Lausiac History

Palladius, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1918

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 pots² 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. 2And 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 say⁴ 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

Notes

“The Ladder.”
κιλικίσια. See XVII. 11.
Cf. XVII. 9, where a five weeks’ absence is enough to call down punishment.
The translation is approximate only; the text is quite uncertain.
μηδενὶ μηδὲν ὁμιλοῦντα.
Prov. xi. 14 (LXX).