The Desert of Chaeremon, Nesteros, and Joseph

So he took his staff and traveling bag, as is the custom there for all monks setting out on a journey, and himself led us as the guide of our road to his own city, that is, Panephysis. Its lands, and indeed most of the neighboring region, had once been extremely rich, since, as report says, everything for the royal table used to be supplied from it. But the sea, stirred up by a sudden earthquake, had overflowed its banks, and with almost all the villages in ruins, it had covered what were once rich lands with salt marshes. So you might think that what is sung in a spiritual sense in the psalm was a literal prophecy of that region: “He has turned rivers into a desert, and springs of water into a thirsty land; a fruitful land into a salt waste, for the wickedness of those who live in it.” In these districts, then, many towns perched in this way on the higher hills had been deserted by their inhabitants and turned into islands by the flood. These offered the solitude they longed for to the holy anchorites. Among them three old men, Chaeremon, Nesteros, and Joseph, stood out as the anchorites of longest standing. [a]