On the Gift

Contents

1. 78Synesius answers Paeonius's complaint that philosophy is slighted while its pretenders are honoured: each gets what he has pursued.
2. 79The pretender gets reputation and the true philosopher gets wisdom; the slighted philosopher should accept the rank he has chosen.
3. 80The philosopher needs no popular honour, but gladly welcomes Paeonius, who has rejoined philosophy and soldiering.
4. 81In the past philosophers ruled and fought: the Pythagoreans in Italy, Zeno against tyrants, Xenophon leading the Ten Thousand.
5. 82Dion, Plato's friend, overthrew Dionysius with one ship; once philosophy and statecraft were joined, but later times split them.
6. 83Paeonius, an official who practises philosophy, may restore the union of power and wisdom, and philosophers should help him.
7. 84Rulers with understanding will expose the sham philosophers whom the crowd now admires; Paeonius should help philosophy, not blame her.
8. 85Synesius wants to fan Paeonius's interest in astronomy, the science that leads toward theology, and offers him a gift.
9. 86Synesius explains his gift, a silver projection of the sphere designed with his teacher's help, completing what Hipparchus began.
10. 87Earlier astronomers met only practical needs; Synesius has gone further, as growing cities add beauty to necessity.
11. 88Synesius describes making the instrument: a treatise, a slightly hollowed surface, stars of six magnitudes, circles divided into degrees.
12. 89The divisions are unequal to the eye but proportional; two gold inscriptions are set along the outer circle, the first an old epigram.
13. 90The old epigram praises the astronomer's ascent to heaven; Synesius's own eight-line poem explains the use of the instrument.
14. 91The poem promises the stars' positions by the equator, the obliquities and the co-risings; Synesius quotes it for later readers.
15. 92The end of Synesius's poem on the instrument.