strike him dead, but the ruler of Faiyum delivered him from their hands. When Cyrus saw that Samuel had escaped, he ordered him driven away from the Nitrian Desert. Cyrus appointed Chalcedonian bishops over every Egyptian city up to Ansena, putting Coptic priests to death whenever they were found. The Coptic people, though left without priests, had secret gatherings. One priest, Agathon, would risk his life every night visiting Alexandria to administer communion there. He later succeeded Benjamin as pope. Some Copts attempted to assassinate Cyrus, but the plot was discovered by Eudocianus, brother of Domentianus who was a general in the Muslim conquest of Egypt. The conspirators were killed with no trial. Military prefect When Umar's general, 'Amr ibn al-'As known to the Romans as Amru, threatened the Prefecture of Egypt, Cyrus was made prefect and entrusted with the conduct of the war. Certain humiliating stipulations, to which he subscribed for the sake of peace, angered his imperial master so much that he was recalled and harshly accused of connivance with the Rashidun Caliphate; however, he was soon restored to his former authority, owing to the impending siege of Alexandria, but could not avert the fall of the great city in 640. He signed a peace treaty that surrendered Alexandria and Egypt on 8 November 641 before dying in 642. Writings From Cyrus there are three letters to Sergius and the "Satisfactio", all preserved in the acts of the Roman Synod of the Lateran and of the Sixth Œcumenical Council (Mansi, X, 1004; XI, 560, 562, 964). The first letter is an acceptation of the Ecthesis; in the second Cyrus describes his perplexity between Pope Leo and Sergius; the conversion of the Theodosians is narrated in the third. The seventh article of the "Satisfactio" — the others are irrelevant — reads thus: "The one and same Christ, the Son, performs the works proper to God and to man by one theandric operation according to St. Dionysius". Cyrus' chief opponents, St. Sophronius, died in 638 (Epistola synodica, Mansi, XI, 480), and St. Maximus, died in 662 (Epistola ad Nicandrum; disputatio cum Pyrrho, P.G., XCI, 101, 345), reproached him for falsifying the then much-respected text of Dionysius and substituting for (new). They showed, moreover, the inanity of his claim to the support of the Fathers, and explained how the Divine and human natures of Christ, sometimes styled one, because they belong