Vita Hilarionis, c. 31, gives an incidental description of this last residence of Anthony, according to which it was not so desolate as from Athanasius one would infer. He speaks even of palms, fruit trees, and vines in this garden, the fruit of which any one would have enjoyed. 184: THIRD PEEIOD. A.D. 311-590. with other solitary saints, a prominent part of Anthony's ex- perience, and continued through all his life. The devil ap- peared to him in visions and dreams, or even in daylight, in all possible forms, now as a friend, now as a fascinating woman, now as a dragon, tempting him by reminding him of his former wealth, of his noble family, of the care due to his sister, by promises of wealth, honor, and renown, by exhibitions of the difficulty of virtue and the facility of vice, by unchaste thoughts and images, by terrible threateuings of the dangers and punish- ments of the ascetic life. Once he struck the hermit so violently, Athanasius says, that a friend, who brought him bread, found him on the ground apparently dead. At another time he broke through the wall of his cave and filled the room with roaring lions, howling wolves, growling bears, fierce hyenas, crawling serpents and scorpions ; 1but Anthony turned man- fully toward the monsters, till a supernatural light broke in from the roof and dispersed them. His sermon, which he de- livered to the hermits at their request, treats principally of these wars with demons, and gives also the key to the interpre- tation of them : " Fear not Satan and his angels. Christ has broken their power. The best weapon against them is faith and piety. . . . The presence of evil spirits reveals itself in perplexity, despondency, hatred of the ascetics, evil desires, fear of death. . . . They take the form answering to the spiritual state they find in us at the time.' They are the re- flex of our thoughts and fantasies. If thou art carnally minded, thou art their prey ; but if thou rejoicest in the Lord and occupiest thyself with divine things, they are jDOwerless. . . . The devil is afraid of fasting, of prayer, of humility and good work?. His illusions soon vanish, when one arms himself with the sign of the cross." Only in exceptional cases did Anthony leave his solitude ; and then he made a powerful impression on both Christians and heathens with his hairy dress and his emaciated, ghostlike form. In the year 311, diu-ing the persecution under Maxim- inns, he appeared in Alexandria in the hope of himself gaining * Atlianas, C. 42 : 'EAj&dvTes yap [ol ex^poi) diroiovs av ivpucnv 'jjuSf, toiovtoi kqI avTol yivovTai, etc. — an important psychological observation. § 35, PAUL OF THEBES AND ST. ANTHONY. 185 the martyr's crown. He visited tlie confessors in tlie mines and prisons, encouraged them before the tribmial, accompanied them to the scaffold ; but no one ventured