Brewer's: Stylites

or Pillar Saints. By far the most celebrated are Simeon the Stylite of Syria, and Daniel the Stylite of Constantinople. Simeon spent thirty-seven years on different pillars, each loftier and narrower than the preceding. The last was sixty-six feet high. He died in 460, aged seventy-two. Daniel lived thirty-three years on a pillar, and was not unfrequently nearly blown from it by the storms from Thrace. He died in 494. Tennyson has a poem on Simeon Stylites.

I, Simeon of the Pillar by surname. Stylites among men- I, Simeon, The watcher on the column till the end.

Tennyson.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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