We saw another venerable old man called Elias in a remote part of the territory of Antinoe, a city of the Thebaid. He was said to be a hundred and ten years old, and the spirit of Elijah was said to rest upon him. Many marvellous things were told about him.
They said that he had spent seventy years in the depths of this vast wilderness, a desert so fearful and inhospitable that no word was adequate to describe it. This old man had lived there all that time having no contact with any place of human habitation. The trackway which led to him was narrow and stony and very difficult for visitors to find. The place where he actually lived was a horrible cave, striking terror into the hearts of those who found it. He himself had trembled and shaken in all his limbs for all his adult life. But every day he was doing signs, for he loosed the bonds of all who came to him, whatever troubles they might have been burdened with. All the fathers agreed that no one could remember when it was that he had come to this hermitage. For food he took a little bit of bread and a few olives, even in his extreme old age. In his youth, however, he had frequently fasted the whole week through.
