Letters 1–21

I have begotten speeches as my children: some from most venerable philosophy and from poetry, which shares her temple; others from popular rhetoric. Yet one could recognize that they are all of one father, who inclines now to seriousness, now to pleasure. To which side this present speech belongs, it will itself declare from what it professes. But I loved it so exceptionally that I would most gladly adopt it into philosophy and enrol it among the legitimate children. This, however, they say will not be permitted, not even by the laws of the commonwealth; for the guardians of good birth are formidable. Still, there is gain in whatever I grant it in secret; and I have brought much from the serious side into it. If, then, you too think well of it, share the speech with the Greeks; but if it is voted down, let it come back to the one who sent it. For they say that she-apes, when they have given birth, gaze at their babies as at statues, admiring their beauty, so fond of its own offspring is nature; but the young of others they see for what they are, the children of apes. Others, then, must be allowed to examine one's offspring, for goodwill is apt to corrupt the votes. That is why Lysippus brought in Apelles to judge his works, and Apelles Lysippus to judge his paintings.

The greatest freedom from fear is to fear the laws. But you were always ashamed to be seen fearing them. Therefore fear your enemies, and with them the judges, if they do not steal; and even if they do steal, unless you are the one who gives more, you must be no less on your guard. For they grow angry on behalf of the laws, …

It was the third day that Aeschines had lain dead, and his niece then came to the tomb for the first time; for it is not customary, I think, for brides to go to a funeral. Yet even then she was in crimson, with a transparent hair-net, and hung about with gold and stones … she lay, so that it might not become an ill-omen for the bridegroom … Sitting, then, on … … … in his own life … but on behalf of good birth … the granddaughter of Cecrops her uncle Herodes, a doorkeeper too, sold off to men named Sosias and Tibius. Unless they say something … whence also the bridegroom for us of the famous Lais. For 'Lais', someone has already said, '… bought from Sicily', whence came the mother of fair children, the far-famed one. She herself was long ago the concubine of a shipowner who was her master; then of a rhetor, and he too a master, the third after those, a fellow slave; first secretly to the city, then openly to the city; and she presided over the trade. Since she gave up the practice of it under a slack wrinkle, she trains the girls in their prime and sets them up for the strangers. For her son the rhetor says he is released from the compulsion of the law to support a mother who is a courtesan. Away with such law! For with those born in this way the mother is proven, but the other parent is disputed. Whatever, then, the well-born owe to both parents, all of it should come from the fatherless to their mothers.

Having cast off from Bendideum before the twilight of dawn, we barely passed the Pharian Myrmex after midday, the ship having grounded two or three times on the floor of the harbour. At once this too seemed a bad omen, and it would have been wise to leave a ship whose very first start was unlucky. But we were ashamed to incur among you the charge of cowardice, and for that reason 'it was no longer possible to shrink back or to withdraw'; so that if anything happens, it is because of you that we shall perish. And yet what harm would there have been in your laughing and our standing out of danger? But as they say of Epimetheus, 'to take thought was not his, but to regret was in him'; so with us. For then it was possible to be saved; now on desolate shores we lament in chorus, looking toward Alexandria as far as we can, and toward our mother Cyrene: the one we left though we had it, the other we cannot reach, having seen and suffered things we did not hope for even in a dream. Listen, then, so that you may not have too much leisure for rejoicing; and first, how matters stood with our crew. The shipowner was longing to die because of … [lost in the scan] …

'… [why do] you suspect both the land and the sea?' 'Not if one uses them well, my good Amarantus,' I said to him. 'We had no need even of Taphosiris; for we had to live; and now what need is there of the open sea? Let us sail', I said, 'straight for the Pentapolis, keeping off the land a moderate distance, so that if anything hard should happen (as is the way of the sea, which is uncertain, as it surely is and as is said among you too), some harbour may receive us from close at hand.' I did not persuade him by saying this; the scoundrel had made himself deaf, until a strong north wind struck, driving a high and rough sea. Falling on us suddenly, it drove the sail backward and turned its bulges hollow, and the ship came near to being upended by the stern. With difficulty we righted her, and the deep-groaning Amarantus said, 'This is what it is to sail by art! For I had long been expecting the wind from the open sea, and therefore I was sailing far out. For now we can run across the wind, since the open water gives us room to yield to the swell. Such a course as ours would not have been possible if we had been sailing along the shore; for we would have been dashed against the land.' And we accepted what he said, as long as it was day and the dangers had not yet come. For they began with the night, the surge growing ever greater.

It was the day which the Jews keep as the Preparation; and they reckon the night with the following day, on which it is not lawful for anyone to have his hand at work, but honouring it exceptionally they keep it in idleness. So the helmsman let the rudder go out of his hands, once he guessed that the sun had left the earth, and, throwing himself down, let any sailor who wished trample on him. We at first did not grasp the real cause; thinking it despair, we [begged him not to abandon] the last hopes. For indeed the great waves were bearing down, the sea being at strife even with itself. This happens when the waves do not fall still together with the wind that has ceased, but, still having a strong impulse of motion, meet head-on … For I need even inflamed words, so as not to narrate great evils too meanly. Those who sail in such conditions, they say, have their life hanging by a slender thread. But if the helmsman is also a teacher of the law, what spirit must one have? When we understood the meaning of his abandoning the rudder (for when we begged him to save the ship by what means he had, he kept reading his book), giving up on persuasion, we now applied compulsion; and one soldier … threatened to cut off the fellow's head unless he took hold of the vessel. But he, a very Maccabee, was ready to persist in his doctrine. When it was already midnight, he is persuaded by himself to take his seat at the helm. 'For now', he says, 'the law permits it, since now we are clearly running for our life.' At this a tumult arises afresh, men groaning, women [shrieking] … as though about to write off his creditors at once. As for me, in the midst of the terrors (I swear to you by the God whom philosophy reveres), that Homeric saying troubled me, lest it be true that death by water is the destruction of the soul itself. For he says somewhere in his verses, 'and Ajax utterly perished, when he had drunk the salt water', counting death at sea the most complete destruction. At any rate he says that no one else 'utterly perished', but each one, dying, 'went down to Hades'. That is why in both the descents to the dead the lesser Ajax nowhere appears in the drama, as though his soul were not in Hades; and Achilles, a man most stout-hearted and most fond of danger, shrinks from death in water, which he even calls 'miserable'. Turning over these reasonings, I see the soldiers [with drawn swords]; I learned from them that it was good, while still on deck, to breathe out one's soul into the air, and not into a wave with open mouth. These I considered genuine Homerids, and I joined their doctrine. Then someone proclaims that those who have gold should hang it on themselves; and those who had it hung on themselves gold and whatever was worth gold. And the women adorned themselves, and [gave cords] to the others … to do this; but it has this meaning: the corpse from a shipwreck must carry the price of its burial. For he who [finds it] … would not [grudge] a small part to the one who has given him many times more. They were busy with these things. … I wept for the deposit of my host. As the god of hospitality knows, it was not whether I should die, but whether the Thracian would be robbed, that troubled me, for the sake of the money; before him I would have been ashamed even in death. Here indeed to perish utterly would have been a gain: to perish with the rest, and to escape all awareness. …

What brought the danger close was nothing other than that the ship was being carried under full sail, and it was not possible to shorten sail. But though we often attempted it with the ropes, … a fear no smaller lay in wait: that even if we came through the surge, we should approach land in that state at night. But day comes first, and we see the sun, I do not know if ever more gladly. The wind grew easier as the warmth increased, and the dew, departing, let us use the ropes and handle the sail. To change it, we had no other spare one, for it had been pawned. We gathered it in as one gathers up the folds of tunics; and before four hours had passed, we who [had expected death] disembark in a remote and utterly desolate spot, which had neither city nor farm for a neighbour, some hundred and thirty stades from a farm. The ship rode in the open, for the place was no harbour, and lay on one anchor; the second had been sold, and a third anchor Amarantus had never acquired. …

We, when we touched the dearest earth, embraced it as though it were a living mother; and offering hymns of thanksgiving to God, as we used to do, we added to them also the fortune just past, through which we had been saved beyond hope; and we stayed there two days in succession, until the sea should calm. But since there was no way to travel by land, with no human being in sight, we again ventured on the sea; and setting out right at the beginning of day, we sailed with the wind astern that whole day and the next. As that was ending, the wind left us, and we were vexed; but we were to long for a calm, as it turned out. It was the thirteenth of the waning month; and it was likely that there would coincide the conjunction of the stars and those notorious days, during which, they say, no one sailing ever felt confident; and although we ought to have been lying in harbour, we had unawares run back out to sea. The commotion began with the northern winds, and it rained heavily during the night of the conjunction. Then the winds ran riot, and the sea had become a stirred-up brew. Our state was such as is likely in such events (not to narrate similar sufferings twice); in it the very size of the storm did us some good: … the ship. Then the yard, broken in the middle, came near to destroying us all; but since it did not destroy us, this very thing saved us; for otherwise it was not possible to bear the violence of the wind. For the sail again was stubborn and would not run freely to be lowered. So, having beyond expectation relieved ourselves of the insatiable violence of the drive, we were carried a day and a night in succession. When it was already about the second cock-crow, we unawares struck against a rugged rock jutting out from the land so as to form a short peninsula. A shout went up, since someone passed the word that we were near the land itself, and a great din arose, not at all in harmony: the sailors shuddering, while we, from inexperience, were clapping our hands and embracing one another, not knowing how to cope with the fullness of our joy. Yet this was said to be the greatest of the dangers that surrounded us. When day was already breaking, someone waves his hand … the suspect places, and others in which we might take heart. At last he came alone in a little two-oared boat; tying it to the ship, he takes the rudder in hand, and the Syrian gladly gave up the chief seat. Having gone no more than fifty stades (… I think they call the place), he set us down on the beach, and was hailed as saviour and good genius. A little later he brought in another merchantman, and then another, and before evening five cargo ships had been saved by the divine old man, a deed most contrary to that of Nauplius; for he did not, as that man did, show [false fires] in the storm. On the next day … us. They were from Alexandria … And now we are an entire fleet in a small dockyard.

But since our provisions were by now eaten up (for being unaccustomed to misfortune, and not expecting to be overdue, we had put on board only moderate supplies, and did not use even these moderately), the old man remedied this too, giving us nothing, for he was not like one who had anything; but he showed us rocks in which, he said, breakfast and dinner for each day lay hidden for those willing to work. Fishing from there, we have now been living for a seventh day: the men …, the lads feasting on gudgeons and rainbow wrasses; I and the Roman devotee are strengthened by limpets. The limpet is a hollow shellfish which, once it takes hold of a rock, clings with all its strength. At first we lived meagrely from the hunt, each one holding on to whatever he had caught, and no one gave a gift to anyone. But now all are in greater plenty, for the following reason. The women, Libyan women to the women on board, would gladly provide even birds' milk; at any rate they give what the air and the land bear: cheeses, … hens' eggs; one woman even gave a bustard. These women bring the gifts down to the ship, and those who receive them share with anyone who wishes. And these now present us with the catch of their hunting; and one comes after another, a boy after a man and a man after a boy, always bringing me some gift of hospitality, one a little fish caught on a hook, another something else; in any case some good thing of the kind the rocks bear. For I am not willing to accept what comes from the women, and this too for your sake, so that no truce may be made between me and them, and then, when I have to swear it off, I be at a loss in denying it. Otherwise, what prevented us from living in luxury on the necessities? So much flows in from many sides. You, then, will count the friendliness of the natives, which they show to the women who are their guests, as a virtue; but the other matter is strange, worth narrating, especially at the leisure I now have. The wrath of Aphrodite, so one would guess, holds the country; for they suffer what the women of Lemnos suffered. They have huge breasts, out of all proportion to the chest, so that the babies suck the nipple not under the arm but over the shoulder, the breast being thrown back. Unless one should say that Ammon and the land of Ammon is no better a nurse of flocks than of children, and that nature has granted to humans and beasts alike more abundant and richer springs of milk, and for this there is need of richer udders and paps. Learning from outsiders that not every female is made like this, they disbelieve it; and whenever they lay hold of a foreign woman, they treat her kindly and do everything until they have searched her bosom. The one who has seen tells another, and they call one another, like the Cicones; and they run together to the sight, and bring gifts for it. Now we had among us a little slave-girl from Pontus, in whom art and nature together [had made a waist] slimmer than the ants' …

'It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man.' But I learn that men of the most godless heresy of Eunomius, … Quintianus by name, and … have come, again to commit adultery against the Church and to set up certain false teachers, a snare for the souls of the simple; … for this very purpose they have sailed down here, bringing … For the lawsuit is a pretext for impiety, or rather a contest on behalf of impiety. These bastard presbyters, then, these newly arrived apostles of the devil and of Quintianus, must not escape your notice as they sow the tares among the wheat. Their hiding places are plain to all. You know which estates would receive them; you know which houses stand open to the robbers. Pursue the thieves …

Carnas is still putting it off, and becomes just neither willingly nor under compulsion. He must come, so that we may know what he has to say, and with what eyes he will look us in the face, from whom … against their will, the horse he stole, to buy it, 'so that', as he says, 'a soldier may not be without a horse'. He offers quite a small sum of silver, and when they will not sell he does not give the horse back, but thinks he holds it justly; and this though he is no Agathocles or Dionysius, whom their tyrannies permitted to be so very wicked, but Carnas from Kapharodis, whom it is not hard to bring back under the laws. If, then, anyone brings him over to you, let us not be ignorant of it either, so that those who …

How deeply do you think my heart was stung when a report spread through the city that [you had been struck by] some terrible disease, and worse than terrible? Then the report proved false; and I think some utterly wicked man, seizing on the name of an eye inflammation as a pretext, blew the rumour up and made a tragedy of it. May whatever lies he told about you recoil on his own head; but thanks be to God, who has let us hear better news. One ought not, as the saying goes, to have your affairs signalled to us by the stars, nor to find out what rumour says, but best of all to have you with us; if not, to read your letters and know your news from you. But you neglect us too much, as perhaps God wills.

You will surely not say that the bearer of the festal letters escaped your notice. No: you saw him and overlooked him, and you did not think it worth while to remember your brother and add a letter to him telling how you are and in what circumstances you are. For to me it is no matter of indifference to know your news. And since I am grieved in all my own affairs, I would like to rejoice in yours; but you have deprived me even of this consolation. It ought not to be so. For even if we were not born of the same parents, … our upbringing was common and our education common; and what indeed was not common? Everything through everything has bound us to one another. But, as is said, ill fortune is a terrible thing; and whenever an adverse time comes upon someone, then everything else is tested, and the minds of brothers and of friends. It will be enough for me to learn your news even from others. Only may God be the shepherd of good things for you; for such is the news we long to hear about you.

[Letter 9] May a deep and sleek old age await you, most holy and most wise. For in other respects your being preserved would be a gain to life, … and the greatest addition to the school of Christ is the number of the festal books growing with the years. For the discourse sent down this year both delighted the cities and benefited them, the one by the greatness of its thoughts, the other by the grace of its words.

[Letter 10] I greet you yourself, blessed lady, and through you your most blessed companions. Long ago I would have complained that I am not thought worthy of letters; but now I know that I am overlooked by all of you, because, though I do no wrong, I am unfortunate in many things, indeed in as many as a man can be. But if I could read your letters and learn how you are spending your time (surely you are in better circumstances and are finding fortune kinder), I would be only half unhappy, being happy in you. But now this too is one of the hardships that have overtaken me. Besides my children, I have been deprived of my friends and of the goodwill of all; and, greatest of all, of your most divine soul, which alone I had hoped would remain to me, stronger than the spite of fortune and the currents of fate.

Neither did I formerly prevail over you, though with all my strength and all my devices I tried to escape the priesthood, nor have you now prevailed over me. It was divine after all, both the 'not yet' then and the 'already' now. I would have chosen many deaths rather than this ministry, for I did not reckon the dignity of the office to be within my measure. But since God has brought upon me not what I asked but what he willed, I pray that he who has been the dispenser of my life may also become the protector of what he has dispensed. For I have spent my life in the leisure of philosophy and in contemplation, engaging only so far in life with the body, and in being a citizen of cities, as to discharge my duty: how shall I be equal to cares that never let up? Or how, giving myself up to a crowd of affairs, shall I still attend to the beauties of the mind, which can be harvested only in blessed leisure, without which all life is unlivable for me and those like me? I myself would not know. But to God, they say, all things are possible, even the impossible. You yourselves, then, lift up suppliant hands to God for me, and charge the people in the city, and all who live on the estates or belong to the village churches, to offer prayers for us, all together and each one. For if I am not left forsaken by God, then I shall know that the priesthood is not a descent from philosophy but an ascent to it.

Go back to your mother the Church, brother Cyril. You were not cut off from her but separated for a season, a season set in proportion to your sins. For I seem to know clearly that our common father of holy memory would long ago have done this too, had death not come first; for to fix the punishment within a measure was the mark of a mind that from the start promised pardon. Consider, then, that it is that holy priest himself who has given you your return, and approach God with a soul pure of passion and holding no memory of wrongs. And keep that holy and God-loving man in all reverent remembrance; this too, surely, is not against your wish.

To Peter the presbyter. Let God lead every work and word. The bearer of the festal letters, which announce that the principal day of the feast is the nineteenth of the month Pharmuthi, since the night leading into it holds the mystery of the resurrection: show him every kindness both coming and going, and send him on his way in each direction with relays of animals. For, so that an ancient and ancestral custom might not fail the churches, he gave himself into the very midst of the enemies' weapons, undertaking to travel through dangerous country. Persuade the city also to pray for us. For it must now begin to feel its own ill-advisedness concerning us, since it called to the priesthood not one who has freedom of speech before God to pray for a whole people, but one who himself needs the people's prayers to be saved. Since there was also a meeting of the synod here (a multitude of many priests), which the present season had gathered, when I set myself to write to you … And if I had nothing to say of the kind you are accustomed to hear, this is excusable in me, but it is a charge against you, because you chose one who does not know the oracles of God in place of those who do.

So do children defend their parents! I have my thanks. Carnas has become my suppliant, and God made his supplication the more to be respected. For where [would it be right] for a priest, for a private grievance of his own, to look on while a man was being led off under arrest on one of the fast days? So the man who was leading him off did not let him go; he was deprived of him. If, then, he is to pay the penalty for having been overpowered, we shall have come round to being kind to those who did wrong, and to having wronged those who did no wrong at all.

I am faring so very badly that I need a hydroscope. Have one cast in bronze for me and … It is a cylindrical tube, with the shape and size of a flute. Along one straight line it bears the notches by which we test the weight of waters. It is closed at one end by a cone set on at an equal position, so that the cone and the tube have a common base. This is precisely what is called the baryllium. Whenever you let the tube down into water, it will stand upright and allow you to count the notches; and these are the indications of the weight.

… may you receive, mother, sister, teacher, and in all these things benefactress, and all that is honoured both in fact and in name. As for me, my bodily weakness depends on a cause in the soul. The memory of my children who have departed is consuming me little by little. Synesius was worth living only so long as he had no experience of the evils of life. Then, like a stream held back, they burst on me all at once, and the sweetness of life was changed. May I cease either to live or to remember the tomb of my sons! But may you yourself be well; and greet the blessed companions, beginning with father Theotecnus and brother Athanasius, all of them in order; and if anyone has been added to them so as to be dear to you, I must owe him thanks because he is dear to you; greet him too from me as a dearest friend. If you care at all for my affairs, you do well; and if you do not care, I do not care about that either.

Many good things befall so-and-so, through whom …

So-and-so is a councillor of the city in which I begot my children. In a way, then, all Alexandrians ought to be honoured and looked after by us as fellow citizens. But this man has the further claim of being a relative of the blessed Theodore, a man of whom we keep a very warm memory, and who … deserves not to be neglected by those who hold the first place here in public life. These men brought him to me, [asking me] to send him on to you with letters, … thinking that all would go well for him if he obtained from me an introduction to you and to so-and-so. I, then, have given what they asked; whether not in vain, you will show.

I do not think I am to blame for making this a joint letter; it would be blameworthy if I separated by letters those joined in mind. Greetings, then, admirable friends. The man who hands you the letter, who has been sent to you on the public road to convey gold, cherish in whatever way you can, since he was recommended to me by the whole council. And I would like to become the cause of some good to him; yet I do not know that it is more fitting for others than for you to care for us and for those we take up …

While the blessed Theodore was still alive, he was the common patron of all the people of the Pentapolis, but he was attached especially to our parents, through his zeal in everything and the eloquence and grace of his tongue. For the many and most pleasant favours from him, then, … let us repay our gratitude to Ammonius his nephew. I, for my part, have paid my share. What could one who is absent do, but recommend the man to those who are present? That his stay there should not be burdensome to him is your task.

If Theodore's memory lives with your reverence (and how should it not?), grant to those who are bound to the departed the honour shown to his nephew. For you will have done good to a good man and gratified the council of great Alexandria, since they came in a body and brought the man to me, and asked that he might profit somewhat from our letters. To give the letters was our part; that they should be of benefit to him is sought from you.