xxii. ad Eustochium, " De custodia virginitatis " (torn. i. p. 113). C. A. Heumann has written a special treatise, De ecstasi Hieronymi anti-Ciceroniana. Comp. also Schrookh, vol. vii. p. 35 sqq., and Ozanam : " Civilisation au 5e Siecle," i. 301. "" Ep. xxii. cd. Yall. (i. 112). 208 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. later life, lie did not strictly keep. On tlie contrary, he made the monks copy the dialogues of Cicero, and explained Virgil at Bethlehem, and his writings abound in recollections and quotations of the classic authors. "When Rufinus of Aquileia, at fii'st his warm friend, but afterward a bitter enemy, cast up to him this inconsistency and breach of a solemn vow, he re- sorted to the evasion that he could not obliterate from his memory what he had formerly read ; as if it were not so sin- ful to cite a heathen author as to read him. With more reason he asserted, that all was a mere dream, and a dream vow was not binding. He referred him to the prophets, " who teach that di"eams are vain, and not worthy of faith." Yet was this dream afterward made frequent use of, as Erasmus laments, to cover monastic obscurantism. After his baptism, Jerome divided his life between the East and the West, between ascetic discipline and literary labor. He removed from Kome to Antioch with a few friends and his library, visited the most celebrated anchorets, attended the ex- egetical lectures of the younger Apollinaris in Antioch, and then (371) spent some time as an ascetic in the dreary Syrian desert of Chalcis. Here, like so many other hermits, he nnder- Avent a grevious struggle with sensuality, which he described ten years after with indelicate minuteness in a long letter to his virgin friend Eustochium.' In spite of his starved and emacia- ted body, his fancy tormented him with wild images of Roman banquets and dances of women ; showing that the monastic seclusion from the world was by no means proof against the temptations of the flesh and the devil. Helpless he cast him- self at the feet of Jesus, wet them with tears of repentance, and subdued the resisting flesh by a week of fasting and by tlie dry study of Hebrew grammar (which, according to a letter to Rusticus,^ he was at that time learning from a converted Jew), until he found peace, and thought himself transported to the chou's of the angels in heaven. In this period probably falls the dream mentioned above, and the composition of several * Ep. xxii. (i. p. 91, ed. Vallars.) ' Ep. cxxv., ed. Vallars. (al. 95 or 4.) § 41. ST, JEKOME AS A MONK, 209 ascetic writings, fall of heated euloiry of the monastic life.' His biographies of distinguished anchorets, however, are very pleasantly and temperately written." He commends monastic seclusion even against the will of parents ; interpreting the word of the Lord about forsaking father and mother, as if monasti-