The monks borrowed many of their customs from the old Egyptian priests, such as shaving the head; and Athanasius in his charge to them orders them not to adopt the tonsure on the head, nor to shave the beard.  He forbids their employing magic or incantations to assist their prayers.  He endeavours to stop their emulation in fasting, and orders those whose strength of body enabled them to fast longest not to boast of it.  But he orders them not even to speak to a woman, and wishes them not to bathe, as being an immodest act.  The early Christians, as being a sect of Jews, had followed many Jewish customs, such as observing the Sabbath as well as the Lord’s day; but latterly the line between the two religions had been growing wider, and Athanasius orders the monks not to keep holy the Jewish Sabbath.  After a few years their religious duties were clearly laid down for them in several well-drawn codes.

One of the earliest of these ascetics was Amnion, who on the morning of his marriage is said to have persuaded his young wife of the superior holiness of a single life, and to have agreed with her that they should devote themselves apart to the honour of God in the desert.  But, in thus avoiding the pleasures, the duties, and the temptations of the world, Amnion lost many of the virtues and even the decencies of society; he never washed himself, or changed his garments, because he thought it wrong for a religious man even to see himself undressed; and when he had occasion to cross a canal, his biographer tells us that attendant angels carried him over the water in their arms, lest, while keeping his vows, he should be troubled by wet clothes.

In the religious controversies, whether pagan or Christian, Rome had often looked to Egypt for its opinions; Constans, when wanting copies of the Greek Scriptures for Rome, had lately sent to Alexandria, and had received the approved text from Athanasius.  The two countries held nearly the same opinions and had the same dislike of the Greeks; so when Jerome visited Egypt he found the Church holding, he said, the true Roman faith as taught by the apostles.  Under Didymus, who was then the head of the catechetical school, Jerome pursued his studies, having the same religious opinions with the Egyptian, and the same dislike to Arianism.  But no dread of heresy stopped Jerome in his search for knowledge and for books.  He obtained copies of the whole of Origen’s works, and read them with the greatest admiration.  It is true that he finds fault with many of his opinions; but no admirer of Origen could speak in higher terms of praise of his virtues and his learning, of the qualities of his head and of his heart, than Jerome uses while he timidly pretends to think that he has done wrong in reading his works.

At this time—­the end of the eleventh century after the building of the city—­the emperor himself did not refuse to mark on his Roman coins the happy renewal of the years by the old Egyptian astrological fable of the return of the phoenix.