arcadius had entered, from the time he was proclaimed under the title of Augustus, and the tenth year of the Emperor Theodosius, commencing in the year 388, or for the expenses of the war against the tyrant Maximus,969 or on account of both these events, as well as for other necessities of the state. The people of Antioch, that is to say, the superior class of the citizens, dismayed at the burden of this impost, first ap- proached the prefect, and with tears lamented the excess of the tax that had been announced, and implored the Divine assistance. And next, a multitude of vagabonds and foreigners of the lowest class of the people,970 in a state of excited feeling, broke out into deeds of violence. At first they turned every thing upside down in the public baths; hence they proceeded to the prefect’s palace, and attacked the doors and windows, and were scarcely repelled, when they turned their rage in another direction, and attacked the painted tablets of the Emperors with stones, covered them with filth, and reduced them to a ruinous condition, while they loaded the Augusti themselves with curses and reproaches. At length they threw down the Statues of the Emperor Theodosius and Flacilla his deceased wife,971 and dragged them 968 [That is events which occurred at Antioch during St. Chrysostom’s sojourn in that city—Ed.] 969 [And the Goths who were threatening the Danubian frontier.—Ed.] 970 [These low foreign adventurers were sometimes hired by actors to get up applause in the theatre, or by men of rank, not overpopular, to raise a cheer when they appeared in public.—Ed.] 971 See Hom. XXI., where St. Chrysostom speaks of him as especially pained at this. Preface to the Benedictine Edition. 439 Preface to the Benedictine Edition.