quiet and peaceful haven of the life and labours of asceticism.
And she contended with all the women of senatorial rank and with the women of high degree, and strove with them as with savage wild beasts, for the men tried to restrain her from making the women do even as she had done, that is to say, to prevent her from converting them and making them to forsake their worldly rank and position. And she spake unto them thus, “My children, four hundred years ago it was written that that time was the last time (1 St. John 2:18). Why do ye hold fast thus strenuously to the vain love of the world? Take ye heed lest the day of Antichrist overtake you, and keep not fast hold upon your own riches and the possessions of your fathers”; and having set free all these she brought them to the life of the ascetic and recluse. As for her [grand] son Publicola, who was a child, she converted [him] and brought [him] to Sicily; and she sold the whole of the residue of her possessions and taking the price [thereof] came to Jerusalem, and, having distributed it in a wise fashion and arranged all her other affairs, after forty days she died at a good old age, being crowned with an abundance of gratification and happiness; and she left in Jerusalem a house for religious folk and money for the maintenance thereof.
Now therefore when all those who clave unto her had gone forth from Rome the great barbarian whirlwind, which had also been mentioned in ancient prophecies, came upon the city, and it did not leave behind it even the statues of brass which were in the market-places, for it destroyed by its barbaric insolence everything whatsoever; and it so thoroughly committed everything to destruction that the city of Rome, which had been crowned and adorned for twelve hundred years with edifices and buildings of beauty, became a waste place. Then those who without contention had been converted by means of her admonition, ascribed glory unto God Who, by means of a change in temporal affairs, had persuaded those who did not believe her; for whilst the houses of all the latter were plundered, the houses of those only who had been persuaded by her were delivered, and they became perfect burnt-offerings unto the Lord, through the care and solicitude of the blessed woman Melania. And it happened by chance that I and they once travelled together from Aelia to Egypt, and we were accompanying on our journey the gentle virgin Sylvania, the sister of Rufinus, a man of consular rank, and Jovinianus was also with us; now he was at that time a deacon, but subsequently he became bishop in the Church of God of the city of
