ABSTRACT
A recently published book on ascetic behaviour in Greco-Roman antiquity, ‘the culmination of an eight-year-long conversation’ between the authors, evoked an observation from a reviewer regarding ‘the difficulty in defining asceticism that haunts the volume’.1 Anyone who writes on asceticism in late antiquity knows that definition is more difficult than one might at first suspect. In the case of Augustine, recent criticisms of his asceticism make this task as problematic as it is necessary. Yet paradoxically, these same criticisms, by touching on the points at which Augustine’s life and work seem most out of harmony with our modern sensibilities, offer a key with which a tentative description of asceticism in Augustinian terms can best be advanced.
