Jerome and his fellow pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, had visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the holy places of Galilee, and now go to Egypt, the home of the great heroes of the ascetic life.

At the Catechetical School of Alexandria, Jerome listens to the blind catechist Didymus the Blind expounding the prophet Hosea and telling his reminiscences of Anthony the Great, who had died thirty years before.

He also spends some time in Nitria, admiring the disciplined community life of the numerous inhabitants of that "city of the Lord," but detecting even there "concealed serpents," i.e., the influence of the theology of Origen.