This book introduces readers to John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent. Engagement with death provides the Ladder’s organizing principle, shaping the monk’s perception of his own life in context of divine judgment, and offering him a model of progress in imitation of Christ, which takes account of failures and repentance. This book sets Climacus’ presentation of death against the backdrop of a developing tradition within which he writes. It offers a sustained study of the vocabulary and practices of death that emerge from biblical literature and Greco-Roman philosophical practices, as these are elaborated in the Life of Antony, the Desert Fathers (including Evagrius), and the Gaza Fathers.