water, and fixed his last residence on Mount
Colzim near the Red Sea, where an ancient monastery still preserves the
name and memory of the saint. The curious devotion of the Christians
pursued him to the desert; and, when he was obliged to appear at
Alexandria, in the face of mankind, he supported his fame with
discretion and dignity. He enjoyed the friendship of Athanasius, whose
doctrine he approved; and the Egyptian peasant respectfully declined
a respectful invitation from the Emperor Constantine. The venerable
patriarch (for Antony attained the age of 105 years) beheld the numerous
progeny which had been formed by his example and his lessons. The
prolific colonies of monks multiplied on the sands of Libya, upon the
rocks of the Thebaid, and in the cities of the Nile. To the south of
Alexandria, the mountain and adjacent desert of Nitria were peopled by
five thousand anchorites; and the traveller may still investigate the
ruins of fifty monasteries, which were planted in that barren soil by
the disciples of Antony. In the Upper Thebaid, the vacant island of
Tabenna was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen hundred of his brethren.
That holy abbot successively founded nine monasteries of men and one
of women; and the festival of Easter sometimes collected fifty thousand
religious persons, who followed his angelic rules of discipline.
The stately and populous city of Oxyrrhynchos, the seat of Christian
orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices, and even the
ramparts, to pious and charitable uses, and the bishop, who might preach
in twelve churches, computed ten thousand females and twenty thousand
males of the monastic profession."

The monks borrowed many of their customs from the old Egyptian priests,
such as shaving the head; and Athanasius in his charge to them orders
them not to adopt the tonsure on the head, nor to shave the beard. He
forbids their employing magic or incantations to assist their prayers.
He endeavours to stop their emulation in fasting, and orders those whose
strength of body enabled them to fast longest not to boast of it. But he
orders them not even to speak to a woman, and wishes them not to bathe,
as being an immodest act. The early Christians, as being a sect of Jews,
had followed many Jewish customs, such as observing the Sabbath as well
as the Lord's day; but latterly the line between the two religions had
been growing wider, and Athanasius orders the monks not to keep holy th