In the chapter in which Professor Ramsay discusses the story of Glycerius he asks how it was that, while Phrygia was heretical, Cappadocia, in the fourth century, was orthodox: “Can any reason be suggested why this great Cappadocian leader followed the Roman Church, whereas all the most striking figures in Phrygian ecclesiastical history opposed it?” In Phrygia was the great centre of Montanism, a form of religionism not unfavourable to excesses such as those of Glycerius. But in Letter cciv., placed in 375, Basil claims both the Phrygias, i.e. Pacatiana and Salutaris, as being in communion with him. By the “Roman Church,” followed by Cappadocia and opposed by Phrygia, must be meant either the ecclesiastical system of the Roman Empire, or the Church at Rome regarded as holding a kind of hegemony of Churches. If the former, it will be remembered that Cappadocia boldly withstood the creed patronized and pressed by imperial authority, when the influence of Valens made Arianism the official religion of Rome. If the latter, the phrase seems a misleading anachronism. In the fourth century there was no following or opposing the Church of Rome as we understand the phrase. To the bishop of Rome was conceded a certain personal precedence, as bishop of the capital, and he was beginning to claim more. In the West there was the dignity of the only western apostolic see, and the Church of Rome, as a society, was eminently orthodox and respectable. But, as important ecclesiastical centres, Antioch and Alexandria were far ahead of Rome, and the pope of Alexandria occupied a greater place than the pope of Rome. What Basil was eager to follow was not any local church, but the Faith which he understood to be the true and Catholic Faith, i.e., the Faith of Nicæa. There was no church of Rome in the sense of one organized œcumenical society governed by a central Italian authority. Basil has no idea of any such thing as a Roman supremacy. cf. Letter ccxiv. and note.