It may fairly be doubted whether the work does not really contain considerable that is not in strict accordance with the facts observed by the author, whether his account is not to an extent idealized, and whether, in his endeavor to emphasize the Jewish character of the Therapeutæ, with the design of establishing the antiquity of monasticism (compare the review of Schürer referred to above), he has not allowed himself to introduce some imaginative elements. The strong asseveration which he makes of the truthfulness of his account would rather increase than allay this suspicion, and the account itself at certain points seems to bear it out. On the whole, however, it may be regarded as a reasonably accurate sketch. Were it not such, Eusebius would not have accepted it, so unreservedly as he does, as an account of Christian monks. Lucius’ exhibition of the points of similarity between the practices of the Therapeutæ, as described here, and of early Christian monks, as known from other sources, is very interesting (see p. 158 sq.).