The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: BOOK I 51
winds, disregarding heat and cold equally. And they completely cast o¡
human sustenance and feed o¡ the earth ^ they call them ‘Grazers’ ^
furnishing from there only their subsistence, so that in time they also
come to resemble wild beasts, with their appearance distorted and their
mind thereafter incompatible with mankind; on seeing men they even
run, and on being pursued procure for themselves escape either through
swiftness of foot or through one of the impassible places on earth. 183
[31] And I will tell of another type also, which almost escaped me,
although it has highest honour in the eyes of all. They are very few, but
nevertheless there are those who, when through virtue they have
achieved absence of passion, return to the world in the midst of its
turmoils. 184 By proclaiming themselves mad, they thus trample down
vainglory, which, according to the wise Plato, is the last garment that
the soul naturally casts o¡; 185 so their practice is to eat without passion,
even if needs be among shopkeepers or traders, feeling shame before
neither place nor person nor anything at all. And they frequent the
public baths, generally mixing and washing with the women, being in
such control of the passions that they even play the tyrant over nature,
and neither by sight, nor by touch nor even indeed by actual embrace of
a female do they revert to their own nature; among men they are men,
among women in turn women, wishing to share in the nature of each
and not to be of one nature. So to speak brie£y, in this absolutely excellent
and inspired life virtue has ¢xed its own laws and legislates in opposition
to nature, so that they partake of none of the very necessities to the
point of satiety. And their own law imposes on them hunger and thirst,
183 Sozomen’s chapter on the monks of Syria includes a description of the Grazers
(vi.33.2); cf. also Theodoret, RH 1.2, Rufus, Plerophories 31, for speci¢c examples (Jacob
of Nisibis; Heliodorus of Cilicia), and other references in Allen, Evagrius 92 n. 82. It was
common for ascetics to try to shun the publicity which their holiness attracted, e.g. Theodoret,
RH 15.1^2, the case of Acepsimas whom no one saw or spoke to for 60 years (and
someone who eventually did see him mistook him for a wolf).
184 The last category of ascetic is the Holy Fool, or salos. The best-attested contemporary
example was Symeon of Emesa, some of whose actions Evagrius later described (iv.34),
and this passage is almost a synopsis of Symeon’s behaviour; early in his ascetic career
Symeon had been a Grazer (Life 133:2^11), and so his progression is re£ected in the order
of Evagrius’ treatment: Ryden, ‘Fool’ 108^9, in fact suggested that Symeon’s biographer,
Leontius, was in£uenced by the order of material in Evagrius. In general on saloi, see
Krueger, Symeon ch. 4.
185 A saying attributed to Plato in Athenaeus xi, 507D, and paraphrased in Evagrius’
description of Symeon the Fool (iv.34, p. 182:27).