The mid-fourth-century bishop Basil of Ancyra conceded in his treatise on virginity that goodness took many forms within the Church and that his readers could readily find works exalting different aspects of the good life. There were hymns on virginity, texts praising those who mortified the flesh by fasting and sleeping on the ground, and lengthy eulogies of those who sold their possessions for the sake of the Lord. The existence of this growing body of literature justified the bishop's decision to restrict his theme to consecrated virginity and the godlike freedom which it won from all that was corruptible. Basil offers us a glimpse into the sustained promotion of different practices we commonly term ‘ascetic’ and neatly raises numerous questions about those practices. While the bishop associated different practices with different lives, to what extent were these practices common elements to one and the same life of renunciation? What beliefs gave meaning to these practices? Did the beliefs and practices known to Basil in the fourth century differ from those familiar to Christians in earlier centuries and what was their relationship to the rise of monasticism? While the bishop wrote only of their value within the life of the Church, to what extent were these practices and beliefs common to Christians, pagans, and Jews? And what might be meant by terming them ‘ascetic’? These are the questions which this book aims to answer in its account of asceticism in the Graeco-Roman world.