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hood; but the hundred-fold expresses the crowning glory of virginity." At first world-weary women rather than men, probably, embraced the vocation of single life, for the greater leisure and freedom it gave for religious service, and as an escape from the vacuity and vanity of fashionable folly. Such an enthusiasm was kindled by the exhortations of Jerome that many of the noble and wealthy women of Rome espoused a life of celibacy, and worldly-wise mothers felt constrained to seclude their daughters from the fascinations of his eloquence.

The monastic spirit only gradually pervaded Christendom. As the political aspect of the times became chaotic, and the great empire was breaking up under the weight of its own corruptions and the assaults of barbarians, hope grew dim in the hearts of patient watchers for the dawn. Despairing of the regeneration of society, they sought, in spiritual selfishness, to save their own souls alive by fleeing from a doomed world, and hiding in the clefts of the rock and caves of the earth till the indignation should be overpast.

The doubtful honor of originating monastic life is claimed for the rival saints, Anthony and Paul of Egypt. Of these, the former is the more celebrated through the account of his life written by Athanasius, the reading of which led to the conversion of St. Augustine, the Great Doctor of the West. Anthony, the youthful heir of great possessions, hearing the words read, "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell that thon hast, and give to the poor," they came like a voice from heaven to his soul. He immediately obeyed, withdrew to the desert, and underwent the most extreme austerities. He fasted for days, dwelt in caves or among the tombs, slept on the bare ground, and scourged his frame with frequent and unsparing flagellation. His morbid and melancholy imagination dwelt much on the terrors of the quenchless fire, on the torment of the undying worm. He fancied himself the object of demoniacal assault. Loathsome, bestial forms, doubtless the offspring of delirium, haunted his lonely cell; or, more terrible still, beings of unearthly beauty sought to allure him to perdition. But he fought valiantly against them, "chasing them with holy words as with whips." Multitudes of devout ascetics followed him to the wilderness, till, "lo!" writes his biographer, "the cells in the mountains were like tents filled with divine, choirs, sing

ing, discoursing, rejoicing; working that they might give alms. thereof, and having love and concord with each other, so that one seeing would have said, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!""

In recounting some of the alleged miracles wrought by the saint, Jerome naively remarks: "These things will appear incredible to those who do not believe, but to those who believe, all things are possible." He tells, for instance, how a she-wolf led the hermit to the cave of the blessed Paul, a fellow-ascetic. A raven, which for sixty years had brought half a loaf daily to the holy man, now brought a whole one; but neither of the saints would break it, Paul declining because he was the host, and Anthony because he was the younger man. After a day's dispute, they compromised the matter by each taking hold of the end of the loaf and pulling till it broke. With such puerilities is this "holy romance" disfigured, and even its historical elements invalidated.

The practice of monastic retirement spread like an epidemic throughout Christendom. Soon no lonely island, no desert shore, no gloomy vale, was without its laura or monastery. At the close of the fourth century Jerome declares there existed an innumerable company of monks,* and, bursting into poetical enthusiasm, exclaims, "O wilderness, blooming with the flowers of Christ! O desert, rejoicing in communion with the Deity!" The land swarmed with anchorets, who seemed spawned, as was contemptuously said, from the mud of the Nile. They became a mighty nation, soon rivaling in number the population of the cities. † All classes of society shared the contagion. Men, wearying of the ignoble life and petty ambitions of cities, left the palace and the forum for the solemn silence of the desert, and forsook the babbling strife of tongues for solitary communion with God. Women, sated and sickened with fashionable folly and tawdry vanity, with something of the old Roman spirit flashing in their eyes, turned from the frivolous enjoyments of the world to a life of stern asceticism. With hearts aching for a spiritual sympathy which they found.

*Monachorum innumerabilis multitudo.

Quanti populi habentur in urbibus, tantæ pæne habentur in desertis multitudinis monachorum.-Rufin. 7. Pachomius, the first disciple of St. Anthony, had seven thousand followers.

not in their often loveless homes, they yearned for the Divine perfection, and poured the precious ointment of their lives on the feet of the celestial Bridegroom. The once beautiful Mary of Egypt became sordid and emaciated. By constant genuflexion and prayer the knees of the Roman damsel, Asella, became hard as a camel's.* "For twenty years," said Macarius, "I have neither eaten, drunk, nor slept as nature craved. My bread has been weighed, my water measured, and my sleep has been stolen while reclining against a wall." The record of these ascetic austerities, as given by Theodoret, Evagrius, Socrates, Sozomen, and other contemporary writers, is a painful chapter in the history of superstition.

Pressensé devotes his last chapter to the Christianity of the Catacombs. "There is no historical monument," he says, "comparable to the Catacombs as a source of intimate knowledge of a religion through the feelings of its faithful adherents. We find in them the spontaneous utterances of the heart, never intended for the public eye, and which are, therefore, far more trustworthy than the studied and formal statements of religious thought and feeling, which we get in books."-Pp. 493, 494. Similar to this is the testimony of Dean Stanley. "He who is thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the Catacombs," he says, "will be nearer to the thought of the early Church than he who has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian or Origen." On this part of the subject we shall not dwell, as we have elsewhere given with much fullness of detail and copious pictorial illustration their important testimony as to the history, martyrology, art and symbolism, doctrinal teaching, ministry, rites and institutions of the primitive Church, and as to the life and character, and social and domestic relations, of the early Christians. §

*Hieron., Epis. xxi.

Socrat., iv, 23.

Eastern Churches.

§ Withrow's Catacombs of Rome, and their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity. New York: Nelson & Philips.. See passim, and especially pp. 203-543.

ART. III.-SCHLIEMANN'S DISCOVERIES AT MYCENÆ AND TIRYNS.

39 66

By

Mycence; A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycena and Tiryns. DR. HENRY SCHLIEMANN, Citizen of the United States of America; Author of "Troy and its Remains,' Ithaque, la Peloponnèse et Troie," and "La Chine et le Japon." The Preface by the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, M. P. Maps, Plans, and other Illustrations, representing more than 700 Types of the Objects found in the Royal Sepulchers of Mycena and Elsewhere in the Excavations. Imperial 8vo., pp. lxviii, and 384. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1878.

NOTHING could be more natural than for Dr. Schliemann, after his remarkable success in unearthing the remains of what may reasonably be believed to be the ancient city of Troy, to turn his eyes with covetous glance to the district known as the Argolis. There, if anywhere, he was likely to obtain confirmation of the accuracy of his theory of the historic reality of the expedition which has been in men's mouths for the past three thousand years-in fact, of that entire cycle of song, whose renown Homer makes, even in the time of his heroes, to have "reached broad heaven." (Odyssey, viii, 74.)

If not beyond dispute the part first settled, the north-eastern corner of Peloponnesus was certainly the part that attained at an early period a very distinct predominance in the politics of the peninsula. One of the Argolic cities was the reputed birthplace of Heracles, or Hercules, the typical Greek hero, and in the vicinity was laid the scene of several of his renowned "labors." Another city was the capital of one of the three kingdoms apportioned among themselves by the Heracleida. That it was by far the richest and most powerful, not only of these three kingdoms, but of all the kingdoms of Greece, seems conclusively established. Except on this supposition it is well-nigh impossible to account for the supreme rank conceded to Agamemnon, a prince personally by no means the bravest or most warlike of his age.

Mycenæ, then, the capital of Agamemnon's dominions, or as the poet is wont to say, "of central Argos and the islands," is the spot above all others in Greece where traces of that civilization which appears in the Iliad and to some extent in the Odyssey ought to be discovered.

The very fact of the early

destruction of Mycenæ, just at the beginning of the brilliant period of Athenian supremacy, might be expected to be a favorable element in the search. As the total overthrow of the city by the inhabitants of the neighboring and rival city of Argos occurred only eleven years subsequently to the battle of Platea, whatever remains might be discovered must necessarily belong to a period antedating the great development of Attic art. In fact, in a city which like Mycena steadily declined after the end of the heroic age, apparently because of its inability to adjust itself to the new order of things, those remains should exhibit a culture and the marks of a civil life not very dissimilar to those of the time of the rule of the son of Atreus.

So, at least, thought Dr. Schliemann, and scarcely had he completed his excavations at Hissarlik, when he began to make arrangements for exploring the site covered with Cyclopean ruins in the neighborhood of the village of Charvati, long, since identified, beyond any dispute, with Mycenæ.

Before speaking of the results of these explorations and discussing their significance, it may be well to recall the principal facts previously known respecting the city.

Mycenæ stood at the northern end of the plain of Argos, which, like all other level spaces in the mountainous country of Greece, is of very limited extent. From Mycena to the head of the Argolic Gulf, the length of the plain is barely ten miles, and the breadth, at its greatest, is only nine. North of Mycena the plain contracts into a narrow defile between hills of considerable height. Through this defile led in ancient times the road to Nemea and Phlius, as well as to Cleonæ, and thence to Corinth and northern Greece. If it be asked, What considerations led to the selection of a spot now altogether uninhabited for the chief city of early Greece, it may be answered that, apart from the strength of the situation itself, the command of the pass in question probably had considerable influence in the choice. Moreover, it must be remembered that, as Thucydides tells us, (i, 7,) the settlers of ancient times preferred to place their strongholds some distance back from the sea-shore, for greater security in view of the great prevalence of piracy. The plain itself, of which the Inachus was the chief stream, suffered in its upper portions rom the

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