Against Eunomius 1.247–1.261

It is not, it seems, in every respect free even from the reproach of the many to wish to do good to everyone, and to lavish one’s own favour without discrimination on whatever people one happens to meet; nor is it free from reproach to waste on the incurably sick the supply of many remedies. For when such conduct brings nothing worth the effort toward the aim of benefit — neither gain to those who receive nor praise to those who are generous — it often becomes, on the contrary, an occasion of something worse. For the sickly, already ready for death, are easily destroyed all the more by the stronger drugs; and the bestial and irrational, as the Gospel says somewhere, become worse by the benefit when pearls are lavished on them. Therefore it seems right to me, as the divine word has said before, to separate the worthless from the precious in giving what is valuable, so that the one who has trampled the pearl and insulted the kindness by his insensibility to good things may not grieve the goodness of the generous giver.

This came to my mind to say as I considered, on the one hand, the one who shared his own good things unsparingly with all — I mean the man of God, the mouth of piety, Basil, who in the abundance of his spiritual treasures poured out the grace of wisdom without discrimination even into crafty souls — and, on the other, Eunomius, ungrateful toward those who were eager to do him some good. For this man, through the excess of the soul’s sickness from which he suffered concerning the faith, seemed pitiable to all who share in the Church. For who is so unfeeling as not to pity one who is perishing? But it moved that man alone to undertake the cure, the one who alone, in the abundance of his love for humankind, ventured even on what is impossible for the sake of healing; who, grieving deeply at the man’s ruin, out of his natural compassion for the wretched, composed the discourse overturning the heresy as a kind of antidote to deadly poisons, aiming by it to rescue the man again and restore him to the Church. But he, as though his mind were struck by frenzy, resists his physician, fights and battles him, and considers an enemy the one who strives forcibly to lift him out of the pit of impiety.

And he does not simply rave these things, as it chanced, before whoever happened by: he has set up against himself a written monument of this melancholy. Having obtained, over a long time, as much leisure as he wished, he was in labour with a discourse through all the intervening time, longer than the great and fleshy beasts; he was heavy with threats while he was still shaping the embryo in secret; and late at last, and with difficulty, he brought into the light a kind of abortion, an offspring not carried to term, which all who share the same dissent nurse and cherish. But we, because of the blessing of the prophecy — for “Blessed,” it says, “is he who will seize and dash your infants against the rock” — since this little infant of a discourse has come into our hands, have resolved to seize it and dash it against the rock, as one of the children of Babylon. “And the rock was Christ,” that is, the word of truth. Only may the power that strengthens what is weak come upon us, through the prayers of him who perfected his power in the weakness of the body.

Now if that godlike and holy soul still looked upon human life through the flesh, and that lofty mouth, according to the grace allotted to it from the beginning, still sent forth that invincible voice, who would have come to such confidence as to dare even to utter anything on this subject, when that divine trumpet sounded above every word and every sound? But since he has flown up wholly to God — formerly touching the earth with a small and shadowy remnant of the body, while with the greater part he travelled aloft with God, and now having let go and left to this life even that shadow of the body — and the drones are buzzing about the honeycombs of the word and spoiling the honey, let no one charge me with rashness for rising up in defence of the silent mouth. For I did not undertake the labour because I was conscious of any power of speech beyond others; I know precisely, if anyone does, that thousands who abound in the gift of wisdom are multiplying in the Church. Yet since I say that the inheritance of the departed belongs to me above all, both by the written laws and by the laws of nature, for this reason I claim for myself, before the others, the inheritance of the argument. Among those who contribute to the Church of God I am counted with the last; but against the one who has broken away from the Church into the opposing rank I am not the weaker. For in a healthy body even the least part, through the concord of the whole, would be stronger than a part that is decayed and cut off, even if the one is larger and the other smaller.

Let no one think that by these words I am speaking big, as though boasting of vain things beyond the power I have. For I am not led, out of some boyish ambition, to descend tastelessly with the man into a contest of speeches or a display of phrases. Where getting the better is useless and unprofitable, we readily yield the victory to whoever wants it. I judge that this man is in other ways too a practised hand at words, looking at his very practice in his doctrine; but that he has laboured especially over the present discourse I infer both from the fact that no small part of the writer’s life has been spent on this composition, and from his admirers’ exulting beyond all measure in his labours. And it is not unlikely that one who has laboured through so many olympiads of years should have produced something more than those who set to work offhand. But what shows his long wearing-away over words even more is the tastelessness of the figures in the arrangement of what he said, and the superfluous and vain zeal about such things. For having collected from certain books, with hasty preparation, a great sweeping of petty phrases, and having laboriously heaped up a countless pile of words on a few ideas, he has produced this toilsome work, which the disciples of deceit praise and gape at — perhaps because of their blindness about what matters, being deprived along with it of all discernment of what is good and what is not — but which those whose heart’s insight has not been darkened by the filth of unbelief laugh at and judge worth nothing.

For who would not reasonably laugh to see that the subject of the effort was announced as the defence of the doctrines of truth, while the effort itself is spent on a tastelessness of words and figures to no achievement? For what would it contribute toward refuting what had been said (as he supposes) and establishing the truth of what is in question, though he struggle all the more, to have an outlandish invention of figures in the discourse, a novel and peculiar syntax, insolence laboured over and labour again insolent, worked out in imitation of none of those who went before him? For one could not discover which of those known for eloquence he looked to when he brought himself to this, like one of the conjurors on the stage, with parallel and balanced clauses, words that sound alike and end alike, beating out his discourse to the rhythm of his little phrases as if with castanets. Such, along with many others, are also the silly trills in his prologue and the effeminate Sotadeans, which, it seems to me, he did not even recite in a quiet manner, but, tapping with his foot and snapping his fingers, chanted shrilly in time with the rhythm, saying that there will be no further need “either of other words or of second labours.”

In these things, then, and things like them, I concede that he has the advantage and may gorge himself on victory at will; I shall willingly pass over all effort about such things, as befitting only those who have ambition in view — if indeed it brings any credit at all to be affected in such words. For even Paul, the genuine servant of the word, adorned with truth alone, thought it shameful himself to dress up the word with such embellishments, and trained us to look to truth alone, rightly and fittingly laying this down. For why should one who is made beautiful by the adornment of truth drag in the fussiness of the cosmetic art to complete a counterfeit and contrived beauty? For those who lack the truth it is perhaps useful to drug the lie with the pleasure of words, spending such fussiness on the style of the discourse like a rouge; for so the deceit, coloured and decked with flowers by such elegances of speech, would become persuasive and acceptable to the hearers. But when truth is pursued by people pure and unmixed with any deceitful veil, its beauty shines from within on what is said.

Now that I am about to take up the examination of what he said, I seem to be at a loss, like a farmer in a windless calm, not knowing how to separate the grain from the chaff; so much in this heap of words is superfluous and chaffy that I come near to thinking that in all that he has said there is no substance of facts or thoughts at all. For to go through everything he has written in order I judge both vain for our effort and laborious, and not suited to our aim. For we do not have so much leisure left over as to be free to spend time on vanities; and I think it befits the approved workman not to wear out his strength on vanities but on those things in which the labour has acknowledged fruit. All, then, that right at the start, in his prologue, giving himself airs as a champion of truth, he says in attacking his opponents with the reproach of unbelief — saying that a lasting and indelible hatred is ingrained in them; and how he swaggers over the things lately become known to him, not adding what the things known were, but saying that a judgment

of the disputed points had taken place among them, and a lawful penalty bringing the necessity of self-restraint on those who were insolent without justice — saying it thus in his own voice, in that Lydian mode of his: “And those who were insolent without justice having been compelled by lawful justice to be moderate” — which he also named the “renunciation” of those who had risen against him (I do not know what he means by “renunciation”): all this and everything of the kind I shall pass by in my discourse, as a vain crowd that contributes nothing useful. But if he has made any plea on behalf of the heretical way of thinking, to that I think it right to give more attention. For so too did the interpreter of the divine doctrines in his own discourse: though there were many things that could have extended his discourse at length, proceeding by the necessary rules he cut short the mass of the subject, having picked out from all that was said in the book of impiety the chief heads of the blasphemy.

If anyone demands that our own discourse be set against his in order, following the sequence of his discourse, let him say what the gain is. What more will the hearers have if I solve the riddle and enigma of the title, which, like the tragic Sphinx, is held out to us right away in the prologue — that novel “apology for the apology” — and the great nonsense about it, and recount the long narrative of his dream? For I think that the sticky and vain novelty in the title of the work, preserved in the discourse of Eunomius alone, wearies the readers enough, and so does the vulgarity of his own narratives: what labours and contests of his own he recounts, as having travelled through every land and sea and as proclaimed throughout the whole world. If these things were written out again — and, as is likely, with the refutations of the lies swelling the discourse further — who will prove so tough and adamantine as not to be nauseated at the untimeliness of the labour? And if I were to write out word for word that inspired history — who the man from the Euxine Pontus was who annoyed him beforehand through the sameness of the name; what his life was, what his pursuits; how he quarrelled with the Armenian because of their likeness of character; then on what terms they came to agreement with each other and were reconciled, so as to make common cause against that invincible and greatly renowned Aetius, his teacher (for he dignifies him with these praises); then what the contrivance and plot against him was by which they brought the man to trial, making it a charge against him that he was well regarded and above the others — if I were to tell all this, would I not, like those who draw an eye disease upon themselves through much company with those already sick, seem myself to share in the sickness of vain zeal, following his babble step by step and examining each detail? What slaves set free does he speak of? What relationship of initiates, and what rank of bought slaves? What is the point of Montius, Gallus, and Domitian coming into the discourse, and false witnesses, and an angry emperor, and certain people being sent into exile? What could be vainer than these narratives, at least for one who wishes not to tell a bare story but to refute the man who spoke against the doctrine of the heresy?

Still more useless, I think, are the things shown by the history after these; for I think not even the writer himself could go through them without dozing, even though fathers are held by a natural affection toward their offspring. For there, forsooth, the deeds are displayed, the sufferings are raised on high by the discourse, and the history is fitted out to the bulk of tragedy. But so that I may not, by excusing myself more than is needed, linger over useless things — and so that, like one who drives his horse through mud and is filled with the unpleasantness of it, I too, by leading my discourse through the memory of what he wrote, may not defile my treatise — I think it fitting to leap over all such rubbish, as far as possible, with a high and swift bound of the discourse. For a quick withdrawal from unpleasant things is gain enough, hurrying the discourse to the end of the story, so that the words of their bitterness may not drip into my book as well. Let it befit the voice of Eunomius alone to say such things about priests of God: “shield-bearers, lictors, and bodyguards, terrifying, searching, not allowing the one in hiding to escape notice,” and all the other things he is not ashamed to write against the grey hairs of priests. For just as in the schools of the outside learning, to train readiness of tongue and mind, the youths are given themes of invective against some unspecified person, so the writer steps straight in against those he has mentioned and lets loose his slanderous tongue on them; and keeping silent about any deeds of wickedness, he prepares for them a mere stale dregs of insults, fabricating every reproach against them and combining incompatible things in his abuse: “a lentil-pounding soldier,” and “a holy man accursed,” “pale with fasting and murderous with bitterness,” and much buffoonery of this sort. As in the processions outside someone is held up to scorn because in his excess of shamelessness he revels without a mask, so he, hiding his bitterness behind no curtain, with a naked and brazen voice hurls abuse as from the wagon.

Then he admits what provokes him: that those men, he says, were eager that not many should be perverted along with them by their deceit. And for this he is angry: that they were not free to stay in all the places they wished, but that by the order of the ruler of that time Phrygia became their place of residence, so that not many might be harmed by their wicked company. And indignant over this he writes: “And the great weight of the contests, and the unbearable sufferings, and the noble endurance of the sufferings: to have exchanged the land that bore them for Phrygia.” Quite so! For was not what happened a disgrace to the man of Oltiseris, bringing down his father’s pride and insulting the dignity of his family, so that the famous, double-named Priscus, this man’s father’s father, would never have chosen the things he now chafes at? Hence the brilliant and admired stories of his family: the mill, the leather, the slave’s ration of grain, and the rest of the inheritance of Canaan; and for these things those who procured their removal had to be reviled!

I too agree with him on this: truly worthy of their blame are those who became the cause of these things for them, if there are, or ever were, any such at all; because through these things the knowledge of their former lives is covered up and the memory of the more respectable facts taken away, and it does not allow inquiry into what is older than the present: from what rank each of them set out at the beginning, what course of life they had from their fathers, what small or great thing befitting free men they were conscious of in themselves, before they became so known and named as to become known even to emperors, as he now boasts in his treatise, and all the higher authorities were stirred up over them, and their affairs were talked about over much of the world. Has he not truly been most gravely wronged by these things — whether this writer himself, or his patron and guide in a like life, Aetius, whom he seems to me to have emulated not so much with an eye to the deceit of his doctrines as much more to the provision and comfort of his life? I say this not inferring it by guesswork, but having heard it with my own ears from those who knew it accurately.

For the story of this Aetius I once heard from Athanasius, bishop of the Galatians, a man who would put nothing before the truth, who, to attest his account to the many, also showed a letter of George of Laodicea. He said that Aetius did not take up absurdity of doctrine at first, but that later he put forward this innovation as a trade for his living. For when he had already shed his slavery to Ampelis, the woman who owned him (how, I need not say, lest I seem to touch on the story too maliciously), he was at first a smith, practising this fiery and mechanical craft by hand, sitting at a little hammer and a small anvil under a hair tent, and scraping together meanly and with toil the necessities of life by this work. For what wage worth mentioning could there be for one who mends the rotten parts of bronze vessels, stops up holes, applies tin to the cracks, and solders the bottoms of cauldrons with lead? The cause of his change of life, he said, was a misfortune that befell him through his craft. For once he received from a soldier’s wife a golden ornament of the kind worn on the neck or the arm, to mend a dent it had received, and he cheated the woman by a trick: he stole the gold piece and gave her back in its place a bronze one of equal size to the gold, with a like appearance through a surface dye, having smeared the bronze with gold. The woman was taken in by the appearance — for he was clever in the smith’s work too at cheating his customers by the tricks of the craft — but in time she detected the fraud about the gold, when the dye had worn off the bronze; then she took the thief to court, certain soldiers being stirred to anger because of kinship and common race. And after that piece of daring, having suffered what a cheat and a thief would be likely to suffer, he swore himself off the craft — as though it was not his choice but his trade that had put the desire to steal in him.

After this he became the attendant of one of the quack physicians, so as not to be utterly without the food he needed, and he went about to the more obscure houses and to certain outcast people under the pretext of medicine. Then, as his scheme gradually brought him to prosperity, a certain Armenian, easily deceived because he was a barbarian, was persuaded to consult him as a physician and supplied him with plenty of money; and he now thought it a small thing to serve others in the craft for wages, and claimed to be a physician himself and to be called one. From then on he took part in medical gatherings, and mixing with those who wrangle in disputes, he was one of the shouters.

And by throwing his own weight into the scale of the argument, he was courted not a little by those who hired the shamelessness of his voice for their own quarrels. When his bread had become richer through this, he thought he ought not to remain even in this way of life, but little by little he stripped off that medicine together with the smithing. Now when Arius, the fighter against God, had sown these wicked seeds of tares, whose fruit is the doctrines of the Anomoeans, the schools of the physicians at that time resounded with the uproar about that question. Having practised himself in that kind of debate, and having picked up a certain method of syllogisms from echoes of Aristotle, he became famous for surpassing Arius, the father of the heresy, by the novelty of his inventions; or rather, having grasped the consequence of what Arius had laid down, he was thought to be a sharp fellow and a discoverer of hidden things, declaring that what is created and is from what is not is unlike the one who created it and brought it out of non-being. Since by such arguments he tickled the novelty-loving ears of those sick with these things, this novel language came to the knowledge also of Theophilus the Blemmyan, who had an earlier acquaintance with Gallus; and through him Aetius slipped into the palace. When the crime against the prefect Domitian and against Montius was then dared by Gallus, all who had shared in the pollution shared, as was to be expected, in his downfall. But this man slips out of the punishment, not even judged worthy to suffer any harm along with the accomplices in the crime. After this, when the great Athanasius had been removed from the church of the Alexandrians by imperial power, and George of Tarbasthena was tearing that people apart, Aetius became an Alexandrian again, behind none of those who were fed by the Cappadocian and lived as his parasites; for he did not neglect flattery either. And George, long since captured by the perversion of the doctrine, delighted in him, and lay open to Aetius at will as a windfall.

These things, then, did not escape the notice of this Eunomius, his genuine emulator. He had observed that the life of his natural father — a most excellent man in other respects, except that he became the father of such a son — was honest and respectable, but toilsome through poverty and full of countless labours. (For he was a farmer bent over the plough, spending much labour on a small plot of land; and through the winter, when he was free from his labours on the land, he would cleverly trace out the first letters and the syllables for children, and with those fees eke out his living.) Seeing these things in his own father, he bade farewell to the plough and the mattock and all his father’s tools, so that he himself might not toil at similar labours, and first became a disciple of the wisdom of Prunicus. Having practised writing at speed, he at first attended, I think, one of his relatives, getting his food as the wage of his service as a writer; then, as tutor to the boys of the man who fed him, he gradually advanced to a desire for rhetoric. I pass over what came in between: his life in his native country, and in what circumstances he was caught in Constantinople, and with whom. After this, they say, he busied himself with the cloak and the belt. But since he saw that it was all small, and that nothing worth his desire was being gathered by his zeal for these things, he left the other pursuits of life and admired Aetius alone of all — not unwisely, I think, choosing this, with a view to his own aim, as a scheme for making a living. For from the time he shared in this secret wisdom, everything grows for him unsown and unploughed. For he is wise in what he is eager for, and he knew how one might best win over the more passionate among men. For since human nature is, for the most part, easily caught by pleasure, and nature is very prone to this passion, readily falling from the rougher pursuits to the smoothness of pleasure, in order to win to himself as many partners as possible in the disease of his doctrines, he makes himself pleasant to those whom he initiates, discarding the steepness and toil of virtue as unpersuasive for the reception of the mystery. What they teach in secret, and how much those who have received the pollution through deceit blab and bring into the open — that secret initiation, what they are taught by the august hierophant of their mysteries, the manner of their baptisms and their plea for nature, and everything of the kind — if anyone has leisure to learn it accurately, let him ask those who think it no offence to utter anything unseemly. We will be silent. For it is not holy even for accusers to mention such things, nor, having learned to honour purity even in speech, to soil our treatise even with the milder of these stories, though the truth attends what is said.