Letters 147–156

I have left the ranks of the tribute-payers. For what was I to do, when none of the Greeks who live in Libya is willing to send merchantmen to our sea? And I release you from the contribution too; for neither do the Syrians care to put in at the Cyrenaean coasts. And even if that did happen, I would not notice it. For I am no neighbour of the sea, nor do I often frequent harbours; I have moved away toward the south wind, the farthest of the Cyrenaeans; and our neighbours are such as Odysseus was seeking when he went about holding his oar, to appease the wrath of Poseidon as the oracle bade, men 'who do not know the sea, nor eat food mixed with salt'. But do not think it idle talk that people here do not use the sea even for salt; nor think that for this reason they eat their meat and cakes unsalted. By sacred Hestia, there are inland salts among us, lying farther to the south than the sea lies to the north. These we call the salts of Ammon. A crumbly rock both nourishes and hides them; when you remove what lies over it like a scab, it is very easy to plough the depth with hands and hoes. What is dug up … 'For no wave of the sea leaping up wakes them in the night', but the neighing of horses and the bleating of flocks; and when the first ray strikes, the humming of the bees, which yields to no music in the account of pleasure. Do I seem to you to be describing the estates of Anchemachus, living as we do in such a countryside, far from the city, from roads, from trade, and from varied manners? With us there is leisure to pursue philosophy, but no leisure to do evil. All gatherings are among companions, who use each other's help for farming, for flocks, for shepherds, for hunting the manifold creatures the earth bears. For it is not the custom with us, either for ourselves or for our horses, to take food without sweat. We breakfast … and the kykeon that Hecamede mixes for Nestor. After toil, the kykeon is a strong remedy in the summer season. We also have wheaten cakes, and fruits to nibble, some cultivated and some wild, all of the country, juices of the best soil; and honeycombs, and goats' milk, for we do not think it right to milk cows. Hunting with dogs and horses also makes no less abundance on our tables; I do not know how Homer did not call it 'glorious to men', nor say that men become distinguished in it, while he honoured the assembly with such praise, which provides shameless and utterly wicked little men, with nothing sound in them, abusive and skilled in stitching mischief. We laugh at them whenever they come to share our table; for they shudder at game meat roasted in the ovens. And why do I say game? They would taste poison sooner than taste these with us. They look for the thinnest wine and the thickest honey, the lightest oil and the heaviest wheat; and they sing the praises of the native lands of these, Cyprus and some Hymettus, and Phoenicia, and the barbarian country. But our land, even if in each single thing it is beaten by the land that bears the top prize for it, beats each of them in all the rest. And this is the first prize won from second places, by which Peleus and Themistocles too were proclaimed the best of all among the Greeks. Even if we grant that the honey here is inferior to that of Hymettus, still it is such that, when it is at hand, there is no need of the foreign juice. Our oil, however, is plainly the best, unless those with corrupted diets are the judges. For they weigh it, testing its quality by weight, and count lightness as an advantage. We forge no scales for oil; but we say that, if it must be done, it is the nature that draws more down that should be honoured. Certainly their admired and purchased oil, in the wicks, feeds a weak flame through its nothingness; but ours, through its nobility, raises up a whole bonfire, and when a lamp is needed, makes a hand-made day. It is good for enriching barley-cake, good for nourishing the sinews of those who train their bodies. Music too is native to us as nothing else is, a shepherd's music, simple and home-made, auspicious and fittingly manly, not unworthy to bring up the children in Plato's city. For it is not reckoned by intricacy, nor does its excellence lie in being elaborately tuned; with the simple instrument of strings the singers keep time. For they do not set themselves to luxurious themes; we have a fine thing in song: the praise of the ram with all his parts, and the dock-tailed dog receives an encomium, because, I think, he is just, not fearing hyenas and throttling wolves. And the huntsman not least becomes the subject of song …

You are always present among us in memory, even when absent. For even if we wished it very much, we could not forget your sweetest soul and most guileless character, brother admirable in all things. Nothing could be holier to us than the memory of you, except to embrace your venerable head again; which may God grant some day, and may we see you, and hear the sweetest echo of your words. You pleased us also with what you sent; for we received everything. But you grieved us more by making us reckon what a friend we, though alive, are deprived of while he lives. May the moment of meeting come at last, and may I obtain this from God.

I think that your Heraclea too has not failed to hear of Alexander, who practised philosophy among us, a man who travelled everywhere with glory. 'Deaf is the man who does not lend his voice to Heracles.' His son, my cousin, will hand you this letter; he has plainly stepped into his father's place, not by his dress but by his mind. He is being sent on behalf of his fatherland itself. He needed, of course, God and Heracles; but also Iolaus, as ally and helper. God he will win for himself in the way that is possible, and incline to himself by virtue of life and piety of mind; your friendship, in place of Iolaus's, we woo for him through this letter. You will be to him all that you are to us. And if you make use of the young man's friendship, you will certainly say that I am no poor praiser.

Will you remain a philosopher for me? Will the soul, the divine seed, remain? I fear the time that has passed since birth. I fear still more the dealings of the market-place, and being rolled about among frequent fortunes and affairs, lest they defile the most holy temple, your sacred mind, which I, with few others, consider a most worthy receptacle of God. And I know … having once made a prayer to work at philosophy together with you. But since love of your fatherland proved stronger, I prayed that wherever on earth you might be, you would cultivate philosophy as far as you could. Therefore I greet that dear head, and very often greet that dear head, both in silence and in speech, both in writing and without writing.

Imagine me embracing Pylaemenes: the very soul with the very soul. I am at a loss for words in which to pour out all that my mind wishes; or rather, I cannot even find out what this feeling of my soul toward you is. But there was a man skilled in the things of love, Plato son of Ariston, of Athens, resourceful in finding and ready in expressing the nature of a lover and what he wishes to happen to him with regard to his beloved; and he has found it and said it on my behalf too. He would wish, he says, to be fused and grown together by the art of Hephaestus, and to become one from two.

Once a year letters come to us from you, as if the seasons brought this too. To me, perhaps, this fruit is sweeter than what the circling months and the farmers bring forth. But you would not act fairly in depriving us of the joy they give. Change your mind, then, and this year at least make for us …

This year I have produced two books: one moved by God, the other by the abuse of men. For some of those in white cloaks and some of those in dark ones said that I transgress against philosophy because I care for beauty and rhythm in diction and think it right to say something about Homer and about the figures used in oratory; as though the philosopher ought to be a hater of letters and busy himself only with divine matters. They themselves, of course, have become beholders of the intelligible; but it is not lawful for me, because I allot some leisure from life to purifying my tongue and making my mind more pleasant. What led them to condemn me as fit only for play was that my 'Hunting' pieces, having somehow slipped out of the house, were eagerly studied by some young men who care for Greek style and grace; and certain carefully made pieces of poetry, showing something of the ancient hand, as we say of statues. But of those critics, some, with ignorance leading their boldness, are the readiest of all to talk about God; whenever you meet them, you will at once hear something about inconclusive syllogisms; and they pour out their words on those who do not need them, for their own advantage, I think. For it is from these that the public teachers in the cities come, which is the same to them as the horn of Amalthea, and they think they must use it. You recognize, I think, this facile tribe, which brings a noble subject into disrepute. These men think I should become their disciple, and say they will make me within a short time most daring in speaking about God, able to harangue day and night on end. Others, better educated, are far more wretched sophists than these; they would like to win fame in the same things, but they are fortunate in not being able even to do that. And you know some who stripped for the contest in counting-houses, or were persuaded by some single misfortune to take up philosophy in the midday of life, on the sole qualification of swearing off the gods and swearing by them in the Platonic manner; a shadow would be quicker than they to utter anything needful. Yet the pretension is formidable. Their eyebrow, oh, how high it is raised! and the hand props up the chin. And in other respects they put on a more solemn face than the statues of Xenocrates. They even think fit to lay down for us the law that is most profitable to themselves: that no one who knows anything good should make it plain; for they consider it a refutation of themselves if anyone who seems to be a philosopher should know how to speak. For they would escape notice under their pretension and seem to be full of wisdom within. Both these kinds have slandered me as having spent my zeal on worthless things: the one because I do not talk the same nonsense as they; the other because I do not keep my mouth shut and put 'the ox on my tongue'. For these reasons the treatise was composed, and it meets the one with speech and the other with silence. It is put forward as against these very ones, the voiceless and envious (with how seemly a form, you may imagine); but it has found a way to drag the others along with them. It aims to be no less a display of learning than an encomium (for I have not abjured the charges); and so that they may be annoyed still more, I have been lavish in it too. Going on to examine the choices of life, it praises philosophy as the most philosophic of choices; what kind of philosophy one should think it to be, ask the book. At the end it also defends the chests, which also have some reason for hiding uncorrected books; for not even from such things have the Telchines held off. If each part stands in its proper order, and all is in season, and the starting-points of what is treated in each place are just; and if it is divided into several heads, like that divine writing, the Phaedrus, which Plato produced on all the forms of the beautiful together, yet contrived so that all converge on the one subject; and if anywhere a proof has crept in under a relaxed narrative, and, as in such writings, a demonstration has come forth from the proof; and if what arose for another purpose also serves: these would be gifts of art and of nature. But whoever is not untrained in detecting a divine face hidden under a meaner form (as the craftsmen at Athens used to do, wrapping Aphrodite and the Graces and such divine beauties in statues of Silenuses and Satyrs), him the writing will not escape: under the pretence of digression it escapes others, being scattered through the discourse seemingly at random and naïvely. For of the chills caused by the moon, only the sick feel the epilepsy; and only those receive the illuminations of the intuitions of the mind whose healthy intellectual eye God kindles with a kindred light, which is the cause to minds of their understanding and to intelligibles of their being understood; just as the light here joins sight to colour, and if you take it away, though both are present, the power directed to it is inactive. On all these matters we shall await your judgment. And if you vote that it should be put before orators and philosophers alike, … it will be of profit, in any case, unless it is struck out by you, who are able to judge. But if it does not seem to you worthy of the ears of the Greeks, and you, with Aristotle, place truth before a friend, a thick and deep darkness will cover it, and it will pass unspoken among men. So much on this. The other book God both commanded and approved, and it has been dedicated as a thank-offering to the imaginative nature. In it the whole imaginal soul is examined, and certain other doctrines are put forward which have not yet been treated by the Greeks in philosophy. And why should one lengthen the account of it? It was completed entirely in one night, or rather in the remnant of a night, which also brought the vision that it should be written. There are places in the discourse, twice or three times, where I became, as though I were someone else, a hearer of myself together with those present; and now, as often as I go over the treatise, a wonderful disposition comes upon me, and a divine voice pours round me, as the poets say. Whether this is my experience alone, or whether it might happen to another as well, you will tell me; for you will be the first of the Greeks after me to read it. These, of the works not yet published, I have sent you. And so that the number may be perfect, I have added the speech on the gift, made long ago at the time of the embassy, to a man holding power beside the emperor; and the Pentapolis profited somewhat from both the speech and the gift.

Having learned very clearly from your deeds themselves that your admirable head rejoices in kindness and is willing to stretch out a hand to those in need, I appeal to you for this very thing, thinking I am urging horses onto the plain, as the saying goes. And you must show your kindness now more than before, dear head, inasmuch as the person who is to be benefited is now more pitiable. For she is a woman, and a woman who has suffered widowhood, and then, with an orphaned child, has suffered what she has suffered. Who it is that has wronged her, and in what, and how, she herself will tell your nobility. See to it, then, admirable friend, that you defend the woman, both because it is right, and because it befits you, and for my sake. For I too shall share in what is done for her, since she is my kinswoman, and was brought up modestly among us by a decent mother.

Just causes need allies, and those who help them would be happy, defending what is right … and by skill. My part is to do good to all whom I can. You yourself provide the occasions.

A letter of Synesius to one of his companions who asked from afar for a bishopric, after the restoration of the bishops. Your most wise letter, very harmonious, very short, yet very clear, which your admirable mind brought forth, did us the greatest good when it arrived, and pleased us doubly: because it came from the best and most praiseworthy of friends, and because it was crafted with abundant grace. Yet it also stirred me to something greater and bolder, for which, perhaps, unless longing had come in (being apt to join things far apart and often to reconcile things contrary to each other), I would have to ask pardon along with those who are rightly indignant; it will need little to set us on our feet. 'Toward what?' you may say. Toward giving in return, as you see, our tongue to such a man, initiated in the Muses as I know not who else (on seeing whom Demosthenes would have said with us that an image of Hermes, god of eloquence, had come among men): our tongue, which long ago did not share in the better even with the tip of a finger, and now has become altogether rustic, and scarcely knows how to call a spade a spade. For I share with you a feeling kept secret, peculiar to me, which is now more likely to become decisive, as it was fated. This persuades you to pity us rather than call us happy, since it has not befallen us to mingle with anyone of the best lot, such as you (so that something of our barbarous part might be chiselled away from us, and thus our affairs might be rid, little by little, of their long grime); and now, since what you sought has not appeared in season, it gives more reason for pity than before. For the olive which you think fit, and I wish, or rather had in prayer, to pass over to such a man, having stayed where it was, as the nature of things allowed, has been put to its uses. So there is no olive now lacking grafts (bear with me if I indulge the common tongue a little) onto which my sweet friend might be grafted; for each is filled, and is already beginning to bear fruit as best it can. So much for that; the rest the present time will make plain, and perhaps it will show you clearly how what you asked had no season. Farewell, and be of good cheer, laying claim to all philosophy.

[Homily 1] I will not leave the festival without a voice, nor yet with many words: by my voice honouring God, by stopping quickly gratifying the festival. But so that you may be a festival-keeper worthy of God, do not long for a drunken table after the fast. Crown for God a bowl of a sober mixture. Our God is Wisdom and Word. A bowl that unsettles thought and troubles reason has nothing to do with the Word. There is a relaxation fitting to God, and there is a relaxation fitting to demons. 'Rejoice in the Lord with fear.' Whenever you feast, it says, remember God; for that is when the great slide into sin happens. When the body is well fed as to flesh, it turns the soul away from understanding. 'A cup in the hand of the Lord, of unmixed wine, full of mixture; and he poured from this into that; but its dregs were not emptied.' Drink of that cup, and you have become worthy of the Bridegroom's banquet. That cup is the maker of the best; it is full of wine which, even when remembered, calls us to rouse ourselves to understanding. The saying is clear in itself, but it needs much understanding. 'A cup of unmixed wine, full of mixture; and he poured from this into that.' If unmixed, how full of mixture? And if it is one, how did he pour from this into that? What is said seems altogether absurd, but not when it is understood. God cares nothing for the diction of the inspired; the divine Spirit disregards the pettiness of writers. Would you see the harmony within the discord? Of what cup, then, does it speak? Of the Word which we have from God, offered to men from God, in the Old Testament and the New. For with this drink the soul is watered. Since each is Word, each is unmixed; yet it is mixed, being twofold. For what is composed of both is one: the perfection of knowledge. The Old held the promise; the New brought forth the one sent; and 'he poured from this into that' hints at the succession of teachers, of the law of Moses and of the Lord's law; and the cup is one. For one Spirit breathed into prophet and apostle. And, like good painters, he first sketched in outline, and then finished in detail the members of knowledge. 'But its dregs were not …' …

[Homily 2] Holy night, bringing to the newly initiated a light such as no sun has ever shone by day; for it is not even holy to compare the Creator with the fairest thing on earth. But that light which enlightens souls, and which enlightened the visible sun, is not a created thing either. By the confession of the present blessedness … If you so remain, you will keep the present blessedness, more enviable, for the present, if not for life. Now each of you goes about the city as an angel. Now consider that it is said of you, 'being on earth, and having your citizenship in heaven'. Fear to fall from your dignity; defilement after cleansing is hard to wash out …

[A further piece, heading lost] The people of Leontopolis have resolved on something gentler than their own nature: leaving off from each other, they have indicted their neighbours for illegality. For until yesterday and the day before, brothers against brothers, son against father, and father against his family called in the executioner. Perhaps not even what is now attempted means that they are giving up their ancestral mutual slaughter; but privately each goes after his own, and in common the city goes after its unfortunate neighbours. For they cannot bear it unless the character of the city is accusatory even in public, and it enters into the place of a sycophant. But for us, as regards doing no wrong, the very charges make it clear … We learned to farm, not to plead lawsuits. Why, then, when the proper boundaries have long since been shown to them, do they think fit to overstep them, and come against us who are scorched above them, who are thirstier and wronged by our position, and always sell off our surplus? Since this year no money came in to them, they think fit that our misfortunes should provide it. This is what their recent indictments aim at, and their decrees have no other object. They admit a second thing as well, which is worth being said by us first and alone, as it shows their most unjust undertaking. For long ago they laid a foundation for their sycophancy, on behalf of license to use waters that did not belong to them, to the venerable …