testimony,
as far as it goes. He addressed his _Oration for the Temples_ to a
Christian emperor, and would in consequence be guarded in his language;
however it runs in one direction. He speaks of "those black-habited
men," meaning the monks, "who eat more than elephants, and by the number
of their potations trouble those who send them drink in their chantings,
and conceal this by paleness artificially acquired." They "are in good
condition out of the misfortunes of others, while they pretend to serve
God by hunger." Those whom they attack "are like bees, they like
drones." I do not quote this passage to prove that there were monks in
Libanius' days, which no one doubts, but to show his impression of
Christianity, as far as his works betray it.

Numantian in the same century describes in verse his voyage from Rome to
Gaul: one book of the poem is extant; he falls in with Christianity on
two of the islands which lie in his course. He thus describes them as
found on one of these: "The island is in a squalid state, being full of
light-haters. They call themselves monks, because they wish to live
alone without witness. They dread the gifts, from fearing the reverses,
of fortune." He meets on the other island a Christian, whom he had
known, of good family and fortune, and happy in his marriage, who
"impelled by the Furies had left men and gods, and, credulous exile,
was living in base concealment. Is not this herd," he continues, "worse
than Circean poison? then bodies were changed, now minds."

In the _Philopatris_, which is the work of an author of the fourth
century, Critias is introduced pale and wild. His friend asks him if he
has seen Cerberus or Hecate; and he answers that he has heard a
rigmarole from certain "thrice-cursed sophists"; which he thinks would
drive him mad if he heard it again, and was nearly sending him headlong
over some cliff as it was. He retires for relief with his inquirer to a
pleasant place, shadowed by planes, where swallows and nightingales are
singing, and a quiet brook is purling. Triephon, his friend, expresses a
fear lest he has heard some incantation, and is led by the course of the
dialogue, before his friend tells his tale, to give some account of
Christianity, being himself a Christian. After speaking of the creation,
as described by Moses, he falls at once upon that doctrine of a
particular providence which is so distasteful to Plutarch, Velleius in
Cicero, and Caecilius, and genera