It was at the close of this same year 371 Maran, Vit. Bas. xx. 1. that Basil and his diocese suffered most severely from the hostility of the imperial government.  Valens had never lost his antipathy to Cappadocia.  In 370 he determined on dividing it into two provinces.  Podandus, a poor little town at the foot of Mt. Taurus, was to be the chief seat of the new province, and thither half the executive was to be transferred.  Basil depicts in lively terms the dismay and dejection of Cæsarea. Epp. lxxiv., lxxv, lxxvi.  He even thought of proceeding in person to the court to plead the cause of his people, and his conduct is in itself a censure of those who would confine the sympathies of ecclesiastics within rigidly clerical limits.  The division was insisted on.  But, eventually, Tyana was substituted for Podandus as the new capital; and it has been conjectured Maran, Vit. Bas. xix. 3. that possibly the act of kindness of the prefect mentioned in Ep. LXXVIII. may have been this transfer, due to the intervention of Basil and his influential friends.