Chapter XVIII.                    While Eusebius had been
exhorting his congregation in the church of St. Mark to
Christian love towards the idolaters, these had collected in the
temple precincts to the number of about four thousand, all eager
for the struggle. A vast multitude! But the extent of the
Serapeum was so enormous that the mass of people was by no means
densely packed on the roof, in the halls, and in the underground
passages and rooms. There was no crowding anywhere, least of all
in the central halls of the temple itself; indeed, in the great
vestibule crowned with a dome which formed the entrance, in the
vast hall next to it, and in the magnificent hypostyle with a
semicircular niche on the furthest side in which stood the far-
famed image of the god, there were only scattered groups of men,
who looked like dwarfs as the eye compared them with the endless
rows of huge columns.  The full blaze of day penetrated nowhere
but into the circular vestibule, which was lighted by openings
in the drum of th