in
the year 305, by the establishment on Mount Cobyim, near the Red Sea, of
a colony of ascetics, who renounced all the business and pleasures in
life as the price of eternal happiness. A long series of hermits, monks,
and anachorets propagated the system and, patronised by Athanasius, it
spread to all parts of the world.

The monastic profession was an act of voluntary devotion, and the
inconstant fanatic was threatened with the eternal vengeance of the God
whom he deserted. The monks had to give a blind submission to the
commands of their abbot, however absurd, and the freedom of the mind,
the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed by
the habits of credulity and submission. In their dress and diet they
preserved the most rigorous simplicity, and they subsisted entirely by
their own manual exertions. But in the course of time this simplicity
vanished, and, enriched by the offerings of the faithful, they assumed
the pride of wealth, and at last indulged in the luxury of extravagance.

The conversion of the barbarians followed upon their invasion of the
Roman world; but they were involved in the Arian heresy, and from their
advocacy of that cause they were characterised by the name of heretics,
an epithet more odious than that of barbarian. The bitterness engendered
by this reproach confirmed them in their faith, and the Vandals in
Africa persecuted the orthodox Catholic with all the vigour and cruel
arts of religious tyranny.

* * * * *

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--IV

_I.--Theodoric the Ostrogoth_

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, an interval of fifty
years, until the memorable reign of Justinian, is faintly marked by the
obscure names and imperfect annals of Zeno, Anastasius, and Justin, who
successively ascended the throne of Constantinople. During the same
period Italy revived and nourished under the government of a Gothic
king, who might have deserved a statue among the best and bravest of the
ancient Romans.

Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of royal line
of the Amali, was born (455) in the neighbourhood of Vienna two years
after the death of Attila. The murmurs of the Goths, who complained that
they were exposed to intolerable hardships, determined Theodoric to
attempt an adventure worthy of his courage and ambition. He boldly
demanded the privilege of rescuing Italy and Rome from Odoacer, an