Primary source · Koine Greek

The Lausiac History

Palladius of Galatia · c. AD 419–420 (of the 4th-century desert)

Patrologia Graeca, vol. 34 (Migne) — manuscript witness to The Lausiac History
Patrologia Graeca, vol. 34 (Migne) — 1860Eastern Orthodox St. Fathers · Public domain · Commons
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Patrologia Graeca, vol. 34 (Migne) — manuscript witness to The Lausiac History

Patrologia Graeca, vol. 34 (Migne) — 1860Eastern Orthodox St. Fathers · Public domain · Commons

What this text is

Palladius’ eyewitness memoir of the Egyptian desert — Nitria, Kellia, Scetis — written for the chamberlain Lausus: the primary source for Amun, the two Macarii, Evagrius, and Pachomius in this archive.

Interlinear passages

Word-for-word glosses of the original; the complete public-domain translation is linked below.

Chapter 17 — Macarius of Egypt
διὸwhereforeκαὶalsoπαιδαριογέρων‘child-old-man’ἐκλήθη·he was called;θᾶττονfasterγὰρforτῆςthan hisἡλικίαςageπροέκοψεν.he advanced

Public-domain translations

W. K. Lowther Clarke (1918)

Macarius the Egyptian… advanced faster than his age, and so was called ‘the child-old-man,’ for while yet young he had the wisdom of the aged.

Manuscript witnesses

Greek recensions B and G

10th c. onward

Butler untangled the authentic short recension from the expanded metaphrastic forms.

PRINCIPAL WITNESSES

Coptic, Syriac & Latin versions

5th–7th c. (translations)

The History translated across the monastic world within a century.

EARLY VERSIONS

Patrologia Graeca, vol. 34 (Migne)

1860

Standard pre-critical text of the corpus.

PRINTED PROXY

Provenance

Written c. AD 419–420 for Lausus, chamberlain of Theodosius II

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Figures named in this text (26)

Complete public-domain text ↗