For it is perilous to
turn your eyes often to those things whereby you may some day be
made captive, or to attempt the possession of that which it would
go hard with you to do without. Thus the Pythagoreans shunned all
companionship of this kind, and were wont to dwell in solitary and
desert places. Nay, Plato himself, although he was a rich man, let
Diogenes trample on his couch with muddy feet, and in order that he
might devote himself to philosophy established his academy in a
place remote from the city, and not only uninhabited but unhealthy
as well. This he did in order that the onslaughts of lust might be
broken by the fear and constant presence of disease, and that his
followers might find no pleasure save in the things they learned."
Such a life, likewise, the sons of the prophets who were the
followers of Eliseus are reported to have led. Of these Jerome also
tells us, writing thus to the monk Rusticus as if describing the
monks of those ancient days: "The sons of the prophets, the monks
of whom we read in the Old Testament, built for themselves huts by
the waters of the Jordan, and forsaking the throngs and the cities,
lived on pottage and the herbs of the field" (Epist.
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