[65] The lonely alluvial flats at the mouths of the Nile. "Below the cliffs, beside the sea," as one describes them.
[66] Now the monastery of Deir Antonios, over the Wady el Arabah, between the Nile and the Red Sea, where Antony's monks endure to this day.
[67] Meletius, Bishop of Lycopolis, was the author of an obscure schism calling itself the "Church of the Martyrs," which refused to communicate with the rest of the Eastern Church.
[68] Arius (whose most famous and successful opponent was Athanasius, the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of God was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by Him out of nothing, and before the world. His opinions were condemned in the famous Council of Nicæa, a.d. 325.
[69] I.e. those were still heathens.
[70] Probably that of a.d. 341, when Gregory of Cappadocia, nominated by the Arian Bishops, who had assembled at the Council of Antioch, expelled Athanasius from the see of Alexandria, and great violence was committed by his followers and by Philagrius the Prefect. Athanasius meanwhile fled to Rome.
[71] I.e. celebrated there their own Communion.
[72] Evidently the primæval custom of embalming the dead, and keeping mummies in the house, still lingered among the Egyptians.