The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: BOOK IV 239
things were in place, the labour produced violent, great and intolerable
pain, and brought the woman into extreme danger, but the birth in no
way advanced. So when they besought Symeon to pray ^ he had deliberately
come along ^ he said openly that the woman would not give
birth until she said who it was who had sired the pregnancy. When she
had done this and revealed the true father, immediately the infant
leapt forth, the truth acting as midwife. 108
This man was once seen to have gone into a certain prostitute’s room,
[184] and, after shutting the door, he spent a long time alone with her. So
when he opened the door, departed and left, looking everywhere lest
anyone should see, suspicion reached such a pitch that the onlookers
brought the woman, and enquired what was the reason for Symeon to
go in to her and why the great period of time. But she swore that this
was the third day since she had tasted anything but water for want of
necessities, and that he brought delicacies, bread and a jar of wine; after
closing the door he had brought up a table and dined her, bidding her
take her ¢ll of the meal until she was su⁄ciently fattened up after the
abstinence from food. 109 And she produced the remains of what had
been brought.
But, there is another story that when the tremor which £attened
Phoenicia Maritima was at hand, the one in which the cities of Beirut
and Byblus and Tripolis su¡ered particularly, he raised aloft a whip in
his hand and struck most of the columns in the forum, shouting:
‘Stand, you can dance.’ Accordingly, since nothing of that man was
without purpose, the bystanders made a mental note of which
columns he had passed by without striking. Not long after they did
indeed fall down, becoming the victim of the earthquakes. 110 There
108 Cf. Palladius, Lausiac History 70, for a similar story where a woman is in labour for
a week before admitting a false accusation of paternity against a Holy Man. Such an accusation
by a prostitute was used to remove Eustathius of Antioch from his see in 327 (Theodoret
EH i.21; cf. also ii.9), though Allen, ‘Use’ 274, rejects that story as a topos.
109 The verb in this clause may well be corrupt. Christophorson (cited in Bidez^
Parmentier’s apparatus) suggested piesyei“ san for pianyei“san, i.e. ‘because she had been
su⁄ciently a¥icted by’. Cf. Pratum Spirituale 136 for a similar story.
110 This refers to the great earthquake which devastated the Levant and terminated the
prosperity of Beirut in 551. Cf. the Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger chs. 104^5 for a
prediction of the devastation by this earthquake, and Evagrius iv.7 for Zosimas having miraculous
knowledge of the 527 quake that struck Antioch (and the need to make a mental
note). Cf. Pratum Spirituale 50 for a prediction by the recluse Gregory of an earthquake in
Palestine.