History of Palladius and St. Jerome’s biographies of the three solitaries, St. Paul, Malchus the Monk, and St. Hilarion. It was, moreover, the inspiration of the vast iconography in honor of St. Anthony,8 and the theme of the ‘temptation of St. Anthony’ has recurred frequently in literature and art. The most famous instance of the influence of the Life, however, is recorded in the Confessions of St. Augustine, where the saint relates how Ponticianus, a fellow countryman and an official at the imperial