his
obedience.

The primitive monks renounced all property and family relations; the
cenobites surrendered also their will. On entering the community they
engaged to possess nothing, not to marry, and to obey. "The monks,"
says St. Basil, "live a spiritual life like the angels." The first
union among the cenobites was the construction of houses in close
proximity. Later each community built a monastery, a great edifice,
where each monk had his cell. A Christian compares these cells "to a
hive of bees where each has in his hands the wax of work, in his mouth
the honey of psalms and prayers." These great houses needed a written
constitution; this was the Monastic Rule. St. Pachomius was the first
to prepare one. St. Basil wrote another that was adopted by almost all
the monasteries of the Orient.

FOOTNOTES:

[165] The church counted ten persecutions, the first under Nero, the
last under Diocletian.

[166] The word is Greek and signifies place of repose.

[167] See his biography in the "Lives of the Fathers of the Desert," by
Rufinus.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LATER EMPIRE

THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

=Military Anarchy.=--After the reigns of the Antonines the civil wars
commenced. There were in the empire, beside the praetorian guard in
Rome, several great armies on the Rhine, on the Danube, in the East,
and in England. Each aimed to make its general emperor. Ordinarily the
rivals fought it out until there was but one left; this one then
governed for a few years, after which he was assassinated,[168] or if,
by chance, he could transmit his power to his son, the soldiers
revolted against the son and the war recommenced. The following, for
example, is what occurred in 193. The praetorians had massacred the
emperor Pertinax, and the army conceived the notion of putting up the
empire at auction; two purchasers presented themselves, Sulpicius
offering each soldier $1,000 and Didius more than $1,200. The
praetorians brought the latter to the Senate and had him named emperor;
later, when he did not pay them, they murdered him. At the same time
the great armies of Britain, Illyricum, and Syria proclaimed each its
own general as emperor and the three rivals marched on Rome. The
Illyrian legions arrived first, and their general Septimius Severus
was named emperor by the Senate. Then commenced two sanguinary wars,
the one against the legions of Syria, and the other against the
legions of Britain. At the