Athanasius was an intimate friend of the hermit Anthony and a persistent advocate of the ascetic ideal.  When he fled to Rome, in 340, to escape the persecutions of the Arians, he took with him two specimens of monastic virtue—­Ammonius and Isidore.  These hermits, so filthy and savage in appearance, albeit, as I trust, clean in heart, excited general disgust, and their story of the tortures and holiness of their Egyptian brethren was received with derision.  But men who had faced and conquered the terrors of the desert were not to be so easily repulsed.  Aided by other ascetic travelers from the East they persisted in their propaganda until contempt yielded to admiration.  The enthusiasm of the uncouth hermits became contagious.  The Christians in Rome now welcomed the story of the recluses as a Divine call to abandon a dissolute society for the peace and joy of a desert life.

But before this transformation of public opinion can be appreciated, it is needful to know something of the social and religious condition of Rome in the days when Athanasius and his hermits walked her streets.

After suffering frightful persecutions for three centuries, the Church had at last nominally conquered the Roman Empire; nominally, because although Christianity was to live, the Empire had to die.  “No medicine could have prevented the diseased old body from dying.  The time had come.  When the wretched inebriate embraces a spiritual religion with one foot in the grave, with a constitution completely undermined, and the seeds of death planted, then no repentance or lofty aspiration can prevent physical death.  It was so in Rome.”  The death-throes were long and lingering, as befits the end of a mighty giant, but death was certain.  There are many facts which explain the inability of a conquering faith to save a tottering empire, but it is impracticable for us to enter upon that wide field.  Some help may be gained from that which follows.

Of morals, Rome was destitute.  She possessed the material remains and superficial acquirements of a proud civilization, such as great public highways, marble palaces, public baths, temples and libraries.  Elegance of manners and acquisitions of wealth indicate specious outward refinement.  But these things are not sufficient to guarantee the permanence of institutions or the moral welfare of a nation.  In the souls of men there was a fatal degeneracy.  There was outward prosperity but inward corruption.

Professor Samuel Dill, in his highly instructive work on “Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire,” points out the fact that Rome’s fall was due to economic and political causes as well as to the deterioration of her morals.  A close study of these causes, however, will reveal the presence of moral influences.  Professor Dill says:  “The general tendency of modern inquiry has to discover in the fall of that august and magnificent organization, not a cataclysm, precipitated by the