Periodical games were often closely connected with the religious rites. The great importance of public games in Imperial times is well known. Not a provincial town of any consequence was without them. This was especially the case with those in connection with the games in honour of the Emperor, which were everywhere in vogue, even in the time of Augustus. In Gaza a πανήγυρις Ἁδριανή (an assembly of a whole nation for a public festival) was celebrated from the time of Hadrian. A παγκράτιον (the joint contest which comprises both wrestling and boxing) is mentioned as held there in the inscription of Aphrodisias. These wrestlers and boxers of Gaza were, in the fourth century, the most famous in Syria. St. Jerome, in his _Life of St. Hilarion_, mentions the Circensian games there.[51] Pharisaic Judaism has always repudiated this heathen kind of games (1 Maccabees i. 14, 15; 2 Maccabees iv. 9-17). Judaism, however, was unable, in spite of this theoretic repudiation, to prevent the pageantry of heathen games from developing every fourth year, in the midst of the Holy Land, during and after the Herodian period.[52] THE CIRCUS OF GAZA[53] Moonrise on the desert. Above the dark ridges of rocks which rose from the tawny waste of sand, a pale faint light poured down on the wilderness of Gaza. An aged man, yet apparently more worn with labour than with years, was standing at the entrance of a cave, which, dark and silent, pierced one of the mountain ridges. The time of which I am speaking was about 350 years after the birth of our LORD; the place was one of the deserts which stretched themselves between the Nile and the Holy Land. Already innumerable hosts of monks occupied the wilderness of Egypt; and if St. Antony had attained the greatest reputation for the holiness of his life and the wonders of his miracles, St. Hilarion among the monks of the solitudes held the second place. Many times he had fled from the concourse of people that the fame of his powers of healing had drawn to him; and now, in one of the wildest and most unfrequented parts of the wilderness, he hoped to find a place where he might serve GOD without the interruption of men. The moonlight showed distinctly the furthest objects on the horizon; and as the hermit stood gazing around him, and thinking, perhaps, of that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, which shall be the abode of those who have been CHRIST'S faithful servants here, he noticed a dark spot in the far distance, which gradually drew nearer, and took form and shape.