Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/89

PACHOMIUS. the stipulation. Notium was given up to the party which had called in the aid of the Athenians. Paches now returned to Lesbos, and proceeded to reduce those parts of the island which still held out. He sent home most of his forces, and with them Salaethus and a large number of Myti- lenaeans who on the surrender of the city had taken refuge at the altars, and were removed thence by Paches to Tenedos. On the arrival of the first decree of the Athenians, ordering the execution of all the adult citizens of Mytilene, and the enslavement of the women and children, Paches was about to put it into execution, when the second decree arrived, sparing the lives of the inhabitants, but ordering the destruction of their walls and the surrender of the fleet. Paches, after complying with these instructions, returned to Athens. On his arrival there he was brought to trial on some charge, and, perceiving his con- demnation to be certain, drew his sword and stabbed himself to the heart in the presence of his judges. (Plut. Nicias^ c. 6, Arislid. c. 26.) On what grounds he was impeached it is very difficult to ascertain. There is a story preserved in an epigram of Agathias (Jacobs, Anal. vol. iv. p. 34), according to which Paches, after the sur- render of Mytilene, became enamoured of two women of the city, Hellanis and Lamaxis, and murdered their husbands that he might accomplish his designs. The victims of his cruelt}% however, escaped to Athens, and made known his criminal proceedings ; and their prosecution of him ended in his death. There seems no sufficient reason for rejecting this story. If the offence be thought hardly sufficient to have occasioned the condem- nation to death of a general who had just returned, after a most successful series of military operations, there are various suppositions which might remove the difficulty. It is possible that Cleon was incensed against him for not putting the first decree into execution more promptly, or there migiit have been some ground for exciting odium against him on account of his not having set out in chase of Alcidas sooner than he did ; for it appears that he did not act upon the first in- formation which he received. Or various other pretexts might be imagined, which would furnish a handle to the demagogues of the day. It seems likely that the singular death of Paches gave occasion for the introduction of that provision in the decree of Cannonus, according to which in certain cases the defendant was to plead his cause in fetters. (Thuc. iii. 18, 28, 33, 34—36, 49; Poppo, ad iii. 50 ; Diod. I. c. ; Strab. xiii. p. 600 ; Fhilological Museum, vol. ii. p. 236.) [C. P. M.] PACHO'MIUS (noxcJ^tos), as Socrates and Palladius write the name, or PACHU'MIUS (ITaxowM'os), according to the author of the Vita Fachumii^ an Egyptian ascetic of the fourth cen- tury, one of the founders, if not pre-eminently the founder of regular monastic communities. " The respect which the Church at present entertains," says Tillemont (Mem. vol. vii. p. 167), "for the name of St. Pachomius, is no new feeling, but a just recognition of the obligations which she is under to him, as the holy founder of a great number of monasteries ; or rather as the institutor, not only of certain convents, but of the conventual life itself, and of the holy communities of men devoted to a religious life." Of this eminent person there is a prolix life, Bios rov arylov Ha^^ovuiov, Viia S. Pa- PACHOMIUS. 77 cJiumii, in barbarous Greek, the translation perhaps of a Sahidic original, by a monk of the generation immediately succeeding Pachomius ; also there is a second memoir, or extracts of a memoir, either by the writer of the life, or by some other writer of the same period, supplementary to the first work, and to which the title Paralipomena de SS. Pachomio et Theodora has been prefixed ; and there is an account of Pachomius, in a letter from Ammon, an Egyptian bishop, to Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria : 'Y.TTKTTOX'fl 'AlX/J-WVOS fTTLffKOTVOV TTepi TTOAlTeiaS Koi fiiov fxepiKOV Haxovixiov koI ©coSwpou, Ephtola Ammonis Episcopi de Conversatione ac Vitae Parte Pachumii et Theodori. All these pieces are given by the BoUandists, both in a Latin version ( pp. 295 — 357), and in the original {Appendix, pp.25* — 71*) in the Acta Sanctorum, Mail, vol. iii. with the usual introduction by Papebroche. Pachomius was born in the Thebaid, of heathen parents, and was educated in heathenism ; and, while a lad, going with his parents to offer sacrifice in one of the temples of the gods, was hastily ex- pelled by the order of the priest as an enemy of the gods. The incident was afterwards recorded as a prognostic of his subsequent conversion and saintly eminence. At the age of twenty he was drawn for military service in one of the civil wars which followed the death of Constantins Chlorus, in a. d. 306. The author of the Vila Pachumii says that he was levied for the service of Constantine the Great, in one of his struggles for the empire. Tillemont thinks that the war referred to was Con- stan tine's war with Maxentius in A. D. 312, but supposes that Pachomius was drawn to serve in the army of Maximin IL, in his nearly contem- porary struggle against Licinius, as it is difficult to conceive that Constantine should be allowed to raise troops by conscription in Egypt, then governed by his jealous partner in the empire, Maximin. A similar difficulty applies to all Constantine's civil contests, until after the final overthrow of Licinius in A. D. 323, and the only civil war of Constantine after that was against Calocerus in Cyprus, in 335 ; the date of which is altogether too late, as Pa- chomius {Epistol. Ammon. c. 6) was converted in the time of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, who died A. D. 326. It is likely, therefore, that the mention of Constantine's name is an error of the biographer, and that Tillemont is right in thinking that the conscription in which Pachomius was drawn was ordered by Maximin II. We ma}', therefore, with Tillemont, fix the time of Pachomius' birth in a. d. 292. Papebroche makes the war to be that of Diocletian (under whom Constantine, then a youth, was serving) against the usurper Achilles, A. D. 296, but this supposition is inad- missible. The conscripts were embarked in a boat and conveyed down the Nile ; and being landed at Thebes, were placed in confinement, apparently to prevent desertion. Here they were visited and relieved by the Christians of the place, and a grateful curiosity led Pachomius to inquire into the character and opinions of the charitable strangers. Struck with what he heard of them, he seized the first opportunity of solitude to oflfer the simple and touching prayer, " God, the creator of heaven and earth, if thou wilt indeed look upon my low estate, notwithstanding my ignorance of thee, the only true God, and wilt deliver rae from this affliction, I will obey thy will all the days of my