Letters 107–131

I asked the boy about the silphium, whether it came to you from your own farming, or whether you received it as a gift and set aside a share for me too. And when I learned that the garden you take such pains over had produced this crop as well as everything else, I was doubly pleased, both by the beauty of the plant and by the fame of the place. May you enjoy your all-bearing estate; may you never tire of watering your dearest beds, nor they ever give up their bearing, so that you may both use them yourself and send us all that the seasons bring.

To the same. You are charming, forbidding us to provide ourselves with weapons, when the enemy are upon us and making plunder of everything, and there are no soldiers, not so much as to be seen. Will you say, then, that it is not lawful for private persons to bear arms, but lawful for them to die, if the state is to be angry with a man who tries to save himself? But if I gain nothing else, at least I shall gain this: that the laws become supreme instead of these accursed men. And how highly do you think I value this, to see peace again, and the tribunal … and, if I were dead, to enjoy the first form of my fatherland …

I now have three hundred spears and as many cleavers; of double-edged swords there were not more than ten even before, for these very long iron blades are not forged among us. But I think … we shall use these. If need be, we shall have clubs too; the wild olives here are good. Some of us also have single-edged axes, each man at his belt, with which … having [these] as a shield of arms. The battle, as one may guess, will be tomorrow. For some of the enemy fell in with our scouts first and pursued them hard; and when they saw that our men were too strong to be caught, they told them to bring us the pleasantest news: that we would no longer need to wander about looking for men who sink into the breadth of the continent. For they said they would stay where they were, and wished to learn who we were, that we dared to tear ourselves so many days' journey from our land to engage warlike men who live a nomadic life, and have arranged their civil affairs as we arrange our military ones. So, as one who will tomorrow, with God, conquer the enemy, and, if need be, conquer them again (for may I utter nothing ill-omened), I charge you with the care of the children. It befits you, as their uncle, to remember the debt of kindness toward them.

I have neither ass, nor mule, nor horse; all have been let out to pasture; otherwise I would have used one to come to you, my dearest head. I would very much have liked to walk, and perhaps I could have; but my relatives said I must not, lest we become a source of amusement to those who met us. For they think these people, whoever they are, so very wise, and to have so much sense, that each of them could judge better than I what befits me. On so many judges do they make us depend, these people who compel us to live for the opinion of outsiders. And they prevailed, not by advising, but in the more forceful way: when I was setting out, they would not let me go, but took hold of my cloak. What remains, then, but to send the letter to you in my place? Through it I greet you and ask what news has come from Ptolemais, the fresh stories you are likely to bring from the general's headquarters; and above all, what is the much-talked-of secret from the West. For you know that it matters a great deal to me whether it happened so or not. If, then, you send a letter that tells each thing clearly, I shall stay where I am; if not, you too will blame me for the journey.

Cheilas the brothel-keeper, who is not likely to be unknown to many, because of the brilliance his trade has won him. For the mime Andromache, who flowered as the most beautiful of women in our time, belonged to his troupe. Having grown old in such fine pursuits, he thought it fitting to crown his past career with … He has lately come from the emperor, having obtained the command of the most noble Marcomanni, who were likely enough good soldiers before, and now that they have met with a fitting general will display some great and noble deed. He said, at any rate, when he met Syrianus (you know the physician from the neighbourhood), and Syrianus reported it to us, in what state he had left the sacred camp. The rest, what need is there to write to you, which I too heard only in passing? But what I myself was exceedingly pleased to hear, and want you to be gladdened by, is this. The admirable John, to put it briefly, is in the same position, fortune advancing his affairs as far as advancement can go and finding some excess of her own besides. For the emperor's ears are open to him, and before them his mind, to use for whatever he needs. And whatever Antiochus can do, this man can do; and Antiochus can do whatever he wishes. Do not think this is the Antiochus of Gratian's time, that sacred little man, excellent in character but very ugly to look at; it is another, the young man with the hollow belly, who held power beside Narses the Persian. Fortune has been making him great from then until now. This being so, it is likely that the most just governor will rule among us for a crow's lifetime, being related to the one and having become intimate with the other.

… fifty lines each day. He gives them back without stumbling, without repeating himself, without stopping to collect his memory over time; but once he begins to speak, he runs on continuously, and silence is the end of the recitation.

People do not love and praise for the same reasons, nor is one power of the soul assigned to both. By the part subject to feeling we are drawn to others or estranged from them; by the part of the soul that can judge and possesses reason, we praise and blame.

Shall we see these wretches willing to die for what belongs to others, whatever plunder they have gathered, so as not to give it back to its owners, while we, for our land, for our sanctuaries, for our laws, for property which time has made familiar to us, will not spare ourselves, but cling to our lives? Then we shall not seem to be men. I, at any rate, must go against them …

And then you wonder, living in parched Phycus, that you shiver and have spoiled your blood? On the contrary, one should wonder if your body is a match for the heat there. But you can come to us, with God, and be better, once you are rid of … salty, lukewarm water, and, in a word, stagnant water, which is the same as saying dead. And what is so fine about lying on the beach sand, which is your only pastime? For where else will you turn? Here, how pleasant it is to go under the shade of a tree; and if you are not satisfied, you may change from tree to tree, and from grove to grove. How pleasant to cross the little stream that trickles by! How sweetly the west wind gently stirs the branches! Varied are the songs of the birds, the colours of the flowers, the shrubs of the meadow, some the work of farming, others the gifts of nature; all fragrant, the juices of a healthy earth. The cave of the Nymphs I will not praise; that needs a Theocritus. And there is something besides all this.

Eating little is a necessary good. Someone else might mock it, but that is not right for you, who boast of Hippocrates, who in his aphorisms said that want is the mother of health.

'Onto a mountain, or into the wave of the loud-roaring sea': so Homer sends off the evils that come from contention. Philosophy does not even give them entry into the soul at all. But I, for my part, am too weak to be a philosopher; yet we do not think fit to be altogether worse than soldiers, …

If you know the hero Maximinus (for he spent quite a long time at court), you surely know too that he was a good man. His son, my second cousin, will hand you this letter. Someone else might perhaps honour him even for his fortune, for among those who have governed it is no undistinguished office. But the philosopher Troilus will see into the inner man of the youth, and praise him from there. It is clear that you will also help him bear his present troubles; for he is being torn apart by informers who have grown like a cancer on Cyrene, 'unless you put on your strength'. For whatever you persuade Anthemius, or anyone of his rank, to say on our behalf and on behalf of the truth will surely be yours, and you will have the credit for what is done. Through one man and one case, then, I beg you, be eager to rid us of these utterly wicked beasts. For if the attempt succeeds for those who started it, it will encourage many to become like them.

Whatever you do for Diogenes, of the things your nature is to do, you will have done nothing new, but will be building on what is your own. For he is a Cyrenean, of the city that still stands because of you. And one must do good not only to people in a body but also one by one. In what matters Diogenes will need friends, you should not read in my letter but hear from his own telling; for nothing could be more eloquent than the one who has suffered. Greet from me Marcianus the philosopher, who governed the Paphlagonians. And if he can (and I guess that he can), let him prevent a close relative of mine, my first cousin, from becoming the prey of sycophant informers, the common curses of the country; whose son I entrust to you with this letter, because of whom, being two brothers, three …

… they give them to sip, so that with this they may draw out also what was stored up before. I too want to send you rumours, so that you may give them back to me many times over, adding whatever more you happen to know.

Odysseus was trying to persuade Polyphemus to let him out of the cave. 'For I am a wizard,' he said, 'and could be of use to you at the right moment, since you are not fortunate in your love for the sea-nymph. I know incantations and binding spells and love-compulsions, which Galatea is not likely to resist even for a short while. Only undertake to move the door, or rather this door-stone; to me it looks like a mountain peak. I will come back to you quicker than words, having worked on the girl. Worked on, do I say? I will show you that very girl brought here by many charms; she will beg you and entreat you, and you will play coy and make fun of her. But meanwhile something of this sort has troubled me: that the smell of the fleeces may be unpleasant to a girl who lives in luxury and bathes many times a day. It would be good, then, to put everything in order and sweep the place out; better still, to prepare garlands and crown your darling. But why do you delay? Why not set your hand to the door already?' At this Polyphemus laughed as loud as he could and clapped his hands. Odysseus thought that he did not know what to do with himself for joy, hoping to win his darling. But Polyphemus chucked him under the chin and said, 'Nobody, you seem to be a very shrewd little fellow, well rubbed in affairs. But embroider something else; from here you will not escape.' Odysseus, then (for he was truly wronged), was going to profit from his villainy after all. But you, a Cyclops in daring and a Sisyphus in your attempts, have been pursued by justice and shut up by the law; may you never laugh at them. If you must in any case be above the laws, at least may I not be the one who sets you free and breaks down the doors of the prison. For if the state were in the hands of the priests, they ought to be the punishers of wickedness, since the public sword is no less a means of purification. So we learn of the famous men of former times. So they did, as long as it seemed good for the same man both to pray for the common good and to act so that it might come about. For both the Egyptians and the Hebrew race were ruled for a long time by priests. But since the two lives have been separated, and the one declared sacred, the other a ruler's, and others are appointed to be in affairs, while we are appointed to be in prayers, we to whom the law forbids to lend a hand to justice and to put to death even the most wicked: how could anyone allow us to lend a hand to a villain against justice? But I, for my part, do everything: I pray both at home and in the common sanctuaries that justice may prevail over injustice and the city be purged of wickedness. And that is the same as you, and anyone else like you, coming to a bad end. Let this be a proof to you of what I would have been if I could do anything, I who, since it is not permitted, …

Many good things befall the priests of the Axomitae! When the soldiers had sunk into holes in the mountains and thought it right to guard their own blood, these priests summoned the country people and led them straight from the churches against the enemy; and having prayed, they set up a trophy in the Myrsinitis. This is a long, deep ravine, thickly wooded; but because no hostile arms had met the barbarians, they had grown bold enough even for difficult ground. And it seems they were to meet a 'black-bottomed' hero in Faustus, the deacon of the church. He was the first to stand up unarmed to a man in armour; he struck him on the temple with a stone held in his hand, not throwing it but leaping on him like a boxer. When the man fell, Faustus stripped him of his arms and with them slew many. And whoever else proved a brave man at that time, Faustus must be credited with what happened, both for what he did and for what he said at the right moment. I would most gladly crown and proclaim all who took part in the deed. For they were the first to set their hand to noble deeds, and to show those who were terrified that the enemy are not Corybantes, nor any of the spirits around Rhea, but men, who can be wounded and are mortal, as we are. And if we too prove men in such things, not even the second prize would be without honour. Perhaps we might even be granted the first, if, lying in ambush in a ravine, fifty …

'Even if in the house of Hades they forget the dead, yet even there I shall remember my dear comrade.' The lines were composed by Homer; but I do not know whether their sense was more fitting for Achilles to speak about Patroclus, or for me about you, my dearest and most beneficent head. I call to witness God, whom philosophy reveres, that I carry the image of your sacred and sweet soul in the middle of my heart, and the wonderful echo of your wise words booms in my ears. When I came home to my fatherland from Egypt and read the letters of two years all at once, you cannot imagine how many tears I shed over them. For I did not rejoice in what I enjoyed of you through the writing, but was grieved, as the writing brought back to me your living company, the company of such a friend, and indeed a father, who willingly lives for his fatherland; so that I might again have a pretext for travel. Shall I ever see you, truly most genuine Father? Shall I ever embrace your sacred head? Shall I share again in the gathering made blessed through you? If I am granted these things, I will show that the story of Aeson the Thessalian, whom the poems say grew young twice, is no longer a myth …

'Even if in the house of Hades they forget the dead', yet even there I shall remember dear Hypatia. I, at any rate, beset by the sufferings of my fatherland, and vexed with it because every day I see enemy arms and men slaughtered like sacrificial victims, and breathe air corrupted by the rotting of bodies, and expect to suffer the same myself (for who can be hopeful where even the air around is most gloomy, darkened by the shadow of carrion birds?), yet even so I cling to the place. For what am I to do, being a Libyan, born here, and seeing the tombs of my ancestors not without honour? Only for your sake, I think, would I overlook my fatherland, if I could find leisure …

To his brother. We are unfortunate in that we have only wicked news to exchange with each other. For look: they have burned Battia and the threshing floors, ravaged the land, and enslaved the women; and the males they do not spare at all. … But now, I think, they know they are too few to assign many guards to the booty and still have enough left for war, if anyone should march out against them. Yet none of us is indignant; we sit at home …, and we have on our lips the soldiers' rations and their profits in time of peace, as if we needed to go to law with them, not to defend ourselves against the enemy. Shall we not stop talking nonsense? Shall we not come to our senses at last and arm the farmers against the enemy, for our children, for our wives, for our land, and, if you like, even for the soldiers themselves? For it is fine in peacetime to boast that we feed and save them. I, for my part, … For I have formed companies and captains from those at hand, … and a large number is gathering for me at Asusamas too; for the Soestae are coming to meet us. And I hope that once we are on the road, and the report goes round that a youthful force has gathered about me, many more will come uninvited. For the best men will come from everywhere to share in a noble deed; and the most wicked, …

Alas! But why 'alas'? We have suffered what mortals suffer. The third and last of my sons is gone. But the doctrine that nothing outside our control is either good or evil is still kept by me. Rather, long ago it was a lesson learned; now it has become the conviction of a soul exercised by circumstances. It seems the onset of the grief had to be harder for me; and for this reason the spirit whose concern is to harm my affairs arranged beforehand that you, dear head, should not be with me. But may you come some day, admirable, thrice-longed-for, most guileless of friends. The admirable Menelaus is my witness of my disposition toward you; for this reason I often gladly spent the day with him, because he spoke of you in words of praise … he was grateful to the great Asclepiodotus, and has continued thanking him as a benefactor for the greatest favours. So that we may have cold water, I am looking for a jar or a cask of marble: the larger, the better. It will stand in the shrine of Asclepius by the river; beside it …

'Asp, toad, snake' … flee … But after the most gentle and philosophic Pentadius, the tablets which the state makes the token of the Egyptian prefecture have been received and are held by Euthalius of Laodicea. You know the young man, as one may guess, since he spent time at court at the same period as we did; for neither his character nor his nickname let him go unnoticed. You used to hear of a certain 'Ballantas', who did not inherit this august name from his father but acquired it himself. For when, I believe, he had been appointed governor of Lydia in the time of Rufinus, and was plundering the Lydians, Rufinus was indignant and pursued him with a fine of fifteen pounds of gold; and he assigned soldiers from among his attendants, the bravest and most loyal, as he thought, to exact the gold by force and bring it faithfully to his own treasury. What, then, did our Sisyphus do in answer? 'Let me not be too unrefined': the famous purses! He had two made, more like each other than the horses of Eumelus, and into one he put bronze obols, into the other gold staters. He showed the one and hid the other; and when they had counted the gold, weighed it, and sealed it with the public seal, he secretly substituted the other purse, and sent obols in place of the staters. And they had acknowledged in public documents that they had received the gold and would deliver it. 'From that time Daphnis was first among the shepherds.' This raised Euthalius to great fortune. For laughter allowed no one to be indignant on behalf of the state; they wanted instead to see him as a wonder-worker beyond any who had ever lived, and he was summoned and went, as it were, from city to city. I know the little fellow to be more talkative than a cicada. He is just about to relieve my friend Pentadius of his office.

To a bishop driven from his see, who wished to join the party of Arius. You have not lost what you lost. For when someone is separated from the roll of impiety, he is not then deprived of the thrones of piety. Embrace your estrangement from Egypt, and think that the prophet has cried aloud to you too: 'What …

Plato represents Socrates as coming late to his beloved and asking him not to be surprised if, 'as I was slow to begin, so I may be slow to stop'. I think I have had the same experience with you, and have a right to ask the same pardon. For a whole year I held back (it is neither fitting nor true to say so, for I sent the letters in vain, since they came back into my hands again); now, then, I send them all together. With them I am not only talking at length, as if paying arrears of tribute, but I also want to add something. And yet, by the god of friendship, mine and yours, I went down to the sea, and on horseback, for this very purpose, to send you both a letter and a gift; but it is not worth listing what was sent for Pylaemenes to receive and was put ashore at Alexandria because of that most unlucky voyage. On your account (though of my friends there Pylaemenes is the dearest to me), by your honoured disposition, I would have borne the loss more easily than on account of many others, and especially the admirable Proclus and Tryphon, the only ones whom you wrote of as greeting me. I have sent, then, to your honoured disposition ten gold coins, and to my friend Proclus, in the manner of the divine Hesiod, a third more than I had from him. For it is like this: when I was abroad I received from him, for the voyage home, as I needed it, sixty gold pieces. He had written them down as seventy; I have sent eighty. And there would have been many more, if the first letters had reached you, and the ship with the cargo of that time. But now I, trusting to fortune, went abroad to Alexandria, intending the boat to put in at your harbours; but, without my knowing it, it was driven by off-shore winds from Crete and barely reached safety in the Egyptian sea. Or what prevented you from keeping land ostriches, as you keep hens? It is right that the note should be returned to my people by the most admirable Father Proclus when he receives the eighty gold pieces …

[Next letter, heading lost] You did Cerealius a favour by greeting us through him: namely, that he escaped notice for five days as a wicked man. For the cities hoped for something good from a man whom Simplicius did not disdain to know. But very quickly he disgraced, not you (may your affairs never depend on another), but himself and his office and, not to waste time, the affairs of the Romans: a man to be bought for the smallest price, careless of reputation, unwarlike, oppressive in peace, which he enjoyed only a very short time. For he needed no time to overturn and confound everything. As if there were a law that the soldiers' property belongs to the generals, he took what all of them had and gave them in exchange freedom from service and from enrolment, letting them go wherever each thought he could feed himself. Having done this to the local troops, since he could not extract money from the foreign ones, he extracted it from the cities themselves, moving and transferring garrisons not where it was more useful but where it was more profitable; for the cities, burdened by their garrisons, paid gold to have them removed. The Macetae quickly perceived this, and the report passed from the half-barbarians to the barbarians: 'then they came, as many as the leaves and flowers that grow in spring.' Alas for the youth we have lost! Alas for the crops we hoped for in vain! We sowed for the enemy's fire. For most of us, wealth lay in herds, in camels at pasture, in horses … carried away by my feelings. But I write, often seeing beacons in a single hour, and lighting them myself, and raising signals to the others. Hunting I gave up … which we formerly enjoyed freely, not least because of you; everything is gone. And we groan, remembering that youth, and that mind and spirit; and the enemy now hold the country. I … I do not know whether these words were not more fitting for Archilochus. May Cerealius perish evilly, if he has not perished before the curse; he deserved to be the work of last winter's storm. When he saw the country he had brought into danger, he lost all trust in the land, put his gold on board sailing ships, and rides at anchor out at sea. A light boat brings his letters, which we do indeed obey: they command us to stay within the walls, that no one leap beyond the ditches or engage men who cannot be fought; otherwise he protests that he is free of blame. He teaches us to set four watches in the night, as though our hopes lay in not sleeping. For he seems to be wise in such matters, being a man made for misfortune. And yet he did not even wish to share our misfortunes; for the general does not stand at the battlement, as I, Synesius the philosopher, do, but at the oar. If you love the poems you asked for (though we know of nothing good in them except their subject), pray with the Cyrenaeans that we may have a little respite from arms. For as things now are, it is not possible to dig books out of chests.

Consider the definitions of geometry most true, since the other sciences too may pride themselves when they borrow something from geometry, however little, for their proofs. There is among them a principle that things equal to the same thing must also be equal to one another. Now character has made you my friend, and nature the admirable Diogenes; and you are both friends of one man. You must, then, be attached to each other also, as through me in the middle. So I join you to each other through this letter, with which the admirable Diogenes will give himself to the friendship of your reverence; and he will, I know well, take hold of my Pylaemenes; for in calling you mine I would say I neither bring shame nor feel it. That through you he will also gain the other friends who love me, and those who have power will be useful to him too, I would be unjust to doubt; and he needs useful friends, if anyone ever did. His affairs, as briefly as possible, are these. He is young, simple and noble, spirited and gentle, such as Plato wants the guardians of his city to be. He served in the army while still quite a lad; and just out of the ranks of the ephebes he held the command of the troops among us, being compared before envious witnesses (for such are our citizens toward every success); but he proved himself superior even to envy.

That the women should cry out and beat their breasts when the enemy are reported might seem less dreadful; and yet Plato thinks even this dreadful, that they will not even, like birds fighting for their young, stand up to any of the most valiant beasts, but bring on the human race the reputation of being the most cowardly of all creatures. But that you too should make the same mistakes as they, and be terrified at night, and jump up and shout that a barbarian is standing at the very door of the fort (for someone reported such things about you): how can this be borne any longer? Things ought to be otherwise, if you are my brother; and then to be a coward? I, as soon as day breaks, ride out as far as I can, and with ears and eyes inquire into everything about these raiders. For it is not even worth calling them enemies, but robbers or clothes-snatchers or some such most petty name; they stand up to no one who attacks them vigorously, but slaughter only the terrified, like sacrificial victims, and strip them. At night …