at all during his journey with us. He travelled on foot, and he was repeating [passages] from the Scriptures by heart; during the time that he went with us, he repeated [passages] from the Scriptures and sang fifteen Psalms, and he repeated the Beatitudes and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and [the book of] Isaiah the Prophet, and a portion of Jeremiah, and after [that] the Gospel of [Saint] Luke, and after [that] the Proverbs; and in spite of all this we were unable to overtake him as he trudged along. Now therefore this man was at length persecuted by lust as by a fire, and he was never again able to dwell in his cell, but he went to Alexandria, and by reason of his pride it happened unto him, through Divine Providence, even as it is said, “One good is rooted up by another.” Nevertheless, having fallen willingly into a state of indifference, he finally found redemption. Now he was present continually at the shows of the theatres and circuses, and he was never absent from the public drinking rooms of the taverns; and thus whilst he was leading this life of prodigality and drunkenness he fell and was brought to a standstill in the miry ditch of the lust of women. At length he went to one of those women who are at the head of the grade of harlots, and because of his passion with all boldness he held converse with her, and these things having thus been done by him there broke out in the place of his nature a carbuncle which grew with great vigour, and his sickness waxed sore upon him for a space of six months, and his members rotted away and they had to be cut off. By these means he became finally cured, but he remained without members; and afterwards he went back again to the integrity of [his] nature, and to divine thoughts. [And he came to the desert] and confessed all these things to the fathers, and though he remained not a long time [there] he did not flee from leading the ascetic life, nor from weeping because of what had happened to him, nor from offering up the repentance which was meet. And after a few days he died and departed from this world.
Chapter xxiv: Of Ptolemy the Egyptian who was in Scete
AND there was also another man whose name was Ptolemy, and he was by race from Egypt, and he observed a rule of life which no man is able to describe, or rather it is very difficult to relate the story of his life. He dwelt away beyond Scete in that [district] which is called “Klimax.” Now the place which is thus called it is impossible for a man to dwell in by reason of its ruggedness, and it was distant from the stream of water wherefrom the brethren used
