Letters

[Letter 1. To Basil] I have broken my promise, I confess. While we were still at Athens I agreed to live with you and to pursue philosophy with you, as part of the friendship and close union we had there; for I have nothing more fitting to call it. But I broke it not willingly: one law defeated another, the law that bids us care for our parents defeated the law of companionship and intimacy. Yet I shall not break it altogether, if you yourself will accept this: for part of the time we shall be with you, and for part do you be willing to be with us, so that we may have everything in common and our friendship may be equal in honour. In this way it will come about both that they are not grieved and that I have you. [Letter 2. To Basil] …

[Letter 2, continued] … you, who walk on tiptoe and stamp on the paving stones, you winged one, you soaring one, carried along on the arrow of Abaris, so that, though a Cappadocian, you may escape Cappadocia. Or do we wrong you because you are pale and short of breath and have the sun measured out to you, while we are sleek and well fed and not hemmed in? Yet these things are yours. You live in luxury, and are rich, and haunt the market place: this I do not praise. So either stop reproaching us with the mud (for neither did you build the city, nor did we make the winter), or we in turn will bring against you, instead of mud, the hucksters, and all the base things that cities produce. [Letter 3. To Evagrius] I was glad to be praised. For the good repute of our son Evagrius is our good repute; the virtue of children is the glory of their fathers. As for literature, we are conscious of having helped your son little or nothing (for our attainment in letters is not great); but one thing, in place of all others and the greatest, we did contribute to him, I will not deny it: the fear of God, and persuading him to despise present things. For him, then, we have prayed and still pray for the best, that he may bring to full fruit the beginnings he took from us, and that we may reap some fruit of our zeal. To your Honour all thanks, that you think fit to remember us and to honour us with tokens of friendship; and these, though not small, we received as even greater. …

[Letter 4, continued] … only smile, and take your fill of learning, and enjoy our friendship. Everything that comes from you is good to us, whatever it is and however it stands. For indeed you seem to me to mock things here too, not in order to mock but to draw us to yourself (if I understand you at all), like those who dam streams to divert them elsewhere. Such are your ways with us always. But I will admire your Pontus and the Pontic gloom, and the dwelling worthy of flight; the crests over your head, and the wild beasts that test your faith; and the remote spot lying beneath, or rather the mousehole, with its grand names of “thinking-place”, “monastery”, and “school”; the thickets of wild plants and the crown of steep-cliffed mountains, by which you are not crowned but shut in; the air doled out by measure, and the longed-for sun, which you glimpse as through a chimney, O Pontic Cimmerians, condemned not only to a six-month night, as some are said to be, but having not even a part of life free from shadow: the whole of life one long night and truly a shadow of death, to use the words of Scripture. I praise also the narrow and hard-pressed road (I do not know whether it leads to the kingdom or to Hades; but for your sake let it lead to the kingdom), and the land in the middle: what would you have me call it? Shall I falsely name it Eden, and the spring divided into four heads from which the world is watered, or the dry and waterless desert which some Moses will tame, making water spring from the rock with his rod? For whatever has escaped the rocks is gullies; whatever has escaped the gullies is thorn-brakes; whatever is above the thorns is cliff; and the road above this is precipitous and sloping both ways, concentrating the travellers' minds and training them for safety. And below a river roars, this your Strymon of Amphipolis, so “quiet”, carrying stones rather than fish, not spreading into a lake but swept down into the depths, O you most grandiloquent coiner of new names! For it is great and fearsome, and drowns the psalmody of those above; the Cataracts and the Catadupa are nothing to it, so loudly does it

roars night and day. It is rough, and unfordable; muddy, and undrinkable; its one kindness is that it does not sweep away your dwelling when the torrents and storms drive it mad. These, then, are the things we know of these Islands of the Blessed, or rather of you blessed ones. Do not admire the crescent-shaped bends that strangle rather than wall off the accessible parts of your foothills, and the ridge rising above the summit that makes your life a life of Tantalus, and the breezes blowing through and the breathings of the earth that revive you when you faint, and the songbirds that sing, but of hunger, and fly about, but over a desert. No one visits, except for hunting, you say; add: and to visit you as dead men. This is perhaps longer than suits a letter, but shorter than a comedy. If you take the jest calmly, you will do well; if not, we will add still more. [Letter 5. To the same] Since you take the jest calmly, we will add what follows. The prelude is from Homer: “But come now, change your theme, and sing of the adornment within”: the roofless and doorless shelter, the hearth without fire or smoke, the walls dried by fire so that we should not be spattered by drops of mud, like some Tantaluses condemned to thirst in the midst of water; that pitiable banquet without food, to which we were summoned from Cappadocia, not as to the poverty of the Lotus-eaters but as to the table of Alcinous, we the

young, shipwrecked wretches. For I remember those loaves and those broths (so they were called), and I will go on remembering them, and our teeth slipping on the morsels, then getting a grip and being dragged out as from a bog. You yourself will declaim these things more tragically, since your own sufferings give you a lofty voice. And had not that great and truly poor-nourishing woman quickly rescued us from them, I mean your mother, appearing like a harbour in good time to the storm-tossed, we should long since have been dead, not praised for our Pontic faith so much as pitied. How shall I pass over those gardens that were no gardens and grew no vegetables, and the dung of Augeas cleared out of the house, with which we filled them, when we dragged the cart heaped high as a hill, I the vine-dresser and you the illustrious one, with these necks and these hands, which still bear the marks of the labours (O earth and sun, air and virtue! for I will be a little tragic), not to bridge the Hellespont but to level a cliff? If you are not at all vexed when these things are told, neither, of course, are we; but if you are vexed, how much more were we when they were done! And we will pass over most of it, out of respect for the other things, many of which we enjoyed. [Letter 6. To the same]

[Letter 6, continued] … the plane tree, under which sat no pampered king but a worn-out monk; which I planted, Apollos watered (that is, your Honour), but God gave the growth, to our honour, so that a memorial of our industry might be kept among you, as Aaron's rod that budded is said and believed to have been kept in the ark. To pray for these things is very easy, to obtain them not easy. But be with me, and breathe virtue with me, and work with me, and by your prayers keep safe the benefit we once gathered together, so that we may not little by little be dissolved like a shadow as the day declines. For I breathe you more than the air, and live only so far as I am with you, either … [Letter 7. To Caesarius] We have been sufficiently put to shame on your account; that we have also been grieved, what need is there to write, to you of all men the most persuaded of it? Not to speak of our own feelings, or of how much despondency the report about you filled us with (and, let me say it, fear), I wished, if it had somehow been possible, that you could be present at what others are saying, relatives and strangers alike, people known to us in any way, Christians at any rate, about you and about us; not some saying one thing and some another, but all alike, one after another, since people are more eager to philosophize on others' affairs than on their own. These words have become a kind of set exercise for them: that a bishop's son should now serve the state, now covet outside power and glory, now be mastered by money (when a common fire has been kindled and men are running the race for their souls), instead of considering that the one glory and safety and wealth is to stand nobly against the times and to put oneself as far as possible from every pollution and defilement. How could the bishop admonish another not to be swept away by the times,

nor to be defiled along with the idols? How could he rebuke others who do wrong, when he himself lacks freedom of speech at his own hearth? Hearing these things every day, and still more and harsher ones, some saying them perhaps out of friendship, others attacking us out of ill will, how do you think people feel, and what souls do you think they have, who have set themselves to serve God and judge the hopes to come the only good? Our lord father, who is deeply distressed by what he hears and even weary of life, I console and comfort as best I can, vouching for your intentions and persuading him that you will not bear to grieve us any longer. But our lady mother, if she learned anything of your affairs (until now we have hidden them by many devices), you may be sure would find her grief altogether inconsolable, being a woman of little courage and besides, through her great piety, unable to be moderate in such matters. If, then, you take any account of yourself and of us, take some better and safer counsel. For the means here are certainly enough for a free man's life, at least for one who is not too greedy or immoderate in his desire for more. Nor do I see what moment we shall wait for to see you settled, if we let the present one go. But if you hold to the same mind, and everything is small to you beside your own impulse, I wish to say nothing else unpleasant; only this I foretell and solemnly testify: one of two things must happen. Either you remain a genuine Christian and are ranked in the lowest place in your service, acting unworthily both of yourself and of your hopes; or you aim at its honours and are harmed in what matters most, having a share of the smoke at least, even if not of the fire.

… I wished every tongue, musical and harmonious, to be moved, and all rhetoric to ring out something lofty and piercing; not only because the most just of all debts is that a capable ruler be hymned in words, but because it is most fitting that one who excels in both should adorn both. And if I had not put my speaking to rest before its time (for now I perceive this), and resolved, as someone said, more hastily than wisely, not to frequent festivals nor go out into public after embracing philosophy, perhaps I would have outsounded even the Tyrrhenian trumpets (for I will say it, not fearing at all the rough stone of Momus, as Pindar says), had I not voted myself an untimely silence. As it is, what I feel about you, what my condition is, you might perhaps learn from an image. I paw the ground with my feet like the most spirited of horses, and champ the bit, and prick up my ears, and breathe passion from my nostrils, and look fiercely and am flecked with foam; yet I stay within the barrier, since the law does not let me run.

… I wished every tongue, musical and harmonious, to be moved, and all rhetoric to ring out something lofty and piercing; not only because the most just of all debts is that a capable ruler be hymned in words, but because it is most fitting that one who excels in both should adorn both. And if I had not put my speaking to rest before its time (for now I perceive this), and resolved, as someone said, more hastily than wisely, not to frequent festivals nor go out into public after embracing philosophy, perhaps I would have outsounded even the Tyrrhenian trumpets (for I will say it, not fearing at all the rough stone of Momus, as Pindar says), had I not voted myself an untimely silence. As it is, what I feel about you, what my condition is, you might perhaps learn from an image. I paw the ground with my feet like the most spirited of horses, and champ the bit, and prick up my ears, and breathe passion from my nostrils, and look fiercely and am flecked with foam; yet I stay within the barrier, since the law does not let me run.

speech, and more able to speak; so that his judgment is likened to the golden vote, or to that Homeric line by which the equal match of Eumelus's horses was judged, and his speaking surpasses the winter snowflakes; presiding over the contest now as fittingly as he contended in it before. Let others praise firmness blended with gentleness, and nothing slack in your mildness, like the bounds of lions. Let others praise the gold, “mighty and precious”, with its grand names, dishonoured and yielding headlong to your justice: a thing, alone of all, beyond both hearing and belief. And some man who is a poet by his art would say that the land flows with milk and springs gush with honey, and every plant, cultivated and wild alike, is laden with tame fruits, as the poets' fictions run when they make the earth bountiful. Let others say and fashion such things, as they may. For whatever is one's own does not only weigh on one, as the lyric poet thinks, but is by nature most delightful. But what I especially admire and welcome in you I will say: that you show yourself stronger than the difficulty of the times. Though a Hellene in religion, and serving the present power in the business of power, you serve not as the flatterers of the times do, but as the friends of the good and the magnanimous do: you discharge your service to the one, and keep your goodwill for your homeland, reaping immortal glory in a mortal business. This too is praiseworthy in you, that amid so great a weight of office you allot some time to friendship, and have leisure, amid all you do, to remember us.

In return for this I pray for you: for good repute, nothing greater (for office may receive increase, but virtue at least can receive none); but one thing in place of all others and the greatest: that you may one day be with us and with God, and be of the portion of the persecuted and not of the persecutors; since the one is swept away by the current of the times, while the other has immortal salvation. [Letter 11. To Gregory] I have one good point in my nature (for I too will boast of one thing among many): I am equally displeased with myself and with my friends when we take bad counsel. Since, then, all who live according to God and walk by the same Gospel are friends and kinsmen to one another, why should you not hear from us frankly what everyone is whispering? They do not praise your inglorious glory (to use your own manner of speech), and your gradual slide toward the worse, and ambition, “the worst of demons”, as Euripides says. For what has come over you, most wise one, and what fault did you find in yourself, that you have thrown away the holy and drinkable books which you once read to the people (do not be ashamed to hear it), or hung them up over the smoke, like rudders and mattocks in the winter season, and have taken up the salty and undrinkable ones, and would rather be called a rhetor than a Christian? We, for our part, would rather be called the latter than the former, and all thanks to God. Do not, best of men, do not suffer this for long; but sober up, late though it is, and come back to yourself, and make your defence to the faithful, make your defence to God, and to the altars and the mysteries, from which you have gone far away.

only, but also to one's neighbour; nor is it enough to persuade yourself, unless you persuade others too. If you were boxing in public, or striking and being struck on the jaw in the theatres, or twisting and bending yourself in shameful postures, would you say that you were chaste in soul? That is not the reasoning of one who is chaste; it is frivolous to accept such things. If then you change, even now I shall rejoice, as one of the Pythagorean philosophers said, lamenting a companion who had fallen away; but if not, he wrote, “You are dead to me.” I will not yet say this, for your sake. “For being a friend he became an enemy, yet a friend all the same,” says the tragedy. But I shall be grieved (for this is a moderate thing to say) if you neither see for yourself what is needful, which belongs to the first class of the praiseworthy, nor follow another who speaks well, which belongs to the second. So much for my admonition. Forgive me, grieving out of friendship, and burning alike for you and for the whole priestly order, and, I will add, for all Christians. And if I must pray with you, or pray for you, may God help your weakness, who also makes the dead alive. [Letter 12. To Nicobulus] You mock our Alypiana as small and unworthy of your greatness, O you tall one, you measureless and gigantic one, in form and in strength. For now I have learned that the soul is measured, and virtue weighed, and rocks are more precious than pearls, and ravens more to be revered than nightingales. Enjoy, then, your size and your cubits, and may you fall short in nothing of those Aloadae. For you ride horses and brandish a spear and wild beasts are your concern. But she has no work, nor much need of strength, to carry the shuttle, handle the distaff, and sit at the loom: for this is the prize of women. And if you add this, that she bows to the ground in prayer and is ever with God …

… in the movements of the mind, what is your height to you there, or the measurements of the body? Look at her timely silence; listen to her when she speaks; consider her lack of adornment, her manliness for a woman, her care for the household, her love for her husband. And then you will say the Laconian's saying: “Truly the soul is not measured, and one must look past the outer man to the inner.” If you consider these things in this way, you will stop joking and mocking her as small, and you will count yourself blessed in your marriage. [Letter 13] I praise the saying of Theognis, who does not praise the friendship that goes as far as drinking and pleasure, but praises friendship in deeds. What does he write? “Many are the friends who become companions at the mixing-bowl, but in a serious matter they are fewer.” Now we have not shared mixing-bowls with one another, nor have we spent much time together (though we ought to have, above all, both for our own sakes and because of the friendship inherited from our fathers); but we ask for the goodwill that is shown in deeds. A contest is near, and the greatest of contests. For our son Nicobulus is in unexpected troubles, at the hands of those from whom one would least have expected to have trouble. Therefore we ask you to be present and help us as quickly as possible, judging the case with us and pleading for us, if you find us wronged. If not, at least do not be won over beforehand by the opposing side, selling for a small gain the freedom of mind that we know has always been attested of you by everyone. [Letter 14. To Caesarius]

… bought, they have fallen into greater difficulties, on the one side meeting with the unfairness of those who sold, on the other being hemmed in and plundered by their neighbours, so that it would be a gain for them to recover the price they paid, together with what they have spent besides (and it is not a little), and to be rid of the property. If then you are willing to take the business upon yourself, considering how the transaction may stand best and most securely for you, that would be most pleasing both to them and to us. If not, then at least the second course: set yourself against the meddling and unfairness of the man, so that he may not in any case gain an advantage through their peaceableness, either by wronging them while they hold the property or by causing them loss as they give it up. I for my part even blushed to write about these things. But since we are equally bound to them both by kinship and by their chosen way of life (for whom would one care for more than such people? And at what would one be more ashamed than at not being eager to do good to such?), do you, either for your own sake, or for ours, or for the men themselves, or for all these together, by all means do them good. [Letter 15. To Lollianus] Well done that you have come back to us, after a long time, but still (and, what is better than this) that you have fared as you wished, and have freed us from our anxieties about you. For we share everything with you, griefs and joys alike; such is friendship. Since you have come back, “give your friends a share in your good fortune,” as the one who said it says; and you will give it if you are willing to look after my lords the cousins Helladius and Eulalius and my other relatives (I say relatives, unless you think us other than yourself; for I do not know what greater thing I could say), and do not let them need other patrons. Offer yourself to them entirely, a good friend, a kindly neighbour, a noble supporter, not to list it item by item, the well-born Lollianus, known for nobility of character. And I promise that if you associate with them more and see the height of their philosophy, you will even plead for them to others. So much do I trust your character,

and so I have every hope of not failing to obtain from you what I myself have asked on their behalf. [Letter 16. To Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea] Since I am addressing a man who does not love falsehood and is the sharpest of all at detecting it in another, however cleverly it is woven with intricate labyrinths, and since besides artfulness is not dear to me either (it shall be said, even if rather vulgarly), being so by nature and shaped so by the Word, I am therefore writing what is on my mind. Accept my frankness, or you will wrong the truth by robbing it of its freedom, and by forcing me to keep the pang of my grief shut up within myself, like some festering and malignant disease. I am glad to be honoured by you (if indeed I am a man, as the one who said it before puts it), and to be invited to synods and spiritual gatherings. But I cannot bear the insult that has been done, and is still being done by your Reverence, to my most honoured brother Basil, whom I chose from the beginning as partner of life and of letters and of the highest philosophy, and whom I still have; and I find no fault with myself for my judgment of him. For so it is more modest to put it, so that I may not seem to praise myself while admiring his qualities. But you seem to me to be doing something like this, dishonouring him while honouring us, as if someone with one hand were to stroke a man's head and with the other strike his cheek; or were to dig out the foundations of a house while painting the walls and adorning the outside. If then you will listen to me at all, you will do this; and I ask you to listen, for it is just: if you pay him due regard, you will be paid regard by him in return. Our part will follow, as shadows follow bodies, since we are small and readier for peace. For we are not so wretchedly placed as to wish to be philosophers in other things and belong to the better part, but to overlook a matter

… especially in relation to a man who is a priest, and so great a one, whom we know to be the best in life, in word, and in conduct of all whom we know. For grief will not darken the truth. [Letter 17. To the same] I did not write insultingly, as you blamed my letter for doing, but rather spiritually and as a philosopher, and as was fitting, unless this too grieves the most learned Gregory. For even if you prevail in rank, you will still allow us some freedom and just frankness; and for this reason be kinder to us. Unless you judge my letter as that of a slave, who ought not even to look you in the face; in that case we will take blows too and not even weep. Or shall we be accused even of this? That is something which anyone deserves to suffer rather than your Reverence. For it belongs to a magnanimous man to accept the frankness of friends rather than the flattery of enemies. [Letter 18. To the same] … pettily, do not condemn me of that; but after using a little freedom and boldness (enough to cool and heal what grieved me), I was at once overcome and gave way, and placed myself under the rule. How could I not, knowing you and the laws of the Spirit? And now, even if I were very petty and mean-spirited, the time does not allow me to be so, nor do the wild beasts that have overrun the Church, nor your nobility and courage, which fights for the Church so purely and genuinely. We will come, then, if it seems good, helping you with our prayers, contending at your side, serving you, and, like boys training a fine athlete, anointing you with our shouts of encouragement.

[Letter 19. To Basil] It is a time for good counsel and endurance, for none to show himself more manly than we, and for our many sweats and labours not to be undone in a short time. Why do I write this, and on what grounds? Our most God-beloved bishop Eusebius (for so we must henceforth both think and write of him) is very conciliatory and friendly toward us, and, like iron in fire, is being softened by time; and I think a letter of encouragement and invitation will come to you, as he indicated to me and as many who clearly know his mind assure us. Let us anticipate it, either by coming or by …, or rather by writing first and then coming, so that we may not be ashamed afterwards at being defeated, when it is possible to win by being defeated honourably and as philosophers, which is what most people demand of us. Come, then, persuaded by me, both for this reason and because of the times; for a league of heretics is overrunning the Church, some already present and causing trouble, others, so the report goes, about to come; and there is fear that the word of truth will be swept away unless the spirit of …, the wise architect of such words and doctrines, is stirred up very quickly. If you think that I myself should be there to stay with you and travel with you, I will not refuse even this. [Letter 20. To Caesarius]

… ; but let us give thanks that we have escaped. And let us not appear one kind of men to God in the time of dangers and another after the dangers; but let us resolve, whether at home or abroad, whether in private life or engaged in public affairs (for I must put it so and leave nothing out), to follow the One who saved us and to become of his portion, caring little for the little things that creep along the ground. And let us give those who come after us a story, great for our glory and great for the benefit of the soul; and the same will be a most useful lesson for the many, that danger is better than safety, and misfortune more to be chosen than prosperity, if before our terrors we belonged to the world, but after them have become God's. Perhaps you think my words burdensome, and not exhortation but display. So enough of this; but know that we are eager and pray above all to come to you, to share your joy in your safety and to talk of these things more fully; or if not, to welcome you here as quickly as possible to keep the thanksgiving feast together.

[Letter 22. To the same] We ought to be able, just as we recognize gold and precious stones by sight, to discern good and honourable men at once, without needing longer testing. Then we would not have needed many words pleading with your magnanimity for our most honoured son Amphilochius. I would sooner have expected one of the incredible and impossible things to happen than that he should do or even think anything ignoble for money; so fully has everyone granted him his nobility of character, and a prudence older than his years. But what is one to do? Nothing escapes envy, since some fault-finding has touched even this man, who fell into accusations through simplicity rather than wickedness of character. But do not think it tolerable to look on while he is swept away by slanders. No, I beg your holy and great soul; but honour your homeland too, come to the help of virtue, respect us who have been glorified by you and through you, and be everything to the man, adding the will to the power, since I know that everything yields to your virtue. [Letter 23. To Caesarius] If what we ask is great, do not be surprised, since we ask it of a great man, and the request must be measured to the one asked. For it is equally absurd to ask great things of a small man and small things of a great one: the one is untimely, the other petty. I myself bring to you with my own hand our most honoured son Amphilochius, a man so well known for nobility of character, beyond what is usual at his age, that I myself, an old man, a priest, and your friend, would be glad to be so regarded. And if, overcome by friendship for a man, he did not suspect the slander, what is surprising in that? Because he was not wicked, he did not suspect wickedness either, thinking it his business to correct the man's speech rather than his character; and so he agreed to share his work. What is so terrible in this to fair-minded people? Do not

then allow vice to get the better of virtue, nor dishonour our grey hair; but respect our testimony too, and add kindness to the blessings we give, of which perhaps some account is kept before God, before whom we stand. [Letter 24. To Themistius] It is eloquence that is at stake, and the moment is yours, if indeed you are the king of eloquence. And besides, my Amphilochius is a friend of yours from his father's time. I will add that he is such a man as to disgrace neither his father's family nor our friendship, unless I am a poor judge of such things. And, what weighs most with a man as much a philosopher as you, he is in trouble though he has done no wrong. This is the lightest thing for him, but again the heaviest for us, if we should be seen to overlook it. I, then, do the one thing I can: I can intercede with those who are able to do good. For nothing else is possible for me in my present condition. But do you now confirm the saying of your Plato, who said that cities would not be rid of evils until power was joined to philosophy; for you are capable of both. Give a hand to him who asks, advising what is fitting and …; for there is no way you could play the philosopher better than by now contending on the side of justice; and besides, you will do good to us, your admirers, and, if you allow me to say it, your friends. [Letter 25. To Amphilochius] Bread we did not ask of you, since we would not ask

water of those who live at Ostracine. But if we were to ask vegetables of a man of Ozizala, which you have in abundance while we have a great shortage, that is nothing surprising, nor out of the ordinary. Be so good, then, as to send us vegetables, very many and very fine, or as many as you can (since even small things are great to the poor), since we are about to entertain the great Basil; and you would not wish, having experienced him philosophizing on a full stomach, to experience him hungry and cross. [Letter 26. To the same] How stingily the vegetables have come to us from you! What else are they but golden vegetables? And yet your whole wealth is gardens and rivers and groves and parks, and your land bears vegetables as others' lands bear gold, and you graze on meadow leaves. But grain is for you the blessedness of myth, and bread, as the saying goes, the bread of angels, as welcome as it is unbelievable. Either, then, share these with us more generously, or we will threaten nothing else, but we will hold back our grain, and we will find out whether cicadas really live on dew alone.

… honour him with the hospitality approved in the Scriptures, with vegetables. [Letter 29. To Sophronius] You see what our affairs are like, and how there is a cycle of things flourishing and fading; neither good fortune nor, as they say, ill fortune stays fixed for us, but it shifts and changes very quickly, so that one may trust the breezes, or letters written on water, rather than human prosperity. Why is this? It seems to me, so that, seeing the instability and unevenness in these things, we may run rather to God and to the future, and take some care of ourselves, caring little for shadows and dreams. But what prompts my words? For I am not philosophizing at random, nor decking myself out with rhetorical display. Your Caesarius too was once among the men of note, and, unless as a brother I am deceived, among the very distinguished: known for his learning, above most for nobility of character, brilliant in his wealth of friends, among whom he himself thought, and persuaded us, that you and your nobility held first place among the first. These things are of the past, and you will add more from your own knowledge, honouring him with funeral praises and, what all of us humans have by nature, granting something more to the departed. But now (and see that you do not run past this account without tears, or rather, may you weep to good and useful purpose): he lies dead, friendless, deserted, pitied, granted a little myrrh (if even that) and a few last garments; it is much that he is pitied even for these. And his enemies have fallen upon his estate, as I learn, …

… O the insensibility, O the cruelty! And there is no one to stop it; but even the most humane of them grants only this: he invokes the laws. In short, we have become a stage play, we who were once thought fortunate. Do not think this tolerable, but share our pain and our indignation, and grant a favour to the dead Caesarius. Yes, by friendship itself; yes, by those dearest to you and by your hopes, which you will make favourable for yourself by showing yourself faithful and true to the departed, so that you may grant this favour to the living too and make them hopeful. Do you think we are grieving over money? The shame is more unbearable to us, if Caesarius alone of all should seem to have gained nothing from such an intercession, and from such men; since perhaps our affairs are no side-issue for you either. How you will help, and through whom, and in what way, the facts will suggest and your understanding will consider.

[Letter 30. To Philagrius] What grieves you surely grieves us too. For we hold all the affairs of friends in common, whether they go well or otherwise, as is indeed the very definition of friendship. And yet, if I must philosophize somewhat on these things and say to you what is fitting (as the law of friendship also suggests), I do not wish you, nor do I think it right, being Philagrius and exceptionally educated in divine things, to suffer the same as the many, or to collapse along with the body, or to lament your affliction as incurable; but rather to philosophize in your suffering, and now above all to cleanse your mind, to show yourself stronger than your bonds, and to consider your illness a schooling toward what is profitable, that is, despising the body and bodily things and all that flows and is turbulent and perishing, to belong wholly to the portion above, to live for the future instead of the present, making the life here a practice of death, as Plato says, and freeing the soul from the body (or the tomb, to speak as he does) as far as possible. If you philosophize in this way, my excellent friend, and are so disposed, you will yourself profit greatly, you will make us easier on your account, and you will teach many to philosophize in their sufferings. And besides, you will gain no small thing (if you care at all for this),

… you asked for: the one I found and sent you gladly, I mean the Demosthenes; the other I have lost, and I do not have the one you want, the Iliad. Do not distrust me; for I think I enjoy only those things, and possess well only those, in which you share and which you use as your own. [Letter 32. To the same] Well done that you are a philosopher in your sufferings, and that … ; and that, just as you used the body for every best thing when you were in health, so now too you use it well, since you are weak, and are idle not idly, if I may put it so. For you are a philosopher, and what they say Diogenes once said when he was in a fever and holding out against it, you too let us see: a wrestling of soul and body. This befitted my Philagrius: not to grow soft or bend before sufferings, but to despise the clay, and to let the body suffer what belongs to it, since it will certainly be dissolved by the law of nature now or later (for it will go, worn out either by disease or by time); but to keep the soul itself on high, ranked with God in its thoughts, and to know this too, that it is absurd for us to be found unphilosophical outside and to belie our profession.

… low-born or an exile, his happiness being hindered on that account. But I praise the youthful spirit and greatness of mind of the men of the Stoa, who say that external things are no hindrance to happiness, but that the good man is blessed even if the bull of Phalaris holds him burning. And for this reason I admire those of our own who have run risks for what is good, or have borne misfortune nobly; and I admire too those outside who are like them, such as the famous Anaxarchus, Epictetus, and Socrates, not to name many. The first, while his hands were being pounded in a mortar at the tyrant's command, urged the torturers on: “Pound the bag of Anaxarchus.” Meaning what? Our wretched bit of flesh; as though Anaxarchus himself, the philosophic soul, were not being pounded, which is what we call the inner man, while the other is named the outer. The second, while his leg was being stretched and twisted, philosophized as though in someone else's body, and seemed to have his leg broken sooner than to feel the violence. And Socrates, condemned to death by the Athenians and dwelling, as you know, in the prison, for a while discussed with his disciples as though about another prison, the body, and though he could have escaped he would not; and when the hemlock was brought, he took it very gladly, as though he received it not for death but as a toast drunk in friendship. I would have added to these our own Job too, if I did not know that you are far from his sufferings, and are, and will be, with God. Sing these things as a charm over yourself, divine and holy head, and so, healing yourself, you would both be easier yourself and gladden us, your admirers and lovers, being in no way bent by the illness, and in no way, as the divine David says, cut short by the peace of sinners and their prosperity in this life; but rather being purified, if it is right to say this of you, and making your weakness material for virtue.

[A further letter to Philagrius; its opening is lost] … taking good care of your only possession, and working hard in such a condition of body. And this is no wonder, since it is easier to be a philosopher in other people's affairs than in one's own. If I saw you doing this beyond measure, or devoting yourself to your labours greedily or violently, I would even have blamed you (the truth shall be told), without respect for our friendship or your learning. But if you love work, yet not beyond measure, and use what you work for as you should, and there is also your illness, which occupies you with cares and persuades you that what concerns the body is for the body's sake, I do not see how I can avoid blaming those who blame you, and acquitting you of the charge. And besides, I persuade myself of this: that no one could reason better about practical affairs than you, whom everyone uses as teacher and adviser in their own affairs alike, in private and in public, nor take care of the soul more like a philosopher. And if keeping health in the body, or restoring it, belongs to medicine alone, who is so bold and uneducated as to lay down laws for you about these things? So let the many go their way, jackdaws passing judgment on the flight of eagles; but take yourself as your counsellor, and God, about your illness and all that concerns it, and you will not miss what is needful.

[A further letter to Philagrius; heading lost] I remember your company, when we were together lately at my Mataza (for I regard what is yours as mine too), and the philosophy you then practised, at which I still shudder … still moved. I was expounding to you the psalm (for you asked me, and there was no refusing) in which David grows dizzy and frets at the wicked who prosper. Then, sending his thoughts to the courts of judgment there and the recompense laid up for each life, he is stayed from his trouble in this way, and … what grieves him is healed. And as far as I could I drew the exposition toward your suffering, philosophizing on these things from our own writers and from those outside, as one speaking with an educated man and so great a one, while the Spirit at the same time led me so, and the pain sharpened me; for suffering makes one more inventive. And my words were running on somehow; but you rose up in the middle of them, as if from the starting line, and stretching out your hands to heaven and turning as if to look toward the east (for you did not have the power of sight …), said: “I thank you, Father, … maker and educator of your human beings, that you do us good even against our will, and through the outer man you purify the inner, and lead us through contraries to the blessed end, by reasons you yourself know.” And what should I say of all the words in which you philosophized before us and with us, as though rejoicing in the illness, so that the disciple became the teacher? But to what end have I recalled these things? To cry and proclaim this to all through you: that the wicked are more to be lamented by us for their inner disease than we by them for our outer one, if we are so disposed; that a philosophic illness is better than unbridled prosperity.

[A further letter to Philagrius] Before, I myself used to write you words of encouragement in your suffering, for you had fallen ill first …; but now you seem to me to be the one who should encourage us, who suffer almost the same evils. For we, being …, ought not to be separated even in this. … rather you have already encouraged us by your endurance. I am pained by the illness, and I rejoice; not because I am pained, but … because I am a teacher of endurance to others. For since I cannot avoid suffering, this at least I gain from suffering: to bear it and to give thanks, in painful things just as in cheerful ones, since I am convinced that nothing of ours is without reason before the Word, even if it seems so to us. [Letter 37] To honour a mother is a religious duty. One's own mother is … ; but the common mother of all is the fatherland. This you honour … in all the splendour of your life; honour it now too, out of respect for us, in the matter for which we intercede. And what is the intercession? The most learned of those in it, Eudoxius the rhetor, you surely know. His son, to speak briefly, another … in life and in eloquence … now comes to you through us. So that you may make yourself more renowned …, be favourable to the man in whatever he needs of your patronage. For it is shameful, when you are the patron of the fatherland and have made many … (I will add, and will make), not above all to honour the best in eloquence … eloquence, which, if for nothing else, it is just to respect for this: that they are the praisers of your fine deeds. …

[Letter 38. To Themistius] Spartans are known by the spear, the Pelopids by the shoulder, the great Themistius by eloquence. For though you surpass everyone in everything, I know this to be the most distinguished of your qualities. This it was that joined us to one another from the beginning (if indeed we count for anything in eloquence), and that has now persuaded us to be bold. And if you come to know the man for whom we intercede, perhaps you will even approve of our boldness. I present to you this son of the excellent Eudoxius, our most worthy son …, in life and in eloquence such as you will find for yourself (“the stone to the line,” as … ; but your rule is more just), and most dear to us, no less for his virtue than for his father's friendship. As one, then, who will do us good in whatever good you do the man, and will honour your own eloquence, … be willing to … what lies before him. For he needs to be made known by eloquence, and to provide himself a living from eloquence. Who he is and how, he will show you himself; your learning and understanding will judge.

… we looked up to the height of … . As for us, whether we have shown ourselves to him to have anything by way of virtue, he himself would know; but at any rate we show him in return the finest of what we have, giving our friend friends, of whom we count you the first and most genuine; and we wish you to appear to him such as both our common fatherland demands and our longing and our word would have it, for I promised him your care in return for everything. [Letter 40. To Basil the Great]

… insult; second, that you do not think that the same things befit you and us, who share life and studies and everything, having been joined together by God in this way from the first; third (for let this too be said), whether you considered that such appointments belong to the more devout rather than to the more powerful and those more popular with the crowds. For these reasons I have backed water and am drawing back. And if it seems good to you too, let this be resolved: to flee the turmoil in the midst of things and evil suspicions. I shall see your Reverence when affairs are settled and the time is right, and I shall reproach you with more and heavier things. [Letter 41. To the people of Caesarea] I am a little shepherd, set over a small flock, and the least among the servants of the Spirit. But grace is not narrow, nor bounded by places. Therefore let freedom of speech be granted to the small too, especially since the matter concerns things common and so great, and since you are deliberating with such grey hairs, which perhaps have something wiser than the many. You are deliberating about nothing small or ordinary, but about a matter on whose being well or ill the common good too must stand well or ill. For our discussion concerns the Church, for which Christ died, and the one who is to present and bring her to God. “The lamp of the body is the eye,” as we have heard, not only this eye that sees and is seen bodily, but the one that contemplates and is contemplated spiritually. And the lamp of the Church is the bishop, as is clear to you even if we do not write it. Necessarily, then, just as when that eye is clear the body too is guided rightly, and when it is not clear, not rightly; so too with the head of the Church: however he is, the Church must either share his danger or share his safety. Care must be taken of every Church, as

the body of Christ, but most of all of yours, which from the beginning was, and now is, and is considered, the mother of almost all the Churches, and to which the whole looks, as a circle drawn about its centre, not only because of its orthodoxy, proclaimed to all from of old, but also because of the grace of concord plainly given to it by God. Since, then, you have invited us too to the deliberation on this matter, acting rightly and according to the canons, but we are held back by old age and sickness: if we could be present ourselves, the Spirit giving us strength (for nothing is incredible to the faithful), that would be best of all and most pleasing to us, so that we might contribute something to you and ourselves share in the blessing; but if I am left behind, my weakness prevailing, we contribute what the absent can. I am persuaded that there are others among you worthy of the presidency, as is natural in so great a city, so governed, and by such men from of old; but I cannot prefer anyone of those honoured among you to one man, our most God-beloved son Basil the presbyter (I say it as before God as witness), a man purified in life and word, and alone of all, or more than any, able on both counts to stand against the present times and the prevailing loquacity of the heretics. I write this to the priestly order and the monastic, and to those of the dignified and the council order, and to the whole people. If, then, this is agreed, and our vote prevails, being so sound and right, since it is cast with God, I am present in spirit and shall be present; or rather, I have already laid my hand on him, and I take courage in the Spirit. But if something else is decided and not this, and such things are judged by factions and kinships, and the hand of the mob again sweeps away exactness, do what pleases you among yourselves; we shall keep to ourselves.

[Letter 42. To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata] Who will give me wings like a dove? Or how might my old age be renewed, so that I could cross over to your love, and satisfy the longing I have for you, and tell the griefs of my soul, and through you find some consolation for my afflictions? For at the falling asleep of the blessed bishop Eusebius no small fear seized us, lest those who once lay in wait for the Church of our metropolis, wishing to fill it with heretical tares, should now seize their opportunity and uproot by their own wicked teachings the piety sown with much labour in the souls of men, and cut its unity in pieces, as they have done in many Churches. And since a letter from the clergy also reached us, urging us not to overlook them at such a time, looking round about me I remembered your love, your right faith, and the zeal you always have for the Churches of God; and for this reason I have sent our beloved fellow minister Eustathius to beseech your Dignity and to entreat you to add the present labour to all your labours for the Churches, to refresh my old age by meeting me, and to set right for the orthodox Church its renowned piety, giving it with us (if indeed we are counted worthy to share with you in the good work) a shepherd according to the will of the Lord, able to guide his people. For we have before our eyes a man whom you yourselves also know; if we are counted worthy to obtain him, I know that we shall gain great boldness with God,

… we shall lay up … . But I beg you again and many times to lay aside all hesitation and come, and to forestall the difficulties of winter. [Letter 43. To the bishops] How pleasant and kind you are, and how overflowing in love! You have summoned us to the metropolis, I suppose to deliberate about a bishop. For that is what I gather from you, who, without announcing beforehand that we must be present, or for what, or when, have suddenly made it known that you have set out, as men who have decided not to honour us, nor are eager to have us as partners, but are eager that we should not be present, so that you may not run into us even against your will. Your part, then, is such, and we will bear the insult; but ours, how it stands, we will set out. Others, no doubt, will put forward others, each according to his own character or interest, as tends to happen in such matters. But we cannot prefer anyone (nor would it be holy) to our most honoured son Basil, our fellow presbyter. For whom of those we know do we find either more approved in life, or more powerful in word, or trained on every side for the beauty of virtue? And if his weakness is an excuse, you are not calling in an athlete but a teacher. And besides, this too is possible through the One who strengthens and upholds the weak, if indeed they are such. If you accept this vote, we will both be present and help, either in spirit or in body. But if you proceed on terms fixed beforehand, and factions are going to prevail against what is right,

… we are glad to be overlooked. Let the work be yours … [Letter 44. To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata] Where shall I begin your praises? And by what name might I properly call you? Pillar and ground of the Church, or light in the world, using the same words as the Apostle, or crown of boasting for the part of Christians that is being saved, or gift of God, or support of the fatherland, or rule of faith, or ambassador of the divine …, or all these together and more than these, confirming the excess of praise by what is seen? What rain ever came so timely to a thirsty land? What water from a rock so overflowing for those in the desert? … did man eat such bread of angels? … did Jesus, our common Lord, come so timely to his disciples when they were being swamped, to calm the sea and save those in danger, as you appeared to us when we were weary and distressed and already, as it were, shipwrecked? Why must I speak of the rest: with what cheer and pleasure you filled souls, and how many … despair? But our mother the Church, I mean that of Caesarea, now truly puts off the garments of widowhood at the sight of you, and takes up the robe of gladness, and she will shine still more when she obtains a shepherd worthy of herself and of those who held her before, and of your hands. Our own affairs you see for yourself, what they are like, and what wonders … .

… what wonders your zeal has worked, and your sweat, and your boldness of speech before God! Old age is renewed, sickness is conquered, those who were in bed leap up, and the weak are girded with power. From this I guess that our affairs too will turn out as we wish. You have my father in place of himself and of us, about to set a fine end to his whole life and his venerable grey hairs: the present contest for the Church. And we shall receive him back, I well know, stronger and more youthful through your prayers, to which one must confidently entrust everything. And if he should even end his life in this anxiety, it is no loss to meet such an end, and for such a cause. But forgive me, I beg you, if I give way a little to the tongues of the wicked, and run to you a little later, and embrace you, and render in person what is now left out of your praises. [Letter 45. To Basil] When I learned that you had been set on the lofty throne, and that the Spirit had prevailed in setting the lamp on its stand …, a lamp that did not shine dimly even before, I was glad, I confess. And why should I not be, seeing the state of the Church in a bad way and in need of such guidance? But I did not run to you at once, nor will I run …; nor indeed should you ask this yourself. First, to preserve your dignity, so that you may not seem to be gathering your partisans out of some want of taste and hot-headedness, as those who like to make trouble would say; second, to secure for myself steadiness and freedom from envy. “When, then, will you come,” you will perhaps say, “and how long …?” Until God bids, and the shadows of those who now attack and … pass away. For the lepers will not hold out much longer, I know clearly, in shutting David out of Jerusalem.

[Letter 46. To the same] How can your affairs be mere gleanings to us, O divine and sacred head? “What word has escaped the barrier of your teeth?” Or how did you dare to say it? (Let me too be a little daring.) How did your mind start, or your ink write, or your paper … ? O letters, and Athens, and virtues, and sweat over letters! You almost make me a tragedian with what you write. Do you not know us, or yourself, you eye of the world, great voice and trumpet, palace of eloquence? Are your affairs small to Gregory? What else on earth could anyone admire, if Gregory does not admire you? There is one spring among the seasons, one sun among the stars, one heaven enclosing all things, and one voice above all, yours, if indeed I am fit to judge such things and my affection does not deceive me, which I do not think it does. If you charge us with not admiring you as you deserve, charge all mankind too; for no one else has admired you worthily or will, except you yourself and your own grand voice, if it were possible to praise oneself and the law of eloquence allowed us this. But if we are charged with despising you, why not first with madness? Or are you vexed that we live as philosophers? Grant me to say it: this alone is higher even than your words. [Letter 47. To the same] I hear that you are troubled by the new innovation, and have trouble from some sophistical … of those in power and their usual meddling; and that is no wonder. For I was not unaware of envy, and that many of those around you, serving their own interests through you

and are kindling the spark of small-mindedness. That I do not fear, that you should suffer anything unphilosophical in your troubles, unworthy of yourself and of us. Rather I think that now above all my Basil will be known, and the philosophy you have gathered all your life will be displayed, and you will rise above the insults as above a high wave, and remain unshaken while others are troubled. If it seems good, I will come myself, perhaps to share some counsel (if the sea needs water, and you a counsellor), but certainly to be benefited, and to learn the philosophy of being insulted together with you. [Letter 48. To the same]

[Letter 48. To the same] Will you not stop reviling us as uneducated, boorish, unfriendly, and not even worthy to live, because we have dared to understand … ? You yourself would say that we do you no other wrong; nor are we conscious of any evil, small or great, done to you by us, nor may we ever be; except this alone: we have recognized that we were deceived, very late indeed, but we have recognized it; and we blame your throne, for making you suddenly … above us; and we are weary of answering for your doings and defending ourselves to those who clearly know both our former state and our present one. For of all we suffer this is the most ridiculous, or the most pitiable: that the same people are wronged and accused, as has now happened to us. Others accuse us of one thing and others of another, whatever each pleases, according to his own character, or the measure of his anger on our behalf. The kindest blame your … and contempt, and the casting aside after use, as of the most worthless vessels and those of no account, or of the props under arches, which are removed and spurned once the arch is set. Let them go their way, then, and say what they will; no one will check the licence of the tongue. And as for you, pay me my wages: those blessed and empty hopes which you devised against those who

reproach you, as if you were insulting us for the sake of honour, light-headed as we are and quick at such things. But I will make known my position as it is; and do not be angry with me at all. I will say what I uttered at the very moment I was hurt, not so much boiling with anger or stunned by what had happened as to have my reasoning stolen away and not know what I was saying. I will not take up arms, nor learn tactics, which I did not learn before, when it seemed more the time for it, when everyone was arming and raving (you know the ailments of the weak); nor will I stand up to the warlike Anthimus, though he is a warrior out of season, since I am unarmed and unwarlike and better suited to receiving wounds. Fight him yourself, if you like (for needs often make even the weak warriors), or look for men to fight when he seizes your mules, guarding the narrows and, like that Amalek, barring the way to Israel. But to us give quiet in place of everything. Why must one fight about sucking-pigs and fowls, and those belonging to others, as though about souls and canons? And why rob the metropolis of splendid Sasima, or strip and uncover the secret of your intention, which I ought to help keep hidden? But you, play the man and be strong, and draw everything to your own glory, as rivers draw the torrents, preferring neither friendship nor intimacy to the good and to piety, and not caring what sort of man you will be thought for doing this, but being of the Spirit alone. As for us, we shall gain only this from your friendship: not to trust friends, and to hold nothing more precious than God.

[Letter 49. To the same] You accuse us of idleness and sloth, because we have not taken possession of your Sasima, nor act like a bishop, nor arm you against one another like dogs over a morsel thrown into their midst. For me the greatest activity is inactivity. And so that you may know one of my merits, I take such pride in staying out of affairs that I think it might even be a law for all, in magnanimity of this kind. And if all imitated us, there would be no troubles for the Churches, nor would the faith be dragged about, becoming each man's weapon in his private quarrels. [Letter 50. To the same] How hot and coltish you are in your letters! And it is no wonder that, having just come into glory, you want to show us what glory you find, so as to make yourself the more august, like painters who paint the Seasons. As for me, to narrate in full all the affairs of the bishops and of the letter at which you are annoyed, where we began, how far we went, and where we ended, seems too long for a letter, and the work of history rather than of defence. To put it briefly: the most noble Anthimus came to us with some bishops, either to visit my father (for that too was given out) or to press for what he did press for. After making many attempts on many matters, about the parishes, the marshes of Sasima, our ordination, granting favours, asking, threatening, pleading, blaming, praising,

… drawing circles around himself, as though we must look to him alone, and to the new metropolis as the greater … . “Why do you draw a line round our city,” I said, “when we regard our Church too as truly the mother of Churches, and from of old?” In the end he went away without success, after much huffing and puffing, and accusing us of “Basilism,” as men were once accused of “Philippism.” Do we seem to you to be wronging you in this? I do not think so. Consider also the matter of the letter, how it came from us, your “insulters.” They drew up a synodal summons to us. When I objected and called the thing an insult, they asked at least for the second course, that you be invited through me to deliberate on these matters. This I accepted, so that the first might not happen, leaving everything to you, whether you wished to assemble them, and where, and when: the act of one who honours you, not of one who insults you. Since we do no wrong in this either, tell me what is left. If you must learn it from me, I will read you Anthimus's own letter, which he sent us when he seized the marshes in spite of our forbidding and threatening, insulting and reproaching us, and as it were singing a song of victory over us as defeated. And what sense is there in clashing with him for your sake, and displeasing you as though we were doing him favours? You should have learned this first, my admirable friend, and not insulted us even then, if for nothing else, as your elders. If you … behave ostentatiously and ambitiously, and talk down to us from above, as a metropolitan to petty citizens, or even to men without a city, we too have a brow to raise against you. For this is the easiest thing for anyone, and perhaps the more reasonable,

… as much as the purple in woven cloth. Figures of speech we will admit, but few, and those not shameless. Antitheses, balanced clauses and equal members we will leave to the sophists; and if we ever use them, we will do so in play rather than in earnest. To end what I have to say, I will repeat what I heard one of the … say about the eagle: when the birds were contending for the kingship and came adorned in various ways, the eagle's finest adornment was not to think himself beautiful. This above all must be kept in letters: lack of adornment, and keeping as close as possible to what is natural. So much for you about letters, as we went over it in passing; and perhaps these things are not for us, who are busy with greater things; the rest you will learn by your own diligence, being quick to learn, and those clever at these matters will teach you.

… that you might give in return the writing itself and the benefit from what we write. For we can neither ask nor demand a better reward than this, one more profitable to those who ask or more fitting to the one who gives. [Letter 53. To Nicobulus] Having always preferred the great Basil to myself, even if he thought the opposite, I prefer him now too, no less for truth's sake than for friendship's. Therefore I put his letters first and place mine after them. For I desire that we be joined to one another everywhere, and at the same time to give others an example of moderation and modesty.

… finding none more genuine than us, nor more ready to share your concerns, even if not yet much intimacy or experience has taught you this. About your troubles, what should I write, except that I want you to regard this as a time for the highest philosophy, and to endure in your sufferings, and so to contend against those who grieve you, since it is not possible otherwise … [Letter 57. To the same] The year that has galloped past brought a heavy frost on our homeland, and nipped the buds of the vines that were already opening toward birth; and those that were left barren have made our cups dry and unwatered. Why, then, have I been led to make a tragedy to you about the barrenness of plants? So that you may become for us, as Solomon says, yourself a vine in bloom and a fruitful branch, not one that has … a cluster, but one that has pressed out the dew of the clusters for the thirsty. And who are the thirsty? Those who are building the wall round the enclosure of the church. Since I have no mountain wine to give them to drink, I have come to your right hand, rich in grapes, so that you may command your streams to flow over to us from your river country. If you do this quickly, you will heal the dry mouths of many, and you will gladden first of all, as much as possible, me too, the Atticizing beggar.

[Letter 58. To Basil] I took you as guide of my life and teacher of doctrine, and everything good one might name, from the beginning, and I take you so now; and if anyone else praises your qualities, he is surely either with me or after me. So far am I overcome by your Reverence, and so wholly am I yours. And no wonder: where intimacy is greater, experience is greater too; and where experience is fuller, testimony is more complete. And if anything else in life is profitable to me, it is your friendship and … . So I stand concerning these things, and may I continue so. What I write now I write not willingly, yet I write it. And do not be at all vexed with me, or I shall be very vexed myself, if I am not believed to say and write these things to you out of goodwill. Many have condemned us as not firm about the faith, all those, that is, who rightly regard our affairs as one. Some charge us openly with impiety, others with cowardice: with impiety, those who believe we do not even speak soundly; with cowardice, those who blame our reserve. And why should I repeat what others say? But I will tell you what happened recently. There was a drinking party, and among those at it were not a few distinguished men who were our friends, and among them a man of those who wear the name and garb of piety. The drinking had not yet begun, and the talk was about us, as tends to happen at parties, put forward in place of some other entertainment; and when all were admiring your qualities and adding us as philosophizing alike, and speaking of our friendship, and Athens, and our agreement and concord in everything, our would-be philosopher took it ill. “What is this, gentlemen?” he said, crying out very vehemently. “How false you are, and flatterers! Let the men be praised for other things, if you like; I do not dispute it myself. But the greatest thing I do not grant: orthodoxy. In vain is Basil praised, in vain Gregory: the one betraying

the faith by what he says, the other a fellow betrayer by putting up with it.” “Where does this come from,” I said, “you foolish man, new Dathan and Abiram in your madness? From where have you come to us as a dogmatist? How do you make yourself judge of such great matters?” “I have just come,” he said, “from the festival of the martyr Eupsychius” (and so it was), “and there I heard the great Basil speaking of God, most excellently and perfectly about the Father and the Son, as no one else could easily speak, but slurring over the Spirit” (and he added a comparison, like rivers that run past the rocks but hollow out the sand). “And why is it, my admirable friend,” he said, looking at me, “that you already openly call the Spirit God” (and he recalled something of mine, when I had spoken about God at a crowded synod and then had added, of the Spirit, that well-known saying: How long shall we hide the lamp under the bushel?), “while he hints obscurely and as it were sketches the doctrine in outline, but does not speak the truth freely, flooding our hearing with policy rather than piety, and covering his duplicity with the power of his speech?” “Because I,” I said, “lying in a corner, unknown to most, and hardly known to say anything or what I say, can be a philosopher without danger. But his word carries more weight, since he is more conspicuous both in himself and through his Church. Everything he says is public, and great is the war around him, as the heretics seek to catch a bare word from Basil himself, so that he may be driven out of the Church, he who is almost the only spark of truth left and its life-giving power, everything around having been taken; and so that the evil may take root in the city and, from this Church as from a base, overrun the whole world. It is better, then, that the truth be managed by economy, while we yield a little to the times as to a cloud, than that it be destroyed by openness of proclamation. For it does us no harm to know the Spirit as God from other expressions that lead to this (for the truth lies in the meaning rather than in the sound);

but to the Churches a great loss, if the truth were driven out through one man.” Those present would not accept this economy, as stale and a mockery; they even shouted us down, as men who managed their cowardice rather than the doctrine. It was much better, they said, to guard our own people by the truth than to make them useless by this so-called economy and fail to win over the others either. The details, what I said and what I heard, and how I grew angry with my opponents almost beyond measure and beyond my usual way, would take long to narrate now, and are perhaps unnecessary. In the end, I sent them off in this way. But do you teach us, O divine and sacred head, how far we should go in speaking of the Spirit as God, what expressions we should use, and how far we should use economy, so that we may have these things ready against those who contradict us. For if I, who more than anyone know you and your views, and have often given and received assurance on these matters, needed to learn this now, I would be of all men the most ignorant and the most wretched.

… to be present, to contend at your side, and to contribute what I can. For who would hang back? Who would not take courage under you and with you, speaking and contending for the truth? [Letter 60. To the same] That your command be fulfilled depends partly on us, and partly, and I think the greater part, on your Reverence. On us depends the eagerness and readiness; for we have never fled your company, but always pursue it, and now long for it the more. On your Holiness depends setting our affairs right. For we are sitting by our lady mother, who has now been suffering a long time from sickness. If we were not likely to leave her in a doubtful state, be sure we would not miss being with you. Only help with your prayers: her toward health, and us toward the journey.

… generously and eagerly; fulfil the wish of the departed woman, and, thinking of her as present with you and seeing what is done, give her rest by your giving, so that you may not only have the money from her, but may also obtain a mother's blessing, which establishes the houses of children; bearing this in mind, that a small portion with righteousness is better, as it is written, than a larger one with stinginess (not to say something blasphemous), and that many have even put up with whole houses being given over to churches, while others gave away all their property of their own accord and made the finest of bargains, becoming poor for the sake of the riches there. Do not, then, sow sparingly, so that you may reap abundantly; but grant this good inheritance to yourselves and to those dearest to you, holding back nothing of what was written, but giving us everything with pleasure and cheerfulness, or rather paying back God's things as his own, as men who will gain only this: whatever you spend for your souls. For why must one lay up treasure for robbers and thieves and the changes of fortune, which move unstable wealth now to some and now to others and toss it about, and not store it in secure storehouses, stronger than those who plot against it? Show thrift in other matters and toward others (for I pray that you may be powerful, with kindness), but for us contend the good contest, as to who will surpass the other in reverence and in the blessings owed by God to the fair-minded. Convince us, then, that you are genuine Christians. Or rather, beginning from … so pious and just, from this agree about other things too, so that you may rejoice in one another and we in you, as men who have become, among other things, a fine example to the whole Church of fair-mindedness in these matters.

[Letter 62. To Amphilochius] Not barbarous is the command of your inimitable nobility, but Greek, or rather Christian. But the Armenian, for whom you are so zealous, is plainly a barbarian, and far from our sense of honour. [Letter 63. To Amphilochius] You are grieved; I, obviously, am living in luxury! You weep; I, as you see, am keeping festival and priding myself on my present state! Does a son grieve you, carried off for his virtue and honoured, and is it terrible if he will not be with you to care for your old age and tend you as is fitting and customary; while a father does not distress me, who has made his last departure from us, from which he will never return to us nor be seen by us? Yet we accuse no one, nor demand the consolation owed us, knowing that one's own troubles leave no leisure for those of others; for no one is so friendly and so philosophical as to be above his sufferings and to comfort another while needing comfort himself. But you add blow to blow, blaming us, as I hear, and thinking that your son, our brother, has been neglected, or even, what is heavier, betrayed by us; and that we do not feel the loss which all, friends and kinsmen, have suffered, and I more than all, who placed in him the hopes of my life and regarded him as my only support, my only good counsellor, my only partner in piety. And yet to which occasion do you refer this? If to the first,

consider that I even crossed over to you on purpose, troubled by the report, and was eager to share counsel with you while there was still time to deliberate about this; and you shared everything with us rather than this, whether from the same perplexity or wishing I know not what. If to the last, above all my grief did not allow me to meet you again, together with the honour and duty owed to my father, which I could not have held anything above, and that while the blow was still fresh, when it is not only impious, but not at all seemly, to play the philosopher out of season and beyond what is human. Then too we thought that things had been settled beforehand by events, and had already reached their end, such as seemed good to the One who guides our affairs. So much for that. But now relax your grief toward us, the most unreasonable of all, as I persuade myself; and if you think there is anything more, bring it forward, so that you may not grieve us in turn and yourself as well, and suffer something quite unworthy of your nobility, blaming us instead of others, us who do no wrong but, to tell the truth, have been equally tyrannized over by our common friends, whom alone you regarded as benefactors. [Letter 64. To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata]

… you have been shown forth in the difficulties of trials, and have risen higher than your persecutors by nobly leaving the land that bore you. Others have our ancestral soil, but we the city above; others perhaps our throne, but we Christ. O what a bargain! What we have despised, and what we have received! We have gone through fire and water, but I believe that we shall also come out into refreshment. For God will not abandon us to the end, nor overlook right doctrine persecuted; but according to the multitude of our pains his consolations will gladden us. This, then, we both believe and pray. But do you, I beg, pray for our lowliness. And as often as an occasion offers, do not hesitate to bless us by letters and make us more cheerful by telling us of your affairs, as you have now been so good as to do.

… that you do not weary of remembering us. For it is not only a benefit to us to be thought worthy of your letters, but also a boast before the many and an ornament, that we are held in account by a man so great in virtue and so close to God that he can bring others close to him too, by word and by example. [Letter 67. To Julian] I have many claims to your friendship, and, if nothing else, our studies, than which nothing is more venerable or closer to most people; but of enmity there is no ground at all, nor is there, nor may there be. For what has given you offence in your dealings with your brother Nicobulus, or from Nicobulus, is no more mine than what is done in India, as far as approving any of what has happened is concerned. Do not, then, reckon these things against me, nor on this account take worse counsel for yourself; but carry out the kindness you promised the poor. And free from the register the clergy around me whom I asked to be excused, bearing in mind that it is very absurd that others should consecrate their whole property to God, while you will not even be good at no cost to yourself; and that other cities should be granted all who serve at the altar, while we are not granted even those who live with us and serve us, and that by you, our closest friends, whom we would perhaps not disgrace. It was right that this should be written to you by us. It was not possible to meet you, since illness drove me off to Tyana for treatment while there was time. Forgive me. In place of us you have God present, helping the poor, who is far more to be revered than our presence.

[Letter 68. To the same] You have invited us to the lodging, and rightly, as partners in the deliberation on the equalization of taxes; for the matter calls for no small care. If I were in health, I would have come very eagerly; and I will come when it is possible, God willing. For now I make up for my presence by letter. I know that you come of holy parents and have been raised from the first in the fear of God. What you know to be profitable to you, for good repute and for the safety of the soul, you will plainly do, even if we do not write. But if we too must contribute something, we make this known: that, in place of any other way of life that Christian souls offer to God, this is now set before you; and you will lay up great treasure for yourself by caring for the common good, and by setting right anything that was badly arranged before. One thing, and the greatest for safety (which you must guard first of all): take as fellow workers those whom you know to excel others in understanding and character. For what use is it to be a good helmsman with bad rowers?

[Letter to Eutropius] What is this? Eutropius the great is in our country, and we hear of him but do not enjoy him. What else was the famous Tantalus but this, wasting with thirst in the midst of springs? You long to meet us, as you write, and you do well. For being what you are, you ought not to despise your friends, but to do us good even on your way, and to honour after your term of office what you thought worthy of honour while you were in office. But how do you think I feel, and what spirit do you think I have, longing for you no less, if not more, as is natural (for what is more to be revered is more longed for), but fettered by illness? Become for me the Egyptian drug, whether that was a word or something else, with which Homer drugs souls in their griefs. How will you become it? First, by forgiving; for goodness is ready to forgive. Then, by instructing us with whatever you write. Since we had reason to admire you as a governor more for your virtue than for your power.

… imitating the good painters, who train their pupils by showing them many things. This, then, you have now done, and done well. And in future do not hesitate to do us this favour, even if thrones carry you on high again (they will carry your office, not your virtue; for in virtue you have nothing to be raised by, having reached the very top). Even while managing public affairs, do not neglect your friends, like the young men in Homer who attend to the duties of friendship in the midst of war; for your Homer too adorns his poetry with this.

… and in your prayers, that everything will turn out for you as you wish, and the storm will be stilled into a breeze, and God will give you this reward for your orthodoxy: to rise above those who abuse you. Above all, may we see you soon and enjoy your company, as we pray. But if you are delayed, things being as they are, do not disdain at least to gladden us by letters telling us of your affairs, and to pray for us as usual. May the good God grant you health and cheer in all things, you the common support of the Church. [Letter 75. To Vitalian] We do not converse with you often. The reason is that there are many around you, and those in whom we least rejoice. But if you would clear yourself of the many and have virtue as your housemate, you will see even the lame run, as the proverb says. This we promise, with God, and will do.

… have. But you, it seems to me, though there are many friends and many words of consolation, could be consoled by none so well as by yourself and by his memory; for the two of you have become for all others an example of philosophy, and a kind of spiritual rule, both of good order in prosperity and of endurance in sorrow. For philosophy knows these two things: to bear good fortune with moderation and misfortune with dignity. This is what we have to say to your Honour. But as for me who write this, what time or what word will console me, except your company and conversation, which the blessed one has left us in place of everything, so that, seeing his features in you as in a fine, clear mirror, we may think that we have him too?

… the mercy too, from the harshness. But perhaps it is better to be long-suffering, and to give many an example of long-suffering from what we suffer. For words do not persuade the many as action does, which is silent exhortation. We think it a great thing to obtain justice from those who have wronged us; great, I say (for this too is useful for the correction of others); but much greater and more godlike than this is to endure when we suffer. For the one muzzles wickedness, but the other persuades men to be good, which is much better and more perfect than not being wicked. Let us consider that a great task of kindness lies before us, and let us forgive what was done against us, so that we too may obtain forgiveness, and let us bring kindness beforehand in return for kindness. Phinehas was called zealous because he ran the Midianite woman through together with the fornicator and took away reproach from the sons of Israel; but he was praised more because he prayed for the people when they had fallen. Let us too stand and make atonement, and let the plague be stayed, as it is written; and let this be reckoned to us as righteousness. Moses too was praised because he killed the Egyptian, grieving for the Israelite; but he was admired more because by his prayer he healed his sister Miriam when she was struck with leprosy for murmuring. Consider also what follows. The Ninevites are threatened with destruction, but they buy off their sin with tears. Manasseh was the most lawless of kings, but by his lament became the most famous of the saved. “What shall I do with you, Ephraim?” says God. How much wrath is in the word! And yet protection is added. What is swifter than kindness? The disciples ask for the fire of Sodom against those who would not receive Jesus, but he refuses the vengeance. Peter cuts off the ear of Malchus, one of those who were insulting him, but Jesus restores it. And what of the one who asked whether a brother who sins should be forgiven seven times? Is he not condemned for pettiness? For to the seven times, seventy

times seven are added. And what of the debtor in the Gospels, who did not forgive what he had been forgiven: is he not made to pay more bitterly for it? And what of the form of the prayer: does it not wish us to obtain forgiveness by forgiving? Having so many examples, let us imitate God's kindness, and not wish to learn from our own case how great an evil is the requital of sin. You see the order of goodness. He first gives a law, then commands, promises, threatens, reproaches, raises his hand, holds back, threatens again; when he is forced, he brings a blow, and that little by little, opening room for amendment. Let us not, then, strike all at once (for it is not safe), but bringing them to their senses by fear, let us conquer by kindness, and keep them bound to reverence by their conscience rather than tormented by our wrath. Let us not wither a fig tree that can still bear fruit, nor condemn it as useless and cumbering the ground, when the care and attention of a skilled farmer may perhaps heal it. Nor let us so quickly destroy so great and famous a work because of an attack, perhaps, of the evil one and his envy; but let us wish rather to appear perfect in kindness, and lovers of the poor more than lovers of strict justice; and let us not listen to those who inflame us to this more than to those who restrain us, considering, if nothing else, the shame, if we should seem to be fighting against the poor, who have this great advantage, that even when they do wrong they are pitied for their misfortune. Imagine now that all the poor and those who feed the poor are falling at your feet, and all the monks and virgins supplicating for them. Grant the favour to them all in return for this (since they have been crushed enough, as is clear from what they begged of us), and above all to us who intercede for them. If it seems terrible to you to be dishonoured by them, let it seem much more terrible that we who advise you thus should not be heard. And may God forgive the good Paul for the insults he committed against us.

[Letter 78. To Theotecnus] We know that it is hard, while the injustice is fresh and the anger still boiling, to accept reasoning. For anger and grief blind us, especially when there is ground for just indignation. Yet since we too are among those wronged and insulted with you, and are no less indignant, we have the right also to advise you against dishonour. We have suffered terrible things; add, if you like, such as no other man has. But let us not on this account wrong ourselves too, nor hate piety more than is good for us. A wife is a great thing, and a daughter precious; but not more precious than the soul. Remember that you were lately counted worthy of grace and cleansed by the washing of sins; and the danger is no ordinary one, of staining the gift with blood and needing another cleansing. Let us not, then, plot against ourselves, nor throw away our freedom of speech before God by showing ourselves bitter to those who wronged us and indignant beyond measure. Let us leave the man to God and to the punishments there; and let us make the Judge kind to us by showing ourselves kind, and let us forgive, so that we may be forgiven. And let no vain reasoning deceive you, that to prosecute justly and to hand over the lawbreaker to the laws incurs no guilt. There are laws of the Romans, and there are ours too. But theirs are immoderate and harsh, going as far as blood; ours are kind and humane, and do not allow us to give rein to anger against those who wrong us. Let us abide by these, and follow these, so that by granting small things (for life here is small and worth nothing) we may receive great things from God in return: his kindness and the hopes of the world to come.

[Letter 79. To Simplicia] You praise our holy and common father, the support of the faith, the rule of truth and stamp of piety, the grey hair full of wisdom, the man who surpassed the measures of human life and virtue, the faithful servant and great high priest, the mediator between God and men, the dwelling-place of the Spirit; in this you do rightly, since every word falls short of that holy and blessed soul, unless my affection deceives me, or my grief mingled with longing. But this I wonder at very much: how you praise him as holy and so far honour him fittingly, and yet try to undo his work, as though it were that of the unholy, of those who most deserve insult, who lived and died at random. For if you are claiming his fellow shepherd as a slave of your own, or are pursuing this little gain, I cannot see how I can praise it, to put it mildly, and it is quite unworthy of your magnanimity. For how is it not absurd to honour the Divine with gold and silver and the superfluities of property, where display perhaps counts for more than piety, but to wish to deprive the Church of a priest altogether, and to rob it of the holiest of its offerings? But if you are vexed because we did this by our own authority, and did not remind your nobility or give your generosity room to act, you would be saying something just, and the feeling is human; but know that the gift is greater for you now than it would have been then, at that

time, by as much as it is more generous to pardon those who took than to give oneself. In that way you would have seemed to grant a favour to God alone; but in this way you grant it to us too, his servants, who have been counted worthy to bear his name. Do not, then, be angry either with him or with us. For he has been compelled by force, not done wrong; and as for us, what is surprising if, trusting in your kindness, we went so far, trusting also the common vote of the whole district? Whether some gave it to win favour or with evil intent, they themselves would know, and they will answer to God. It is not ours to know this, or to pry into everyone's mind. But how was it easy for us to repel them, or to overlook so many tears, or the desolation of the district, so long without care, without a shepherd, without spiritual oversight? And this should be clear to you before all: that those who agreed then and deny it now are doing a thing neither pious nor honourable. They would have been much better speaking against it then than flattering now, undoing their own acts, and fearing men rather than God. Imagine them saying again, in their fickleness, that they changed out of fear of you; and that much more truly, since they must always go wrong and hunt for false and sophistical excuses. If you think this rightly said, but you demand a settlement (for I hear this too, though you made no charge in your letter), let it be demanded justly and humanely, and we will find no fault; for we too do not like masters' fair claims to suffer loss. What is left? Perhaps to lay hold of the man as unworthy, and on this ground to attack the appointment.

For this is a somewhat more seemly way of making a charge. My answer to this is simple and easy. Just as we leave no one else under accusation unexamined, not even if he is one of our close friends and well-born (for nothing is more to be revered than God and the canon), so we will not let this man go either. But if anyone has any charge to bring, let him be examined before us, in your presence and with you sitting in judgment with us, if you wish, or otherwise in your absence; and if he is found innocent, let him be acquitted, even if he is a slave; since slaves and masters have the same Father and God, and justice is not defined by rank. But if he is convicted, then he will be condemned by his own sin. In this way neither will the canon be insulted nor the departed be dishonoured (our own part may perhaps be overlooked, as of no account); and you yourself will escape an evil suspicion: that because you are estranged from us and from the sound faith you are contriving this sophistically and not nobly, moved by one thing but striking at another. This I advise you not to incur, as neither holy nor seemly; nor, dishonouring our laws, to take refuge in those outside, nor to keep quarrelling with us, but to forgive us if we acted too simply out of the freedom of grace, and to accept being nobly defeated rather than winning badly by opposing the Spirit.

[Letter 81. To Gregory of Nyssa] You are distressed at your travels, and you seem to yourself unstable, like pieces of wood carried along on the waters. By no means, my admirable friend; do not feel like this. Their motion is involuntary, but your going about is according to God, and doing good to many is your stability, even if you are not fixed in one place. Unless one would also blame the sun because it runs round sowing its rays and giving life to everything it passes over; and, praising the fixed stars, find fault with the planets, whose very wandering is harmonious.

… and also to let us know by letter that you are doing this. For the one is a favour to justice, the other to us. But see that you do not grow weary of doing us good in future too; and may you always be seen to add something to your zeal, so that we may admire you even more. As for our son Euphemius, he is not yet …, but it is hoped, and I think he will not need much effort from you, if he comes. Fortunatus, who hands you this letter, is … our relative too, and, if I must add something, a deacon of those who are well spoken of. This you had to learn from us. The rest I know you will add of yourself: to regard the man as one of your own and with care, in whatever he needs of your Reverence. Whatever good you do him, you will be doing us a kindness.

… then, if you wish, changing your dress, so that both may go as well as possible for us: having you, and not failing of our principle. If not, then at any rate even in your fine cloak. And if anyone prosecutes us for breaking the rule, let us plead at least this far: that you are among those who perform the prayer, not among those invited. But if one of us does not accept this, what will you say to that? That we invite you as an orphan. In this way, then, even playing the tyrant, since the occasion is yours. Third, and greatest: you may, as one who invites us to prayer, share in the prayer. So we will receive you, pleading in this way. As for your sister, no one of us … if she came, but on the contrary would excuse both her and us if she did not. So let her come unbidden; but you are invited, and come, trusting partly in us and partly in the prayer, so that you may make our festival brighter, since by God's grace your belly has been well enough managed, or rather in an orphan's fashion and, if I may put it so, very … and nobly.

… that we should converse with one another by letter; this you yourself have done, and done well, and we are doing it too. The matters you write about are not small to us, nor of small account; and so we too, having considered them not in passing nor carelessly but very carefully, have come to this decision. We are weary of contending against envy and against the holy bishops who dissolve the common concord and make the faith a side-issue of their private quarrels. Therefore we have decided to back water, as the saying goes, and to draw into ourselves, as they say the nautilus does when it senses a storm, and to watch others from afar striking and being struck, while we ourselves make ready for the things there. And if it is dangerous to leave the Church, as you write, which Church? If ours, I say so too, and you are right; but if one that does not belong to us at all, nor was proclaimed for us, we are not accountable. But because we took care of it for some time, are we bound by this? Many others too would be bound, who have taken care of churches not their own. And perhaps the labour earns a reward, while giving it up is not liable to account. So fear nothing about us on this score; but rather fear this, lest we be harmed.

… I think, to share also in the rest of your prosperity. And do you yourself share, as you should, in the cares and difficulties here with your friends who are away; and do not keep the good to yourself alone, as the tragedians' saying goes, but help your friend in his labours in turn, so that you may be just in every way, dealing justly and equally with friendship and with friends. And may your good fortune stay with you a long time, so that you may do more good; or rather, may it be yours inalienably and eternally, when after prosperity here you cross over to the life there. [Letter to Bosporius, bishop of Colonia] I respect the diligence of your summons. But I would be more ashamed of myself if I did not write the truth. I fear our affairs are at an end; so ashamed am I of my grey hair, our common table, and our labours from youth, now that I count for less with you than the worst of men, and am dishonoured by those from whom I would least have expected it.

… . This too is a fair lessening of misfortune. [Letter 91. To Nectarius, archbishop of Constantinople] Our affairs are as they are: we sit without war or trouble, valuing above everything the riskless prize of silence. And we have gained something from our quiet, having by God's mercy fairly recovered from our illness. Prosper …, as the divine David says; and may God, who has honoured you, help you administer the priesthood, granting it to be above all abuse. And so that we may give proof of our confidence in one another, and suffer nothing merely human as we stand before God, I make this request of you; and do you readily nod assent. We are concerned for our most genuine Pancratius, of necessity, for many reasons. Be willing to receive him kindly, and to commend him to the more serious of your friends, so that he may attain his aim. His aim is to obtain freedom from public burdens through some military service; since not a single way of life is free from the abuse of the wicked, as you yourself know.

… proof, to give us such orders about such matters. We would dare to write such things even to others, but to run risks with you as judge is not safe. Still, we will try not to refuse your command. [Letter 93. To Sophronius, the prefect] Our retirement has something good for us, its freedom from affairs and its quiet; but not so much as there is harm in being separated from your friendship and company, so great a good. Others enjoy your perfection; for us it would be much even to have this: the shadow of conversation that letters give. Shall we see you again? Shall we embrace our pride? Will this be granted to the remnant of our life? If it is granted, all thanks to God; if not, we are already dead for the greater part. But remember your Gregory, and tell of our affairs. [Letter 94. To Amazonius] If any of our common friends (and we have many) asks you, “Where is Gregory? What is he doing?”, say boldly that he lives as a philosopher in quiet, caring as much for those who wrong him as for those not even known to have been born: so unconquerable is he. But if the same man asks you again, “And how does he bear separation from his friends?”, do not boldly say any longer that he is a philosopher, but that he takes it very ignobly. For one man is weak in one thing and another in another; we are weak toward friendship and friends. Of these the admirable Amazonius is one. Perhaps you could heal us with one thing alone and make us easier on your account: if you remember us, and show by letters that you do so. [Letter 95. To Leontius] O happy sickness, and abuse of my enemies,

… through which we have been set free, out of the fire of Sodom and the slackness of the bishops. How are your affairs with God? Let these be well; the rest, however they are, let us bid farewell. A little while yet, and I shall see those who insulted me, when our affairs are judged by fire. We greet you, and through you our common friends. Remember my stonings. [Letter 96. To Sophronius] We have suffered loss for a long time, while the first of cities did not have the first of men. For the good had to be poured out, I think, and the benefit of all to become common, so that you might sow good order from on high, as those who tamed our food sowed seeds, so at least the myths and fictions hold. But for me there is still more pain, that having enjoyed you only as much as a lightning flash briefly lights up the sight, I was then overcome by envy and withdrew into myself, yielding to others the government of the Church and the more seemly stage (if I may put it so, because of those who lightly mock what deserves instruction). But you, best of all men, keep the same disposition toward us, which, like the magnet, draws iron to itself. [Letter 97. To Heracleianus] You are always with us, good Heracleianus, both saying something learned and listening; and fair Constantinople is with us because of you, even if only for a time, since envy so willed. And if Gregory too were with you, it would be better for both of us.

You will show this by the letters you send us, which is all that is possible. [Letter 98. To the town councillors] You seem to me, if it were up to you, not even to keep your hands off the wallet of Diogenes of Sinope, but to lay hands on him too, charging him with practising a trade: his cloak and his staff and the very owning of nothing for philosophy's sake, and going now to one door and now to another, living at random and from whatever came to hand; since you are trying to impose on our brother Theotecnus the tax on trades. What should I name first, or as greatest, of the just claims on his behalf? That he is a deacon, or that he is poor, or that he is a stranger and belongs to others rather than to us, or that he is venerable in his life, a minister and neighbour of the martyrs? You know too that he entertains strangers beyond his means. And perhaps this is his only wrong, that he alone of those there forces himself to be good. Which of these is greatest, judge for yourselves. But excuse the man on account of them all, lest you seem to benefit the community a little while doing yourselves great harm, not clothing the naked, as the saying goes, but stripping him. [Letter 99. To Homophronius] I hear that you are living as a recluse, and may you become for us John the Baptist, or Elijah of Carmel; and may those who hate us do us only this wrong: to gather us to God and to give ourselves genuinely to the things above, freed from affairs and tumults, so that they may do us good unwillingly at least, since they cannot do it willingly.

[Letter 100. To Gigantius] I was glad of the invitation, and more than glad of what you write, not because we are praised (that is a small thing), but because you think rightly; and the bond of your love for us is the hope of the same things and the genuine worship of the Trinity, which we utter more than we breathe, in danger and out of danger, giving other things to the times to carry about as they will, but holding this unmoved in our souls, the only treasure that is free from envy and truly ours. As for me, when I consider other things, how many afflictions have surrounded us and surround us still, and the unevenness of the evils that whirl us up and down, and the war waged against us by all though we do no wrong, and look only to this, that I was counted worthy to become a herald of the truth when sound teaching had been cast aside and spat upon in a desert land, trackless and waterless, as it is written: it is too little to say that I am freed from all distress; I even rejoice exceedingly, as one counted worthy of greater things than I deserve. To what end do I write this? To show that the only firm friendship and intimacy for me is with those who are so disposed. And who in his right mind would willingly be absent from those so disposed? What feast is greater than to keep the feast with such men? But if sickness and the winter hinder my eagerness, I will bear the loss myself; but do you forgive me, and pray for another occasion for us to meet.

[Letter 101. To Cledonius the presbyter, against Apollinarius] To the most honoured and most God-beloved brother and fellow presbyter Cledonius, Gregory sends greeting in the Lord. We wish to learn what this innovation in the Church is, which allows anyone who wishes, and every passer-by, as it is written, to tear apart the flock that has been well led, and to plunder it by thievish assaults, or rather by robbers' and senseless teachings. For if those who have now come in had anything to condemn in us concerning the faith, not even then should they have dared such things without consulting us. They ought first to have persuaded us, or been willing to be persuaded (if we count for anything, as men who fear God, who have laboured for the word and have benefited the Church), and then, if at all, to innovate; and then perhaps there would have been some excuse for the offenders. But since our faith has been proclaimed in writing and without writing, here and further away, in danger and out of danger, how is it that some attempt such things, while others keep quiet? And this is not yet the terrible thing, though it is terrible, that men lodge their own false doctrine in simpler souls through the agency of more mischievous ones; but that they also lie about us, as though we shared their opinion and mind, putting the bait round the hook, and through this pretence wickedly fulfilling their own will, and making our simplicity, in which we looked upon them as brothers and

not as strangers, a provision for wickedness. And not only this, but, as I hear, they also say that they have been received by the Western synod, by which they had formerly been condemned, as is well known to all. If, then, those who hold the views of Apollinarius have been received, either now or formerly, let them prove it, and we will be content. For it is clear that they have assented to the right doctrine, since it is not possible otherwise for them to have obtained this. And they will certainly prove it, either by a synodal tome or by letters of communion; for this is the custom of synods. But if this is mere talk and invention, devised for show and for credibility with the many because of the trustworthiness of the persons named, teach them to keep quiet, and …; for we think this befits your way of life and your orthodoxy. Let not the men deceive, nor be deceived, accepting the “Lord's man,” as they themselves call him, or rather our Lord and God, as without a mind. For we do not separate the man from the Godhead, but we teach as dogma one and the same, who formerly was not man but God and the only Son before the ages, unmixed with body and with all that belongs to body, but at the end also man, assumed for our salvation; passible in flesh, impassible in Godhead; circumscribed in body, uncircumscribed in spirit; the same earthly and heavenly, seen and known by the mind, contained and uncontained; so that by one and the same, whole man and God, the whole man who had fallen under sin might be refashioned. If anyone does not regard holy Mary as Theotokos, he is cut off from the Godhead. If anyone says that he passed through the Virgin as through a channel, but was not formed in her divinely and humanly at once (divinely, because without a man; humanly, because by the law of gestation), he is likewise godless. If anyone says that the man was formed and that God afterwards slipped into him,

let him be condemned. For this is not a birth of God but an escape from birth. If anyone introduces two Sons, one from God the Father and a second from the mother, and not one and the same, may he also fall from the adoption promised to those who believe rightly. For there are two natures, God and man, since there are also soul and body; but not two Sons, nor two Gods. For neither are there here two men, even though Paul spoke in this way of the inner man and the outer. And to speak briefly: the elements of which the Saviour is made are one thing and another (if indeed the invisible is not the same as the visible, nor the timeless as what is under time), but he is not one person and another; God forbid! For both are one by the blending, God having become man and man having been made god, or however one might name it. I say “one thing and another,” the reverse of the case in the Trinity. For there it is one person and another, so that we do not confuse the hypostases; but not one thing and another, for the three are one and the same in Godhead. If anyone says that he worked in him by grace, as in a prophet, but was not and is not joined to him according to essence, may he be empty of the higher working, or rather full of the opposite. If anyone does not worship the Crucified, let him be anathema and be ranked with the … . If anyone says that he was made perfect by works, or that after the baptism, or after the resurrection from the dead, he was counted worthy of adoption, like those whom the Greeks bring in as enrolled among the gods, let him be anathema. For

what has a beginning, or makes progress, or is being perfected, is not God, even if he is spoken of in this way because of his gradual manifestation. If anyone says that he has now put off the holy flesh, and that the Godhead is bare of the body, and not that he both is and will come with what he assumed, may he not see the glory of his coming. For where is the body now, if not with him who assumed it? For it has not, according to the drivel of the Manichees, been laid up in the sun, to be honoured through dishonour; nor poured out into the air and dissolved, like the nature of a voice, the flow of an odour, or the course of lightning that does not stand still. And how then could he be touched after the resurrection, or one day be seen by those who pierced him? For Godhead by itself is invisible. But he will come with the body, as my doctrine holds, but such as he was seen by the disciples on the mountain, or as he was shown, the Godhead overpowering the flesh. And as we say these things to remove suspicion, so we write the following to correct the innovation. …

… this is also saved. If half of Adam fell, then half is what was assumed and what is saved; but if the whole fell, he is united to the whole of what was born, and is saved wholly. Let them not, then, begrudge us our complete salvation, nor clothe the Saviour with bones only and sinews and the portrait of a man. For if the man is without a soul, the Arians say this too, so that they may attribute the suffering to the Godhead, on the ground that what moves the body is also what suffers. But if he has a soul, yet not a rational one, how is he a man? For man is not a mindless animal. And then the form and the tent would have to be human, but the soul that of some horse or ox or other irrational creature. This, then, will be what is saved; and I have been cheated by the truth, boasting of an honour that was given to another. But if the man is rational and not without mind, let them stop being truly mindless. “But,” he says, “the Godhead was enough in place of the mind.” What is that to me? For Godhead with flesh alone is not a man, nor with soul alone, nor with both without the mind, which is more truly the man. Keep, then, the whole man, and mingle the Godhead with it, so that you may benefit me perfectly. “But,” he says, “he could not contain two perfect things.” Nor could he, if you look at it bodily. For a vessel of one bushel will not hold two bushels, nor will the place of one body hold two or more bodies. But if you look at them as intelligible and incorporeal, consider that I myself have contained soul and reason and mind and the Holy Spirit; and before me this world, I mean the whole system of things visible and invisible, has contained the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For such is the nature of intelligible things, to be mingled incorporeally and indivisibly both with one another and with bodies. So too many sounds are taken in by one hearing, and the sight of many by the same visible things, and odours by one sense of smell, without the senses being cramped or crowded out by one another, or the objects of sense being diminished by the number of those who perceive them.

And where is the perfect mind of a man or an angel in comparison with Godhead, that the one should be crowded out by the presence of the greater? For a ray is nothing to the sun, nor a little moisture to a river, that we must first remove the small things, the ray from the house and the moisture from the earth, so that the greater and more perfect may be contained. How a house will contain two perfect things, ray and sun, and the earth moisture and river, let us consider; for the matter is worth much thought. Or do they not know that what is perfect in relation to one thing is imperfect in relation to another, as a hill to a mountain, and a mustard seed to a bean or any other of the larger seeds, even if it is called larger than those of its own kind; or, if you like, an angel in relation to God, and a man in relation to an angel? Our mind, then, is perfect and ruling, but ruling over soul and body, not perfect absolutely; and it is God's servant and subject, not sharing his rule nor equal in honour. So too Moses was a god to …, but the servant of God, as it is written; and the stars light up the night, but are hidden by the sun, so that by day one would not even know they exist; and a small torch brought near a great bonfire is neither destroyed nor seen nor separated, but the whole is bonfire, the greater having prevailed.

… God to flesh, as though he could not be bound otherwise, and for this reason you take away the middle wall. But my doctrine, that of an unphilosophical and uneducated man, is that mind is mingled with mind, as nearer and more akin, and through it with flesh, mind mediating between Godhead and grossness. And let us see what their account is of the becoming man, or the enfleshment, as they themselves say. If it is so that God, otherwise uncontainable, might be contained, and might converse with men through the flesh as behind a veil, then an elegant mask is theirs and a drama of play-acting; not to say that it was possible for him to converse with us in other ways too, as formerly in the bush of fire and in human form. But if it was to undo the condemnation of sin by sanctifying like by like, then just as flesh was needed for the flesh that had been condemned, and soul for the soul, so also mind for the mind, which not only fell in Adam but was the first to be affected, as doctors say of illnesses. For what received the commandment, that also did not keep the commandment; what did not keep it, that also dared the transgression; what transgressed, that most needed salvation; and what needed salvation, that also was assumed. Therefore the mind was assumed. This has now been demonstrated, whether they like it or not, by geometrical and necessary demonstrations, as they themselves say. But you are doing something like this: as if, when a man's eye had erred and his foot had stumbled as a result, you were to heal the foot and leave the eye unhealed; or when a painter had painted something badly, you were to alter the picture and pass over the painter as though he had done well. But if, shut out by these reasonings, they take refuge in the claim that it was possible for God to save man even without a mind, then it was possible, I suppose, without flesh too, by his will alone, just as he works and has worked everything else without a body. Take away, then, the flesh along with the mind, so that your madness may be complete. But they are deceived by the letter, and for this reason they run to the flesh, not knowing the usage of Scripture.

We will teach them this too. That everywhere in Scripture he is called man and Son of Man, what need is there to say to those who know it? But if they insist on “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and for this reason shave off the noblest part of man, as cobblers do the thicker parts of hides, so as to glue God to flesh, it is time for them to say that God is God of flesh only and not of souls too, because it is written, “As you have given him authority over all flesh,” and “To you all flesh shall come,” and “Let all flesh bless his holy name,” that is, every man; or again, that our fathers went down into Egypt bodiless and invisible, and that only the soul of Joseph was bound by Pharaoh, because it is written, “With seventy-five souls they went down into Egypt,” and “The iron passed through his soul,” a thing that cannot be bound. For those who say these things do not know that such things are named by synecdoche, the whole being indicated by the part; as also “The young ravens call upon God,” to indicate the whole nature of birds, and the Pleiades and Hesperus and Arcturus are mentioned in place of all the stars and their ordering. And at the same time God's love for us could not be shown otherwise than by mentioning the flesh, and that for our sake he came down even to what is lower. For that flesh is less honourable than soul every sensible person will confess. So “The Word became flesh” seems to me to mean the same as his being said to have become sin and a curse; not that the Lord was changed into these (how could he be?), but that by accepting them he took up our iniquities and bore our diseases. This is enough for the present, for clearness and so as to be easily grasped by the many. For we write these things not to compose a treatise but to check the deception; and if it seems good, we will give a more complete account of these matters at greater length.

… which it is necessary not to pass over. Would that those who unsettle you would even cut themselves off, bringing in a second Judaism and a second circumcision and second sacrifices! For if so, what prevents Christ from being born again to set aside the same things, and from being betrayed again by Judas, and crucified, and buried, and rising again, so that everything may be fulfilled in the same sequence, according to the Greek doctrine of recurrence, the same motion of the stars bringing the same things round? For what is the principle of choice, that some of the things that happened then should come about and others be passed over? Let the wise men show this, who pride themselves on the number of their books. And since, puffed up by their teaching on the Trinity, they lie about us as not sound in the faith, and entice the many, it is necessary to know this: that Apollinarius, while granting the name of Godhead to the Holy Spirit, did not preserve the power of Godhead. For to make up the Trinity of great, greater and greatest, as of light, ray and sun, the Spirit, the Son and the Father (as is clearly written in his works), is a ladder of Godhead that does not lead up to heaven but leads down from heaven. But we know God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these not as bare names, dividing inequalities of rank or power, but, just as there is one and the same title, so one and the same nature, essence and power of Godhead. And if anyone thinks this rightly said, but charges us with communion with heretics, let any of our people show it; and we will either persuade him or withdraw. But before judgment it is not safe to innovate in anything else, let alone in so great a matter and about such great things. These things we have solemnly testified, and do testify, before God and men. And not even now, be well assured, would we have written this, if we had not seen the Church being torn apart and divided, both by their other prodigies and by the present council of vanity. But if anyone, while we say and testify these things, either for certain needs,

or from human fear, or from unseemly pettiness, or because they have so far been without shepherd and pilot, or from a love of novelty and readiness for innovation, spits upon us as worthy of no account and runs to such men, and divides the fair body of the Church, he will bear the judgment, whoever he may be, and will give account to God on the day of judgment. And if long discourses, and new psalters contrary to David, and the charm of metre are thought to be a third testament, we too will compose psalms, and write much, and put it into metre. For we too think that we have the Spirit of God, if indeed this is a grace of the Spirit and not a human innovation. These things I want you to testify to the many, so that we may not bear the blame, as though we overlooked such an evil, and a wicked doctrine gained pasture and strength through our negligence. [Letter 102. Against Apollinarius, to Cledonius: second letter] Since many have come to your Reverence seeking assurance about the faith, and you have therefore lovingly asked us for a brief definition and rule of our mind, we have therefore written to your Reverence (what you knew even before the letter) that we have never preferred anything, nor can prefer anything, to the faith of Nicaea, that of the holy fathers who met there to destroy the Arian heresy; but we are, and with God will be, of that faith, articulating further what they said incompletely about the Holy Spirit (because that question had not then been raised): that one must know the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to be of one Godhead, knowing the Spirit also as God. Those, then, who think

and teach so, hold in communion, as we too do; but turn away from those otherwise minded, and regard them as strangers to God and to the catholic Church. And since a question is also being raised about the divine becoming man, or enfleshment, make this clear to all on our behalf: that we bring into one the Son of God, begotten of the Father and afterwards of the holy Virgin Mary, and do not name two sons, but worship one and the same in undivided Godhead and honour. If anyone does not assent to this, now or later, he will give account to God on the day of judgment. This, then, in brief, is our objection and opposition to their senseless opinion about the mind; for they are almost the only people who really suffer what they teach, cutting off the mind by mindlessness. But so that they may not accuse us of having first accepted and now rejecting the faith of the beloved Vitalius, which he handed in in writing when asked for it by the blessed Damasus, bishop of Rome, let us say a few words about this too. When these men speak about God to their genuine disciples and the initiates of their secrets, like the Manichees to those they call the elect, they uncover their whole disease and scarcely allow the Saviour even flesh. But when they are refuted and pressed by the common understanding of the incarnation that Scripture presents, they confess the pious words but distort the sense, confessing the man to be not without soul, nor without reason, nor without mind, nor imperfect, but bringing in the Godhead itself as his soul and reason and mind, as though it alone were blended with the flesh, and not also what is ours and human, even though his sinlessness was above our condition and a cleansing of our passions.

So too they misinterpret, badly and very simple-mindedly, “But we have the mind of Christ,” saying that the mind of Christ is the Godhead; not understanding, as we do, that those who have purified their own mind by imitating that mind which the Saviour took from us, and shape it to his as far as is possible, are said to have the mind of Christ; just as those who have disciplined the flesh might be attested to have the flesh of Christ, becoming of one body and partakers with Christ in this respect; and, “As we have borne the image of the earthly,” he says, “so we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” So too for them the perfect man is not the one who was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin; but they teach as dogma the blend of God and flesh. “For what,” they say, “is more perfect than this?” The same trick they play on the word for the incarnation: “he became man” they explain not as “he was in the man whom he fixed around himself,” according to the saying “For he himself knew what was in man,” but as “he associated and lived with men,” speaking and teaching; and they take refuge in that saying, “After this he appeared on earth and lived among men.” And why should one contend over … ? They discard the man and the inner image, and cleanse only our outer part by their new mask, the visible one, so much at war with themselves that at one time, because of the flesh, they interpret everything else grossly and carnally (from this their second Judaism started, and their foolish and drivelling thousand-year luxury in paradise, and almost our taking up the same things again on the same terms), and at another time they bring in a seeming rather than a reality of flesh, as though it suffered nothing of ours, not even what is free from sin; and for this they use the apostolic saying, not understood or spoken apostolically, that our Saviour came to be in the likeness of men and was found in fashion as a man, as though the human form were not meant by these words,

but some deceptive appearance and seeming. Since, then, these expressions, rightly understood, are in accord with piety, but wrongly interpreted contain impiety, what is surprising if we took the words of Vitalius in the more pious sense, our wish persuading us so, while others are infuriated at the meaning of what was written? This, it seems to me, is why Damasus himself, when he had been better informed and at the same time had learned that they held to their former interpretations, disowned them and overturned the written statement of faith with an anathema, vexed at the very deception he had suffered through simplicity. Since they have been clearly refuted in this, let them not be angry but ashamed; let them not lie but be humbled; and let them erase from their gateways that great and wonderful proclamation and announcement of their orthodoxy, with which they meet those who come in, at once with a question and a test: that one must worship not a God-bearing man but a flesh-bearing God. What could be more senseless than this, even if these new heralds of the truth pride themselves on the phrase? It has a certain sophistical charm from the quickness of its inversion, and a juggler's trickery that delights the uneducated; but it is more ridiculous than the ridiculous and more foolish than the foolish. For if one changed the words “man” and “flesh” into “God” (the one is our choice, the other theirs), and then used this wonderful and God-taught inversion, what will follow? That one must worship not a God-bearing flesh but a man-bearing God. O the absurdity! They proclaim to us today a wisdom hidden since Christ, which is worth weeping over. For if the faith began thirty years ago, when nearly four hundred years have passed since Christ was made manifest, our gospel has been empty for so long a time, and empty our faith, and in vain have the martyrs borne witness, and in vain have such and so great leaders presided over the people. … and the charm is that of metre, not of faith.

And who would not admire their learning, when they themselves clearly divide the things of Christ, assigning “he was born, and was tempted, and hungered and thirsted, and was weary and slept” to the human element, but reckoning “he was glorified by angels, and conquered the tempter, and fed a people in the desert, and fed them in such a way, and walked upon the sea” to the Godhead; and saying that “Where have you laid Lazarus?” is ours, but to cry “Lazarus, come out!” and raise the man four days dead is above us; and that “he was in agony, and was crucified, and was buried” belongs to the veil, but “he took courage, and rose, and ascended” to the treasure within; and then they accuse us of bringing in two natures, separated or at war, and of dividing the … and wonderful union! They should either not do what they accuse, or not accuse what they do, if they had decided at least to be consistent with themselves, and not to say both their own things and their opponents'. Such is unreason: it fights both against itself and against the truth, so that they neither notice nor are ashamed when they collide with themselves. And if anyone thinks that we write or say these things willingly and not under compulsion, and that we are eager to escape union rather than very eager for it, let him know that he thinks wrongly and has not guessed our desire; for nothing has been more precious to us than peace, as the facts themselves show, even if what they do, and their swaggering against us, shuts out concord altogether. [Letter 103. To Palladius]

… not courting power, but honouring character. We are perhaps not small heralds, but we do not fall short as far as we are able; and not heralds only, but also fellow contenders, contributing what power we have by our prayers. I wanted to end the letter at this point; but since we do not only revere what is divine but also ask it for benefits, accept this too, not as being troubled by us (for our affairs are no trouble to you, as I can guess from what went before), but as being reminded by us: I again present to you your suppliant Euphemius, and again beseech you not only to receive the young man kindly and forgive his slowness, since, having taken charge of the affairs of orphans, he was necessarily busy with his little house; but also be eager to advance him, for our honour and the glory of your goodness. For of the many whom you have benefited and benefit, none will bring you less credit than he, as I explained when I was with you. And now I ask to be believed; for he is pitiable for his orphanhood and dear to us for his character, not to mention the closeness of blood. [Letter 104. To Olympius] All the other favours I have obtained I know I have received from your gentleness; and may God repay you for them with his own good things, one of which is to complete your term of office with good repute and splendour. What I now ask, I come to give rather than to receive, if it is not too bold to say so. I myself bring to you the wretched Philumena, who will fall at the feet of your justice and set before you the tears with which she crushes our soul. In what she has been wronged, and by whom, she herself will make known; for it is not safe for us to accuse anyone. But this much it is necessary to say: that widowhood and orphanhood must be helped by all who have sense, and especially by those who have a wife and children in their midst, those great

pledges of pity, since we who judge men are men ourselves. Forgive us for interceding for these things by letter, since through our sickness we are deprived of so excellent a governor, so admirable in virtue that the beginnings of your office are more honourable than the good repute others win at the end. [Letter 105. To the same] The occasion is urgent, the contest great, and the sickness heavy, having made us almost unable to move. What remains, but to pray to God and beseech your kindness: God, to bring better counsels to your mind; you, not to dismiss our intercession harshly, but to receive gently the wretched Paul, whom justice has brought under your hands, perhaps so as to make you more brilliant by the greatness of your gentleness, and to commend our prayers, if they are worth anything, to your kindness.

[Letter 107. To Cledonius] You ask what our silence means. It means measure in speech and in silence. For he who has mastered the whole will more easily master the part; besides, it tames anger, which, when it is not spoken out, is spent within itself. We keep silence in speech, learning to say what we ought, and we train ourselves to master the passions. If anyone accepts this, well; if not, this too is a gain of silence, to make no answer to the many. [Letter 108. To the same] I do not forbid a meeting; for even if my tongue is silent, we will gladly lend our ears to your words, since hearing is no less honourable than saying what one ought. [Letter 109. To Palladius] The manner of my admonition is new: since by speaking I could not restrain tongues, I have taught silence by silence, training like by like. This is also the law of Christ; for in giving us his law he did not … ; he tames man by what is human, according to the great kindness of his economy toward us.

[Letter 110. To Eulalius] You practise philosophy in solitude and in fasting so beyond measure; I in silence. Let us share the gift with one another; and when we come together, we will sing … in common, bearing the fruit of inspired speech as of reasonable silence. [Letter 112. To Celeusius] I received you even while silent, so that you may learn that silence too has a speech, spoken by the pen. I will speak what befits friendship and such a season. You break the law, judge, by not fasting; and how will you keep human laws while despising the divine? Keep your court pure, lest one of two things happen: either you become bad or you are thought so. To put on shameful spectacles is to make a spectacle of oneself. The sum of what I say: know that you are being judged, judge, and you will sin less. I had nothing better than this to give you.

… Pandion, Athens, Tereus, Thrace, the journey abroad, the marriage, the outrage, the cutting out of the tongue, the letters woven in the cloth, and above all Itys, and how from human beings we became birds. The swans scarcely thought them worth a word, hating their chatter; but when they did, they said: “But we, ladies, for whose sake one would even come into the desert to hear our music, when we give our wings to the West Wind to breathe something sweet and harmonious through them; even if we do not sing much nor before many, this very thing is our finest quality, that we practise our song with measure, like philosophers, and do not mix our music with noise. But you, even when you settle in their houses, men dislike, and turn away from when you sing; and very justly, since even with your tongues cut out you cannot keep silent, but you lament your own speechlessness and your misfortune, and so are more talkative than any of the eloquent and musical.” “Understand what I say,” says Pindar; and if you find my speechlessness better than your eloquence, stop chattering against our silence; or I will tell you a proverb, very true and very short: swans will sing when jackdaws fall silent.

… training ground of philosophy, which I beheld while silent, I desire to see while speaking too, so that I may satisfy the longing of the brothers and pay you back for your pettiness, you bad interpreters of my utterances. For I will be there myself, the one who speaks, no longer in allegory or in likenesses, but understood plainly. … [Another letter] A strange thing has happened to me: having been silent when you were present, I long for you now you are absent, so that I may give and receive speech. For it is good, as with everything else, so with words too, to dedicate the first fruits first to the Word, and then to those who fear the Lord.

… you have sent, and in what you write. I have already passed many Easters, and this is what I have gained from a longer life. But now I long more purely, having come out of this Egypt, the heavy and dark life here, and been freed from the clay and the brickmaking to which we are bound, to move to the land of promise. Pray for this for us, if you care at all to do us the greatest good. And may it often be granted to you to keep the feast with the common body of the Church, in good health. And if you grant me to end my old age well, by giving this Church a bishop whom the Holy Spirit shall make known, you will have done a good work and one, if I may say so, worthy of a father's blessings.

… on the twenty-second of our month Dathusa. And at the same time not a few Church matters need common deliberation. For all these reasons, be so good as to come without hesitation; for even if the labour is great, the reward balances it. … I respected your presence, and I love your company, although I had otherwise admonished myself to stay at home and philosophize in quiet; for I have found this the most profitable course of all for myself. … But since the weather is still stormy and the sickness has not let go, I beg you, be patient a little, and pray with me for health; and when the time comes, we will attend upon your prayers. [Letter 124. To the same]

…, but, as it seems, having made them worse too and harmed the Church by my untimely philosophy. For gentleness does not shame the wicked. And now, if I could have taught you these things in person, I would not have hesitated, be well assured, to set out even beyond my strength and fall at your Honour's feet. But since my sickness has advanced further, and it has become necessary to use the hot springs of Xanxaris on the doctors' advice, I make this letter take my place. The wicked men, who will perish wickedly, have dared, in addition to everything else, having either summoned bishops deposed by every synod of East and West, or made use of them as they passed through (for I cannot say which precisely), and rising up against all the imperial ordinances and your commands, to give the name of bishop to one of their impious and counterfeit men, emboldened by nothing so much, I think, as by my deadness (for so I must call it). If these things are tolerable, let your firmness bear them, and we too will bear them, as we have often borne them. But if they are grievous, and not to be borne by the most pious emperors themselves, be so good as to punish what has been done, even if less than their madness deserves.

… often, of which they leave something on the rocks or take something from them. Such is our state. What I would have asked of your goodness in person, I have dared to ask in absence too. I have found our son Nicobulus much distressed by the care of the public post and attendance at the posting station, a man who is in poor health, unused to such things, and unable to bear the solitude. Use him for anything else you like (for he is eager to serve your authority in everything); but free him, if possible, from this care, if for no other reason, then out of regard for him as our nurse; since, having asked much about many things and obtained it, we need your gentleness for ourselves too.

… known to you great men, and the misfortune of his body, which at once convinces the eye. It is heavy in itself, but heavier, naturally, because undeserved. With our appeal added to these, I know he will the more surely gain what he seeks. … If our body were not in a bad way, and we had not poor hopes even of its life, we would have gained first and above all a meeting and time with you, which we certainly owed you; and second we would have carried out this intercession in person. But since we lie wholly fettered by sickness and have unwillingly suffered this loss, we do what was second best: we approach you by letter, greet and embrace you, and dare to ask concerning our fellow deacon Eugenius, whom we beg of your magnanimity. If his connection with the unholy Rhegianus is no crime (for he appears to do no other wrong), grant him for justice's own sake, of which you are the arbiter and guardian; but if you judge this a crime, then at least for the sake of God, before whom he stands, and of our grey hair, which you know is venerable to many who fear the Lord: grant, then, I beg you, this favour to us and to the whole clergy, and make your hopes in God favourable for yourself by freeing the man from harassment. You will receive in return for what you give no less (if it is not too much to say so): our prayers.

[Letter 130. To Procopius] I am so disposed, if I must write the truth, as to flee every gathering of bishops, because I have never seen a good end to any synod, nor one that brought a release from evils rather than an addition to them. For there are always rivalries and ambitions (but do not think me tiresome for writing so) beyond words; and one would sooner be charged with wickedness himself while judging others than put an end to theirs. For this reason I have withdrawn into myself, and have held quiet to be the only safety of the soul. And now I also have my sickness to support my judgment, being almost always at my last breath and unable to use myself for anything. For this reason let your magnanimity forgive us, and through you let the most pious emperor too be persuaded not to condemn us for slackness, but to pardon our weakness, on account of which, he knows, he also granted us our retirement at our request, in place of any other favour.

…, having received the same command; and let your magnanimity be so good as to write now too on our behalf, since we have you as a trustworthy witness of our sickness. The loss we have now suffered, being unable even to hasten to you and enjoy the company of a governor so excellent and so admirable in virtue that the beginnings of your office are more honourable than the good repute others win at the end, also bears witness to it. [Letter 132. To Saturninus]

… quicker; we were hesitant. Or rather not even that; for we have no means of sending letters. And yet how much do you think we long for it, living in the country somewhere far from the station and looking after our body there? But now, when there is an opportunity, we both address you and ask you to grant us in absence the honour you granted us when present, and not to hesitate to console us by letters, as we suffer greatly from the separation. And since again there is a synod, again a contest, and that in the midst of enemies who carefully watch all our affairs, give a hand to the common settlement, as being not the least part of the Church, and do not look on while everything is consumed by the fire that now surrounds the Church. Whatever means of quenching it you can, bring them, and exhort the others, so that the common good may fare better through your action. [Letter 134. To the same]

… For it often happens that those who are wronged are benefited, and those who are well treated are wronged. Such are our affairs. And even if we do not persuade the others, we want you yourself at least, in place of all, to know, you to whom we gladly give account of our affairs; or rather, we are confident that you know, and that you persuade those who do not. But let all your zeal be now at least, if not before, to bring the sections of the world that are wrongly divided into harmony and unity, especially if you find them divided not over the doctrine of the faith but over their own petty grievances, as I have observed. This would bring you a reward too, if it can be done; and our retirement would be less painful, if we should be seen not to have seized it idly but to have thrown ourselves willingly into the sea, like Jonah of old, so that the storm might cease and those on board be brought safely through. But if they are no less storm-tossed, at least our part has been contributed. [Letter 136. To Modarius] You are both kinsman and friend to us, and anything else of that kind one might say. For piety has joined us, and the good repute of the virtue we have come to know in you, who have shown clearly that Greek and barbarian are a difference of bodies, not of souls, and a distance of places, not of characters or choices. Would that many of our own race might imitate your nobility, and I know that everything would go well for us, public and private. I beg you: as you put an end to the war outside by your own right hand and understanding, standing nobly for us, so put an end to ours too, contending, as far as is in your power, that the bishops now assembled may reach a peaceful end. For to meet often and find no end to evils, but always to add troubles to troubles, brings the greater shame, as you yourself know.

[Letter 137. To the same] I have long wanted to address your Honour, and thanks be to God, who has given the occasion. Seeking how I might reward the man who hands you this letter, I found it best to commend him to your authority. Be so good as to regard him with favour partly for our sake too, since he is both mine and yours: our neighbour, but your soldier (I mean Theodore, who now comes to you through us), so that he too may feel the honour with which we have always been honoured by you and still are.

… that we may not bear the burden, being so condemned by you and cried down by the whole clergy with lamentations of every kind, which crush us, seeing the Church neglected and wounding the many, as though we were overlooking the affairs of the Church; and that you may not labour longer in … us. And this we will do by your prayers, if you yourself shrink from the presidency of the Church, as you yourself say and the facts persuade. For it is better to die in those cares than in these, since one must in any case suffer, God so ordering our affairs. … He who took up his servant David from the sheepfold to the kingdom, and your Reverence to the pastoral office from the flock; who orders our affairs according to his will, and those of all who hope in him: may he now too bring it to the mind of your Perfection to know the dishonour with which we have been dishonoured by my lords the bishops concerning the votes, agreeing to the appointment but pushing us aside. For I will not blame your Reverence, who have only recently taken charge of affairs and naturally do not know most of our history. Enough of this; for I do not wish to trouble you longer, lest I seem tiresome when our friendship is just beginning. What occurs to us as we deliberate with God, we make known. I withdrew from the Church at Nazianzus, neither as despising God nor as overlooking the little flock (may a philosophic soul never suffer that!), but first because I was bound by no proclamation to it, and second because I was crushed by sickness and

thinking that I was not equal to such cares. But since you too were pressing me, reproaching my withdrawal, and I myself could not bear the outcries raised against me by everyone, and the time was hard, threatening an attack of enemies to the harm of the whole Church in common, I was at last defeated, a defeat painful to the body but perhaps not bad for the soul. I give this lowly body to the Church as long as it is able, thinking it more desirable to suffer anything in the flesh than in the spirit to be wounded and to wound the many, who have formed worse opinions of us from what they themselves suffer. Knowing this, then, pray with us and accept our decision; and it may not be worse to add: and shape it toward piety.

… you agreed many times to respect. See, this hand presents him to you, the hand that offers sacrifice, bloodless sacrifice, and that has written many praises of you and will write, I know, still more, if God prolongs your office, I mean yours and that of your fellow worker Themis. [Letter 141. To the same] Again it is a time for kindness, and again I am bold, entrusting to a letter an appeal about so great a matter. For my sickness makes me bold, since it does not allow me to go out; for it would not make my entrance seemly. What, then, is my intercession? Receive it from me gently and humanely. Terrible is the death even of a man (how could it not be?), who is today and tomorrow will not be, and will not return to us. But much more terrible for a city to die, which kings founded, ages built up, and a long succession preserved. My plea is for Diocaesarea, once a city and now no city, unless you nod in mercy. Imagine that she falls at your feet through us; let her have a voice, let her put on mourning, and let her shear her locks, as in a drama, and say these words to you: “Give me a hand as I lie on the ground; help me in my weakness. Do not join with time in attacking me, nor destroy the remnants left by the Persians. It befits you better to raise up cities than to destroy those that are worn out. Become a founder of cities, either by adding something to those that exist, or by preserving

the one that exists. Do not allow it to be a city until your term of office and then no longer after you; nor to give time a wretched story, that you received it numbered among cities and left an uninhabited place, the one-time city known only by mountains and cliffs and woods.” Let the city of our fiction do and say these things to your kindness. But receive our advice as from friends: be willing to correct those who have sinned against the command of your authority. For on their behalf we are not at all confident, even if they say the rash act was not a common decision but the unreasoning impulse of some youths. But forgive the greater part of your anger, and use a larger reasoning. They grieved exceedingly for their mother being put to death; they could not bear to be called citizens and be without a city; they went mad, broke the law, despaired of their own safety; the strangeness of their suffering drove them out of their minds. Must the city, then, for this reason not even be a city? By no means, my admirable friend; do not write this. But honour all who supplicate: citizens, councillors, and men of rank; for imagine that the misfortune touches all alike, even if they keep quiet before the greatness of your authority, groaning as it were under water. Honour also our grey hair, for whom it is terrible if, having once had the great city, we should now not even have a city, and if after your term of office the church we built for God, and our loving care for it, should become a lair of wild beasts. For it is not this that is terrible, that statues will be thrown down, even if it is terrible in other ways (and do not think that we, whose zeal is for better things, are speaking about these), but that an ancient city, which has produced something brilliant, will be thrown down along with them, while we are alive and looking on, we who are honoured by you and are thought to have some influence. So much, then, about these things.

… to the authorities. But this your magnanimity must know about those who have fallen at your feet: that they are utterly wretched and cast off, and shared in no disorder with those who sinned, as many of those then present assure us. In view of this, consider whatever you think advantageous, both for your glory here and for your hopes there; we will bear what is decided, not without grief, but we will bear it. For what else could we do? But if the worse prevails, we will be grieved, and shed a tear over the city that once was. [Letter 142. To the same] Even if my longing for your company is warm …, yet the need of those who ask is great … . Therefore I have dared to entrust this intercession to a letter. Respect … , as you have already done, rightly and often; and respect this sickness, to which perhaps our sweat for God has contributed some part, if I must boast a little. And therefore spare the councillors, who look to us and to our freedom of speech with you. Spare also the others, … to our care. For no harm comes to affairs from kindness, since you accomplish more by fear than by punishments. And in return for this may it be yours to find such a judge as you yourself are to those who ask, and to us who intercede.

… toward pity as having first received kindness. This has happened to me too: I have learned sympathy from what I suffered. And you see our magnanimity: needing your gentleness myself in my own affairs, I intercede for others, and am not afraid of spending your kindness on the affairs of others. I write this on behalf of the presbyter Leontius, or rather the one-time presbyter. As for what he has suffered for what he did, let us stop there, lest the excess become … But if anything is still owed to the punishment, and the disgrace has not yet been made equal to his sins, grant this to us, and to God, and to the altar, and to the common assembly of the priests, among whom he was once numbered, even if he has now shown himself unworthy by what he did and by what he suffered. If, then, we persuade you, that is best; if not, we bring you a more venerable intercessor, the partner of your office and of your …

… to pass over what lies between, so as not to ratify the bill of divorce, which is altogether displeasing to our laws, even if those of the Romans judge otherwise. For justice must be preserved, which we pray that you too may always speak and do. [Letter 145. To Verianus] Executioners do nothing terrible, for they serve the laws; nor is the sword with which we punish the wicked unlawful. But still the executioner is not praised, nor is the murderous sword welcomed. So neither do we endure becoming hateful by having the bill of divorce confirmed by our hand and tongue. For it is better to be mediators of union and friendship than of separation and the dissolution of life together. This, it seems to me, the most admirable governor also had in mind when he entrusted to us the questioning of your daughter, as men who could not come to the dissolution abruptly or without feeling. For he plainly appointed me not as an official but as a bishop, and made me the mediator in your misfortune. I beg you, then, to grant something to my timidity; and if the better course prevails, use us as servants of your will, and we rejoice to be given such commands; but if the worse and more sinister, things we have never undertaken to this day, look for someone else more suited to them. I have no leisure, in order to gratify your friendship (even though I know you to be the most honoured of all by me), to offend God, to whom I give account of every movement and thought. Your daughter we shall believe (the truth shall be told) when she can escape her respect for you and speak the truth freely. As things are now, her plight is pitiable; for she divides her words to you and her tears to her husband.

This is what I said, as if by some prophecy, when I was obtaining your favour in everything and filling myself insatiably with your gentleness: that I feared I might exhaust your kindness on the affairs of others. For see, the contest is my own (if indeed what concerns my own people is mine), and I do not speak with equal freedom. First, because it is my own; for to ask for oneself, even if more useful, is more humbling. Then, I suspect satiety, as something that dissolves what is sweet and opposes everything good. So it stands, and I guess very rightly. Yet trusting in God, before whom I stand, and in your magnanimity in doing good, I have dared this supplication.

… judging today, but also by virtue and vice; which governors who are virtuous and excellent like you must care for more than for each single case. And for this you will have from us not only our prayers, which I know you do not despise as most men do, but also our making your term of office renowned among all to whom we are known. [Letter 147. To Asterius] What is more just than God? Yet, though he is maker and master of all, he makes Israel his chosen people and calls it so, and is not ashamed, nor is he thought unjust on this account. What wonder, then, if we too, who care for all under our hand and protection, hold more closely to our son Nicobulus, whom we know as the nurse of our old age and sickness, and have taken as a support and staff of our weakness? We place him under your hands, and through yours under the governor's, thinking it very terrible that we should free others from the greatest charges through our intercession, and first of all those who are now his bitter accusers, but should not be able to free him even from harassment; and that the honour we obtain among strangers we should not obtain for our own, but should be like the eyes, which see other things but do not see themselves, or like springs lying deep, which do not flow to what is near but water what is far away. Let terrible things have been dared by the boys, or even worse than terrible; though perhaps nothing, or little, will be found, unless we are hurried by the time allowed for the inquiry. But what has this to do with their masters, who shared in none of what happened? Or what reason is there to exact a penalty from some for the sins of others, and to care now for public affairs when one's own grieves us?

“What is this?” you will perhaps say. “Gregory again? Letters again? Requests again?” O the insatiability we have stirred up … ! By no means, my admirable friend, do not feel so. For whose are harbours, if not the storm-tossed? Whose are medicines, if not the sick? May we not be deprived of them, and the less so as we are believed to have influence with you. For we no longer ask but demand, since one favour always calls forth another. Nicobulus is being harassed, which is the same as saying that we are; for he is our rest. And how is it possible to keep silent and not be tiresome, even for one who is very much a philosopher? Give a hand to the oppressed, so that you too may obtain the hand that comes from God, since as a man you need it. And use all your friendship and understanding and power, with God, for our affairs. For neither does steel struck on flint need many blows for the fire within to come out; it is struck, and at once the fire flashes. Nor will you need a longer appeal, especially on our behalf, and when the one persuading you is such a man, so genuine a partner of your office. I will say one short thing: other favours others received through us, but this one we need for ourselves, which should move your Eloquence the more. [Letter 149. To George]

… , this I have wondered at. Do not, then, take what has happened lightly, but come yourself and set the matter before us. Let the deacon be present too, both to answer the charge and to receive a ruling about the life of the man who was injured. For we will not tolerate such indecency being dared almost before our eyes. [Letter 150. To Asterius] I rejoice both to write and to be reproached for not writing, if that ever happens; for even your reproaches are kind. And yet I know that I have often written about many things, and have obtained what I asked of you. If nothing else, the number of those who have been helped bears witness to my letters. If you are more generous in friendship than one could pray for, I am more timid in making requests. Keep the first place in virtue; but forgive me for avoiding being tiresome, since the wise man's saying knows that “measure is best in all things.” But thanks be to God, who has entrusted you with doing good, so setting over us a common benefactor and fellow governor. For now too I entrust to you by this letter our brother and fellow deacon George, a man exceptional in our eyes and most useful to the Church, asking that he may be confident in his disputes with certain persons and not be swept away by tyranny. [Letter 151. To Nectarius] Many rightly guess your mind; or rather they do not guess, but do not disbelieve us when we pride ourselves

that you count us worthy of no small respect and honour. One of these is our most honoured son George, who, having fallen into many losses and being in great difficulty in his affairs, finds one harbour of safety: to be brought to you through us and obtain some kindness from the most honoured of your household, the Count. Grant the favour, then, if you wish, to him and to his need; if you wish, to us, for whom … I know is known to you, and you persuade us of it by the facts themselves. [Letter 152. To Theodore] It is time for me to say the word of Scripture: To whom shall I cry when I am wronged? Who will stretch out a hand to me … ? To whom will the burden of the Church pass, in so bad a state and broken up? I testify before God and the elect angels that the flock of God suffers unjustly, being without shepherd and oversight because of our deadness. For sickness holds me; it took me away from the Church too soon, and now makes me wholly useless, always breathing my last and further crushed by affairs. If the province had any other head, I should cry out and testify to him. But since your Reverence is set over us, I must look to you. Take thought for your Church in whatever way you wish, and do not let it act on its own … . For, to leave other things aside, what the Apollinarians who have now come in have done in part and threaten in part, you will learn from my lords and fellow presbyters, Eulalius the chorepiscopus and Celeusius, whom we have sent to your Reverence for this very purpose. And to check these things belongs not to our age and weakness,

but to your sagacity and power, since God has given you, among other things, strength for the common protection of the Church. But if, saying and writing these things, I am not heard, the only thing left will be done: to proclaim publicly to all and make it known that the Church needs a bishop, so that it may not be harmed by our sickness. What follows you will know. [Letter 153. To Bosporius, bishop of Colonia] Twice now I have been tripped up by you and deceived (you know what I mean); and if justly, may the Lord smell from you an odour of sweet savour; if unjustly, may the Lord forgive. For so it is reasonable for me to speak of you, since we are commanded to bear it even when we are wronged. But as you are masters of your own opinion, so am I of mine. The burdensome Gregory will no longer be a burden to you. I will withdraw to God, who alone is pure and without guile. I will draw into myself. This is what I have resolved. For to stumble twice on the same stone the proverb allows only to fools. [Letter 154. To Olympius] You are our governor even after your term of office (for we judge things otherwise than the many), since you have gathered every virtue of a governor in yourself. For many who sit on high thrones are low in my eyes, all those whom their hand makes humble and slaves of those they govern; and many are high and lofty even if they stand below, all whom virtue sets on high and makes worthy of greater offices.

But what are these things to me? The great Olympius is no longer with us, nor does he hold our helm. We are gone, betrayed; we have become Second Cappadocia again, having been made first through you. Why should I speak of the affairs of others? But who will care for the old age of your Gregory, treat his weakness with honours, and make the man more honoured who obtained your kindness for many? Now, then, may you go your way with … and a nobler escort, leaving us many tears, and taking from us great wealth, such as not many governors have: good repute, and being inscribed in the souls of all, as on monuments not easily moved. And if you should be set over us again, with a greater and more brilliant office (for our longing prophesies this), we will surely offer more perfect thanksgivings to God. [Letter 155. To Asterius]

[Letter 156. To the same] Great among men was Heracles, as the story goes (to remind you, learned as you are, of something of your own); but he would not have been so great had he not had Iolaus fighting at his side, especially against the Hydra, that bitter and many-headed beast, whose heads the one cut off and the other seared, as you both do with the heads of wickedness. The sons of Actor outstripped many with their chariots, as Homer thinks; for they were twins in body and in skill, one taking the reins and the other the whip, and contributing victory to each other. A helmsman brings many sailors safely through; but he would not do so equally without the help of a good lookout at the prow, who watches the winds, points out the hidden rocks, and becomes as it were the eye of the ship. Such is your part for us. For you make the governor, brilliant in himself, more brilliant by your cooperation; and while we praise you both for many things, we admire this most, that while keeping such goodwill toward public affairs you give room also to friendship, not showing your exactness by harshness of character, like many who lack measure, but rather taming the severity of office by gentleness. [Letter 157. To Theodore] Spiritual affairs have reached their end; I will no longer go on troubling you. Meet together, consult, deliberate against us. Let those who hate us win; let the canons be strictly kept, beginning

with us, the most unlearned. There is no grudge against exactness; but let friendship not be hindered. The sons of our most honoured son Nicobulus have come to the city to learn shorthand. Be willing to look on them, among other things, as your own and as a father would (for the canons do not forbid this either), and see that they lodge near the church. For I want them to have their character too shaped toward virtue by being constantly with your Perfection. [Letter 158. To Eulalius]

… virgin, respecting her faithfulness and helping her in her bodily weakness, and therefore stretching out your hand and caring for her in everything, you will do something generous and worthy of your Reverence, and, I will add, of our friendship. You and we both want this: that justice be done to our daughter Eugenia by your Reverence, and that you do not overlook her being wronged by her heirs. And she would be wronged, it seems to me, if she were deprived of any of what was left to her nursling by the nurse whom she brought up with every care, and who left her little in place of the much she had promised and hoped for. [Letter 160. To the same] What I thought just I have written. If anything else, and not this, has occurred to you (for I am persuaded it has occurred to you rightly), we will accept that too. Otherwise we would be wronging and transgressing against piety itself, bringing to you, as one who judges justly, those who come to us, but no longer abiding by what you judge; which it is the custom of very wretched people to do toward many … more uneducated

us, as men who take over a case that is no concern of ours, let him persuade us of this, and we will acquiesce. But now I fear it is not so. For, in the first place, the things of Christ are not divided, nor is Christ; nor does kindness have boundaries. And even if one were to suppose them divided, I know two who are burdened in this matter, your Reverence and ourselves, if justice should be overlooked; for those being judged are under the care of both. And there is fear that the truth may be swept away by the plausibility of arguments. For this reason, judge with me, and judge before me, and fight for our weakness, so that we may not be forced, with our body in such a state, to contend more hotly for the truth, with God and with the help of your prayers.

…; and, to put it briefly, the oath for us is the assurance given by the one who asked and was satisfied. Nor is it enough to claim to have been forced, as an excuse (for the force was the law that bound him); nor to prevail later in court; for going to law at all is perjury. This we persuaded our brother George too: not to make excuses for sins, nor to invent arguments as advocates for the offence, but to acknowledge the oath that was written down, and to weep before God and your Reverence over the sin, even if before he thought otherwise, deceiving himself. These things, then, we discussed with the man ourselves; and you, plainly, discussing them more carefully, will bring him to further compunction, as a great physician of souls; and, treating him with the canon for as long as seems good, you will then add the kindness of shortening the time. The measure of the time is the measure of the compunction.

… has an end. We have yielded to envy; we live as philosophers in quiet with God; we keep company with ourselves in our prayers; we have been freed from the tossing and tumult in the midst of things. But do you play the man for us and be strong, and contend for the Trinity as far as you can. And let the meek man be a fighter, as you saw us doing; for I do not want monkeys to be well thought of while lions keep quiet. And pray much for us, who are very weary, that we may have a peaceful departure, being already inclined toward it. [Letter 165. To the same] I hear that you are bearing your suffering unphilosophically, and I did not approve; for one must write the truth, especially to a friend and a man who lays claim to nobility of character. For I hold, as I persuade myself, very rightly on these matters. I praise neither utter insensibility nor excessive emotion; the one is inhuman, the other unphilosophical. One must walk the middle way, appearing more philosophical than those who are quite uncontrolled, and more human than those who philosophize beyond measure. If I were writing to someone else, perhaps I would need longer words, and would have partly to sympathize, partly to exhort, and perhaps partly to rebuke. For to share the grief is enough for consolation, and the sick man needs treatment from one who is well. But since I am addressing an educated man, it is enough to say this: become yourself again, and the man of the books you have lived with, in which there are many lives, many characters, many pleasures and smooth times, and many, as is natural, misfortunes and rough times. God weaves these together, it seems to me, so that neither what grieves may be without healing nor what gladdens without discipline, and so that, seeing the instability and unevenness in these things, we may look to him alone. These things, then, we apply to your suffering as a rule and a measure. If you know of anyone who was praised among those who gave way excessively to grief, or who achieved anything by grieving, make use of your grief and enjoy your mourning (no one grudges misfortune its lament);

but if such a man is blamed and censured, then the proverb says, “He who wounded will heal,” but now it is right to say, “he who was wounded.” For us it is shameful in other respects too, and against our law, to imitate the many in such things; since the Word makes us higher than present things, and persuades us to run past them as shadows and riddles, and to consider neither what grieves nor what gladdens to be truth, but to live elsewhere and look there, and to know vice as the only grievous thing, and virtue and intimacy with God as the only sweet one. Sing these things as a charm over yourself, and you will be easier; or rather, I know that you have already sung them and will sing them, even if we do not write.

…, in which, if we are not found too ignorant or unmanly, …, many may put us to the test. [Letter 167. To Helladius] See, here is a reminder of our friendship for you: our sweetest son Nicobulus, the first of those in our family for whom we take pains. You will do us a favour by introducing him to the more serious teachers; you will do us a greater one by shaping his character toward virtue. This will happen if he is urged to be often near you, and, most of all, if he knows that he is not overlooked; for the eye of an educator is a silent teaching. You owe us, if it is not tiresome to say so, both spiritual things, as a high priest to high priests, and literary things, as a man of letters to lovers of letters.

… , and of the common harbour of all who fear the Lord. Others enjoy your good things; to me only the memory is left, and envy of those who share them. So that you too may share in our good things, I introduce to you our most honoured brother and fellow presbyter Sacerdos; when you see him, I know you will say, “Gregory truly is a lover of all that is good.” [Letter 170. To Palladius] That I often dare to write is due not to our boldness but to your gentleness. For we have no surfeit of conversing with you by letter, since we cannot do so otherwise, God having so ordered our affairs. To our most honoured son and fellow presbyter Sacerdos (whom we have loved, and love, exceptionally), who lives as a true philosopher and is united to God by his way of life, and who has set out on behalf of his own people for the city made great by you, I do not know what greater favour we could do than to make him known to your goodness. [Letter 171. To Amphilochius] Having scarcely recovered from the pains of our sickness, we have run to you, the agent of our healing. For the tongue of a priest that speaks wisely of the Lord raises up the sick. Do, then, the better thing in your priestly ministry, and loose the greatness of our sins, as you lay hold of the sacrifice of the resurrection. For waking and sleeping your affairs are on my mind; you have become for us a good plectrum and a harmonious lyre, and have made your dwelling in our souls; by writing countless times you have trained our souls toward knowledge. But, most God-fearing one, do not hesitate to pray and intercede for us, when by a word you draw down the Word, when with a bloodless cutting you sever the Lord's body and blood, having your voice for a sword.

[Letter 172. To Helladius] I was pleased with your letter; how could I not be, that you remember even the dead? And since tokens of the feast came with it, the favour is greater. But add to what you give what you ask for: pray for us, if it is profitable, that we may again be reminded of the feast and remind others; if not, that we may be transferred there and receive, or see, the true feast, where is the dwelling of all who rejoice. For we have had our fill of the twists and turns of life. [Letter 173. To Postumianus]

… authority, receiving it not as a gift of fortune, as most would say, but as a prize of virtue, so that the office too may become more honoured and the emperor be praised for his judgment of you. Even these things are small; I will add something of ours too. You were first initiated into piety, and then you received office. For I remember your words, and the wonder of them still rings in my ears. If to these you add remembering your friends too (and you will, I know; I judge this from the past), we shall admire you the more. This is the limit of human happiness, or rather blessedness. That what lies beyond Gades cannot be crossed by men, we believe Pindar when he philosophizes. And since, having obtained great things, you are a debtor for great things, and God first made you ours and then, doing us good, set you over us, and since at the same time it is absurd not to ask the greatest things of so great a man, accept this advice from me. Think nothing so befits your office (since again a synod of bishops is gathering, I do not know why or how) as that the Churches should be brought to peace under you and through you, even if you must rebuke the factious more severely. If I seem to anyone superfluous, having withdrawn from affairs but not laid down my care, do not you wonder at it. For we did not yield piety, as we did thrones and arrogance, to those who wanted them; but now we are the more to be trusted, as I think you too think, since we serve nothing of our own but only the common good.

… as you see. And I would not have adorned my style, be well assured (for it is not my way), if I did not set great store by your friendship, and if it did not seem necessary to rouse you to write, like a colt at the starting line. You would be spurred to it most if you considered who I am, to whom I write, and whose son you are, and that sons should inherit their father's friendship as well as his property. Besides, it is well to reckon this too: that you are in your prime as a philosopher, while we are fathers of philosophers, and you must show your virtue to us, as noble athletes do to their trainers. Let me say something greater than what has been said. Not small are the hostages of philosophy we have with you: you are educating our blood, the blood of our nearest kin. You know whom I mean: the sons of our most genuine and most honoured son Nicobulus. Whenever you help them, think that you are remembering us, who are inferior to no one else, if one must believe those who say so, at judging speeches, testing diligence, and making good teachers more distinguished by our praises.

… we who do not put much before you and your learning. What shall we say has happened to you regarding us, my admirable friend? What is the reason you do not write? We will not accuse you of contempt, nor of idleness, nor of having nothing to write. It is not like you to suffer such things. Are you perhaps bearing a grudge over the iambics which that wretched Valentinus spat at you, and that with your consent? For it was not the part of a rhetor and a clever man to retaliate, when someone had first dared to write such iambics. But, “Achilles, tame your proud anger” … , and move your pen again for us, your ash spear; do not seem, having suffered small things, to respond with greater, in the episcopal manner. Ride, hunt, walk as you please; for my part we will write nothing more, nor jest. And enough of this; so highly do we value your friendship. So much for jesting, and so far. But what is no longer for jesters but for those very much in earnest: we again entrust to you our sweetest son Nicobulus. Receive him from us as from us, granting the work of rhetoric to his father and that of the sophist to us. For I know that for you … . To the admirable sophists you will leave only the frown and the fight over the bigger fee. How do things stand with your virtue? And have you made any progress in the things of God? which we think befits you more than anything.

For these are the things we like to ask about and to hear; the rest let us bid farewell, however it may be. And yet, even if we wished these other things too to go well, we would wish it for one reason only: that you may have things to despise, and may philosophize the more over greater things. Receive these greetings from us, and be to the good Nicobulus such as we hope. If we ask more, satisfy our insatiability, generous as you are. … There was an old law at Athens, and, as I say, a very good one: when the young reached manhood they were led to the crafts, and led in this way. The tools of each craft were set out in public, and the young were brought to them; and whatever each happened to delight in and run to, that craft he was taught; since what is according to nature generally succeeds, and what is against nature fails. What does the story mean for me? I say that you too, being suited for philosophy, should not neglect it, nor accustom yourself to something else that is not your own rather than hold to that toward which you incline, not only because it is the best, but because it is more natural to you. Not to force the stream of a river the proverb too teaches, and poetry, that one who knows horsemanship should not wish to sing; lest something happen, lest you fail both in horsemanship and in

But what is this suitability? As it appeared to me on consideration: first, your character, the calm and artless quality of your disposition, unsuited to these twists of life. Then the good nature and loftiness of your soul, and its readiness for contemplation. Third, your care of the sick and your bodily weakness; since this too seems to Plato no small help toward philosophy. And you are of such an age that the passions are already declining. And you seem to me not to be bent by poverty but rather to take pride in it. And you know how to feel shame, which is not like the rhetors. Nor is your voice foul, nor have you become wicked, nor are you a man of the marketplace, nor have you, to put it briefly, any of those marks by which Democritus, better at demagoguery than Aristophanes, portrays the market man. But though you are called a rhetor, you belong to the rhetors in everything rather than in character. Do not, then, be willing to throw away as much philosophy as you have already gained, nor hold the second place in second things rather than the first in the greatest. And even if we granted you the first place here, do not consent to be best among jackdaws when you could be an eagle. How long shall we be puffed up by small things that creep on the ground, and play among youngsters and fictions, and be carried away by applause? Let us move away from here; let us become men; let us throw away dreams, run past shadows, and leave to others the pleasures of life, which are more painful. Let envy and time and fortune manage others, toss them about and play with them. Let what they call the instability and unevenness of human affairs go to perdition: thrones, dominions, riches, splendours, exaltations, falls, this cheap and contemptible little glory, by which

one would be more disgraced in being exalted than in being laughed at: the toys and shows of this great stage. But let us lay hold of the Word, and choose to have God in place of everything, the only lasting good and truly ours, so that we may have good repute here too, for those who are still small and seek it, or at any rate that from there; since the prize of virtue is to become god, and to be illumined with the purest light, the light contemplated in the threefold Monad, whose rays we now have in measure. Toward this go, advance, take wing in your mind, lay hold of eternal life, stop nowhere in your hopes until you come to the highest object of desire and blessedness; and you will praise us, I know well, a little now, and a little later more abundantly, when you see yourself in what we promise, and find these things to be not an empty fancy nor fictions of the mind, but the truth of realities.

“You are of a good father, dear child,” from what I hear about you. Only be lifted up, and prosper, and reign; and we will speak well of you, even if you do not yet profess philosophy. For we attend not so much to what you say as to what you do; since this very refusal to profess philosophy is very philosophical, as Dionysius the critic says of Lysias the orator, that his artlessness was very artful. [Letter 181. To Saturninus] Even if the height of your office is unapproachable, friendship is kind, and through it we have dared to bring you this request. To all the benefits you have done us add this too: be pleased to look kindly on our most learned son …, a man worthy of your virtue in life and in speech, and to grant him your protection in whatever he needs from your goodness. We will repay with prayers, the only way we can repay our benefactors.

…, nor are they so hostile toward us. But having asked much because of my own deadness, and at the same time fearing the burden of the Church being neglected, I asked of them this favour, which is not contrary to the canons and gives us relief: that a shepherd be given to the Church; and he has been given through your prayers, one worthy of your piety. Him I also place in your hands, the most venerable Eulalius, the most God-beloved bishop, in whose hands may I breathe my last. If anyone thinks that another must not be ordained while a bishop is living, let him know that he has no hold on us here. For it is plain to all that we were appointed not for Nazianzus but for Sasima, even if for a short time, out of respect for our father and for those who begged us, we accepted the presidency as strangers.

… of meeting, and much thanks to the one who granted it. As for writing to the other bishops about whom you wrote, I will leave it aside, for it is not yet the time. And at the same time my sickness makes me more hesitant about it; but what we write to you we write to them too, through you. Let my lord the most God-beloved bishop Helladius stop meddling in our affairs. For he investigates these things not with a spiritual but with a contentious purpose, not for exactness in the canons but to satisfy his anger, as is clear from the timing and from many who have been stirred up along with him without reason; for one must speak so and not give offence. For if I had been in such bodily health as to be able to preside over the Church of Nazianzus, for which I was proclaimed at the beginning, and not for Sasima, as some wrongly persuade you, I would not have been so wretched, nor so ignorant of the divine ordinances, as either to neglect the Church or to pursue the ease of life rather than the rewards laid up for those who labour for God and work with the talent entrusted to them. For what would be the profit of my many labours and great hopes if I took bad counsel about the greatest things? But since my body is in a bad state, as is plain to all, and I feared no burden from this withdrawal for the reason I have given, and I saw that the Church was clinging to us but was being harmed in vital matters and almost dissolved by my own dissolution, I asked my lords the most God-beloved bishops, I mean those of my own country, both before and now, to give the Church a head; and with God they have given one, worthy both of my desire and of your prayers. Know this yourself, then, most honoured lord, and teach the other bishops to accept and confirm it with their votes, and not to burden our old age by believing slanders. And let this also be added to the

letter: as for my lord the most God-beloved fellow minister Bosporius, if your inquiry finds anything wrong concerning his faith, which it is not even lawful to say (I pass over his long years and our testimony), judge it yourselves. But if the dispute over the parishes is manufacturing the charge of false doctrine, and the charge is new, do not be swept away by slanders, nor make them stronger than the truth, I beg you, lest you bring into despondency many who have chosen to do well. In health, in good cheer, and advancing in the things of God, may you be granted to us and to the Church, our common pride. [Letter 184. To Amphilochius] …

[Letter 185. To Nectarius] When others praise one or another of your qualities, and all, as in the marketplace, put forward your praises, I contribute what concerns me, and it is no less than any: that you deign to honour us and, like a beloved child, to console a father's old age. Therefore now too I have dared to bring this request on behalf of the most venerable and most God-beloved bishop Bosporius, ashamed that so great a man should need our letters, whose venerableness both his way of life and his years confirm; but no less ashamed to keep silent and say nothing on his behalf, when I have a voice, honour the faith, and know the man best of all. The dispute about the parishes you will no doubt settle yourself, according to the grace of the Spirit in you and the order of the canons. But let this not seem tolerable to your Reverence: that our affairs should be pilloried in the public courts. For even if the judges of such cases are Christians, as by God's kindness they are, what has the sword in common with the Spirit? And even if we grant this, how or where is it just for the question of the faith to be entangled with other disputes? Is the most God-beloved bishop Bosporius heterodox to us today? Are the grey hairs weighed in the balance today of a man who has brought back so many from error, given such proof of orthodoxy, and is the teacher of us all? No, I beg you, give no room to such slanders; but, if possible, reconcile what is divided, and let this be added to your praises; and if not, at least do not allow all of us to be insulted through such abuse, with whom he has lived and grown old, and whom you know to be exact heralds of the Godhead, in

danger and out of danger, who will not endure to take anything away from the one inaccessible Godhead. And pray for us, I beg you, who suffer greatly from sickness. I and all who are with me greet the brotherhood with you. In health, in good cheer, and of good repute in the Lord, may you be granted to us and to the Churches as their common support. … What would you have done if I myself had been present … ? Plainly you would have taken every care to free us from the harassment, if one must judge from the past. Grant us this now too through our most modest niece, who falls at your feet through us; respecting the age of the suppliant, respecting her character and her piety, which is not like that of most women; respecting, besides the rest, the woman's quiet life, and that she now has trouble from her own relatives; and above all respecting our request. The greater favour is the speed of the benefit we ask. For even the unjust judge in the Gospel granted the widow his kindness, but after much supplication and persistence. From you let there be speed, so that she may not suffer long from cares and hardships in a foreign land; even though I know very well that your piety will make even the foreign land her own.

… your words owed him a funeral speech, you whose art is speaking and writing. So much for the reproof; for those who reproach in friendship must not do so beyond the bounds of friendship. What you write about our sweetest son Nicobulus is very great and wonderful, enough to carry away a father's easy temper, which readily believes what it wishes. But we will accept it as true when the young man, giving us proof, is found not unworthy either of your promises or of our hopes. [Letter 188. To Stagirius] You are Attic in your learning? We are Attic too. You preside over the young? We over every age. You shape them for speaking? We for character. Many things are common to us; but one, in place of all and before all, our sweetest son Nicobulus, lies between us. By doing well by him you will show both your learning and our friendship, if you care about it. I think you do; for old athletes are honoured by young ones, so much so that in offering them the prizes of victory they are thought fair-minded about the laws of the contest.

… having imposed on ourselves the riskless prize. [Letter 190. To the same] “O Odysseus, how sorely you have struck me,” reproaching me with Stagirism, and … us most carefully. I praise your frankness in writing what you write; for it is better to speak out what grieves than to keep quiet as if we would not know. I too have a charge to bring. But so that I may keep the law of the courts, I will first make my defence, then accuse; and both with equal goodwill. My Nicobulus went to the good Stagirius, not at all by our wish (do not suppose that; I am not so forgetful either of Athens or of your friendship and companionship); but he set out of his own accord, his father so wishing; and he was entrusted to him by me through letters. What is unfriendly or inhuman in this? Now that you have the defence, receive the accusation too.

since it has become the custom to call fellow craftsmen rival craftsmen. For how long will this go on? And where shall we stop this sophistic abuse? Until what happens? Until death cuts us off from our wickedness? For a young man, overcome by ambition and seeking gain, to do these things, and moderately at that, has some excuse (for I will play Demosthenes a little for your sake); but at this age, and in this way, to butt and be butted like rams is altogether untimely and quarrelsome, not only because it is unseemly and quite illiberal, but also because the thing is so very easy: “Whatever word you speak, such will you hear in return,” like a stream flowing back (for I will use Homer again). … What wisdom is it, when one can be first in virtue, to be beaten by vice, or even to win, which is much worse? But I blame the judges too (the truth shall be told), because what they punish when they judge they praise when they listen. And not only that, but they also have many who join in the praise, who fan the vice and are so far divided by their partisanship. Whereas, if the charge is disbelieved, it ought not to be applauded; and if it is believed, it ought to be tried in public; or rather, if it is false, the accusers should be refuted, and if true, those against whom it is made; and not so lightly make sport of the greatest thing, the good name of the well-born. If, then, you will listen to me at all (for I am speaking to both of you), give up such speeches and censures, if for no other reason, out of respect for your grey hair, or out of weariness with such shameful things. Consider honouring the old advice that bids us practise virtue when we have enough to live on. You will not be plotting against yourselves, but you will be plotting against the hopes of the young,

who would surely suffer the most terrible harm if, while practising oratory, they learned vice, and that not without paying for it, as having you for teachers not of virtue but of vice. If I seem tiresome to you in writing this, … me in kind by giving me some useful advice yourself, so that you may either benefit me if I obey or accuse me if I resist. For example: I did not know what a boorish and uneducated man I was admonishing for his folly, a sophist; nor did I learn from the common proverb that a bald man should not doze in front of a ram, nor stir up a wasps' nest against himself, a tongue all too ready for abuse. This does not much vex me (for I have been added to many, as I hear, and, if you live, I shall have many after me); but rather that I was not trusted to do it out of friendship. However, may you be healthy in body and soul, and restrain your tongue if you can; but for now we will be content with our part.

… you will wrong him. For we shall have given him offence and gained nothing more from you. But if you grant as much as we hope, you will show yourself fair, and both will go as well as possible for us: to him we will make our defence, and you we will praise. And if you allow us to give you fatherly advice, do not spit out the counsel from your habit of ruling; accept the word of a man not ignorant of such things. Lay down at last your weapons, your slings, and your more terrible spears, your tongues, with which you shoot at and wound one another, and that before your admiring students. And lay them down all the more because this weapon is readier to hand than the others, so that you may not be guides to vice rather than to virtue for the young, if not by words, then by deeds. For what one enjoys when it happens, he recommends even in silence. If you do this, you will benefit yourselves, have us as friends, and not belie the hopes of those who have trusted you. This is your reward for your labours over Nicobulus. If we receive fuller proof, we will repay you with fuller praise than this.

… to become best in every way and according to our common … . [Letter 194. To the same] See, here is a second son-in-law for you, and you are laying down your sweet burden, and doing well. We are idle, as you might say yourself; but, to tell the true story, we are weak, not idle. But things from God are well with us. For we have yielded the tumults to others, and we shall enjoy philosophy with you when you withdraw to God and belong wholly to the things above, held by no bond. And now we contribute to the wedding our prayers, which are the finest gift we ought to bring.

And so that you may know how much I trust your goodness, see, I bring you an intercession very necessary to us, and I ask of your friendship what belongs to friends. I entrust to you from my own right hand my Nicobulus with his brothers, not to pay a penalty but to receive justice; and their mother, widowed before her time; and a house once brilliant and admired, while our great Nicobulus was alive, but now not even allowed to mourn, because of the evils that have already appeared and those that are expected, unless you and your justice stand by them against the evil demon, and honour us, and respect human feeling, and make your office brilliant for yourself by your kindness to us.

… and those oaths which they took at the inquiry, they are now again trying to harass the orphans. [Letter 197. To Gregory of Nyssa] I had set out to you in all haste and had come as far as Euphemias, when I was held back by the synod you are holding for the holy martyrs, since I could not take part in it because of my sickness, and would otherwise have been burdensome by coming at the wrong time. I set out both to visit you after so long, and to admire your endurance and the philosophy you show (for I hear of it) at the departure of your holy and blessed sister, as a good and perfect man, who stands before God and knows better than anyone things divine and human; judging what is heaviest to others in such cases to be the lightest: to have lived with such a woman, and to have sent her on ahead and laid her up in the safe dwellings, “like a heap of the threshing floor gathered in its season,” to use the words of divine Scripture; having shared the delights of life and escaped its sorrows by the measure of her years, and, before having to mourn for you, honoured by you with the fair funeral owed to such women. I too, be well assured, long for my departure, if not with you (that is too much to say), at least right after you. But what must one feel before God's law, which has long prevailed, and which has taken my Theosebia (for I call her mine who lived according to God, since spiritual kinship is better than bodily): Theosebia, the boast of the Church, the ornament of Christ, the benefit of our generation, the freedom of speech of women; Theosebia, amid such great

beauty of the brothers the most comely and the most conspicuous; Theosebia, truly holy, the consort of a priest and of equal honour, and worthy of the great mysteries; Theosebia, whom future time too will receive, set up on immortal pillars, the souls of all who know her now and of all who will come after? And do not wonder if I name her often; for I delight even in the memory of the blessed one. This, then, is from us both a funeral speech for her, much in little, and a word of consolation for you, though you are able to console others in such things through your philosophy in all things. Our meeting (since we long for that too) we have been deprived of for now, for the reason I gave. We pray together for ourselves, as long as we are still above ground, that the common end, to which we draw near, may not part us. Therefore we must bear everything, as men who will neither rejoice nor grieve much longer. [Letter 198. To Nemesius] Some praise Pythagoras of Samos because, when he had to offer a sacrifice (since otherwise he did not approve of sacrificing), he discharged the sacrifice with an ox of clay; for one must not, he said, purify the dead with dead things, meaning bodies. You would do well to imitate him yourself, my admirable friend. Since imposing fines has been forbidden you, and you alone of governors, or with very few, have established among your subjects a fear without penalty, do not fine Valentinian either, who is yours and ours (for we intercede for a relative), but

after pronouncing the fine only so far as to utter it, hold back the penalty. For he is not paying the penalty for his own negligence (if we may make bold to say so). If, then, we persuade you as a judge, that is best; if not, we will take refuge in the friend, and say to your Eloquence what someone is said to have written to his friend: “So-and-so: if he does no wrong, release him for justice's sake; if he does wrong, release him for mine.” But release him in any case, bearing in mind, besides everything else, that the community would gain nothing great from a fine of two horses, while for us the favour will be on record. And let this also be added: help the misfortune of the man, who has been badly crushed by an accident.

… give a hand to his misfortune, which you yourself will examine. For your office needs no addition to its good repute, any more than the morning star needs brightness; but if you seek some addition, none could be greater or more brilliant than this, be well assured, as many who wish to speak the truth will tell your goodness. [Letter 200. To the same] You were making even your office philosophy for us, and I know you will continue to do so, if God cares for our affairs. Yet it would have been best to be with you now, when you have leisure from public affairs, as you longed for, and when one may enjoy your understanding in quiet; of which we had only a small share, as much as a lightning flash gives an eye that cannot hold it, and missed the greater part. But this is a great thing to pray for and not easy to obtain, our body being as it is. If we obtain this too, we shall have everything (for you also owe us some time together, by your promise, about the discourse you left somehow unfinished); if not, we will bear the loss unwillingly. But know that you are with us wherever you may be, and are guided by our prayers. And you remain with us, as long as we breathe, inscribed on hearts more honoured than any pillar, where you have inscribed yourself; and you will inscribe yourself still more when you become God's, and plainly ours, or we yours, if that is sweeter to say. [Letter 201. To the same] What is this? You ran past us without our knowing, and it was not possible to catch you, any more than those can hold the echo who think they have it and are deceived by its answers; or this alone of all things we would have seized by force.

But at least write to us, my admirable friend, and we will have this in place of you: a shadow, as the saying goes, instead of the body. [Letter 202. To Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople]

… they parade …, gathering congregations as though they were doing so by permission. And those of Macedonius's party have gone so far in their folly, in their rivalry, that, even taking for themselves the name of bishops, they swarm over our region, boasting of Eleusius in their ordinations. And our domestic evil, Eunomius, is no longer content merely to exist; unless he drags everyone along with him into his own ruin, he counts it a loss. And these things can be borne. But the hardest of all among the misfortunes of the Church is the boldness of the Apollinarians, whom your Holiness, I do not know how, overlooked when they obtained for themselves the right to hold assemblies on an equal footing with us. You, who have been thoroughly instructed in the divine mysteries in everything by God's grace, know not only the defence of the right doctrine, but also all that the heretics have devised against the sound faith; yet perhaps it is not untimely for your Dignity to hear from our littleness too that a pamphlet of Apollinarius has come into my hands, whose arguments go beyond every heretical wickedness. For he maintains that the flesh which was assumed in the economy by the only-begotten Son for the remaking of our nature was not acquired, but that that fleshly nature was in the Son from the beginning. And, wrongly taking a certain saying of the Gospel as testimony for this absurdity, he leaps on it, saying that “No one has ascended into heaven except the Son of Man who came down from heaven,” as though he were Son of Man even before he came down, and came down bringing with him his own flesh, which he had in heaven, existing before the ages and sharing his essence. For he quotes again a certain saying of the Apostle, torn away from the whole body of the passage: “The second man is from heaven.” Then he argues that that man

who came from above does not have the mind, but that the Godhead of the Only-begotten, filling the place of the nature of the mind, became the third part of the human compound, soul and body being present in him in human fashion, but mind not being present, God the Word filling its place. And this is not yet the terrible thing; but the hardest of all is that he argues that the only-begotten God himself, the judge of all, the author of life, the destroyer of death, is mortal, and received suffering in his own Godhead; and that in that three-day deadness of the body the Godhead too died along with the body, and so was raised again from death by the Father. The other things he adds to such absurdities it would take long to go through. If, then, those who think such things obtain the right to assemble, let your wisdom, approved in Christ, consider that, since we do not agree with what they think, their receiving the right of assembly is nothing else than their being considered truer than our doctrine. For if they are allowed, as men of right belief, to teach what they think and to preach their doctrine openly, it is plain that the doctrine of the Church has been condemned, as though the truth were with them. For two contrary statements about the same thing cannot by nature both be true. How, then, did your great and lofty mind bear not to use its usual freedom of speech to correct so great an evil? But even if this did not happen before, now at least let your Perfection, … in virtue, rise up, and teach the most pious emperor that there will be no gain from all the rest of his zeal for the Churches if such an evil, for the destruction of the sound faith, prevails through their freedom.

“We are driven out of Karbala most unholily,” for I will use the tragic line, changing it a little. We are driven out, not in word at all, but in deed very forcibly. It would have been much better to proclaim our withdrawal by public notice than by means of the women whom you have settled opposite us, cutting away the dignity of our life and yoking to it daily indecency and slander from those who readily abuse people who choose to live as we do. If it is not too bold to say so, you have cast us out of paradise through Eve. It is easy, of course, to find some fair pretext, to satisfy appearances and seem to speak justly: that we are not being driven out by you but honoured, since you wish to be our neighbour; and you will perhaps add that you greet us in a friendly and kinsmanly way and enjoy something of our friendship. But that is word, not deed. For you yourselves, when you visit the place, we both receive and embrace; but before the household rule of women we will withdraw as before the attacks of vipers. Our part is at an end. We have been outwitted, we have drawn in, we have chosen our own dignity, leaving the labours of our hands and our hopes, and making many apologies to the holy martyrs. Surely, even if these things are heavy and hard to bear, still they are borne with philosophy on the road of our life, and are not yet more burdensome than moving from city to city (which we were commanded to bear). May you live in the place longer than those who lived there before you, but more modestly than we expect, so that you neither insult the holy martyrs nor are yourselves struck down for your stay there. Above all, take this precaution: spare what has been consecrated to the martyrs, so that you may not take bad counsel about yourselves and your

But we offer you one thing in place of all, ourselves; and indeed we seek one thing in place of all, you. If, then, you are better and from better stock (we admit it, since this too becomes ours), yet in one thing at least you will not surpass us (it shall be said in God): in faithfulness and sincerity toward kinship; of which those who have sense ought to take more account than of all other things together. This is enough for your Perfection, and perhaps beyond the measure of a letter. For the rest I will pray for myself and for you: may God, by whom these things and all others are ordered for those who love him, put into your minds whatever is best and most advantageous for us and for you alike, especially as you deliberate about such great matters.

… was severely blamed, and the pious father paid the penalty for the lawlessness of his sons. Fearing this example myself, I have come to give you this warning. What has happened to you I do not know. What is this great darkness of a moonless night around you? How can you disgrace your own family, and disgrace our grey hair, and the hopes we had in you when we stayed at Nauila, speaking of every good thing and persuading you, as we thought? How do you not hear Scripture saying, “Do not give your wealth to women, nor your goods to after-regret”? Know well that you will repent of this a little later, “when the flesh of your body is consumed,” as it is written, and your mind, breaking through as from a cloud, can look to God and reckon clearly what is profitable. … the snare, lest you be caught by the eyes; and if you have been caught, come to your senses, lest you confirm the rumour that your mind has been stolen by drugs; for licentiousness is clever at devising evils. It is grievous to scatter and destroy in so short a time so great a house, gathered with such labours, and especially at the beginning of life, when each man lays the foundation of a good or a bad reputation for himself. But it is much more terrible to commit sacrilege and carry off women who are virgins, whom your parents and you yourself, as you persuaded us, consecrated to God; and to have some already and terrify others as about to suffer the same. Fear God, then, whom you serve, and respect us, and restrain yourself henceforth from every evil purpose. For if you could look out and know the disgrace you have poured on all of us, perhaps you would need no other exhortation, but would make shame itself the counsellor of your actions. I could write more pleasant things than these, but none more profitable. I will refrain from writing more, knowing this, that unless the fear of God disciplines you, words will avail little or nothing; for wax is easily engraved with iron, iron with more labour, and adamant not even by the hardest tool, because of the hardness of its nature.

[Letter 207. To Jacob] If I were in such bodily health as to be equal to the labour, I would have come to you myself, satisfied my longing to meet you, and discussed what I wished; for our concern is not with small matters. But since I am held by sickness, I have of necessity turned to letters. I present to your nobility our most modest daughter Simplicia, once the wife of the good and noble Alypius, the ornament of our whole country, with the pitiable names of widowhood and orphanhood, to obtain from you justice in what she will ask of you. And consider the greatness of the misfortune. She has not yet ceased her lamentations, and she is in anguish over the orphans, and travels long journeys abroad with a body so weak and with no experience of affairs, she who was not accustomed even to look out of her house. What is more pitiable than this? To have no room even for mourning, and to have the modesty of her rank broken down by suffering. Considering all this, then, and respecting our request besides, do not wait for someone else to become judge in place of the great and good Jacob, nor force her into a longer stay abroad, confident as she is in her just claims, as she persuades many and us too. But read the letters, examine her claims with all uprightness, and send her back to us more cheerful, considering this before all, that you have many things from God: power, wealth, glory, the road to greater success. Keep these for yourself through your present kindness; and think as a father of children, and as one who has been delivered from some dangers and may enter others; and make your hopes in God favourable for yourself through the present case.

I know your Honour by hearsay; but I admire you as few even of those who have long associated with you do; so great is the report of your goodness among all. Therefore I too have dared this intercession. The admirable Alypius has left us, the common protector of his friends and guardian of orphans. This is no small misfortune for us. A second has been added: that his most modest wife must care for the orphans. Console her by your present kindness, secure safety for your own children by your good deed to the orphans, and show that kinship counts for more than strangers. And there will also be the favour to us, since whatever honour you show us you will have shown to God, whose attendants and ministers we have been counted worthy to be, even if we fall short of the dignity.

A foreign land, it seems, is kinder to me than my own country. For the one let me enjoy your friendship, the other has granted me nothing of the kind. And this I owe to my sickness, which holds me fettered and makes me slow to move toward many things, or rather unable to move, if I must speak more truly. This loss we will bear with grief; but what grievous thing does man not bear? Only may you be well and fare as you wish, and may your affairs be in the hand of God; and they will be, if you hold to him sincerely. And be so good as to send back to us very soon the lady, our common sister, as the common support of the devout and of our weakness; or we will cry out loudly against your “priestess,” through whom we suffer this loss, and call her by her proper name. Who she is you will know by asking her. [Letter 211. To Cyriacus] You honour the devout, I know well, and you do good to the poor. Now is the time for both; for the matter stands thus. Our most honoured and most God-beloved son Sacerdos, our fellow presbyter, is in charge of one of the well-known and well-populated poorhouses, both for piety's sake and because of his zeal for the work. Among the properties that serve the poorhouse are Dirianda and Caserina, which border on the lands of the house and contribute something to the poorhouse by gift of the most honoured Castor. By freeing them from all harassment you will contribute no small share both to the care of the poor and to the recompense for yourself which you know is owed to the pious. And plainly, once you have set out on this benefaction, you will also provide for its future security, so that no one, even if he wished, may do harm to these places, in whatever way your understanding may devise.

I greet you, our young hope, grey-haired in youth; and I wish and pray for you all that is finest. The first of good things you know: always to possess God, and to become God's possession through intimacy with him and ascent toward him; of which I know you will admonish yourself. [Letter 213. To the same] If you expected nothing difficult when you came to philosophy, the beginning was unphilosophical, and I blame those who formed you. But if it was expected: if it did not come, thanks be to God; but if it did come, either endure as you suffer, or know that you are belying your promise.

[Letter 215. To the same] What is terrible for us? Nothing, except to fail of God and of divine things. Let the rest be as God brings it, whether he orders us through the right-hand weapons of righteousness, the kinder ones, or through the left-hand and harsher ones. The steward of our life knows the reasons for these things. Let us fear one thing only: suffering anything unphilosophically. We fed the poor, we loved the brothers, we delighted in psalmody, while it was allowed. We are not permitted this; let us practise some other philosophy; for grace is not poor. Let us be at leisure, contemplate, and purify the mind with divine impressions, which is perhaps higher than what was mentioned before. But we are not so disposed; rather, because we have failed of one thing, we think we have fallen from everything. Not so; but let us still hold to good hope, if we see anything left to us; and let us not be like colts, which, not being used to alarms, grow wild at noises and throw their riders.

… piety, and we have had experience of many men and characters (and experience is the mother of understanding), whereas you are like newly yoked colts, just beginning the contests of God's service (and what is beginning is hotter, and by the zeal of the spirit able to achieve much that is right, and to miss much through ignorance): be willing, then, to come to us, to honour us as old men and respect us as fathers, and to use us as mediators in your dispute with our most venerable brother and fellow presbyter Sacerdos, for he himself is here; so that, settling your affairs with one another, you may serve the bishop, remove the scandal of the many, and, greatest of all, appease God, and not destroy so quickly so great and glorious a thing (I mean your concord and the compacts of life you made in God). [Letter 217. To the same] After the war, the alliance; after the storm, the helmsman; and whereas we ought first to deliberate and then to act, we have reversed the order: after acting, we deliberate. If I had to flatter and make things worse, I would have found many roads of flattery, since that is easier and many succeed at it nowadays. But since doing harm is not our way, especially to a soul newly initiated and just approaching the good, hear the truth. The beginning was unphilosophical; and those who courted you loved you badly, playing their own game under another's mask. If, then, you change even now and heal the sin, perhaps some healing of the wound may come to you, even if with difficulty. But if

you remain in the same state and pride yourself on your evil victory, “Grievous is my wound,” says the divine Scripture; “whence shall I be healed?” For I make your affairs my own. Yet though I am so disposed and write so, if you long to meet, I will not refuse. The good and noble Sacerdos, our fellow presbyter, is my friend, I confess, and may he remain so, and the more because he holds to you. For not even in his complaints did he give up his affection, but made a brotherly reproach rather than a hostile accusation. But I am not so ignorant and rash as to judge a case before hearing both sides (do not suppose that), I who even in that very letter which you condemned as bold (unless you read it carelessly) touched you less than those who inflame you and draw private profit from your petty quarrel. What, then, was my purpose? You may learn it thus. Colt-breakers train colts to colours and noises, and to steep and level ground, not to frighten them but to teach them not to be frightened. With this in mind I made my letter somewhat rough. For the exercises of philosophy are many; and thanks be to God that I found you not unphilosophical, nor wild, but gentle enough and of our own fold, so that you write fairly and long to meet. If, then, you grant us this too, you do better, and we will receive you, be well assured, with a father's eyes. But if the winter hinders you somewhat, meanwhile we greet you with this advice. Prefer nothing, even now, to friendship and concord with your brother Sacerdos (believe me), and think that what has happened is nothing but a trial from the evil one, jealous of your philosophy.

But struggle nobly and manfully against the first trial, so that he may not attempt a second and a third bout and others after them, but go away beaten and ashamed. For we know his wrestling holds, having learned them over a long time and in our own contests against him. [Letter 219. To Helladius] The words I shall address to you I shall address out of goodwill, so that I may fairly ask above all to be heard, or if not, to be forgiven for the advice. Not many approve of your action concerning our most honoured brother and fellow presbyter Sacerdos, as done on the slander of some rather than on your own judgment; they perhaps do not know the course of events, but, looking at the outcome by itself, they do not praise it. These things you yourself would know; for it is not for us to meddle in your affairs, you who lay down for others what they must do. But we beg your goodness, first, to give back to the man all the oversight of what he cared for. For it is not so easy for anyone to be a philosopher, even the most enduring and philosophical, as to bear being deprived of such labours and such long habit. If not, then the second course: arrange the care of the poor as you wish and through whom you yourself approve, but leave in his hands the care of the monastery and the brothers; and do not grieve him by innovation, and grieve still more those who cling to their accustomed life and cannot bear, as it were, the tearing apart of the members of one body. For some of them came to us and lamented this. If, then, the man seems to you to have something venerable of his own (as is fitting), respect him for his own sake, his grey hair, his labours, and the others,

… which he undertook for God's sake, showing a piety older than his years, and those he bore in feeding the poor and caring for the brothers. If this seems small to you, at least do not dishonour us and our intercession; and before all else, let go your anger and grief against him, yes, I beg you, and treat him as a father treats his child. If he has grieved you at all, which I do not think, forgive it for our sake, and say or write nothing about him that is unworthy, not of him, but of your gentleness; and if anything has been written, undo it. Nor make public your grief, which it is better to hide than to make known to those outside; so that in this as in other things you may teach him patience by your example. [Letter 220. To the same] Of what you wrote, some things are very gentle and kind; about the rest I do not know what to say, except that they grieve us, and very reasonably, as I persuade myself. For if our brother and fellow presbyter Sacerdos is justly accused, which I do not think, it is grievous; for how could such piety and such labours be undone so quickly? And if this is a slander contrived by those who envy him, this too is painful: that one whose way of life was joined to yours should be estranged from you by abuse. Accept, then, what I judged the best and most profitable course in the present circumstances. I have sent the brother himself to you, or rather sent him on his way as he was setting out, to heal the grievance in person and to tell you everything truthfully. About some matters he says he is ready to make his defence; others he will show to have been fabricated as lies. This he persuaded us of too, as one who speaks in the fear of God.

[Letter 221. To Homophronius] You invite us to the gathering; and I prayed to be in such bodily health as to be with you even unbidden, to see your holy house, the dwelling of Christ, the root of the holy branches, truly the mother of children who rejoices and whose children rejoice. I know this and am persuaded in the Lord, and therefore I say it boldly, even if something grievous has now befallen us: the lamp of Israel will not be quenched, even if it is buffeted by the winds of the evil one; nor will God's goodness be hidden longer, which he hides for those who fear him for unspeakable reasons of his economy; but it will rather be glorified and admired through your endurance and the hope that does not put to shame. And exhort our most honoured son Sacerdos too not to lose heart, nor to suffer anything unworthy of himself, but so to handle the time as to take his griefs as material for philosophy. Let him still serve our most honoured bishop; let him still strengthen the brothers, so that, above all, our work which we undertook in the Lord, so great and so famous, may not be destroyed. If it is, we will at least show fairness and overcome envy, having given no hold against ourselves to the wicked who hate us without cause.

… having suffered …, as regards the hope there … ; and perhaps so that we may know grace from the things here … . What is it? A company of praiseworthy travellers; whom Thecla too will follow shortly, the … handmaid and first fruits of good things, having remained a little … , so as both to honour them by her endurance … and to become for many an example of … philosophy in these things. Let us praise, then, the same … , and accept the economy … higher. Have these words now in place of us, and be with us in your thoughts, even if you find better ones … . And if we are counted worthy to see you face to face too, with all your household, greater would be the favour … thoughts,

… the pains here, when he says, “For he hid me in his tent in the day of evils.” And he not only lays aside his pain when he remembers God, but even rejoices: “For I remembered God,” he says, “and rejoiced.” Those who are attached to the world suffer pain too, and much more than those who serve God. But their suffering is without reward, while for us even suffering is rewarded, when we endure for God's sake. Come, let us weigh the grievous against the pleasant, and the present against the future; and we shall find that these are not even a tiny fraction of those, so far do the better things exceed. A good medicine for us, then, when we are in pain, is to remember God and the hopes there, and to experience what David did, being enlarged in affliction; not to be cramped in our thoughts, nor covered by grief as by a cloud, but then above all to hold to hope and to look through to the blessedness there, laid up for those who endure. We would be most persuaded to hold out in terrible things, and to be above the many when we are in pain, if we considered what we promised God and what we hoped for when we came to philosophy. To be rich? To be cheerful? To prosper in this life? Or, on the contrary, to be afflicted, to suffer hardship, to be in straits, to bear all things, to endure all things for the hope of what is to come? These, I know, not those, were what we expected. I fear, then, that we may be belying our compact with God, when we seek to have these things and also hope for those. … let us not undo the bargain, but bear these things so as to obtain those. Those who afflicted us have afflicted us; those who have departed have grieved us; but let us keep our soul unenslaved to passions. So let us overcome what grieves us,

… let us grant to them; for I am persuaded that the souls of the saints perceive our affairs. Above all and before all, let us reckon this: that it is absurd to be philosophers when there is no need, but to appear unphilosophical in our sufferings, and not to become a pattern for the many, of endurance in terrible things as of thanksgiving in cheerful ones. I write this not to teach you as one who does not know, but to remind you as one who knows. May the God of consolation keep you unwounded by your sufferings, and grant us to see your piety again, and to be persuaded by deeds that our labour was not in vain, but that we are something more to you than others; so that, as we shared your affliction, so we may have you as a partner in philosophy; which perhaps is owed to this grey hair of ours and to our labours for God.

[Letter 225. To Hellebichus] What losses we suffer from our sickness! I ought to have hastened to you, embraced you, and recalled our old friendship and intimacy. But our bodily state is not such. Therefore we come to you by letter and greet you with our salutation. And since we ought to bring some gift, we offer this: Mamas the reader, the son of a soldier, but consecrated to God for his character. Release him to God and to us, and do not count him among the … , and give him his freedom in writing, so that he may not be harassed by others either. For so you will make your hopes in war and command favourable for yourself. Yes, I beg you, see to this. For those who hold the greatest things in their hands, and on whom everything hangs in the balance, must take most thought of God and of the help that comes from him.

… a manifest cause. Since we do not persuade the many that we live as philosophers without guile, and give all our affairs to God. Who does not praise a plant just bursting into flower? Whom does a crop just being bound into sheaves, promising a ripe ear, not gladden? And whom does a newly initiated soul not gladden, just being adorned for God and beginning to shake off its earthly fetters, so that it may be with God and see the truth of the things of which we now see the shadows? I rejoice, then, for these reasons especially in our beloved brother and fellow deacon Evagrius, seeing him advancing not ignobly toward philosophy; since philosophy is also the love of wisdom. And I rejoice that he also brings me your friendship, and I will rejoice still more if you write more often and repay us with more tokens of friendship.

To what does my example point? There was between us a friendship pure and without guile (a thing rare, especially now, and found among few), and what made it was not so much kinship, nor a common fatherland, nor, as Homer says, “lovely companionship of youth,” as likeness of character and delight in the same things, which most of all fixes friendships and makes them firmer. Now our families too are being joined (the word is with God), so that our friendship may be increased and we may belong more to one another. And God brings this about, helping a just affection. Have us, then, through our sweetest son Euphemius; and we have you through your sweetest daughter. As for what follows, I do not know on whose behalf, or to whom, I should rather speak: to your Honour on behalf of the young man, or to the young man about you. For a father's goodwill is equal toward his children. But I pray that the union may be for every good, and such as is fitting when God joins it. [Letter 231. To Eusebius, a friend] … the dearest; the time of marriage, the foundation of life, and the prayers of fathers being fulfilled. But we are absent, who ought most of all to be present and to pray with you. And yet I promised; for hope lay under the longing, since wishing is enough to deceive. And having often set out and often hesitated, at last I was defeated by my sickness. Let others, then, call upon the Loves (since jesting too belongs to a wedding), and paint the beauty of the maiden, and set against it the grace of the bridegroom, and pelt the bridal chambers with words along with flowers. But I will sing you my own wedding song: The Lord bless you out of Zion, and himself join your union, and may you see your children's children, and, it is not much to say, better ones. This I would have prayed for you if present, and now I pray it. Let the rest be your concern, and let the father crown them, as he prayed to. For this is the rule we have set whenever we have attended weddings: theirs are the crowns, ours the prayers, which I know are not bounded by places.

We have not been invited to the wedding of our daughter, yet we are present, keeping the feast with you, sharing your eagerness, and praying for you all that is best. One of the good things is that Christ be present at the wedding (for where Christ is, there is seemliness), and that water become wine, that is, that everything be changed for the better; so that things that should not be mixed are not mixed, and bishops and buffoons, prayers and applause, … and flute-playing are not brought together. For the weddings of Christians, like everything else, must have seemliness; and seemliness is dignity. These are the gifts we bring to the wedding; and may you give us obedience in return. As for the bridegroom, if he follows these things, you have a son; if not, a soldier. [Letter 233. To Ablabius] I hear that you are in love with sophistry, and that the thing is wonderful: to speak pompously, to look grand, to walk high and lofty, to let your spirit carry you off to Marathon and Salamis, those ornaments of yours, and to think of nothing but Miltiadeses and Cynegeiruses, Callimachuses and Telemachuses, and to have everything dressed up sophistically and as close as possible to the attack. If, then, along with this you make some account of virtue too, you are ours, and success will come to you on the way; but if you are wholly a sophist and forget our friendship and what we often discussed with each other about the good, I will say nothing else harsh. But this perhaps it is fair to say: know that you play a little among the youngsters, but will be mocked very much by yourself, when good sense comes to you, but later.

[Letter 234. To Olympianus] The booklet you received from us, the Letters of Aristotle, I could have not taken back but left with you, a gift fitting for a man of letters and a fine reminder of our friendship. But so that you may not bring an indictment against us for unlawful dealing and insult toward an official, being a most clever orator and the best of judges, on the ground that we are trying to corrupt a judge so incorruptible and above all bribery, let what we gave come back to us. And we seek a reward from your Eloquence, nothing else (for what could you give us, who philosophize by not even having?), but writing itself; so that your repayment may be in proportion, discharging the favour of the Letters with letters. [Letter 235. To Adamantius]

… accepts, even if we do not lay it aside altogether. But if you think these things rightly said, but that it is not philosophical to ask a price for books, … the money, and the poor will settle the counter-claim. [Letter 236. To Libanius] I, a mother, have sent a son to a father: the mother by nature to the father by eloquence. As you care for me, so you will care for him. [Letter 237. To Macedonius] We are not insatiable in receiving kindness from friends, even if you are unstinting in doing it. Therefore we have sent the psalm-singer back to you as agreed, an excellent man besides (as far as one can learn in a short time), and perhaps pleasing to you for his psalmody, which always contains a reminder of God and of salvation. And if you do us a kindness again, whenever it pleases you and the time seems right, you will do better, and this will be more worthy of your friendship. [Letter 238] To the most reverent brotherhood in Christ, adorned in every way, the brotherhood of the blessed Leucadius at Sannabadae, to the monks and virgins sanctified in Christ Jesus, Gregory sends greeting in the Lord. What has happened by God's economy is, for those who have sense, a ground not for tears but for thanksgiving: that the athlete has gone out of the stadium with the good contest he contested, and has been received by the president of the games, so as to receive the crown of righteousness and to increase

by himself the chorus of the angels. All these things, and such things, become an occasion of joy and gladness for those who look to the truth according to the Gospel. But since a certain custom has prevailed of being sad at the departure of the saints and of receiving consolation from those who love us, for this reason we neither agree to say anything sad and downcast, nor do we advise you to lend your ears to such words. But we discharge the consolation we owe by advising your modesty always to look to him by looking at one another. For this we pray, that each man and each woman may be formed by the life of the blessed one, so that when you look at one another you may be assured that you are gazing on his likeness. Let his purity form your life, his freedom from anger, his humility, his active philosophy, his keeping his soul always intent on God, his not being carried away by the deceits of this life; so that, seeing these things in one another, you may paint his memorial in yourselves, and neither he nor you may come into death. For in your life he too will be shown living always, and you, by your good conduct, will make yourselves strangers to the fellowship of death. May the Lord shelter you, healthy and advancing in soul and body in the power of the Holy Spirit, remembering us in your prayers. [Letter 239. To Epiphanius] With one law I challenge another: the one that bids a father be honoured, with the one that bids children be taught. Now, then, I lead you toward the finest things; and receive this letter as a right hand of friendship. And if you reply, and are willing to do so often, perhaps you will make even an old man a warrior, no less noble than Nestor.

… I have written, and I am persuaded that to him too … . O the idleness, not to say the … ! Even Arganthonius would be short for us in a reckoning of sleep, so soundly have we slept. Where is that band of ours? Where the common studies and gatherings, and the sweet and abundant spring from which we drew? I for my part am getting up and shaking off the dust, like the horses of Achilles, late indeed (for I hesitate to say it), and tossing my mane. Do not think I am jesting. But whether you care at all for our friendship will be shown by what you write. … That you dart about like the stars, rising now in one part of the barbarian land and now in another, now supplying soldiers' rations, now appearing before the emperor in brilliant state: this report, messenger of good news, never ceases to announce to us. We pray to God that your undertaking may go on as it should, and that you may advance to a great dignity, and may one day appear to one who is wasting away. For we have only so much share in life as to breathe.

“I very much wonder, and am exceedingly amazed at the sobriety …,” and so on. [Letter 244. To Basilissa] If it is not superfluous to rouse one who labours to further labours, I will not hesitate, for our common safety, to strengthen your eagerness as best I can, not by adding other or foreign precepts, but by reminding you of what we have often said and you are accustomed to practise. They are these: to lead the soul above its griefs by occupying it with the best things; to remove from the mind everything foreign to virtue and unworthy of your judgment; to strain yourself toward piety and every seemliness; to refine the mind so as neither to accept nor to think anything unexamined; to strengthen your prudence at every time and in every way by keeping company with the counsels of the holy ones who went before; to set justice toward kin and strangers above all enmity and friendship; to have self-control as your housemate and companion everywhere, sincerely rooted in the soul and firmly established; not to change your character with the unevenness and changes of life. For neither is it seemly to let one's spirit shrink in poverty, nor safe to be proud in abundance. Therefore it is best to practise self-control in pleasures and endurance in griefs; not to remember former wealth; to ask for sufficiency; to love what is given; to hope for the better; to bear bodily sickness gently; to complain of nothing and to rail at nothing, but to be thankful toward Providence, whatever it may be, which often hides the causes of what happens but does not neglect what is deserved; in view of which, reckon before you say what is to be said

and before you do what is to be done; for so everything you say or do will be free from regret. Think that seemliness lies not in outward coverings; consider having few needs to be true and firm wealth; for to be firmly rich lies not in possessing much but in needing little: the one is in your power, the other belongs to outside things. Regulate your manner with gentleness, your disposition with calm, your tongue with brevity of speech. And through these adorn your head by covering it, your brows by keeping them lowered, your eyes by looking modestly, your mouth by saying nothing unseemly, your ears by lending them only to serious things, and your whole face with the colour of modesty. In all things and through all things keep yourself undefiled, like an untouched treasure. For the adornment proper and fitting to women is dignity, steadiness, and self-control. Consider the finest and easiest luxury to be the food that is needed; for this is praiseworthy in itself, to be chosen for a life of self-control, best for health and good proportion and all other seemliness, and not without profit for discipline.