help of educa- tion or learning, he became one of the most remarkable and influential men in the history of the ancient church. Even heathen contemporaries could not withhold from him their reverence, and the celebrated philosopher Synesius, afterward a bishop, before his conversion reckoned Anthony among those rare men, in whom flashes of thought take the place of reason- ings, and natural power of mind makes schooling needless. § 36. Spread of Anohoretism. Hilarion. The example of Anthony acted like magic upon his gener- ation, and his biography by Athanasius, which was soon trans- ' Comp. the proofs in Tillemont, 1. c. p. 137 sq. ^ Dion, fol. 51, ed. Petav., cited in Tillemont and Neander. § 36. SPREAD OF ANCHOKETISM. 189 lated also into Latin, was a tract for the times. Clirysostom recommended it to all as instructive and edifying reading.^ Even Augustine, the most evangelical of the fathers, was powerfully affected by the reading of it in his decisive religious struggle, and was decided by it in his entire renunciation of the world.' In a short time, still in the lifetime of Anthony, the deserts of Egypt, from Nitria, south of Alexandria, and the wilderness of Scetis, to Libya and the Thebaid, were peopled with ancho- rets and studded with cells. A mania for monasticism pos- sessed Christendom, and seized the people of all classes like an epidemic. As martyrdom had formerly been, so now monas- ticism was, the quickest and surest way to renown upon earth and to eternal reward in heaven. This prospect, with which Athanasius concludes his life of Anthony, abundantly recom- pensed all self-denial and mightily stimulated pious ambition. The consistent recluse must continually increase his seclusion. Xo desert was too scorching, no rock too forbidding, no cliff too steep, no cave too dismal for the feet of these world-hating and man-shunning enthusiasts. I^othing was more common than to see from two to five hundred monks under the same abbot. It has been supposed, that in Egypt the number of anchorets and cenobites equalled the population of the cities.' The natural contrast between the desert and the fertile valley of the l!sile, was reflected in the moral contrast between the monastic life and the world. ' Horn. riii. in Matth. torn, ^'ii. 1 28 (ed. Montfaucon). ^ Comp. Aug. : Confess. 1. viii. c. 6 and 28. ' " Quanti populi," says Rufinns (Vitas Patr. ii c. 1), "habentur in urbibus, tautae paene habentur in descrtis multitudines monachorum." Gibbon adds the sar- castic remark : " Posterity might repeat the saying, which had formerly been applied to sacred animals of the same country, That in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man." Montalembert (Monks of the West, vol. i. p. 314) says of the in- crease of monks : " Nothing in the wonderful history of these hermits in Egypt is so incredible as their number. But the most weighty authorities agreed in establishing it (S. Augustine, De