2.  How comes it to pass then that we have received nothing of what is due to us by the law of love; no letter of consolation, no visit from brethren?  This is now the thirteenth year since the war of heresy began against us. Valens began the thirteenth year of his reign in the March of 376, and this fact is one of Maran’s reasons for placing this letter where he does.  Tillemont reckons the thirteen years from 361 to 374, but Maran points out that if the Easterns had wanted to include the persecution of Constantius they might have gone farther back, while even then the lull under Julian would have broken the continuity of the attack.  Vit. Bas. xxxv.  cf. note on p. 48.  In this the Churches have suffered more tribulations than all those which are on record since Christ’s gospel was first preached. A rhetorical expression not to be taken literally.  Some of the enormities committed under Valens, e.g. the alleged massacre of the Orthodox delegates off Bithynia in 370 (Soz. vi. 14, Theod. iv. 21), would stand out even when matched with the cruelties perpetrated under Nero and Diocletian, if the evidence for them were satisfactory.  cf. Milman, Hist. Christ. iii. 45.  The main difference between the earlier persecutions, conventionally reckoned as ten, and the persecution of the Catholics by Valens, seems to be this, that while the former were a putting in force of the law against a religio non licita, the latter was but the occasional result of the personal spite and partizanship of the imperial heretic and his courtiers.  Valens would feel bitterly towards a Catholic who thwarted him.  Basil could under Diocletian hardly have died in his bed as archbishop of Cæsarea.  I am unwilling to describe these one by one, lest the feebleness of my narrative should make the evidence of the calamities less convincing.  It is moreover the less necessary for me to tell you of them, because you have long known what has happened from the reports which will have reached you.  The sum and substance of our troubles is this:  the people have left the houses of prayer and are holding congregations in the wildernesses.  It is a sad sight.  Women, boys, old men, and those who are in other ways infirm, remain in the open air, in heavy rain, in the snow, the gales and the frost of winter as well as in summer under the blazing heat of the sun.  All this they are suffering because they refuse to have anything to do with the wicked leaven of Arius.