Chapter XXVII.—Ptolemy

AGAIN another monk, Ptolemy by name, lived a life difficult, even impossible, to describe. He dwelt beyond Scete in a place called Climax.[1] The place which bears this name is one in which no one can live because the well of the brethren is eighteen miles away. He then, carrying a number of pots [2] brought them there, and collecting the dew with a sponge from the rocks during the months of December and January----for there is a plentiful fall of dew then in those parts----he made this suffice during the fifteen years he lived there. And he became a stranger to the teaching of holy men and intercourse with them, and the benefit derived therefrom, and the constant communion of the mysteries,[3] and diverged so greatly from the straight way that he declared these things were nothing; but they say [4] he is wandering about in Egypt up to the present day all puffed up with pride, and has given himself over to gluttony and drunkenness, speaking no (edifying) word to anyone.[5]And this disaster fell on Ptolemy from his irrational conceit, as it is written: “They who have no directing influence fall like leaves.’’’ [6]