[24] “Agentes in rebus.” On the Emperor’s staff?
[27] St. Augustine says, that Potitianus’s adventure at Trêves happened “I know not when.” His own conversation with Potitianus must have happened about A.D. 385, for he was baptized April 25, A.D. 387. He does not mention the name of Potitianus’s emperor: but as Gratian was Augustus from A.D. 367 to A.D. 375, and actual Emperor of the West till A.D. 383, and as Trêves was his usual residence, he is most probably the person meant: but if not, then his father Valentinian.
[29] See the excellent article on Gratian in Smith’s Dictionary, by Mr. Means.
[30] I cannot explain this fact: but I have seen it with my own eyes.
[32] I use throughout the text published by Heschelius, in 1611.
[33] He is said to have been born at Coma, near Heracleia, in Middle Egypt, A.D. 251.
[34] Seemingly the Greek language and literature.
[35] I have thought it more honest to translate ασκήσις by “training,” which is now, as then, its true equivalent; being a metaphor drawn from the Greek games by St. Paul, 1 Tim. iv. 8.
[41] I give this passage as it stands in the Greek version. In the Latin, attributed to Evagrius, it is even more extravagant and rhetorical.
[42] Surely the imagery painted on the inner walls of Egyptian tombs, and probably believed by Antony and his compeers to be connected with devil-worship, explain these visions. In the “Words of the Elders” a monk complains of being troubled with “pictures, old and new.” Probably, again, the pain which Antony felt was the agony of a fever; and the visions which he saw, its delirium.