Letters 132–146

Yesterday and the day before, under the recent consuls, one of whom is Aristaenetus, I received a letter bearing the name of your sacred head. I judge it to be very old, both because it has become thoroughly worm-eaten and because most of the letters are blurred. I would ask you not to send a letter once a year like a tribute, nor to make the dearest Syrus your only bearer; for so it comes about that we receive the letters not fresh but stale. Do as I do: no imperial courier changing a public horse leaves the city without letters for your eloquence forming part of the load behind him. If all of them, or some, deliver them, many good things befall those who deliver, for they are honest men; if not, in this too you are wiser, distrusting those who deserve it. But so that we may not tire the secretary in vain by dictating letters that will not be delivered, I ask to be told; for we will make other arrangements in future, and I shall trust Peter alone. This letter, at least, I think Peter will carry, having received it through the sacred hand. For I am sending it from the Pentapolis to our common teacher, and she will give it to whomever she wishes; and she will wish, I know well, to give it to the best known. For we do not even know, dearest and admirable friend, whether we may greet each other again. For through the wickedness of the generals the country has passed to the enemy without a battle, and only those of us live who have occupied the strongholds, while those caught in the plains have been slaughtered like sacrificial victims. And we fear their siege, lest, if it lasts long, it reduce many of the forts by thirst. That is why I have not answered your counter-charges about the gifts; for I have no leisure, my mind being on a certain engine. I am constructing one by which we may hurl stones of considerable weight from the towers as far as possible. At the same time I give you leave to send me gifts; for Synesius must yield to Olympius; but not luxurious gifts. For even then I found fault with the luxury of the lodgings at our common mess; let them be military: bows and arrows, and the arrows with their shafts. Bows I could buy elsewhere, and repair those I have; but arrows are not easy to get, at least not serviceable ones. For these Egyptian ones … and so they fail of themselves; they are like runners who are hampered and stumble at the very start. But yours are of good length, and have what is everything for a straight course of flight. Send me these, and good horse-bridles for use; for I would also very gladly see the Italian horse you praised with your fine tongue, since you promise him to us as the sire of good foals. But below in your letter, after the signature, I found that it was necessary to wait …

I received the letter in which you again blamed fortune, as having planned nothing kinder concerning you. Do not, dearest of companions; it is not right to accuse her, but to console. Since you are so placed, you can come to us; you will find a brother's house. We are not rich, my good friend, but what we have suffices for Pylaemenes as well as for me; and if you come, perhaps we shall even become rich. From equal resources others have more than a moderate fortune; but I am a bad manager. Still, my patrimony holds out even against the most thorough neglect, and it is able to feed a philosopher. Do not think it the same thing when forethought is added. So much on this; and do not do otherwise, unless in the meantime you have done something better and intend once again to raise up fallen Heraclea. I have not written letters to those I usually write to, because of the times; but recently I gave letters for all … Diogenes is mine. If, then, he found you in his search (for he searched, I know), he has handed over the bundle, for it was not addressed. If not, ask the ship's captain to show you the young man, take the letters, and give them to everyone yourself. There are some whom I particularly want greeted from me: father Proclus; Tryphon, who governed here; and Simplicius, a man and a good governor, and my friend. When you have given him the letter, make use of the man while he is there; for it is good to share leisure with a soldier who is a poet. We had large ostriches from our peacetime hunting; but it was not possible to send them to the sea through the enemy's arms, nor to put anything else on board of what is near the shore. So wine is the only cargo. Of oil, by your honoured head, they carry not even a ladle, at least so far as I know. Take, then, so many measures of wine; you will get them by handing over the order to Julius. It is attached to the letter, so that it may not go astray. I have also written to father Proclus and sent him the same. Let him receive the letter from you and the wine from Julius. For golden Tryphon (for one must say something frigid and Gorgianic in this too), for Tryphon we have prepared gifts: plenty of silphium juice (you have heard, I suppose, of the silphium of Battus) and the best saffron; for Cyrene is good at producing this too. … It was not possible to send them for the present; but we shall send them in another ship, when … and to you, along with it, the ostriches separately …

This Poemenius, who gives you the letter, was sent to us by Artabazacus, who held power here a little earlier, to take charge of all the estates in these parts of which he had become master. But in such a position he showed himself gentle and most moderate. And who else has used such an opportunity so? Yet no Libyan found Poemenius's power at that time burdensome. A great proof of it: he grieves the cities by leaving. You, then, for my sake …

May I have as much profit from Athens as you wish! For I think I have become wiser by a palm and a finger. … And it is possible, from there, to [learn] of divine wisdom … and at Cephisia and Phalerum. And may [the ship's captain who brought me here] perish evilly … present-day Athens has nothing august except the famous names of … the skin is left, a token of the creature that once was … and the Lyceum, and, by Zeus, the Painted Stoa, … no longer painted; for the proconsul took away the panels. … As for Athens, long ago the city was the hearth of the wise; but now it is the beekeepers who make it famous. So it is with that pair of Plutarchean sophists, who gather the young in the theatres not by the fame of their words but …

If Homer said that the gain of Odysseus's wandering was 'to see the cities of many men and learn their mind', and that though he put in not among cultivated men but among Laestrygonians and Cyclopes, surely poetry would have sung wonderfully of my journey and yours, which let us experience things that are disbelieved even when reported. For we have been eyewitnesses and hearers of the genuine guide to the mysteries of philosophy. And if human needs bind in affection those who have shared them, a divine law requires us, who have come together in mind, the best thing in us, to honour each other. I, then, having also enjoyed your bodily company, seem to see you though you are absent, as memory brings forward the image laid up by affection; and the wonderfully sweet echo of your sacred words booms in my ears. If you are not so disposed toward us, you do wrong; if you are, you do nothing great, for you are paying a debt of affection. But when I look to our fellowship in philosophy, and to that philosophy over which we pored so much together, then, as I reach this reasoning, I attribute our meeting to God as its arbiter. For it was from no lesser cause than a divine one that Synesius, who least of all makes the thing public, who is with very many people but keeps his meetings with them to human fellowship, and holds philosophy among the most ineffable of ineffable things, so readily uncovered himself and his treasures to a man who had given and received speech with him only briefly. Since, then, there has come to be one to whom I divulged what had till then been kept unpublished, and forgot the wise art of Proteus (for it was nothing else than to be with men not in a divine but in a civil fashion); since this has happened, not by my design but suddenly and unprepared, I reckon God the guide of the paradox, and we will ask him for the completion of what was begun through him. May he grant us to pursue philosophy together; if not that, at any rate to pursue philosophy. For my part, I am in labour to pour into this letter some thoughts in my soul about the subject we were treating; but I will not do it. For to you … may it be granted, God willing, to meet and talk with us about these things, and with many who know better. It is not right for me to trust such things to writing; for a letter is not discreet, but by nature talks to whoever comes upon it. Farewell; pursue philosophy, and keep digging up the eye that is buried in us. For living rightly, being, I think, the prelude to wisdom, was shown to be pursued earnestly by the ancient and wise men … as the divine voice says. But the many hold living rightly to be desirable not for the sake of wisdom but in itself, and the perfection of man; they think the road is not a road but the goal one must reach by it, and they think wrongly. For irrational self-control and much abstinence from meats have been given by nature to many irrational kinds. But we do not praise the crow, or any other creature that has found a natural virtue, because they are void of wisdom. The life according to mind is the end of man. Let us pursue this, asking from God to think divine things, and ourselves gathering wisdom from every side as far as we can …

To the same. I heard one of the clever speakers praising the use of letters; a sophist had made this the subject of many admirable speeches. Its praise was supplied from many sources, but above all from this, that a letter can be the consolation of loves that are not fortunate, giving, in the absence of bodies, an image of presence, and, by seeming to converse, satisfying the longing of the soul. So he sang the praises of the inventor of letters, and judged the gift worthy not of any man but of God to men. I enjoy this sacred grace of God, and with the one I ought to talk with, if I cannot talk, since I can write, I do this often; and so I am with him as far as possible and enjoy my beloved. But you yourself, if it is not petty to say so, have separated your mind along with the place. And if you do not stop withdrawing yourself from those who have loved you most guilelessly and honourably, you will have imitated the swallows, which settle into men's friendships, as it were, with singing, but leave them in silence. This is still said as to a man, and the complaints are human ones. But if through philosophy you have united what here below stands apart, and have heard the mind say that the friend is the beautiful, and the beautiful the same, and this is one, then we no longer judge your silence toward us to be contempt, but rejoice with you as one who pursues philosophy, refusing pettiness, and keeping company, with what is better in you, with what is better in us. May you be such, best of men, and truly my thrice-longed-for brother.

If there is such a goad of persuasion even in letters, if images of character have such power over readers, surely it would be an irresistible thing to touch them in person. Me, at any rate, you won over even when present by the sweet Siren of your words. Yet I would not be ashamed to say truly that a second experience would be sweeter to me. For one who has experienced a good does not perceive it when it is present as he does when it is absent. In the one case the continuity of enjoyment steals away the perception of the delight; but he who is separated a little from what is sweet at once has memory alongside, goading him, of what he truly had. Come, then, dearest head, and let us meet each other in philosophy, building what befits what has been begun, so that a beauty perfect from perfect parts may appear, and not a mutilated one. But if, as it is right to pray against, we should miss each other, it is clear that the harm is mine. For you, while things go well there, have companions both better and like yourself. My fatherland, because it is my fatherland, is precious to me; but toward philosophy it is, I do not know how, hardened. So it is not without fear that I remain without help, with no one to sing with me like a lark. And even if we grant that there are some …, against what other kindling, after your sacred soul, could I strike myself, to bring forth the shining offspring of the mind? Who is so able vigorously to call forth a hidden spark that loves to escape notice, by every device, and to kindle it and show a bright fire? May God, then, be present to us both, absent and together; and when God is present, every impossibility becomes possible. Farewell; pursue philosophy, and lead the divine in you up to the first-born divine. It is good, in every letter of mine, to say this from me to your honoured disposition, the words they say Plotinus spoke to those present as he was releasing his soul from the body …

Of loves, those which have their beginnings on the ground and are human are hateful and fleeting, measured only by presence, and that barely. But those which the presiding God arbitrates, in the divine words of Plato, fusing them by his art and making the two lovers one, refute the nature of time and place. For nothing prevents souls longing for each other from coming together in ineffable meetings and being entwined. It is from there that our love must hang, unless we are to shame the nurture of philosophy by loving sense perception, and … knocked at the door by bodies, not admitting the presence of soul. Why, then, do you lament, and pour tears into your letters? If it is out of pity for us, because we do not yet pursue philosophy, though we seem to and say we do, I recognize the truth of the lament. But if it is because senseless fortune has wronged our companionship (for this is the drift of your letters), it is womanish and childish to love things in which a spirit can harm the ends of our choices. But I asked that sacred head, Herculian, to look upward and be wholly a beholder of the things that are, having passed beyond the virtues of the starting-point of mortals, those turned long ago toward adorning things here below. And so to such a man the address of my letter is 'think much': not 'rejoice', nor 'fare well', which is more modest. For a lesser mind presides over actions, not the one I wished to dig up in you; about which I discussed a great deal with you in the first two letters, neither of which those who received them delivered. Indeed this is the fifth letter I am sending. May it not be in vain too; and it would not be in vain if first it were delivered, and then, more august than this, if you transferred the strength of the body to the courage of the soul: not to that of the first and earthly tetrad of the virtues, but to its analogue in the mind, when you admire nothing human. And even if the distinction in what has been said is not yet clear to you, which virtues are more primal and which are the lowest, let this be your rule and test of having attained the first: not to weep over anything, but justly to despise all things here, when that comes to you; so that 'think much' may return to you in our letters. May you live in health, with philosophy presiding over a waveless cheerfulness … apathy itself, while the middle states stop at moderation of the passions; where shall we place inexperience of passion and readiness to be humbled? Is it not far from philosophy, into whose mysteries we prayed you would be initiated? Not so, dearest of all to me; show your friend to be more manly. All my household has begged me to greet you on its behalf. Be greeted, then, by all, each one all but pouring out his soul into the greeting. And greet the mounted archer for us, I beg you.

Do not be surprised if I use one bearer for two letters. First, feel that you are paying the penalty for an untimely complaint, and take your fill of our garrulity; then, I also want the second letter to meet another need of mine. I ask for that little composition in iambics, in which the writer converses with his soul. At the time I thought I could put it together again from memory; but now there is a danger that the substitute would be nothing compared with it. If I let myself write it, I shall be using judgment rather than memory, perhaps for the worse, perhaps for the better. But one ought not to give birth twice to the same offspring, when one can have the one already born. Send me, then, a copy of the quire, for the sake of the very soul which the book wishes to adorn; but as quickly and as safely as possible. That is, if you do it through people who will deliver it quickly and surely. For if you fail in either, you will not have done it at all: if you send it more slowly, it will arrive after I have come; and if you give it to someone who will not surely deliver it, …

Odysseus I recognized in your letter, for many things brought the hero back to memory; but Proteus I did not recognize. For you, being such a man … 'and it is not unfitting to touch the demigods'. I am not wise in anything else; but in keeping with the Delphic inscription, having come to know myself, I condemn the poverty of my nature and renounce any kinship with heroes, except that I prayed to imitate their discretion, which you too confounded for me, like Menelaus from Sparta. So you are in danger of belonging to a pair of heroes, not to Odysseus alone. So much for that. Since you complained of my unfitness for writing, you have no right to demand a multitude of letters that will only annoy you; so I have shortened this one, so that there may not be more toil for one who reads more. Farewell, and live cheerfully, using philosophy as your guide to the divine, admirable friend. Greet the admirable Count, to whom we did not allow ourselves to send greetings in person … For the saying from poetry holds that it is right for the younger to begin war and strife, but the elder friendliness. And yet …

You are not keeping our agreement, my friend, not to make public what deserves to be hidden. For I heard from some who came from you, who remembered certain expressions and asked us to uncover their meaning for them. But we, after our manner, neither claimed the writings before them nor said that we recognized them. You need no longer an admonition from us, dear head, for ours is too small to persuade you; but seek out the letter of Lysis the Pythagorean to Hipparchus, and if you find it anywhere, do me the favour of reading it often. Perhaps you would come to a strong repentance for that which, as Lysis says in his Doric way, 'began great contempt for divine things among men'. For I myself have associated with some, both long ago and recently, men who through rashly hearing … what they were, laymen; and, filled with conceit, they blunted divine doctrines by pretending to teach what they had never had the good fortune to learn. And indeed they attached to themselves admirers, three or four, no less vulgar in soul, some of them not even led through the preliminary studies. For conceit of wisdom is a terrible and deceptive thing: it rises up among those who know nothing, and dares everything without circumspection. For what could be bolder than ignorance … among drones, who neither understand words nor desire them; hating the tribe, I find no other cause of their rearing than that they were thought worthy of the first principle without guidance and before their time, perhaps by others like themselves, at very costly lectures. For this reason I am myself a more careful guardian of the mysteries of philosophy, and I urge you to be one too. That this befits Herculian, I know; but if you have genuinely come to philosophy herself, you must stand aloof from fellowship with those who turn away from her and make a bastard of her supreme majesty by their pretension. By God, the overseer of friendship, do not take this letter out to anyone. For if you do, the marks of their wickedness will grieve those who recognize in themselves or in their friends the tokens of what is said.

Phoebammon, who hands you this letter, is a good man and a friend, and he is being wronged. On every count, then, you ought to help him: for our sake, for his character, and for his circumstances. Let this be done; for he seems to have trusted greatly in our goodwill toward each other. Needing you, he took refuge with me, confident that through me he would obtain your help. And I promised him Herculian through Synesius, and victory over those who trouble him through Herculian, that sacred and honoured head. About the Count you wrote through Ursicinus (I mean the one who obtained command of the soldiers in my fatherland), and you asked for tokens from us, so that letters might be written by those of your friends who are able to do this, to him and to the ordinary governor. I welcomed your intention then, but declined the deed as superfluous, setting myself bare for philosophy. But now friends who are being wronged, private persons and soldiers, compel me to wish …

A servant of mine has run away: not one of my ancestral servants, nor of those otherwise brought up with me. For those, having shared a free upbringing and being treated, I might almost say, as equals, love me as a chosen ruler rather than fear me as a master by law. But Philoromus (that is the runaway's name), being a servant of my niece, the daughter of Amelius, becomes mine through her. Brought up careless and undisciplined, he could not bear a philosophic and Spartan supervision; and now, having found an Alexandrian master in place of me, he goes about Egypt with him. Harpocration is one of Herculian's guardsmen, holding the rank of assistant to the assistant. … Philoromus is with this man. I, for my part, would have said goodbye to him. For where is it reasonable that the worse should not need the better, and the better, who admit that they are better, should need the worse? But the wretch's mistress is not yet persuaded to be so much a philosopher as to despise those who do not cling to her, and she begged hard that men be sent to bring him back. Our tent-mate Aeithales undertook the service of his own accord, and I have sent him, trusting in God as guide and promising him human help from you. May the letter be delivered to you; what follows, since you have taken up the matter, will be the care of God, of yourself, and of Aeithales.

Wishing to make your sacred soul more manly by rebuking, in letters, the vehemence of your … toward …

I think you are faring well beyond what one could pray for, you who have left us men … rolling about in earthly cares, have set yourself above them, withdrawn while still here below, and taken hold of the blessed life; unless Ganus, being a friend, thinks that in telling and reporting your affairs to us he must lie a little; for goodwill is apt to steal the truth. This Ganus, then, ascribed to you the solitary life, and said that your pretext for coming into the city is books, and their meaning so far as it bears on theology; and he says you wear a grey cloak. Nothing would be lost if it were white; for what is pure among sensible things would rather be dedicated to the most luminous nature, and is more like light. But if you have also approved the dark one, since you did it in emulation of some who went before you, I approve everything that is done for the sake of the divine. For the purpose for which a thing is done grants success to the doer, and the choice carries the virtue. We, then, rejoice with you, who have reached at a stroke the goal at whose door we have long been knocking with toil and barely. Pray with us that we too may arrive one day, and find some gain from our labour in philosophy, so that we may not have worn away our life over books to no purpose. Live in health and happiness, admirable friend.