Battles with Demons on the Inner Mountain

So he was alone on the inner mountain, spending his time in prayer and discipline. The brothers who served him asked that they might come every month and bring him olives, beans, and oil, for by now he was an old man. There he lived his life, and he endured great wrestlings, “not against flesh and blood,” as it is written, but against opposing demons, as we learned from those who visited him. For there they heard uproar, many voices, and something like the clash of weapons. At night they saw the mountain become full of wild beasts, and saw him fighting as though against visible beings, and praying against them. Those who came to him he encouraged, while he himself contended on his knees and prayed to the Lord. It was truly a marvelous thing that a man alone in such a desert feared neither the demons that rose up against him nor the fierceness of the four-footed beasts and creeping things, many as they were. But in truth, as it is written, “he trusted in the Lord like Mount Zion,” with a mind unshaken and undisturbed, so that the demons fled from him instead, and the wild beasts, as it is written, “kept peace with him.” [a]

The devil, therefore, as David says in the Psalms, watched Antony and gnashed his teeth at him. But Antony was comforted by the Savior and remained unharmed by his tricks and his many schemes. While he was keeping watch at night, the devil sent wild beasts against him. Almost all the hyenas in that desert came out of their dens and surrounded him; he was in the middle, and each one threatened to bite. Seeing that it was a trick of the enemy, he said to them all, “If you have received power over me, I am ready to be devoured by you. But if you were sent against me by demons, do not stay, but go away, for I am a servant of Christ.” When Antony said this, they fled, driven off by that word as if by a whip. [d]

A few days later, while he was working (for he was careful to work hard), someone stood at the door and pulled at the braid he was plaiting, for he used to weave baskets, which he gave to those who came in return for what they brought him. He got up and saw a beast that was like a man down to the thighs, but had legs and feet like a donkey’s. Antony only made the sign of the cross and said, “I am a servant of Christ. If you have been sent against me, here I am.” But the beast fled together with its evil spirits, and it ran so fast that it fell and died. The death of the beast was the fall of the demons. For they tried in every way to drive Antony away from the desert, and they could not. [e]