Near the end of the fourth century, Evagrius of Pontus, a widely respected monk and spiritual guide in Egypt, received a letter from the leader of a local monastic community, Loukios. The letter pleaded with Evagrius to compose a treatise that would train the monks to wrestle with demons tempting them with evil thoughts and leading them into vicious behavior that put at risk the vitality of the community. Evagrius accepted the assignment and prepared a handbook entitled ">Talking Back (Antirrhêtikos) in which he identifies the evil thoughts through which demons worked and develops a strategy for combating these demonic powers.