Letters 21–55

[Letter 1. To Basil] I have broken my promise, I confess. While we were still at Athens I agreed to live with you and to pursue philosophy with you, as part of the friendship and close union we had there; for I have nothing more fitting to call it. But I broke it not willingly: one law defeated another, the law that bids us care for our parents defeated the law of companionship and intimacy. Yet I shall not break it altogether, if you yourself will accept this: for part of the time we shall be with you, and for part do you be willing to be with us, so that we may have everything in common and our friendship may be equal in honour. In this way it will come about both that they are not grieved and that I have you. [Letter 2. To Basil] …

[Letter 2, continued] … you, who walk on tiptoe and stamp on the paving stones, you winged one, you soaring one, carried along on the arrow of Abaris, so that, though a Cappadocian, you may escape Cappadocia. Or do we wrong you because you are pale and short of breath and have the sun measured out to you, while we are sleek and well fed and not hemmed in? Yet these things are yours. You live in luxury, and are rich, and haunt the market place: this I do not praise. So either stop reproaching us with the mud (for neither did you build the city, nor did we make the winter), or we in turn will bring against you, instead of mud, the hucksters, and all the base things that cities produce. [Letter 3. To Evagrius] I was glad to be praised. For the good repute of our son Evagrius is our good repute; the virtue of children is the glory of their fathers. As for literature, we are conscious of having helped your son little or nothing (for our attainment in letters is not great); but one thing, in place of all others and the greatest, we did contribute to him, I will not deny it: the fear of God, and persuading him to despise present things. For him, then, we have prayed and still pray for the best, that he may bring to full fruit the beginnings he took from us, and that we may reap some fruit of our zeal. To your Honour all thanks, that you think fit to remember us and to honour us with tokens of friendship; and these, though not small, we received as even greater. …

[Letter 4, continued] … only smile, and take your fill of learning, and enjoy our friendship. Everything that comes from you is good to us, whatever it is and however it stands. For indeed you seem to me to mock things here too, not in order to mock but to draw us to yourself (if I understand you at all), like those who dam streams to divert them elsewhere. Such are your ways with us always. But I will admire your Pontus and the Pontic gloom, and the dwelling worthy of flight; the crests over your head, and the wild beasts that test your faith; and the remote spot lying beneath, or rather the mousehole, with its grand names of “thinking-place”, “monastery”, and “school”; the thickets of wild plants and the crown of steep-cliffed mountains, by which you are not crowned but shut in; the air doled out by measure, and the longed-for sun, which you glimpse as through a chimney, O Pontic Cimmerians, condemned not only to a six-month night, as some are said to be, but having not even a part of life free from shadow: the whole of life one long night and truly a shadow of death, to use the words of Scripture. I praise also the narrow and hard-pressed road (I do not know whether it leads to the kingdom or to Hades; but for your sake let it lead to the kingdom), and the land in the middle: what would you have me call it? Shall I falsely name it Eden, and the spring divided into four heads from which the world is watered, or the dry and waterless desert which some Moses will tame, making water spring from the rock with his rod? For whatever has escaped the rocks is gullies; whatever has escaped the gullies is thorn-brakes; whatever is above the thorns is cliff; and the road above this is precipitous and sloping both ways, concentrating the travellers' minds and training them for safety. And below a river roars, this your Strymon of Amphipolis, so “quiet”, carrying stones rather than fish, not spreading into a lake but swept down into the depths, O you most grandiloquent coiner of new names! For it is great and fearsome, and drowns the psalmody of those above; the Cataracts and the Catadupa are nothing to it, so loudly does it

roars night and day. It is rough, and unfordable; muddy, and undrinkable; its one kindness is that it does not sweep away your dwelling when the torrents and storms drive it mad. These, then, are the things we know of these Islands of the Blessed, or rather of you blessed ones. Do not admire the crescent-shaped bends that strangle rather than wall off the accessible parts of your foothills, and the ridge rising above the summit that makes your life a life of Tantalus, and the breezes blowing through and the breathings of the earth that revive you when you faint, and the songbirds that sing, but of hunger, and fly about, but over a desert. No one visits, except for hunting, you say; add: and to visit you as dead men. This is perhaps longer than suits a letter, but shorter than a comedy. If you take the jest calmly, you will do well; if not, we will add still more. [Letter 5. To the same] Since you take the jest calmly, we will add what follows. The prelude is from Homer: “But come now, change your theme, and sing of the adornment within”: the roofless and doorless shelter, the hearth without fire or smoke, the walls dried by fire so that we should not be spattered by drops of mud, like some Tantaluses condemned to thirst in the midst of water; that pitiable banquet without food, to which we were summoned from Cappadocia, not as to the poverty of the Lotus-eaters but as to the table of Alcinous, we the

young, shipwrecked wretches. For I remember those loaves and those broths (so they were called), and I will go on remembering them, and our teeth slipping on the morsels, then getting a grip and being dragged out as from a bog. You yourself will declaim these things more tragically, since your own sufferings give you a lofty voice. And had not that great and truly poor-nourishing woman quickly rescued us from them, I mean your mother, appearing like a harbour in good time to the storm-tossed, we should long since have been dead, not praised for our Pontic faith so much as pitied. How shall I pass over those gardens that were no gardens and grew no vegetables, and the dung of Augeas cleared out of the house, with which we filled them, when we dragged the cart heaped high as a hill, I the vine-dresser and you the illustrious one, with these necks and these hands, which still bear the marks of the labours (O earth and sun, air and virtue! for I will be a little tragic), not to bridge the Hellespont but to level a cliff? If you are not at all vexed when these things are told, neither, of course, are we; but if you are vexed, how much more were we when they were done! And we will pass over most of it, out of respect for the other things, many of which we enjoyed. [Letter 6. To the same]

[Letter 6, continued] … the plane tree, under which sat no pampered king but a worn-out monk; which I planted, Apollos watered (that is, your Honour), but God gave the growth, to our honour, so that a memorial of our industry might be kept among you, as Aaron's rod that budded is said and believed to have been kept in the ark. To pray for these things is very easy, to obtain them not easy. But be with me, and breathe virtue with me, and work with me, and by your prayers keep safe the benefit we once gathered together, so that we may not little by little be dissolved like a shadow as the day declines. For I breathe you more than the air, and live only so far as I am with you, either … [Letter 7. To Caesarius] We have been sufficiently put to shame on your account; that we have also been grieved, what need is there to write, to you of all men the most persuaded of it? Not to speak of our own feelings, or of how much despondency the report about you filled us with (and, let me say it, fear), I wished, if it had somehow been possible, that you could be present at what others are saying, relatives and strangers alike, people known to us in any way, Christians at any rate, about you and about us; not some saying one thing and some another, but all alike, one after another, since people are more eager to philosophize on others' affairs than on their own. These words have become a kind of set exercise for them: that a bishop's son should now serve the state, now covet outside power and glory, now be mastered by money (when a common fire has been kindled and men are running the race for their souls), instead of considering that the one glory and safety and wealth is to stand nobly against the times and to put oneself as far as possible from every pollution and defilement. How could the bishop admonish another not to be swept away by the times,

nor to be defiled along with the idols? How could he rebuke others who do wrong, when he himself lacks freedom of speech at his own hearth? Hearing these things every day, and still more and harsher ones, some saying them perhaps out of friendship, others attacking us out of ill will, how do you think people feel, and what souls do you think they have, who have set themselves to serve God and judge the hopes to come the only good? Our lord father, who is deeply distressed by what he hears and even weary of life, I console and comfort as best I can, vouching for your intentions and persuading him that you will not bear to grieve us any longer. But our lady mother, if she learned anything of your affairs (until now we have hidden them by many devices), you may be sure would find her grief altogether inconsolable, being a woman of little courage and besides, through her great piety, unable to be moderate in such matters. If, then, you take any account of yourself and of us, take some better and safer counsel. For the means here are certainly enough for a free man's life, at least for one who is not too greedy or immoderate in his desire for more. Nor do I see what moment we shall wait for to see you settled, if we let the present one go. But if you hold to the same mind, and everything is small to you beside your own impulse, I wish to say nothing else unpleasant; only this I foretell and solemnly testify: one of two things must happen. Either you remain a genuine Christian and are ranked in the lowest place in your service, acting unworthily both of yourself and of your hopes; or you aim at its honours and are harmed in what matters most, having a share of the smoke at least, even if not of the fire.

… I wished every tongue, musical and harmonious, to be moved, and all rhetoric to ring out something lofty and piercing; not only because the most just of all debts is that a capable ruler be hymned in words, but because it is most fitting that one who excels in both should adorn both. And if I had not put my speaking to rest before its time (for now I perceive this), and resolved, as someone said, more hastily than wisely, not to frequent festivals nor go out into public after embracing philosophy, perhaps I would have outsounded even the Tyrrhenian trumpets (for I will say it, not fearing at all the rough stone of Momus, as Pindar says), had I not voted myself an untimely silence. As it is, what I feel about you, what my condition is, you might perhaps learn from an image. I paw the ground with my feet like the most spirited of horses, and champ the bit, and prick up my ears, and breathe passion from my nostrils, and look fiercely and am flecked with foam; yet I stay within the barrier, since the law does not let me run.

… I wished every tongue, musical and harmonious, to be moved, and all rhetoric to ring out something lofty and piercing; not only because the most just of all debts is that a capable ruler be hymned in words, but because it is most fitting that one who excels in both should adorn both. And if I had not put my speaking to rest before its time (for now I perceive this), and resolved, as someone said, more hastily than wisely, not to frequent festivals nor go out into public after embracing philosophy, perhaps I would have outsounded even the Tyrrhenian trumpets (for I will say it, not fearing at all the rough stone of Momus, as Pindar says), had I not voted myself an untimely silence. As it is, what I feel about you, what my condition is, you might perhaps learn from an image. I paw the ground with my feet like the most spirited of horses, and champ the bit, and prick up my ears, and breathe passion from my nostrils, and look fiercely and am flecked with foam; yet I stay within the barrier, since the law does not let me run.

speech, and more able to speak; so that his judgment is likened to the golden vote, or to that Homeric line by which the equal match of Eumelus's horses was judged, and his speaking surpasses the winter snowflakes; presiding over the contest now as fittingly as he contended in it before. Let others praise firmness blended with gentleness, and nothing slack in your mildness, like the bounds of lions. Let others praise the gold, “mighty and precious”, with its grand names, dishonoured and yielding headlong to your justice: a thing, alone of all, beyond both hearing and belief. And some man who is a poet by his art would say that the land flows with milk and springs gush with honey, and every plant, cultivated and wild alike, is laden with tame fruits, as the poets' fictions run when they make the earth bountiful. Let others say and fashion such things, as they may. For whatever is one's own does not only weigh on one, as the lyric poet thinks, but is by nature most delightful. But what I especially admire and welcome in you I will say: that you show yourself stronger than the difficulty of the times. Though a Hellene in religion, and serving the present power in the business of power, you serve not as the flatterers of the times do, but as the friends of the good and the magnanimous do: you discharge your service to the one, and keep your goodwill for your homeland, reaping immortal glory in a mortal business. This too is praiseworthy in you, that amid so great a weight of office you allot some time to friendship, and have leisure, amid all you do, to remember us.

In return for this I pray for you: for good repute, nothing greater (for office may receive increase, but virtue at least can receive none); but one thing in place of all others and the greatest: that you may one day be with us and with God, and be of the portion of the persecuted and not of the persecutors; since the one is swept away by the current of the times, while the other has immortal salvation. [Letter 11. To Gregory] I have one good point in my nature (for I too will boast of one thing among many): I am equally displeased with myself and with my friends when we take bad counsel. Since, then, all who live according to God and walk by the same Gospel are friends and kinsmen to one another, why should you not hear from us frankly what everyone is whispering? They do not praise your inglorious glory (to use your own manner of speech), and your gradual slide toward the worse, and ambition, “the worst of demons”, as Euripides says. For what has come over you, most wise one, and what fault did you find in yourself, that you have thrown away the holy and drinkable books which you once read to the people (do not be ashamed to hear it), or hung them up over the smoke, like rudders and mattocks in the winter season, and have taken up the salty and undrinkable ones, and would rather be called a rhetor than a Christian? We, for our part, would rather be called the latter than the former, and all thanks to God. Do not, best of men, do not suffer this for long; but sober up, late though it is, and come back to yourself, and make your defence to the faithful, make your defence to God, and to the altars and the mysteries, from which you have gone far away.

only, but also to one's neighbour; nor is it enough to persuade yourself, unless you persuade others too. If you were boxing in public, or striking and being struck on the jaw in the theatres, or twisting and bending yourself in shameful postures, would you say that you were chaste in soul? That is not the reasoning of one who is chaste; it is frivolous to accept such things. If then you change, even now I shall rejoice, as one of the Pythagorean philosophers said, lamenting a companion who had fallen away; but if not, he wrote, “You are dead to me.” I will not yet say this, for your sake. “For being a friend he became an enemy, yet a friend all the same,” says the tragedy. But I shall be grieved (for this is a moderate thing to say) if you neither see for yourself what is needful, which belongs to the first class of the praiseworthy, nor follow another who speaks well, which belongs to the second. So much for my admonition. Forgive me, grieving out of friendship, and burning alike for you and for the whole priestly order, and, I will add, for all Christians. And if I must pray with you, or pray for you, may God help your weakness, who also makes the dead alive. [Letter 12. To Nicobulus] You mock our Alypiana as small and unworthy of your greatness, O you tall one, you measureless and gigantic one, in form and in strength. For now I have learned that the soul is measured, and virtue weighed, and rocks are more precious than pearls, and ravens more to be revered than nightingales. Enjoy, then, your size and your cubits, and may you fall short in nothing of those Aloadae. For you ride horses and brandish a spear and wild beasts are your concern. But she has no work, nor much need of strength, to carry the shuttle, handle the distaff, and sit at the loom: for this is the prize of women. And if you add this, that she bows to the ground in prayer and is ever with God …

… in the movements of the mind, what is your height to you there, or the measurements of the body? Look at her timely silence; listen to her when she speaks; consider her lack of adornment, her manliness for a woman, her care for the household, her love for her husband. And then you will say the Laconian's saying: “Truly the soul is not measured, and one must look past the outer man to the inner.” If you consider these things in this way, you will stop joking and mocking her as small, and you will count yourself blessed in your marriage. [Letter 13] I praise the saying of Theognis, who does not praise the friendship that goes as far as drinking and pleasure, but praises friendship in deeds. What does he write? “Many are the friends who become companions at the mixing-bowl, but in a serious matter they are fewer.” Now we have not shared mixing-bowls with one another, nor have we spent much time together (though we ought to have, above all, both for our own sakes and because of the friendship inherited from our fathers); but we ask for the goodwill that is shown in deeds. A contest is near, and the greatest of contests. For our son Nicobulus is in unexpected troubles, at the hands of those from whom one would least have expected to have trouble. Therefore we ask you to be present and help us as quickly as possible, judging the case with us and pleading for us, if you find us wronged. If not, at least do not be won over beforehand by the opposing side, selling for a small gain the freedom of mind that we know has always been attested of you by everyone. [Letter 14. To Caesarius]

… bought, they have fallen into greater difficulties, on the one side meeting with the unfairness of those who sold, on the other being hemmed in and plundered by their neighbours, so that it would be a gain for them to recover the price they paid, together with what they have spent besides (and it is not a little), and to be rid of the property. If then you are willing to take the business upon yourself, considering how the transaction may stand best and most securely for you, that would be most pleasing both to them and to us. If not, then at least the second course: set yourself against the meddling and unfairness of the man, so that he may not in any case gain an advantage through their peaceableness, either by wronging them while they hold the property or by causing them loss as they give it up. I for my part even blushed to write about these things. But since we are equally bound to them both by kinship and by their chosen way of life (for whom would one care for more than such people? And at what would one be more ashamed than at not being eager to do good to such?), do you, either for your own sake, or for ours, or for the men themselves, or for all these together, by all means do them good. [Letter 15. To Lollianus] Well done that you have come back to us, after a long time, but still (and, what is better than this) that you have fared as you wished, and have freed us from our anxieties about you. For we share everything with you, griefs and joys alike; such is friendship. Since you have come back, “give your friends a share in your good fortune,” as the one who said it says; and you will give it if you are willing to look after my lords the cousins Helladius and Eulalius and my other relatives (I say relatives, unless you think us other than yourself; for I do not know what greater thing I could say), and do not let them need other patrons. Offer yourself to them entirely, a good friend, a kindly neighbour, a noble supporter, not to list it item by item, the well-born Lollianus, known for nobility of character. And I promise that if you associate with them more and see the height of their philosophy, you will even plead for them to others. So much do I trust your character,

and so I have every hope of not failing to obtain from you what I myself have asked on their behalf. [Letter 16. To Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea] Since I am addressing a man who does not love falsehood and is the sharpest of all at detecting it in another, however cleverly it is woven with intricate labyrinths, and since besides artfulness is not dear to me either (it shall be said, even if rather vulgarly), being so by nature and shaped so by the Word, I am therefore writing what is on my mind. Accept my frankness, or you will wrong the truth by robbing it of its freedom, and by forcing me to keep the pang of my grief shut up within myself, like some festering and malignant disease. I am glad to be honoured by you (if indeed I am a man, as the one who said it before puts it), and to be invited to synods and spiritual gatherings. But I cannot bear the insult that has been done, and is still being done by your Reverence, to my most honoured brother Basil, whom I chose from the beginning as partner of life and of letters and of the highest philosophy, and whom I still have; and I find no fault with myself for my judgment of him. For so it is more modest to put it, so that I may not seem to praise myself while admiring his qualities. But you seem to me to be doing something like this, dishonouring him while honouring us, as if someone with one hand were to stroke a man's head and with the other strike his cheek; or were to dig out the foundations of a house while painting the walls and adorning the outside. If then you will listen to me at all, you will do this; and I ask you to listen, for it is just: if you pay him due regard, you will be paid regard by him in return. Our part will follow, as shadows follow bodies, since we are small and readier for peace. For we are not so wretchedly placed as to wish to be philosophers in other things and belong to the better part, but to overlook a matter

… especially in relation to a man who is a priest, and so great a one, whom we know to be the best in life, in word, and in conduct of all whom we know. For grief will not darken the truth. [Letter 17. To the same] I did not write insultingly, as you blamed my letter for doing, but rather spiritually and as a philosopher, and as was fitting, unless this too grieves the most learned Gregory. For even if you prevail in rank, you will still allow us some freedom and just frankness; and for this reason be kinder to us. Unless you judge my letter as that of a slave, who ought not even to look you in the face; in that case we will take blows too and not even weep. Or shall we be accused even of this? That is something which anyone deserves to suffer rather than your Reverence. For it belongs to a magnanimous man to accept the frankness of friends rather than the flattery of enemies. [Letter 18. To the same] … pettily, do not condemn me of that; but after using a little freedom and boldness (enough to cool and heal what grieved me), I was at once overcome and gave way, and placed myself under the rule. How could I not, knowing you and the laws of the Spirit? And now, even if I were very petty and mean-spirited, the time does not allow me to be so, nor do the wild beasts that have overrun the Church, nor your nobility and courage, which fights for the Church so purely and genuinely. We will come, then, if it seems good, helping you with our prayers, contending at your side, serving you, and, like boys training a fine athlete, anointing you with our shouts of encouragement.

[Letter 19. To Basil] It is a time for good counsel and endurance, for none to show himself more manly than we, and for our many sweats and labours not to be undone in a short time. Why do I write this, and on what grounds? Our most God-beloved bishop Eusebius (for so we must henceforth both think and write of him) is very conciliatory and friendly toward us, and, like iron in fire, is being softened by time; and I think a letter of encouragement and invitation will come to you, as he indicated to me and as many who clearly know his mind assure us. Let us anticipate it, either by coming or by …, or rather by writing first and then coming, so that we may not be ashamed afterwards at being defeated, when it is possible to win by being defeated honourably and as philosophers, which is what most people demand of us. Come, then, persuaded by me, both for this reason and because of the times; for a league of heretics is overrunning the Church, some already present and causing trouble, others, so the report goes, about to come; and there is fear that the word of truth will be swept away unless the spirit of …, the wise architect of such words and doctrines, is stirred up very quickly. If you think that I myself should be there to stay with you and travel with you, I will not refuse even this. [Letter 20. To Caesarius]

… ; but let us give thanks that we have escaped. And let us not appear one kind of men to God in the time of dangers and another after the dangers; but let us resolve, whether at home or abroad, whether in private life or engaged in public affairs (for I must put it so and leave nothing out), to follow the One who saved us and to become of his portion, caring little for the little things that creep along the ground. And let us give those who come after us a story, great for our glory and great for the benefit of the soul; and the same will be a most useful lesson for the many, that danger is better than safety, and misfortune more to be chosen than prosperity, if before our terrors we belonged to the world, but after them have become God's. Perhaps you think my words burdensome, and not exhortation but display. So enough of this; but know that we are eager and pray above all to come to you, to share your joy in your safety and to talk of these things more fully; or if not, to welcome you here as quickly as possible to keep the thanksgiving feast together.