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 chap, xxxvii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 79 humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with the common herd. 69 They often usurped the den of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble ; they buried themselves in some gloomy cavern which art or nature had scooped out of the rock ; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still inscribed with the monuments of their penance. 70 The most perfect hermits are supposed to have passed many days without food, many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking; and glorious was the man (I abuse that name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which might expose him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of the seasons. Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and Simeon genius of Simeon Stylites 71 have been immortalized by the a.d. 39^451 singular invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. 72 In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude with his outstretched arms in the figure of a B9 Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a panegyric on these &6<tkoi, or grazing monks (Tillemont, Mem. Eccl6s. torn. viii. p. 292). 70 The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, torn. ii. p. 217-233) examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder and devotion. The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character, which was used by the Christians of Abyssinia. 71 See Theodoret (in Vit. Patrum, 1. ix. p. 848-854), Antony (in Vit. Patrum, 1. i. p. 170-177), Cosmas (in Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental, torn. i. p. 239-253), Evagrius (1. i. c. 13, 14), and Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. torn. xv. p. 347-392). [On Simeon and the other stylite anachorets, see the monograph of the Bollandist, M. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Stylites, 1895.] 72 The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three feet, which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column, is inconsistent with reason, with facts, and with the rules of architecture. The people who saw it from below might be easily deceived.