of St. Jerom to his Latin version of the Rule of
Pachomius, tom. i. p. 61.]

[Footnote 14: Rufin. c. 5, in Vit. Patrum, p. 459. He calls it civitas
ampla ralde et populosa, and reckons twelve churches. Strabo (l.
xvii. p. 1166) and Ammianus (xxii. 16) have made honorable mention
of Oxyrinchus, whose inhabitants adored a small fish in a magnificent
temple.]

[Footnote 15: Quanti populi habentur in urbibus, tantae paene habentur
in desertis multitudines monachorum. Rufin. c. 7, in Vit. Patrum, p.
461. He congratulates the fortunate change.]

Athanasius introduced into Rome the knowledge and practice of the
monastic life; and a school of this new philosophy was opened by the
disciples of Antony, who accompanied their primate to the holy threshold
of the Vatican. The strange and savage appearance of these Egyptians
excited, at first, horror and contempt, and, at length, applause and
zealous imitation. The senators, and more especially the matrons,
transformed their palaces and villas into religious houses; and
the narrow institution of six vestals was eclipsed by the frequent
monasteries, which were seated on the ruins of ancient temples, and in
the midst of the Roman forum. [16] Inflamed by the example of Antony, a
Syrian youth, whose name was Hilarion, [17] fixed his dreary abode on a
sandy beach, between the sea and a morass, about seven miles from Gaza.
The austere penance, in which he persisted forty-eight years, diffused
a similar enthusiasm; and the holy man was followed by a train of two
or three thousand anachorets, whenever he visited the innumerable
monasteries of Palestine. The fame of Basil [18] is immortal in the
monastic history of the East. With a mind that had tasted the learning
and eloquence of Athens; with an ambition scarcely to be satisfied with
the archbishopric of Caesarea, Basil retired to a savage solitude in
Pontus; and deigned, for a while, to give laws to the spiritual colonies
which he profusely scattered along the coast of the Black Sea. In the
West, Martin of Tours, [19] a soldier, a hermit, a bishop, and a saint,
established the monasteries of Gaul; two thousand of his disciples
followed him to the grave; and his eloquent historian challenges the
deserts of Thebais to produce, in a more favorable climate, a champion
of equal virtue. The progress of the monks was not less rapid, or
universal, than that of Christianity itself. Every province, and,
at last, every city, of the empire, was fil