Epistulae

To Caesarius and Eubulus: Pythagoras of Samos—but they say that not even he honored silence to the very end, but a time was fixed for them that brought a change to speech, and they changed. But surely not even during the time they were silent was it necessary for them to know nothing from one another; rather, the tongue kept silence, but the hand served the thought, and through letters they spoke again. But if you emulate Pythagoras, then let there be an end to silence; for time will reasonably dissolve it. But if you have come bearing something more, you are harsh and do not know how to love in return. And yet there is a story that the Alpheus, though a river and so far removed from Arethusa, even now looks upon Sicily from the Peloponnese, and carried through the middle of the sea, watches that it may be beautiful and remain sweet at its source. And she receives her lover when he has grown weary and gives herself to him, and then you might see a strange love of river and spring. But you neither come to us with words, nor do you return words to those who come. But may you grant us an end to complaints; and if not—but I do not wish to say anything, so that I may not depart having grieved you.

To Hieronymus: I thought that you had long since reached the Nile, and often calling to mind that familiar saying of mine, I used to say to the Egyptians, "Blessed are the children," who long ago had the Nile as a provider of all that it knows how to bring, but now have also taken up your Muse, no less honored than the Nile, and in my judgment perhaps even greater.

For the one flowing over their land allows them to be rich, but you, applying your tongue to the souls of the young, direct them toward the wealth of knowledge, no less than Pythagoras of old did when he dwelt among them, and after him Plato. These things, then, I was reckoning, but you, not far away, were escaping notice. And when the one who delivered the letter arrived, at first, in my amazement, I thought the matter a deception and did not trust my eyes. But when I had read what was written and was convinced that the favors were not another's, I rejoiced—how does it seem to you? For I considered them closer, the hopes of seeing you again, and I rejoiced with good reason if you made your homeland enviable for even a little time. But you seem to me to be speaking in jest when you accuse it. For that the air above one's head is such as you said it is, and that the water brings those who drink it to the memory of the sea, and that our bread is barley carelessly mixed—I would not deny; but even these things have been less tragically exaggerated by you out of sparing your homeland. Nevertheless, my excellent friend, one ought to be grateful to it for training the mind toward philosophy, so that you might know at some point how to look down on Egyptian luxury. But the wise Odysseus, dwelling on an island both small and rugged—and what else but Ithaca?—neither did Calypso persuade, nor did a change of nature for the better, not to choose Ithaca instead of these things. But neither, I think, did a Spartan, reflecting on his way of life at home, find fault with Sparta. But I know from where you were once stirred up to accuse it. You are disposed to love money, my good friend. Then, having stood apart from a small part of the gain, you cry "Alas, alas!" and you call back the Nile many times and the wealth from there.

This, I suppose, is what makes you dry, as you yourself said, and what makes the body of Chaerephon no more refined either. I think you are also amorously devoted to the bride and are trying, with difficulty, to do all that desire can. But may these things turn out as is dear to Aphrodite and the Erotes. Farewell, and may I soon address you also as the father of children. To Pythius: If someone came to me without having done this first and thought it proper to learn whether I had a lyre, and made a speech about harmony, I would certainly have perceived the matter, and I would have known at once that this man was a musician. But if the talk were about weapons, and he spoke of battles and was always recounting the fortunes of war, surely there would have been no need to go to Pytho to hear that this man is a soldier. But what does this mean for me? You surely understand already, yet nevertheless it will be said no less. You seem to me to be one in whose soul the Muses truly dwell; then, possessed by the goddesses, you have a life consecrated to them, and nothing is wonderful to you except books and words and all that leads the soul upward to what is better. From there you came to us as a stranger, making the beginning of friendship in a way that I think befits you. But would that you had not missed the hope that lay with us, but that the book you ask for were here with us. For thus you would always have had what you desired, and for me it would have been the greatest thing to seem to have gratified you. But now I swear, not by the plane tree of Socrates but by the words themselves, that I have not yet obtained the possession, though I have long desired it. A little later—but let it be said with Hermes and the Muses—it will be brought from Alexander's. For those who were instructed sent us word of this from there.

If this were brought to action, you will see me coming to you of my own accord to share it, as if I too wished to receive it. To Germanus: How much good men grieve us when they give proof of themselves and then withdraw from those who have come to know them, I now tell others, having learned by experience. For I knew you even before we came to words. And if you wonder from where, I had as teachers all those who, having made trial, admired you. But when I too, having met you, was learning, I acknowledged gratitude to fortune, but again I blamed it, if after letting me taste so great a thing with, as they say, the tip of a finger, it would then take away the pleasure. And the present did not delight me as much as the hopes of the future grieved me. For I reasoned that you would soon depart, leaving us. And this has happened, and having happened it grieves me, and I am at a loss over the matter, while you strive to kindle our love the more even when far away. For by your zeal toward me and by surpassing my hopes you prevailed. But would that some god, favorable to us, might come and bring you back to us quickly. To John: If there were writings about neglect of friends, and someone brought me into a court accusing me of this very thing, that I do wrong not moderately, making a friend of no account, I would not think to win the verdict otherwise than by producing you as a witness—you who now, I know not how, have appeared as an accuser; so unexpectedly did your conduct turn out for me, if some small matter prepared you to hesitate about me. For I know that even those who are not friends often strike with letters, when they wish to escape notice, and that friends keep silent, when, content with the memory of the absent, they are occupied with others.

Therefore neither writing is a sign of goodwill, nor silence of accusation, since the judgment does not confirm either. So setting these aside, consider those things: whether nothing of your affairs gives me forgetfulness, whether I bring you up in every conversation and admiration, as if adorned by the very memory, whether when I have said John the sweet, I have altogether added him to my account. Considering these things, you will love me more when I am silent than another when he speaks, even if the bronze of Dodona rings on his tongue. But do not suppose you have this defense and so keep silent; otherwise, we shall say the opposite. To Zacharias my brother: Wishing to recount to you the things concerning this excellent man, I fear I may seem to trouble you in vain, making my words to those who already know. For you know what sort of man he is, how, having dedicated his whole life to God, he is hated by all human things, and holds fast to the hope from above, and for this reason he lies exposed to those who wish to do wrong, and is ready to suffer. You know this man too—for I am ashamed to call him brother—how he considers it a single virtue to fulfill every vice, having overlooked a brother so long pressed by hunger, though he was not going to supply from his own house what ought to have come from a man of sound mind, even if the occasion called for it. But now the accusation is not this, that he passed over what befits the exceedingly temperate, but that, having become a lover of things not proper, he has been deprived of these, and is frequently reviled for this, and often added blows. And considering his own judgment a law, perhaps he blamed nature, because it had devised nothing more for wickedness. Hence not up to

This stopped their wickedness—or rather, these things were preludes of the evils to come. For his own mother, who was already an old woman, when she hoped to reap the fruits of child-rearing—a woman who enjoyed respect both because of her age and because of her family and even among those who had no connection to her—her he often reviled, and often he even raised his hands against the one who bore him, O Zeus, reverencing neither nature nor time nor the pitiable gray hair nor the humane name of mother, but he even violently overturned her and cast her to the ground, and trampled upon her with his heel, while she cried out as was likely and called him her child. And what would a mother not say, after labor pains and nurture and those fair hopes, having endured such evils from her child? Finally he even drove her from the house, destitute and naked, deprived of necessities, granting her perhaps this one favor, that he released her from living with him. And now he revels in their evils, while the old woman, who holds the first rank of nobility among us, has her hopes of life in her hands. But to this good man here another misfortune attended—her suffering—and being at a loss for his own sustenance he took her in, though she increases his want, yet he pays a necessary debt to nature. And now they are together, having one consolation, that they have not suffered more; and the mother, as is likely for a woman and one who has suffered such things, has one life: to remember her own evils and weep at the memory and show her breast to Justice, recounting what she has suffered.

Having taken these things to heart, then, and thinking that we are adding nothing to the truths but only displaying the heads of his wickedness because of the occasion of the letter, measure your zeal against his wickedness, and become such a man as God requires and the law of friendship and the hope of the wronged. To Philip my brother. You have been silent toward us for a long time, and I cannot bear the matter. For consider: it was winter and we were bearing it not moderately; swallows appeared and not even with them did you speak, and now the cicadas sing and our silence is beyond expectation. If then these things are due to grief, I do not know what I ever did to grieve you, yet I do not think you would receive a greater punishment. But if you have changed from your former zeal to slackness, you wrong the law of kinship and transgress the ordinance of friendship. And if it is not unpleasant to say so, perhaps someone might say that you have become your own accuser. For those whom you rebuked when we were silent, you yourself have been caught doing. And how would it be reasonable for the one who persuaded another to speak to take on the silence of the one persuaded? But it is time now both to call me a sophist and to jest along with the argument. This is no great matter at all, and whatever you say, I shall bear it moderately, if only I hear you speaking. To Diodorus. The report concerning your education has filled our ears with such words as we prayed for. For one recounted the zeal of your advocacy, another marveled at your vigor in the courts, another at your goodwill toward those who approach you—unless someone happened to have been wronged.

I know this too from hearing it, that when you saw certain men who were very powerful but admired nothing of what is just, you breathed great wrath against them and poured out a praise-worthy abuse. And I, hearing these things as others recounted different things, became as if inspired by pleasure, and thinking great things of these words, I seemed myself to be praised, and I even acknowledged gratitude to those who reported them, as those who hear their own praisers are accustomed to do. While I was in this state and reasoning thus, the noble Orion came forward and handed over to me the letter written by you to him, and he rejoiced with me over our friendship, as though he considered it a terrible thing that you, being such a man, should be unknown to me. But I, having learned you by experience after the report, and what sort of man you are toward those in need, even when they are not present, you could not say how much I admired it, and I called him blessed, having obtained your zeal as his good fortune. And when he thought it right to obtain letters from me as well, since the remembrance of friendship stirred up your eagerness still more, I called him foolish; for you, being naturally inclined toward virtue, would not rightly [be in need of] letters

asking them to entreat him for this. But nevertheless I did not persuade him. For he seemed to say something just, that one who is such in himself, what sort of person might he become if he obtained letters from you? So may you be yourself such as you were before, and may I again be praised for friendship, and may the young man not fail of the hope that lies with us, but may those who seem to have great power know that it is reasonable for them to yield to what is just. To Hieronymus. I thought that my sister's marriage was hidden, and not known even to all who live near the house, let alone to you, whom I thought was still sitting by the Nile. But it seems that nothing that comes to indulgence escapes you, but as soon as anything is done, the smell of what is being accomplished strikes you from afar, and perhaps you even surpass the Homeric Zeus, longing for libation and the savour of fat as it curls about the smoke. The Nile has brought this upon you, and those blessed men near it, after whom, living in Elousa, you have a sharper sense, if anywhere smoke rises from the earth. And I almost set out to treat your son badly, because he did not allow you to write the letter at length. But bringing gifts from you he changed at the sight and somehow dissolved my anger. And I will repay you for these before long; for either a little daughter has been born to you or she will be. To Philippus my brother. The season that grieved us because of the silence now has its end and has ceased, and I, although wishing to think greatly in hope of letters from you, become my own and take memory of the past; for as far as it depends on you in your silence, the whole year is winter for us.

Rather, you make the real winter more longed-for by us, in that in winter it brings comfort to bear the silence as the necessity of the season, but in summer it is left to us to weep because no word of your lovers is with you; for the necessity being absent, and you again being silent, presents to us the appearance of being despised. But, O all you Loves, bring this man to the test of our affairs, so that he may at some point perceive how dread a thing it was to be a lover overlooked. Zacharias, loose for us along with the winter your silence; for both are burdensome; but if it were possible to hear you speaking all the time, winter would not distress us so much. But pour out your spring upon us with its whole stream. For this prevails with me over the pleasure of spring, even if in it the light is new, even if in it the swallows fill the ears with song, singing the season, as it seems to me, and the roses rising from the bud present a middle and blended sight and bring to mind ancient tales, how Adonis was beautiful and Aphrodite sought him, and she who bore the Loves was somehow taught to love, and failing of her darling is struck on the foot and bears the rose. But while we are in love with your voice, these things are reckoned small. Zacharias, behold, the occasion again demands your inclination toward those in need, and I am again the one giving the starting point, so that from both sides, I well know, you will acknowledge thanks, that you have found how to do good and that this has come about for you through me. For you truly rejoice in doing good, or in others suffering, and you would call even the one who gave the starting point a benefactor.

Therefore, as one who will give you thanks rather than receive it, I pride myself thus. But what is the matter? I know well that you ask with a laugh. A certain Alexander among us carries on trade in timber, and from this he has his living. As is likely for such men, he makes a certain Euthymius his partner in the business—that is his name—so that the one sends what seems good, and the other, staying behind, receives it, and thus they carry on the trade. This man, then, dwells among you as a citizen of Rhodes—O Zeus!—and yet he says he is being treated unjustly. The one doing the injustice you would call in the Roman tongue a "concussor"; for he legislates things not customary and contrives a starting point for a newer profit, as though you were not the rulers of Rhodes. But these things are, as is likely, unknown to you. So let it cease, now that you know, so that I may be grateful to you, and he, having obtained justice, may be grateful to me, recounting how he was wronged and has ceased to be. To Alypius and Stephanus the grammarians, and to Hierius the Roman Solon—since because of laws the city seemed to be in good order, he considered it terrible that the wonder of his wisdom should stand only as far as Attica, and so he traveled to the Egyptians, though they boasted of being wiser than others, and he traveled also to Croesus, who prided himself on his wealth as a mark of prosperity; for it seemed greater to Solon to luxuriate in wisdom than for the Pactolus to flow with gold... as much land as that man traversed. And those who saw him marveled, and when he departed, they longed for Solon again. And the Athenians, among whom he laid the foundation of his studies, perhaps also prayed that Athena would give the lawgiver back to the city again.

But if he is also devising his absence for the sake of these things, wishing to know how the Athenians came to be in love with him, I do not think I would be surprised. Except if the Athenians wept at the absence of one man, even though they presumably enjoyed the good fortune of other wise men, what would we be, removing the whole sum? And she whom one would previously have doubted whether it was Attica or Italy one ought to call—she is now suddenly silent and stripped of her distinguishing marks, and she seems to suffer the same as Cithaeron, when it has received the god in abundance and, as he departs again, is suddenly deserted, and Dionysus is nowhere. Whence I will cry out against Apollo, who called our affairs to himself while disregarding them. And I think the Muses share in his good fortune; but you are no doubt filled full of ancient myths, reckoning the god's passion right by Daphne herself—Daphne's chastity and love of humanity, and the plant that comforts the lover; and among you alone of those who see, the sight grants its testimony to the account. And if dense cypresses are also sent up for the favor of Apollo's beloved, and abundant water, and cicadas sing and a soft path is poured out for the grass, and trees upon trees and houses hidden in their midst by their height, and a moderate breeze and mingled fragrance and shade shutting out the painful part of the sun—it is yours either to announce it as quickly as possible or to narrate it in letters. Except I would wish to see you having come to us, so that in addition to other things I might also hear you prophesying. For I think Daphne has granted you this too.

To Palladius: I think that the virtue of the powerful is the greatest consolation to those who are wronged. For when power and a mind that honors justice come together, what prevents the things that seem right to the laws from being brought to fulfillment? But what is the purpose of my preface? Isidore the scholastic, my friend long ago while he lived, and now as far as memory goes—what sort of man he was in life, and how he made himself admirable from every side, you yourself could recount to others. But now that he has departed from among men, he has left his household bereft of alliance; for the mother, once a mother, is now childless at the threshold of old age and no longer a mother, and the wife bears the yoke of widowhood. And why need one even speak of the children? For these are girls of tender age, experiencing the lot of orphanhood. To speak briefly, they lie exposed to all who wish to do them wrong, unless you prevent it—you to whom their hopes look. For a certain man is by nature wicked, and having been given impunity and seeing their desolation, he has shown himself more wicked still; for dwelling near their house and taking from the proximity a grudge, he has made it his single purpose to render their dwelling useless to them. Hence he did not tolerate those who build lawfully being hindered, and regarding the agreements made between them in writing as nonsense, he declares himself more authoritative than the laws and than what he himself acknowledged. But taking on the mind of a judge who hates base things, become a father to the girls and a son to the mother and again equal to the wife and a housemate, and to us such a one as the previous experience has often shown you to be.

And let him know well that he is not destitute of alliance, as long as the laws are preserved and men honor justice. To Nephalius: I rejoiced when I received your letter, but wishing to put it into action, I did not find the means serving my eagerness. The cause I would never call chance, and least of all to you, but entirely the providence of God, steering our affairs as it wills. To Gessius the physician-sophist: When I took your letter in my hands, I seemed scarcely to have recovered the Muses themselves; I was inspired with pleasure and did not know what had become of me, like the Delphians when, after Apollo had come from the Hyperboreans, they who before were silent suddenly become full of the god. Such a one was I, marveling at everything—the beauty of the names, their harmony with one another, the beauty shining through them all, and greatest of all, your character, from which these writings came to us. And may many good things be yours for having given us such a festival. But, as the saying goes, one swallow does not make a spring. Yet what need of spring did the previous swallow suffice for? And if you add a second and a third, and then many, there would be nothing with us—neither that Croesus nor the Pactolus flowing with gold. I was glad to see your children and was led up to you as if through an image. Hence I prayed to see more, and, if I must speak greatly, better than their father. But for one who prays it is easy to say as much as he wishes, and to imitate Hector.

You should imagine that our companion Dorotheus himself is present, introducing him to you, and saying nothing else, but fulfilling by this the hopes that he himself provided when he described your affairs. And if he hopes to have something more because of me, it would be yours not to disappoint him of his expectation. Both his character and his zeal will commend the young man to you; if it were possible to make these clear to him at the same time as the sight of him, perhaps there would be no need at all of our letters. But as it is, since he honored the first place because of me, I think you will later admire him also for his own sake. I think also that you will look with kindly eyes upon our companion Anastasius, who also is enrolled in our family. For what need is there to say more to a man who was long a friend and now has chosen to be no less well-disposed? To Philip his brother: Again a letter from us, and again you are among the silent. And I fear that you may condemn some foolishness of ours. For by being completely silent you seem to think that those who speak in any way at all are babblers. But if you, being absent, overlook your friends, then silence is left to all who are absent. Therefore become that man again and speak to us; for good men, when they do not do what is fitting, are set forth as an example to those who wish to do wrong. And I would wish you to bear the mark of a man who would not overlook what is fitting, not even if anything should happen. And toward the need that has been written to you, show yourselves so zealous as to accomplish it for yourselves. For I hesitate to say that I wish your eagerness to be even greater. For instead of the greatest thanks, we pay this one to the one who needs the service. To Zacharias his brother: As it seems, O best of men, you will never cease from your mockeries against us.

And may you never cease from these things, O all you gods. For when I hear them spoken, I smile at the letters, and I come to you in my mind, and I seem to say something to you and to hear you speaking. So if you care for the grace that lies in letters—and care you certainly do—"shoot thus," and you will seem to grant me greater favors than if you had made me Croesus. Call me sophist again, and say that I dote on crotons, and add brow and vanity and whatever else you please. And often, having said "sophist," you have dismissed it, since to say this is the same as to call one a braggart. But I would not deny my own art; yet if it is proper to this art to exalt one to boastfulness, then you too surely have a great share in the art, so that I fear lest, inasmuch as you share in it... but for shame before you I will be silent. Perhaps you wonder that I, being a sophist and already beholding spring, when I ought to have made a display in my speech, then passed by in silence; and perhaps you seek in my letters flowers and swallows and the gentle change of the sea, and beautiful Adonis and that Aphrodite who loved so paradoxically, and that you do not hear of the rose and again marvel at the grace upon it. But I would say nothing of the sort, and least of all to you, lest you laugh again and call me tasteless and a sophist. To Epiphanius: A dread power you had, then, to move whomever you wished toward speech and silence, and you seem to me to do something very like a man who, having a lyre and having learned to use it, now weaves a melody, and now holds back from striking.

For if anything should be thought better than these things, he turns to that at once, and neither he himself nor the lyre would say anything musical. And when you are silent to us, having turned to newer things, those who were once dearest, but now perhaps only friends, are at once downcast and silent. But I know whence the matter comes. The laws compelled you to equip yourself, to draw up your brows in solemnity, and then, having taken on the air of a lawgiver and thinking that you already direct the affairs of the Romans by your vote, you were so exalted above us. But since the word and memory of our old familiarity has scarcely stolen into you, would that this had happened long ago; nevertheless, hearing your tongue uttering something sweet along with the swallows, I am stirred in my soul and I seem to feel the sun striking me more brightly, and now it is truly spring for me. But be favorable to us from now on, and no longer come to forget old loves. To Strategius and Hilasius. Again the fish come to you from the vineyards, and the fields, it seems, supply the things of the sea, and at the same time you have both lands and sea to harvest and here to take grapes and there again fish. And the sea seems to imitate your ways; for you supply eagerly, and it wishes to minister to your generosity. But the sea among us makes us just like mainlanders, except that it provides waves and supplies its own menace without fish. To Sosianus. If anyone is a lover of money, he would say nothing more gladly than this and would listen to others saying it. And if you should bring and provide gold, you have the first place of honor with him.

But for one whose business is in arms, he takes a fine shield and is lifted up in great pride, and carrying the possession this way and that he is filled more with Ares. And to a good man, what could one do to gratify him rather than by bringing him to see men like himself? Therefore, knowing you to be such a man, both having become so and wishing to be so, it seemed to me not fitting that the scholar Diodorus should be ignorant of you, but I bring and give him to you, and you to him, thinking that I shall gratify both of you, if you come to have experience of one another. And each of you will certainly praise me, inasmuch as I knew how to procure friends for friends. To John: Let the most learned Diodorus be to us the dissolution of our silence toward one another, both demanding that you write and giving you what is from us. For this man is my friend, and even before seeing you he happened to be a lover of yours; for the words from us, recounting the things concerning you, produced the love even before the sight. For the man is a lover of noble things and busies himself about the good, as if fearing lest ever such a one should escape notice. And why must I speak to you about this man? For having learned him by experience, you will surely think the praise too little and will call me a weak orator, as one not even able to speak of the qualities that are present. To Diodorus: This is that very thing which has happened also to me when I expected it. For I thought that straightway, when you got there, seeing the bench of rulers and the chorus of orators and the crowd of suppliants following, you would be filled at once with pride, and if anyone wished merely to talk, you would scarcely endure the speaker; and our word would be brief, and why should I mention those hidden in darkness? You will surely say something about us. But if you should address those who walk on the ground, I would not even marvel at this.

I expected the same thing, and this has indeed happened: such is the disposition of the orators of our time, who call others suppliants while they magnify their own affairs. And now you seem to have chosen us as friends earlier, not judging us worthy—as is likely—but because, in want of better men, you made use of those at hand, and you wholly regret the time you spent with us unworthily. And now, as I write, I fear lest you be vexed even at the letter from us. But I would pray that you fare well; and even if it must be that we be despised again, it is painful, but we shall bear it nonetheless, consoling ourselves with your fortune. To Zacharias and Philip: Let the winter, troubling us as usual, carry off the blame for the preceding silence; but for the silence from now on, if any should arise, you would reasonably bear the responsibility. And yet, how great a thing silence is to those who long for playful converse, how could one set it before those who have not come to experience the matter? But you would surely know, being disposed toward friends in a loving way; for I would not be so proud as to think that I myself am loved in return by you. And yet I would pray that this be mine rather than to abound greatly in gold and to reach the utmost of any fortune whatsoever. For in that way each one, having no leisure for idleness because of longing, would wholly console my love. But if there is nothing of the sort, and you will still keep silent, I shall bring accusations, having suffered such things, and some loving judge will decide and vote on what you must suffer or pay.

Rather, the suffering will be kept away, so that you may not grieve me, your lover, again; but it will vote that you pay back so many letters that the silence may be consoled by the abundance of the time that has gone before. To Philip, brother. For good men, character is sufficient for the establishment of friendship; but since there ought also to be some starting point through which one must first come to words, and then, having tested, to admiration, for this reason I have given the letter to the learned Theon. For first through it you will see him kindly disposed, and later, thinking the writing superfluous, I think you will admire the man for his own sake. To Eusebius. If one day makes those who long for each other grow old together, from how long a time does it seem to you that I have grown old, thus struck by longing—for who, having made trial, departs from loving?—and deprived of the sight of you for so long a time? But doing well, you lighten the difficulties by your letters, having emulated the wise among physicians, who, having no means to cure, only console the suffering. Such have you become to us, offering your letters in place of yourself. And now I imitate the vehement among lovers and console my love through the image. But for the noble Megalus, nature makes you a father, and art makes me one, so that through me consider yourself present with the child. But if I omit anything, consider that I am not even able to do it, and I blame fortune that I am not able to do all things, so as to gratify you as much as I also wish. But O gods, may we both not miss the hope that we have placed in the child.

To Elias. When I took your letter in my hands, I seemed to see you yourself present; so wholly did you put your grace into its writing, and I smiled more and more often at the letter, as when, seeing you, I was filled with pleasure. But if you remember your friends when they are absent, that is wonderful, or rather nothing beyond expectation, but this has happened which we also hoped for beforehand. And I, even sleeping, seem to converse with you, and often on rising I was vexed that it was a dream. As for our companion Megas, if I were able easily to give as much as I wish, you would certainly have received him already both complete and an orator. To Victor my brother. I have received the book, more longed for before the trial than it deserved. For it has come, wonderful in its title, but in substance bringing nothing strange, but what has been pursued by many and varied writers. But for your sake let it be passed over in silence what is better to say. Nevertheless, the favor will lie recorded for you in my memory, except not such as it was with the Persian, Pausanias, who was not wholly sound of mind. For he, reverencing neither Plataea nor the beloved trophies, was betraying to barbarians the Greece that had been saved through him, as if unable to endure being fortunate to the end; but you, tending your own affairs, will do nothing but act. The favor will therefore lie for you, not first, by Zeus, but in addition to many firsts, another first. And one favor from those well treated will suffice for good men merely to remember that they have been treated well. But may it be granted to me not to be forgetful even of those who wish to do good only as far as intention, even if there will be no completion for what has been decided. To Diodorus. Are you still silent? Do you still despise our affairs?

And indeed I thought you had reached a surfeit of pride, deeming silence a solemn thing, while we would handle the matter more ambitiously than you, so that we might even overcome an eyebrow raised in arrogance through silence. For this is that familiar thing: as soon as you saw Caesar's [letter?], you walk on high and are indignant that you are not lifted aloft on Perseus' wings, and to you, reckoning our affairs, they still seem small and as nothing. Hence an ancient law, prevailing everywhere, was being transgressed by you. For it is necessary that whenever someone, leaving behind his accustomed ways, directs his course in a foreign land, he himself should be the first to write, [telling] what sort of voyage the sea brought him, how the land escorted him on his journey, whether he enjoyed good fortune, whether the place received him kindly. Of none of these things, then, did you yourself speak, nor do we have anything to recount, but on my side you have become more voiceless than those fish. But so that the things of friendship, having come to forgetfulness through silence, may not gradually slip away, I renew the matter again and become more kindly disposed toward you. And you, by Philian Zeus, jest with us in your accustomed ways and in ways worthy of your grace. But if any of the distressing things has happened, let this be given to the breezes and to the fortune of human affairs, which, reveling in our affairs, shifts them up and down and is changed by a slight turn, wishing to see nothing standing and unmoved. And I think the suffering dreadful, but the spectacle more dreadful to those who saw it. A girl, not even known to all her own kin, was led in the sight of all instead of to a bridal chamber to a tomb. And from this, the hopes of a suitor were left empty, and the marriage contract was torn in pieces over her. Dreadful, alas, are these things, and they ought not to have happened.

Except that fortune does not first campaign against us; she has already snatched many others, as it were, from the very midst of the bridal chamber, and turned the nuptial room into lamentation. O how many who luxuriated in hopes have become a tale because of her. But let her who wins by her vote, and at once wills something and it comes to be, be conquered by philosophy and reason, and let it be an advantage for those devoted to the Muses to know how to bear fortunes. For I for my part admire even the one who spoke wisely: "but since what we wish does not come to be, let us wish what comes to be." She is gone, having left the earth, along with the evils of marriage and the pangs of children, if ever they came to be. And I pass over in silence the dangers of child-rearing and the fear amid good fortune, lest one ever fail of what is present. Having become free of all the evils that are companions to life, she is gone on a truly public road, which all must travel, since we too have been born. To Diodorus: Now I have learned how greatly you wronged me before by keeping silence; for by the very things with which you gladdened me by writing, by those, when you fell completely silent, you grieve me. For when I took your letter in my hands, I was filled with an ancient happiness, thinking you present in your words, and I was moved to say something as though to one present. And some things I said, and others I seemed to hear as you spoke, and scarcely recovering myself I knew that those things were a dream and we had been deceived. Therefore write often, so that, lacking the sight of you, we may be gladdened by dreams, since indeed even a terrible lover of his boy, when unfortunate, saw a good dream and was changed. But I fear, in saying this, that you may think it true and be filled with pride and there be silence again. Believe it, then, to be false, and may I only hear you speaking.

Seeing with kindly eyes the cousin and kinsman by marriage who is carrying the letter—if indeed one must speak of what is to come—and, if need be, lending him my tongue as an ally, you seem to grant me the whole of the favor. To Diodorus: how great a benefit the good Zacharias enjoyed from you, he himself often recounts and we have heard, and your letters also made it clear—though less than the truth, so that, I think, you may seem to know how to do good things rather than to speak of them. This is not from any poverty of the speaker, but from a modest shame that conceals its own virtue. But your zeal toward us, even before it came to be, I proclaim to all, and nothing strange befalls us; for what we hope for comes to pass, and since the hope is always great, experience does not refute it. I, then, wish to say even more; but you, I know not how, think I am jesting, and I shall be silent; for so great is your modesty that you think even the one who truly praises is jesting. But I neither depart from the truth when jesting, nor from jesting when speaking truth, whenever my words are addressed to those who love me. So take courage in my praises; for you are not entirely among those cast aside in my estimation. To Dorotheus: You were indeed a clever man at making small things great and at giving a muse to whomever you wish, and in praises not such as I am to speak, but such as ought to come to be. But also by the very fact that in asking me for my words you utter something Attic and devoted to the Graces, you persuade me that never willingly

I sent these men out of fear that my children might be found wanting when judged by you. For what is ours, in the eyes of kindly judges, perhaps seems great, but before those who wish to scrutinize it, it will appear the opposite. But may you rather be to me as you were before; for my arguments, fearing your letter, kept saying, "Father, let them escape notice," and I barely consoled them by promising that I would go from home to home; for, I said, since he has the Muses with him, you would not seek them unless he also wished to exalt them. This is brought about by a citizen of yours who cares for the Muses: his name is Dorotheus, and they call him Pelagius. To his brother Philip: O how much power the Loves have and how they change things, and they confirm by their deeds that nothing is stronger than they themselves. They seem to say that we hate arrogance most of all; and even if someone raises his brow and disregards the words of a lover, these have reversed the order, and that dignified man suddenly loves and speaks humbly. But what does this mean to me? You surely already know and are laughing, but nevertheless it shall be said for the sake of their honor. For longing for you fell upon my reasoning with its whole stream and drew it to itself, and I was terribly at a loss and did not know what to become. I thought, then, that there was one consolation: if you would say something in your absence and I might often hear you speaking. So when you learned the matter, you suffered something strange, alas, and were lifted up to boastfulness. And I was in love, but you paid no attention at all. I begged, and I gained nothing more. I brought forward our kinship, I called you brother, I reminded you of Zeus of friendship, and you were silent again. The matter was now impossible.

What then happened? I spoke a word to the Loves and wept, and I pleaded with them for their bows; and they are persuaded; and they were shooting, and you, having made trial, were changed, and he who was formerly insolent to us asked that I become humane, so that you might not suffer the same things from us as we suffered from you. But, O dear Loves, I am persuaded and am reconciled even before defending myself. But if he plays the youth again... but I do not think he would dare. To Elias. If the old saying wishes the things of friends to be common, and the most learned Peter is a friend to me, he would reasonably be considered yours as well. That I justly embrace him, experience will show many times, but for now the sight of him will bear witness to you of his character. He, needing something from you and wishing by all means to obtain it, moved me to this letter, thinking that I have so much power with you that I would reasonably fail in nothing. But if he thinks truly, confirm still more your opinion; but if falsely, serve him even so, so that we may not be shown to be feigning friendship toward one another in the eyes of others. Justice also fights alongside, which is dear to you even when no one asks. But to look on while one who is able to prevent injustice stands in equal case with the one who does it, which is alien to your judgment. Know that you will nod assent by all means, persuaded either by my letters or by his presence. In one thing only will you grieve me, by showing your virtue duller through the delay. To Elias. Of your gift, the experience moves those who know it to wonder, and the report moves the others, but both move me to have your benefaction ever recorded.

And being admired for having become a servant of such good things for my country, I refer the cause back to you by the memory of those good things. Whence, I always speak with more frankness than is fitting, bringing small things to you; and it is no wonder; for not even those who burn incense to the gods show gratitude in proportion to its worth, but in proportion to their ability they demonstrate that they seem grateful. And in the case of things brought to you, the greatest things measured against the smallest have the same power toward beneficence. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: Well done for your letters, how great a cheerfulness of our mind they know how to lift up. For what is sweeter than to hear those speaking when he prayed that certain ones be present with him by their own voices? As it was fitting that fortune nod to this long ago, and it might come to pass and reach its end if you wish, O gods, for as long as the letters are going to be furnished to us in place of themselves. For to another it is a pleasure to be Croesus and to possess his things, and to another to hear the great king; another, having seen the swallows, defines having spring, but I, enjoying your voice, thought greater things than Croesus over those talents and the great king sitting under the plane tree, and instead of the swallows the Muses themselves seemed to sing to me. But indeed I shall stop, lest, wishing to display the pleasure too much, I shall perhaps seem to you in my letters to be such a sophist, and laughing at one another you may mock this, our usual practice.

Except that it gave me double pleasure to address you both together, just as for those who arrive at Delphi, whenever after singing a hymn they have Apollo in their speech, Artemis too was at once a part of the song. And this pleased the gods more than if someone had taken each one separately and hymned him. For being brothers, they wished to remain such also in their songs. To Zacharias my brother: You complain that the seasons of the year have passed away, but I complain that they are here again. Why then are you still silent? For it is not sufficient for a defense to have anticipated an accusation against oneself, but whoever, being guilty, then blames others—if you remove the pretense of accusing others, he accuses himself. And do not bring up to me the stay in Byzantium while we were silent; for Pamphylia is my witness that she said much and heard nothing. But would that I again had the august bema and an Attic judge and the brilliant guise of Athens, when rhetoric flourished in reverend fortune, and Plato—how could I speak of it moderately?—he could not bear her prosperity; for a graphē would have been immediately laid against you, that he wrongs Greece by reckoning rhetoric, on which the cities stand, to be nothing, and coming forward I would have prosecuted. But grant me a little to play the young man; for already I am filled with anger and the accusation of words, and I would not in the first place have kept silent. Nothing, then, was more terrible, O judges, than when a man speaks ill of that from which the power to speak came to him. Such a one as this good fellow here, speaking about you against rhetoric, dares to utter something, from which he has a blessed life and fame, so that even if he receives the vote, he is defeated, mastering that from which comes his victory.

And he uses Plato as a witness, who assigned rhetoric the last place, and he proceeded far into outrage against the orators. Having learned these things, the judges of the speech... but I would no longer add the penalty. And when you speak of Polus and Callicles, add Plato's characters; for he creates them for himself as speaking in a drama the things they agreed upon. If not, grant that the Socrates of the comedy also leads. To Zacharias: Our winter has now reached its end and has ceased, though we blamed both things, the silence and the season, but spring has arrived to our joy and has become spring more than it was accustomed to be; for not only do the swallows sing of the season, but rumor also cries out the vote concerning you, that you have advanced to greatness, that you have been enrolled in the chorus of blessed orators. And if it had added as much as we wish, nothing at all would be lacking for happiness. If, then, these things have happened, I will certainly ask for greater things; but if we are pleased only as far as words go, I praise the report, but I divine the deeds through the report. To Zacharias: Now truly I have learned that the report was not a word but a deed, and I marvel perhaps at the Attic law, which established this too among the gods. For not only does Hesiod hymn her as a god, but the Athenians too, who learned of the battle at Mycale on the same day, said it was not to be endured if they did not consider Rumor a god. If, then, the speech were addressed to another, I would have said at once that you would raise your brow at us and say you suffer terrible things, unless someone frequently addressing you as an orator should summon you, and you would think more highly than that Demosthenes himself on the Attic bema;

For he used to lead one city by public speech, but you will prevail in the court, from which justice comes forth for the subjects of the emperor. Had I said these things to another, I would keep silence before you, whom I see to be more moderate in prosperity. Therefore I always expect even greater things. For fortune is wholly measured out to such men, envying nothing of what has gone before. To Zacharias my brother: Receive the present letter, late indeed, but nevertheless confident, because it has arrived at a friend. So do not disappoint it of its hope, by turning away and knitting your brows at it, since they say that even lovers, when they succeed by time and with difficulty, forget their former toils because of the present pleasure. But if you should appear sullen toward it, it is painful to say, yet I will say it nonetheless. For I fear that not even another letter will easily reach you, since it will consider you arrogant and will reckon what the former one suffered. To Thomas: Now truly, as we flourish, Justice and the Muses become our companions. Having found your soul divided by a just vote, they now consort with one another, as is likely, being sisters and having Zeus as their common father. For since you left long ago, no longer having Caesar's hand—as indeed has happened—they left the cities to us, and our affairs are despised, and they were with their father accusing those on earth. But he nodded again, and you have become present among us, and fortune again grows young for your subjects. For even if you bring a vote, Justice does not reject it, and if you speak a word, the Muses wholly praise it. And what I have especially marveled at, I will say.

For it is a mark of one so greatly superior not to look down on lesser men, but even to initiate conversation and to remember friendship and to be willing to listen to those who speak—this is an addition to your wonder, I think, since you philosophize in the manner of Socrates; but for me the matter is burdensome, living as I can by myself and praying to escape notice. And if I did not wish to gain another letter from you, I would have kept silent, at a loss what to say after you. But as it is, I blush to write and cannot endure silence, rousing your tongue to resound musically once more and hunting great things with small. May many good things come to him who has been allotted the governorship of our cities; for wishing to show the future before the test and bringing to mind ancient fortune, he called you as co-workers and straightway prophesied the future to all. And I loved the noble Megas even before, as is fitting, and I gave as much as I had. For the law of the craft so wills it; but he is also a father and a father-in-law, sufficient through virtue to implant zeal even in the lazy man. But now that you have been added to the young man, I will make a just prayer: O Zeus and other gods, may I be able to do something greater than before, and may our Megas profit as much as he who cares for him wishes. To Zacharias my brother: I seem, having partaken of your letters, not to remain where I was before, but to revel in the occasion and to consider the opportunity a windfall. For behold, I am suddenly among those who ask, and you, I think, marveling at the speed, will quickly say the comic poet's line. But I considered it dreadful if, watching for the time, I should not ask sooner for what is fitting both for you to give and for me to receive.

For Aeneas, the man who is delivering the letter to you, is our fellow citizen, and I wish him to prosper through you. For he is well born, and in character he is free, and he knows the art of the laws. But he wishes to enjoy the art only to the extent that it is possible for his judgment also to remain free. For he does not know how to be pleased by a gain that does not come with justice. And it is possible to learn this also from experience. For when he had been set over certain cities in matters of justice and had received the title of ekdikos, he imitated the name, so that he even conquered the nature of a sycophant. For no one ever blamed him for anything, not even unjustly. But perhaps this even seemed ridiculous to the rulers before you; for they were concerned only with receiving; he was not one of those who give. Hence he stopped, and others, as was likely, were doing things worthy of what they had given. But now he wishes to be in the same fortune, offering you as a gift the possession of a just judgment. Do I then begin to ask for things that do not belong to me? Well then, if you admire the request, honor it with deeds. To Zacharias my brother. I, having seen your letter with gladness, as is fitting, but not being able to praise it as it deserves, came close to sending you back the very same letter, changing only the superscription; for in the things you wrote in admiration of my affairs, I seemed to be hearing my own praises, and you seemed to me to be doing something very similar, as if Nireus were admiring Thersites, who came to Ilion the most beautiful man. Hence

Shame came over me at the praises, except not so as to keep me from rejoicing in the matter. For the letter, by the very things with which it ostensibly praised my qualities, was adorned and displayed its beauty and stirred the lover to a greater longing. But you also urged on the embassy not moderately with your words. And if I am praised while serving as an ambassador, what would I myself be if I nodded assent? For by as much as giving is greater than asking, by so much does the one who is about to give surpass the one who has asked in the account of virtue. And the most learned Aeneas, as though he had already received it, sings my praises; for having already come to experience of you, he reckons the future equal to what has been done. But if he proclaims it before receiving, what would he become upon obtaining the object of his longing? And at some point, recounting your deeds, he will certainly add that you also knew how to double your favors by your speed. And as for the excellent Megas, if it were possible to transform him into an orator on the same day, we would not need a second day. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: I loved the wonderful Julian in other respects too—for he is sufficient to draw the one who meets him toward longing—but I was far more pleased that he has become for me a pretext for writing to you. For if ever I should obtain this, I think I am beyond Cinyras. And he asks nothing difficult, but wishing me to be present there through you, he hopes that you will become this, which I altogether also wish. And I would not have become anything if not present. But what the consistorium is, I do not know, for it strikes my ear with Roman bombast; but through you I love even the name, and I would wish it truly to be divine, and I honor an appellation whose function I have not known.

But if your fortune has also changed for the greater, still remain such as you were long ago in your deeds, so that I may not call you a boastful consistorian. To Zacharias my brother. My country—and let it be said with God's favor—looked upon us with kindly eyes; for it presented to me the acquaintances such as I prayed to find, and after pausing a little it gathered theaters for me and stirred up applause, and a report seized me and led me through all mouths, and I seem somehow even to be acting the young man and to have my mind lifted up by the applause and to be simply playing the sophist, as you yourself might say. So then, mock such things; but I shall not endure not to be illustrious and to lift my brow on high and to follow the law of my own art. Let these things then be said by me in jest, so that I may provide you with material for mocking, as is your habit; for you delight me by mocking, know well, more than others who assail me with many praises. To Philip my brother. Behold, here is another letter for you again, and you—I know not what has happened to you—are silent again. For if you will say that you do not have leisure, but your art brings you some profit continually, it is dreadful—alas, dreadful—if you do not give us even a little of yourself out of the whole year; but at any rate I rejoice with you in your occupation. But if you are silent because you are rich in another way from your art, I congratulate you on this too, yet I would not wish you to be so rich as to be lifted up against us and no longer to know your dearest friends of old.

And yet we have been gaping at your letters, and we look toward the sea no less than Phyllis calling to that unjust Demophon, who did not know how to love in return—whom, since he was but newly a bridegroom and was increasing his love for Phyllis, he departed leaving the bridal chamber, giving hopes that he would surely come back again. But when he had been released and had gone, he immediately changed and did not see Phyllis again, while she wept toward the sea and counted the merchant ships, lest one of them ever bring Demophon back. But indeed, I think our own case is more terrible; for he did not wish to be present any longer, while you, though not far away, do not write. To Constantius. While I was still living by the Nile, I received that fine letter. What happened concerning it would not be right to pass over in silence. For when the bearer delivered it, and added also whence it came, I suffered a certain erotic experience. For having strayed a little from what was likely, I already seemed to myself to have you altogether present with me. And so, O dearest of men, I said, "You pained me greatly by your absence, and now you have come to those who long for you." But when I had said such things many times and gave those present some suspicion of the matter, they said, "What is the matter with you? For surely that man is not actually present with you." And coming to my senses, I was distressed, as one who has erred in such a

...of hope, and after weeping a little I recognized how great is the power of love, and that it was a kind of delusion that comforted my reasoning. But when I unrolled the letter and examined it, I was delighted so greatly that I willingly held back from the present moment, saying many times, "Lest once again..." And longing for what was to come urged me on. To Ulpius: I loved the admirable Strategius even before now, but now I have loved him still more, because he became the occasion of letters between us; for by setting aside his former silence he has given us the chance to say something to you and to hear you speaking again. And if our letters are also to your liking, then honor their cause—one who already acknowledges gratitude to you for your earlier zeal, and who will proclaim the benefaction even more if you bring the favor to completion. But show some youthful vigor against those who do wrong, so that all may perceive what sort of friends I have, though I kept them hidden. And your brother I knew even before seeing him; for report often made him known to me; but now I admired him more, having learned by experience. And seeing him, I thought I held you through another body, and though far away you seemed to be present to us through another image. To Sosianus: It was fitting, then, that I too, taking courage, should ask a favor of you, and that you should grant it eagerly—both befitting us: for me to say what is needed, for you to bring the word to deed. For Strategius reported to me that such great eagerness on your part toward him had arisen that, so far as you were concerned, the case reached its end and we have won. But may this also come to pass in deeds.

For I am so confident, hoping through you for the outcome, that even before the end I am already seeking words by which I may acknowledge the favor. Ulpius, you have escaped a great accusation that was being prepared against you by us. For when Strategius came but had no letter, he blushed to approach me—how could he not?—and though he often escaped, he was barely caught, and I was calling him abominable and hateful to the gods, because having come to us he reported nothing about you, our dearest ones, about whom I often prayed to hear. But nevertheless he made his defense sufficiently; for he said the reason was the flight, that he was not carrying letters. And I forgave him for blushing over these things, but I said to myself: how many things time knows how to bring and to change. For Ulpius the noble, when he shared our former fortune, was a friend and seemed so, and I would never have thought that he would change; but when he was raised up brilliant and became great, he is unbearable in his good fortune and forgets those former things. But may he only prosper, and we shall bear being overlooked with moderation. Saying these things and the like, I was gathering up a great accusation against you. But when someone came and was delivering the letter from you, first, before unrolling it, I often greeted the letter; then, encountering what was inside and finding the defense of the delay, I was delighted not moderately, and I repented of my former words. And I said rather, alas, how many things do men suspect in vain. For neither time nor fortune changed for us the wonderful Ulpius, but he is grateful and knows me, his former benefactor. But see that by being silent again you do not once more bring us into accusation.

To Silanus: You could not say how great a hope you have dashed for us. For when I took your former letter in my hands and learned from it that you would return to us a little later, I rejoiced and, drawing a deep breath for joy, I said: "O Zeus, may these things come to pass." Accordingly I was uplifted every day and walked on the light breeze of hope, saying again and again: "Will I ever see and greet him after so long?" and "may I be again with him." But when time passed beyond expectation, I did not even deign to write, doing this, as they say, as a provocation of love, so that, seeming to be disregarded, you might hasten all the more to us, since I wished to reproach you for not remembering your friends. And you seem to me to have become Stratocles the orator for us. For he announced victory to the Athenians when they were defeated and ignorant of their fortune. At once, then, the city was elated, and it gave itself over to play, and those who were faring badly rejoiced. But when the truth was reported and the appearance was no longer, "What," says Stratocles, "was I wronging you, if for at least two days you became happier because of me, and the appearance was a gain?" But since the matter of a mother seems to Pindar greater even than business, may your fatherland see you sooner, and after it, we ourselves. To Philip my brother: Behold, a letter from us is again at your side, and again I know well that you will be silent. And if you would grant me pardon for speaking with annoyance, your character has changed toward arrogance, and you are unwilling to remain such as you were before. But it is well that I did not sail across the sea of the Bosporus and arrive at the city of the king.

For perhaps I too, seeing the great king and the robe and office of the consuls and some rule called the greatest, and these august things among you—whether you wish to call them realities or names—would have raised my brow and thought youthfully, exalted by the fortune of what I saw, and the things once dear to me would have seemed to me nonsense. For when you have been captured by these things, I could not easily say how I would have escaped suffering the same, unless some reasoning crept in upon me that, my good friend, judgment and fortune are not the same, but the one is carried along as it seems best to itself and often falls and laughs at our affairs, while the prudent man ought to be master of the other, and neither to rise up with it when it exalts nor to change along with it when it falls. To Zacharias his brother: Whom would I become, having taken a lover and a brother as accuser, and one thinking that I have nothing at all to say? For what do you say? We are rhetors and fathers of many daughters—for so it seemed good to call our letters. But these things were long ago, you say; for now they are no longer so, but we are insolent men and dishonoring the law of love. But if there were some poetic man, they would surely call upon Apollo and the Muses: grant me to speak and to persuade and not to appear unjust in my affection. But now at least I will imitate something poetic and swear a great oath: let the gods be witnesses, that our affairs are not as is somehow also said, but there is still in us shame and memory of dearest friendship. What then, you say, is the silence? I fear lest some unjust fortune revel over my offspring, and drive my children, hastening toward you, now one and now another.

And perhaps the hands of strangers carried these things, not knowing who these women are and whence. But in my misfortune over these matters I seemed, and am judged, both ignorant and senseless. Why should one distress oneself speaking of the others? But yesterday, perhaps, and the day before, someone was sent to you, recounting my struggles, and now, as it seems, some stranger wanders and is desolate. But may she come at some point into your hands, and may I rejoice on hearing it. And having received your roses, I was pleased with them no less than Odysseus seeing the generosity of Alcinous; for there the receiving had only the pleasure, but with us both, because you give and I receive. To Epiphanius: Are you still silent? Are we still among the cast-offs, and has no thought of our old loves stolen over you? You are indeed a pitiless and implacable man. Recall my memory, that you did not depart from us on such hopes, but you wept—alas for me—and scarcely set out, and you agreed you would write almost before setting foot on land. But now those things are gone, and you are simply silent, and there is no word of us. And if you remain silent still, I shall cry out something tragic, saying "O Zeus" and "Friendship" and "Words"—you have been wronged, and I have been wronged. And the one doing the wrong was once calling me friend. For now he no longer does. To John: If silence shows friendship to be false, it must always be held together by words, if indeed in their absence it is convicted. It remains, then, to consider even an enemy a friend, only if he speaks. But let us not be such judges of friendship. For what prevents one from seeing friends in memory even while silent? Which is ours even now and will never cease.

But let us rather consider that it is not granted to everyone to do as each one wishes, but the cares of life from without and the uncertainty of the future sometimes prevail over reason, and some things lead, while one serves and obeys. And so for me too, since I set foot upon the work of teaching, continuous struggles and cares about these matters have been upon me from the beginning and have not left me until now. These things one ought rather to have borne in mind than to suspect over small matters that we were once good for friendship and have now already ceased. But O Zeus and Erotes and all who watch over friendship, may you persuade my accusers that I have never come to forgetfulness of them, but I am present with them in thought and seem both to speak something and to hear them speaking, and that if I am ignorant of these, I have also forgotten myself. To Hieronymus: Do you still live by the Nile? Do you still look down upon those who long for you? What, tell me, have you suffered so great? For if you think that your slowness kindles our love the more, know well that it has reached its peak, and you would have nothing further to add to the matter. But if the city of the Macedonian draws you on account of its graces and of your seeming already to possess Helicon itself, emulate Odysseus and, passing by the Sirens, remember Ithaca. For I, now longing to see you in the ancient fashion wearing the cicada-brooch, gape at the sea and scan the merchant ships, if ever I shall behold you present. But you seem to me to have emulated that Theseus of old, and that too while leading children, bridegroom Demophon, unjust stranger, who do not wish even to remember the child any longer, though he is fair and, if you were present now, would already be able to call you father.

To Zacharias and Philip, brothers. With how great a longing for you I am overcome, how could I express it in words, unless perhaps you happen to have suffered something similar? For one who has suffered knows how to judge matters concerning this. I am persuaded that you are such men, and that you preserve the law of friendship together with that of nature, both by what you write and by the consolation you give in your letters. Yet even so, being at a loss because of my feeling, something of this sort has often occurred to me to say: Would that I might become Perseus and appear winged, cutting through the air and being carried over the sea, so that at once I might seem to be and might actually be present with you and enjoy your love. This thought is contrary to nature, but not far from those who long; for it is easy to wander and to dream of things that are not naturally able to happen. But if you would again endure my mythologizing, I have already often envied Abaris—a Scythian and a barbarian, yet wise in another way; or, if you wish, fortunate—because he had the arrow serving his purpose and was carried to whomever he wished, and no length of road troubled Abaris at all. But why do I seek things far off and contrary to nature? Only letters are left to us for consolation; let Perseus and Abaris be given over to poets and myths. To Philip, his brother. If both ancient accounts and the law of nature wish us to render to parents what is due, how much more fitting is it to pay back gratitude to one's fatherland, from which one has come forth and from which parents too have their beginning? Now the occasion calls you to this, and consider that this land which bore you sends forth its voice to you through me; for in this way you will both have fulfilled what is due and will have given us a remembrance of the deed, inasmuch as the need concerns the greatest matters.

Expect nothing burdensome, but for you it is very easy to give, while for those who receive it is a great thing to obtain. We wish the petitions on behalf of the city to be submitted to the great emperor through the high priest who is with you or through the emperor's brother, so that the rank of the one who submits may lend some weight to what is given. For by doing this he will confer a common favor both on us who ask and on us who are asked. To Epiphanius: If while we speak you are silent, and you write while we are silent, I fear to write, since one must certainly either speak to the voiceless or hear in silence. And yet, as is likely, humans devised letter-writing so that for those who are absent they might preserve an imitation of those present, and might say something through letters as if they were also together with them. But I, having read your letter, wept for pleasure, and I seemed to hear you present as you are accustomed, and having breathed something sweet, I said that very thing, "that dearest voice." But, O by that very love and that friendship, if you still in any way know and remember it, do not go away from me through letters, nor take away the only consolation, lest perhaps I envy those who do not even love at all, who do not even happen to grieve over having suffered such things. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: I previously commended a certain person to you through my earlier letter, not knowing him exactly, but from the things he pretended I considered him to be what he was not; for he escaped notice, having used a fair pretense, but being such a one as experience showed him to be. For starting from the people of Gaza and

When he was about to put out to sea, he was staying, as was natural, at the house of one of his friends until the voyage should be ready. But having been trusted under the law of friendship, and having received this favor besides many others, he broke into the house of the man who had received him, and stripped him of the money he had. And so that the grounds for suspicion might escape notice, a key was ready at hand for his plot. Opening with it and taking what he found, he again put the old appearance on the chest. But when he had with difficulty put out to sea, and the owner, needing what seemed to be lying there, called for it, the deed came to light, and there was no contradicting the evidence. Of such hospitality did Menelaus too partake, having taken away Helen in return for some recompense. I was moved to write this, so that, having been trusted by you, he might not do such things to the one who trusted him, and the victim might blame you, and you certainly blame me. To his own brothers. Again the time has come demanding letters to you, and again we consider ourselves fortunate. For what life would there be for us if we were deprived of saying something to you and writing? And if we should also obtain like things from you, by Heracles, how fortunate we shall be. Do not delay, then, to bring your longing to fulfillment, lest, dishonoring the law of Eros, you experience his arrows; for the god is dread in both moving arrows and raising the bow, and he makes his target those who dishonor a lover. To Athenodorus. Having received the book, I reasonably acknowledged gratitude to you, but I rejoiced in myself if I have been fortunate to have you, being such men, for friendship. And let not envy strike me with a rough stone, as Pindar thinks.

I used to pray to Fortune too that I might one day be able to repay you with a favor worthy of you. And she quickly gives the opportunity, such as you wished and I, though long seeking it, have now barely obtained; for I have persuaded the man who holds the whole lot to sell you that portion of which you happen to be in need. If, then, you come to us, you would receive the property sooner, persuading in some matters of the price and being persuaded in others, as the law of trade requires; but if not, he himself will come to you when the occasion calls, as he promised us. To Sosianus: The admirable Alphaeus reported to me that you had become such toward him as he himself wished, as I expected, and as it was fitting for you to be seen to be. And I, hearing these things, was pleased—for how could I not be?—yet the matter did not seem to me even now altogether wonderful; and if you wish, I was even beforehand describing it in outline, sketching what sort of man you were toward him, so that he, at a loss as to what more to say, fell silent with a laugh and called me blessed for your friendship. But see that you bring equal zeal to the matters of which he asked you when present, so that he himself may be grateful to me, and both of us in turn to you. To Zacharias: I received the letter from you, which ought indeed to have happened long ago, yet even happening now it has not in any way blunted the favor. Such is the experience of lovers: whenever they are unlucky, the matter seems grievous to them and they cannot bear it; but when they grasp what they long for, as though they had suffered nothing, they forget their former toils. But see that you do not now, having learned this, before writing anything again distress us by your silence; for I for my part would not wish, after suffering much, then to rejoice again.

For not even would the Delphians altogether choose that the Pythian be absent from them, even if, when he is present, they immediately keep festival for the arrival of Apollo. To Nestorius: We have been disappointed of a hope that was long and painful in its duration, because it did not receive its end, yet it gladdened us nonetheless and made us more moderate; for bringing your letter to mind, it allowed us to think that you would return to us sooner. But now, having fallen even from the hope itself, how could we bear it with moderation? But O Fortune, Fortune—for I shall dramatize a little for the consolation of grief—why do we please you so much by being distressed? For you ought either not to have brought people together into longing, or at least to allow them to enjoy one another and not to rejoice in those who are separated. But it is nothing strange, dear Nestorius, that we, being human, should experience such things; rather, one must bow the neck and willingly endure the yoke of necessity; for voluntary labors are more moderate for those who toil. To Nephalius: To what degree of helplessness Stephen has come, I think does not escape you either, and that he is scarcely able even to place his hope of life in his hands, having almost had his eye taken away by Fortune. Hence, devising some remedy for his want, he has changed into the guise of a deacon. But the device risks profiting him nothing, unless he should obtain the assistance that comes from you, which I am persuaded lies open to all who wish to obtain it; for when you ask, I think one of the bishops among you will nod assent that this man will either have a service or even be fed alone. Know that even if he is helped in no way, he does not cease babbling; but if he should obtain some benefaction, where is it not likely that he will proclaim the favor?

For it will, I think, expend its innate loquacity on remembering the favor. To Thomas: The memory of good men knows how to gladden even without the sight of them, and all the more then, when those who have had experience of them, having filled them with complete love, are no longer present, always furnishing pleasure to the sight. For then, at a loss as to what they should become, they have desire in place of sight, memory always furnishing it. For they fashion for themselves images of those who have departed and contrive a likeness of them as if present. These things I pronounce as maxims, having fallen into such a passion, from which both having experienced it I marveled and, when he is not present, I seek him again, and I pray to Fortune to contrive something new and to gather together at some time lovers so far apart from one another. To Palladius: The letter of your wisdom, when seen, moved all with pleasure, as usual; but when it was also necessary to learn what was written, we came near to filling it even with tears. For those whose successes are shared, it is altogether necessary that they partake also of whatever grieves them. But consider, by the gods, how much Fortune plays the youth, wishing to distinguish nothing, if she hastens to strike the wicked, if she lets fly her arrows at the earnest. For if matters were measured by virtue, be well assured, you would not have had experience of unjust Fortune. But as it is, you mourn a woman, temperate, as is likely, and such as it was fitting for a wise man to live with, and—the most terrible thing—the mother of children, and of these still needing a mother. Who, hearing these things, would not weep, and who, having suffered them, could hold out unless he had obtained a fortunate disposition like yours? For I am persuaded that, obeying Isocrates, before suffering anything, you yourself trained yourself by actual experience, seeing many such things and hearing many from those who told of them.

For what of harsh things does not come into our life? What does it show gentler than the sea? One man is lifted up great, another comes to a height and finds Fortune betraying him and has fallen; one man in old age begs death as a consolation, another has been snatched away before youth. One man marries, another laments the wife who lives with him. These things fill up life, and it hastens to confirm the opinion of Homer, that nothing is more wretched than man, whom the earth nourishes; for from every side the divine power votes that nothing remain as it even has come to be, but if anything is according to the mind of men, it says, wait a little, and it will certainly be gone. So then, to suffer is to be granted by the providence of God and by a nod that altogether well guides our affairs, but to bear whatever God gives nobly is to conquer by virtue and not to give everything over to Fortune. For this is an adornment for the good, that the mind not fall together with circumstances. Therefore let there be enough of tears; for you will not raise him up again, before you suffer some other evil too. But for the children you yourself will be a mother, and God will bring the hopes placed in them to fulfillment by his nod. To Nestorius: I was delighted by your fine and very long letter, in part defending yourself about the long silence, which, even if you had often written, at any rate you kept silent to me, until I received the letters, and in part also very much reproaching me, because I was accusing you of silence in the first place. I was delighted by both these things, by the gods. For the one was the mark of a man who had not erred concerning friends, the other of one who did not even wish to seem such. I have been defeated, then, in accusing you of silence, and I would wish always to be defeated in this.

I have received your letters late and with difficulty, and indeed the first from you reached us as the second. It would be for you to consider how, if I, believing myself wronged, bring so great an accusation, what I would be if I had actually suffered. To Stephanos: You are still silent, and that though you live at Daphne, that talkative and prophetic water; but I

have long been scanning the merchant ships, always suspended in expectation of what is to come. And they put in somewhere, a second and a third, and they prove that our affairs were only hopes. I consider the cause of the silence, and I am at a loss from every side. For if I have grieved you in any way—and yet in no way grieved you—let these things be gone and let the breezes bear them away. But nevertheless I undergo a penalty greater than the charges, if I shall not hear you speaking. But if you are playing the coquette in vain, saying that you are unable to speak to beauty's advantage, we are the judges of these things, and we blame the excuse. But already, perhaps, I divine the matter, without even having drunk of your Daphne. You will say that you blush, as having transgressed the promise and disregarded the agreement and having had the book somewhere for this third or fourth year, though you promised not even to keep it a third month. These things, then, if you will say them in vexation, you will show that you did not keep it a longer time. And having accepted the silence as the token of shame, I reckon the matter to necessity, although I have given you a book whose price I have not even yet paid down, but it is unclear whether it belongs to the seller or to me who gave it. But nevertheless I have made nothing an obstacle to your use, neither the uncertainty of the possession, nor the need to learn something from it, but disregarding all these things I would have provided it to you along with many things, if you had allowed me to do this.

Nevertheless, it is no terrible thing if up to now you set a limit to the delay. But if you add still more, I shall reap this much from the affair, that I shall consider everyone untrustworthy; for what could I hope, having suffered such things at your hands? But the most wise John was not like this, who, having received one thing from me, not long after sent a second in addition. So much did he wish to seem fair-minded rather than to possess a book. And do not tell me that you kept it not wishing to deprive me; for of this I am persuaded, and I shall swear it on a great oath. But you ought not to have prolonged it by delay, since it is equivalent to depriving to give back late and with difficulty. But, by Philian Zeus, wait no longer for other letters nor for another ship than the one carrying the letter to you. To Diodorus: The bearer of the letter to you will not now for the first time make trial of your goodwill, but still recounting the first he will receive a second trial, and, as I think, perhaps even a greater one; for of that one he reaped the benefit of being about to be called our kinsman by marriage, but this one he will receive when he has actually come to action. And you who honored this man when he was about to be—who would you be, seeing him when he has become? For I think that you will straightway move the treasuries of the laws, and having sharpened your tongue against those who do wrong you will let loose springs of words. And what else than an Attic platform will you bring the spectator to remember? These things I have to say, these things the young man is here hoping. And neither shall I be caught in falsehood, nor he in hoping in vain. To Castor: The bearer of the letter demands much goodwill from you on my behalf; a family connection joins him to me, marriage confirming the kinship, and—the greatest thing—our letters.

And this speech is not boastfulness, but rather the confidence of one who trusts that my affairs, small by nature, have great power with you. It needs a just tongue and a flow of words able to extinguish slander. I know, then, that you will prove greater than my hope; for you always strive with ambition to come to the test of greater things than one might hope from you. It would remain for you either to conquer my hope by your deeds or to show that the reality is not less than it. To Hilasios: The place among you seems to bear good fruits, but to be hostile to bodies alone; for it provides a wonder to those who see it and forces the nature of the season, but what it received strong it returned a little later pale. Therefore I would not choose, having enjoyed a few fruits, to be sick and, when asked the cause, to be ashamed and silent, which you are accustomed to do, adorning the places in silence. But I wish you both to enjoy the greatest goods and to conquer the nature of the place by the strength of your body. To Nestorios: Chremylos has suddenly grown rich, says the comedy. And you now seem to be rich, though you have never yet suffered this, and have always been poorer than Irus. From there, then, your fatherland has become more desirable to you, which you formerly called the pit of the inhabited world, and you have become wholly of the matter, having bidden farewell to philosophy. The

But that gentle and mild disposition, which I barely instilled in you before, and all the hopes of your advancement—you have made them utterly void. Now, as is likely, you have become a mountaineer and such as the law of the land wishes. Such things you have enjoyed from fortune, you who long ago philosophized in the face of poverty. Hence you linger in your homeland and consider not whence you will be wiser, but whence you might see the crops in full ear. And I, longing for you, blame the Loves, if they cannot make one soul love in return those who long so greatly. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: Your letters revealed both your goodwill toward us and were not devoid of a sound mind, and each appeared pure through the addition of the other; for neither did you wish us to be thus simply because you longed for it, but unless the advantageous were also present you considered the sight superfluous, nor, having become fearful at the uncertainty of the future, did you refuse to come to you again, but the manner of the counsel was novel and befitting a rhetorical thought, neither having the boldness of what calls, and suspecting the deterrence. But I am so far from boastfulness and from longing for affairs and from envying the happiness of others, that although I have not fared according to my mind here, I nevertheless endured for so long a time. And now, since they promise me that they will do moderate things, I do not consider it a windfall to see the city of the emperor on merely light hopes, and that too when I long for quiet and consider this alone happiness, and have come wholly to the thought of Byzantium, so that I might find a provision for once being outside affairs and enjoying a more divine life. Nevertheless, not longing for affairs, I set down what seems best.

For nothing is choiceworthy unless it receives God's nod, and each thing that does not come to be shows that it does not have God's approval, just as whatever comes to be without being yoked to passion has wholly seemed good to God and has come to be. And neither can anything that does not seem good come to be, nor anything that has come to be fail to seem good, so that if any of the things promised should proceed, it must, as it seems, remain, and I cannot contradict it. But if these things are words and the necessity of things not happening is gone, it shows God's vote as commanding you to go. For otherwise, all these things would certainly have existed, on account of which I ought to remain. To Diodorus: I thought you would complete the festival of the martyrs among us and grant that we might scarcely succeed in seeing the spectacle; but you, even if you see Maiumas in a dream, as it seems, are vexed and, fearing the omen, call the day ill-omened. So long ago and from afar has hatred been instilled in you that for this reason you do not even wish to see your friends, and you prove that time knows how to increase anger rather than to disprove it. I always foretold these things, and these things have come to pass. For seeing you, because of those who grieve you, turning away even from the place, I often said, "Alas, alas, once you have got rid of us, you will not wish to see us again." But not even Achilles was so angry with the Achaeans for so long a time, but having grieved them by his absence he yielded again as he ought and changed his mind. Nevertheless I am grateful to Fortune that you do not have Thetis as a mother; for long ago you would have prayed, and we would have perished. To Irenaeus: Your goodwill toward me was produced by those around Zonaeus—first by you, and after the test, by the nature of the young men. And having obtained the first things through you, finally they produced that love in me through themselves.

For their manner is adorned by zeal, and nature knows not how to refute zeal, so that if you had not happened to foretell it, I might perhaps have divined that they are joined to you by kinship, guessing from the stamp of nature. But well done for your family, if it knows how to give birth to such things. Know then that my judgment is strong on behalf of the young men; but whether I also have the power that serves my eagerness, let it lie on the knees of the gods. To Eusebius and Elias: I, who both take pleasure in seeing you present and always remember you when absent, did not think it right that the occasion should pass by in silence; for it is always sweet to write to you, and to send the common child on his way without a letter neither would you have praised, and I would have been ashamed to do. So long as he was with me, I seemed, for his sake, to have become a father even by nature; but now, as he goes from us, I can only pray, hearing from others as they tell it, that the god has nodded assent and it has already come to be, such as you wished the young man to be. But may someone become a father of words for him—not more well-disposed, but perhaps better. To Phaedrus: Truly, then, words were images of the soul, and they showed those who were absent as they were in their mind, no less than a painter shows whatever he wishes to imitate. For having encountered your letters, I seemed to have that very man whom I did not know by experience, so that if someone had removed the heading and handed over the letter, I would have thought the writing was a fond father's to his child. Such, it seems, virtue shows its nurslings to be. For that you, neither having seen me nor having had experience of me, both begin the conversation and make the present good things common with me—of what praise would this not justly obtain?

But nevertheless I have chosen, even if anything should happen, not to overlook my own Ithaca, but I even envy the Homeric Odysseus for this reason, that having passed everything by he longed for the small island and for the things of which one would not make mention for the best of reasons. To Hieronymus: Again Egypt and luxury, and we are poor in your eyes, and there is no word for those who are absent. This is nothing; only laugh when you see the Nile flowing with gold. And even if you raise your brow still more, we shall endure it altogether, being overlooked. For the day will come when you will again see Elousa, and you will weep as the sand is shifted by the winds and strips the vine bare to its roots. There are also certain dry nymphs and sea-nymphs, and Zeus the rain-god is nowhere. Then I shall laugh and make comedy of fortune, and you will consider happy this man who is now cast away—me. However, as long as the Nile gives you leave to live in luxury, only write and call us small and some of us coming along the ground. For thus, as you write, we shall enjoy it and shall console your arrogance with the hope of the future. To Zacharias and Philip: The good John will demand your goodwill both from his family and from his association with me; for he is the son of Leontius, if you know Dionysius, the husband of our grandmother. His father is by nature the brother of this man, so that I may remind you, though you know the man. But if these things were not also present, you would altogether have considered him a kinsman, our companion, and one who has filled up the chorus with me. Therefore do not delay to do good to the young man, who has from every side the goodwill that is owed him.

For I pass over saying that by his manner he wins over those who see him, knowing how to blush before he says anything and to speak with moderation, measuring his words by the occasion and having acquired understanding beyond his years. But that abominable Theodore, having brandished the voyage at us, has again slipped away, perhaps having recognized his own case, if indeed he had foretold anything truly and would bring his word to fulfillment. To Zacharias and Philip: the man who delivers this letter to you is one of those who have studied under me—not for a long time, but nevertheless he considers it sufficient for receiving beneficence from you and for being inscribed with my bare name. But whether he has judged rightly, he awaits experience as his teacher. Therefore it is a contest for you that he not be disappointed in his opinion, and that I not be put to shame, being considered to have so much influence with you. To Zacharias and Philip: Again a letter to you, and again another crowd; for I seem somehow not to know the measure of asking, but always to anticipate by concealing what has gone before with second requests—and for you to laugh with one another and say that it would have been better for me to keep silent than to pelt you with frequent writings. But nevertheless, even if I provide you with amusement and laughter, I will not endure to keep silent, as you would say, having always received from fortune the lot of speaking by craft, and especially since the present matter looks to our need. For the leading men among us by common decree deem it worthy of the greatest office to nod assent to an easy matter—to furnish me with a ship free of toll, able to provide me with provisions. But they also ask that the old assessments be confirmed for those who have received them and that the bare name be transferred.

These things await your zeal; by bringing them to completion you will gratify both me and those who have asked you through me. But if you overlook these things, I suffer a double misfortune: both failing of my hope and failing through you—the one produces shame, the other loss. But we shall succeed entirely, with God nodding from on high, with you ministering to the need, and with the greatest magistracy voting in favor.

To Zacharias and Philip: So greatly did the speed of your zeal strike us with amazement that we count the days since we sent the decrees, and we find you all but conquering time itself. So great is the good of falling in with the zeal of good brothers, who consider as gain whatever they procure for one another's cheerfulness. And that you not only met the need of what was asked but provided more than the one asking wished—how great a goodwill does this not reveal? So neither do you cease doing such things, nor do I think greatly of myself for them.

To Hieronymus: You, my excellent friend, since you departed from us, ought to have begun the correspondence and to have informed those who long to know whether Poseidon has been kind to you and spread the sea beneath your ship, whether the affairs at Alexandria have turned out favorably, whether you sailed up the great Nile successfully, whether the conditions of your stay are flourishing, and whether henceforth your money is in the tens of thousands, and you have a house filled with Egyptian gifts. These things you ought to have written and to have fulfilled your promises, in which there were many letters and no forgetting of friends. But you disregard even one who writes to you, unwilling to requite him with letters.

Therefore I have already sent a second letter, and if you remain silent still, perhaps we shall add a third, until some shame at what is being done comes over you, and we are fortunate enough to hear your voice. To Agapetus: So then you were a formidable fellow at snatching away an expected accusation and bringing these things up against others, things which one might justly have used against you. For a long time you had Alexander's letter, and having abandoned it you kept silent, and for your part you went unnoticed even while present. But well done, Fame, who allows nothing of the best men to go unnoticed. She has reported that you are present, and I had reason to wonder why on earth you too are silent. If silence seems to you a solemn thing and worthy of Pythagoras—but I was speaking of a rhetorician, not of Pythagoras—if, on the other hand, you were vexed at Elousa as hateful to the gods and a pit of destruction, you ought to have asked your friends for consolation. Hence none of these things, but they said rather that you had been greatly puffed up and that you think your former dearest friends are nonsense, and that too while living in Elousa and, so to speak, being tutored by a brother who does not laugh. Reflecting on these things by myself, I would not have expected suddenly to see you as an accuser. Hence I smiled at the letter, and I marveled at rhetoric providing such great license, through which I, who once was the accuser in argument, sought a defense. These are the solemnities of the sophistic art, and it did not even spare those of the same craft, sending owls to Athens, as the saying goes. But my children—for so you used to call my speeches—blush to come to you, since you know how to expose even hidden ugliness. To Dorotheus: When I was already about to write the previous letter, you yourself got ahead of me and added a second; so eager are you to win even in letters.

But you will say, "What is the time, and what is the delay of not writing?" It is not possible for a man to do all that he wishes, but he must needs follow and be a slave to necessity, and obey the occasion. And the occasion gives not as many things as one wishes, but as many as necessity measures out for the need. Therefore up to now, though unwillingly, yet in silence I was grieved, although I had reason to marvel at the zeal you showed when you were with us, at the goodwill toward me that still remains since you sailed away again, at the envy that was stirred up against you and the long-standing plot of fortune, and how, becoming prudent, you sailed away from your words and bade farewell to the babbling about these things, choosing rather to be inferior in all things, so that you might gain the Muses. But may you soon enjoy your love of the Muses, and may you receive as much as you wish, and may you become, in the case of the slander that came before—if it was true, more prudent; if it was false, more fortunate—so that the life hereafter may no longer receive even a false slander, but you may appear again as that former man. For thus, when the extremes are united, the middle is destroyed, struck by each part. To Stephanus. Are you still silent? Are we still among the neglected? And yet long ago you used to hold us with frequent letters, and it was a most pleasant thing to hear you speaking often. But now suddenly you are silent and of the

We have been deprived of pleasure. Such is the enjoyment I have had from good books. For in seeking those, I seem to have lost besides the man dearest to me of all. But do you, above all, send me the book too, and leave nothing of your former goodwill. If not, at least let us remain friends. For in that way I shall seem to have suffered nothing. And tell me also how your school is doing, and whether a crowd of students surrounds your lecture hall, and—what is most important—whether you revel in wealth, and some Pactolus has flooded your house. May these things be yours, and we shall have the book, and for you the coin will henceforth be counted by the thousand.

To Sabinus

If for lovers one day suffices for old age, you would not be quick to count how very old we have grown. For formerly we were happy, seeing you and clinging to your company; and everything was good for us—a sight most sweet, words that charmed the ear, a mind that supplied goodwill. And whatever beautiful thing one longed for, it was enough to look at you alone. But now suddenly we are bereft of all, whence I am at a loss and shall speak of myths and pray to become that Perseus; for perhaps it might be possible for me, flying a little, to console my love. But why did my heart converse of these things with me? For behold, longing has molded me with wings too, and I have become a Perseus and a myth, and whatever a longing mind readily wishes to mold. Already I was glad even to see you in a dream, and rising at once I consoled myself with the vision. Do well by the one who carries the letter to me, and you will both gratify me and confirm the opinion he happened to hold—that if you receive letters from us, you will do nothing except with ease.

To Hieronymus: We impostors and great sophists, sick with contempt in our modest garb, have enjoyed the accusation you made against us. And I could not say how much you have heaped up against us, as though long seeking an occasion to rouse your tongue against us. Hence, without even taking a just pretext, you bring into the open what you had long been concealing unnoticed. For tell me, what is so terrible if Procopius, writing to you, inscribed "Procopius to Hieronymus, greetings"? For as the ancient law stands, I surely have you agreeing with me. But there is no need, you say, to depart from the custom now prevailing. Then you would also accuse anyone who wished to bring the present luxury back to ancient dignity, or who would bring music, now fallen into mobs of tunes and vulgar chatter, back again to the muse of Terpander. But how, by Philian Zeus, do you yourself seem to us to be dignified if you utter some Attic word, and may you find those who praise you as the ancient custom has it, when you could instead gorge on words from the crossroads and carry them onto the platform? Or why, pray, sitting before the young men, do you think you bring something great to the praise of the great Aristeides, if you say that he is as he himself was? Or that Polemon did not purify the ancient rhetoric of Asianic monstrosity? But if fortune had allowed you to be born then, you seem to me likely to have brought an indictment against him too, on the ground that, disregarding customary usage, he wishes to be an impostor, being led back to the ancient muse. Would that a Laconian table now again prevailed, and that our life were as of old for the Persians—barley cake and water and cress.

But even now one could see these things prevailing in Elusa through your influence, not because of any excess of endurance, but because the land barely supplies so much to its inhabitants. Yet you yourself, having learned Egyptian luxury, have stripped off the ways of your fathers—you who legislate that customary practices must be preserved, even when it is outside what is fitting. And your calling me a braggart, when I placed you after my own name in the address, seems to be the act of one who does not quite know that the first in order does not by all means hold the first place in honor as well, nor that he knows the sayings of Demosthenes, which the boys are accustomed to study, namely that acting is later than speaking in order but prior in power and stronger. But if you altogether accuse such things as arrogance, it is time to wrap in this same disease, along with me, those ancients who used the law of such inscription—passing over the others, I mean Socrates and Plato, who raised philosophy on high. But put down your charges about arrogance from where you stand, and do not stir against yourself the proverb's

A sword. Or was this not long ago your own established custom, that as soon as you disembarked from the merchant ship, the Egyptian boys would escort you with some barbarian shout, and there was a festival no less than when of old some kindly bounty gave them Apis, and that, lifted high in your mind by these things, you called me, who dwell in a small city, worthless, and your fatherland and wife and the little child himself were cast away in your eyes? And somewhere you thought me a fool for philosophizing, because no great applause attended me, since I was of an obscure voice, O Zeus, and a barbarian tongue; and, the greatest thing of all, you called yourself blessed if they showed you your house full of grain and meat. Do you see how greatly you were elated by small things, you who are now written down as boastful? And I say these things by the gods, not wishing to avenge myself on your words—for I do not judge this to be in accordance with my philosophy—but if I somehow could, wishing to show you your tongue more moderate. But take care lest, struck dumb by the power of my words, you keep far away from writing such things to us. For by your Nile and the Graces present with you, I made your letter a rational theater, and in the middle of Gaza it was spoken of to all. And I was ashamed to be called boastful by your writings, and the theater laughed at me; but you seemed blessed in your words. Orion, ever carrying you in my memory, I almost seem to have you present, and I contrive that the absent one be present. And as I remember everything, it comes in with pleasure: the steadiness of your character, your zeal for letters, the moderation of your mind, and, the greatest thing of all, the self-control of youth that checks irrational impulses.

And sometimes I reason with myself: when he has shown himself such a man while all of us were watching, what would he become when he is by himself? For he will surpass, I think, his former self, contending against himself, so that he may show to us who are absent that he honored virtue for its own sake, and not out of shame before us who were watching. And if he has a city given to luxury, and many examples of licentiousness, this will make him oppose pleasures with greater zeal. For what athlete, priding himself on victory, having come to Olympia, will regard the greatness of the contest as an occasion for ease, and will not rather intensify his training at once and confirm his previous victories by a greater one? Do you too, then, closing your senses, becoming unbending toward every sound and sight, show that the abundance of evils does not know how to conquer temperance, but that where there is longing for the nobler things, even if you mention the Sirens, even if you mention Circe who transforms all things, Odysseus will conquer again, now displaying the moly—reason, I think, this which Hermes gave him—and now binding himself about with virtue, and, I think, sailing past the pleasures that cry out loudly. To Apollonius. The most reverent Martyrius, rich in virtue but poor in fortune, needs your favorable inclination, having, as he says, the greatest experience from what has gone before, and he easily persuaded me, knowing that you extend a hand to all who need to be set upright and who call for assistance; for having among us as much as neither instills strength nor allows him to die, he looks to you, considering such a thing to be a release from evils. But hold fast eagerly, giving a kindly eye both for your own sake and for mine and for the sake of the man who has been placed in need.

For he was saying confidently that if you received a letter from me, there is nothing you would not do readily. And when I smiled and asked him how he knew, he was ready even to pledge the future. So fulfill his hopes, lest when need calls again he pledge the future on the ground that I accomplished nothing with you. To Diodorus: I have received your letter again, clear in its words and very beautiful, but unclear in its letters and covering the charm of the words. For you seem to me, fearing lest you ever come to forget your nature by forcing it toward clarity, to be consoling the familiarity of your phrases by the shape of the letters, so that you might again have your mark of recognition from your customary obscurity. Thus the matter appears to you an advantage, and you seem to me to fear falling out of your appellation. Take courage, then, that I would never change my opinion, thinking otherwise about you, nor would I willingly deprive you of your wondrous good repute. Only do not compel me to go to Pytho and, showing the letters, to say, "Tell me, prophetic Pythian, what was the writer wanting to say?" But let this have been said by me to you in jest, imitating your own grace. To Nephalius: Your letter already summons me to the festival, and it says that you are setting your house before us, and it makes what is present common, and it promises us the good of reason. But I greatly admire your goodwill, and I seem to myself already to have had the festival fulfilled, having obtained your letter. But as for the journey from here, many obstacles have arisen for me. But do you both fare well and conquer your troubles and remember not only those present.

And if you also restore the despondent by your letters, this to me is more august than the good fortune of Polycrates. For many worthy men shook our ears, saying that something terrible had been done—saying that you had been caught in the act, that you had become invisible. Fabricating these tales, they produced as witnesses those whom they strenuously claimed had come from there, and one told it to another, and the rumor spread through all. But when I received the letter from you, so far removed from the unjust rumor that it even invited friends to a festival, I immediately became overjoyed, and having the refutation of the falsehood, I proclaimed it everywhere, so that those who had been bold before now barely blushed and bowed their heads to the ground and, I think, cried out against fortune that they had not remained concealed for a longer time. The excellent Macarius, enjoying my goodwill for the sake of his zeal and his character, brought and delivered to me your letter, and I, recognizing the shapes at the very sight and having greeted the superscription, immediately without any delay entered into what was written, and the swan at once sang in my ears, and as if giving its wing to the Zephyr it was wholly devoted to its songs and was more musical; and your nightingale I now truly knew, that it was not an Attic myth, but the maiden was from Athens, and had become a bird, and preserves the Attic quality in her melodies; such is the form of the letter that the words create for her. And I, delighted by these things, breathed deeply and was led up into the memory of ancient happiness—how we were together by the Nile, how fortune allowed me to enjoy you without fear, how I grieved when deprived of you, how I rejoice now at having received you. For I think I now have you through the letter.

And I acknowledged gratitude to the one who gave this to me, and I said, "O child, you are blessed in your lineage," and I reproached him that one so closely related to you had gone unnoticed. What then shall I become? From where could I be able to provide him with all that I wish? But if you measure the favor by the eagerness, there is nothing that he will not receive from us. And having heard that you also bear the yoke of marriage, I would pray to see your children too proclaiming their father to those who see them. To Makarios: The symbol of your goodwill toward us is sweet, and the gift imitates the intention, being intertwined with honey. For having become a lover of words and having been filled with them, you knew what a great thing friendship is, advancing with time and not receiving forgetfulness through separation. Therefore, praising you before, I now marvel even more, because even when not present you have stood by like one present. But fare well for me, and be filled with the laws, and may you come soon, so that I may say something poetic too: "a great joy to your father and to the city and to all the people." To Diodoros: What has happened to you, you great one in tongue, who breathe great things against those who are silent? You have been caught in the very things you accused, and you were unaware that you were accusing yourself, and you have been caught, netted in your own nets. For what you reproached, you have done, and you have the proof from home, and you have been caught in your own feathers, suffering the proverb. So if anything proper were happening, I would certainly have set your own letter against you; for perhaps you would have known that in reproaching you would not have erred, but now in your failings you have accused nothing.

And the greatest thing is that, having acted generously, you have sent me beautiful shoes, exceedingly fine and better fitted to the foot, as comedy thinks, and these too bereft of a letter, saying neither "farewell" nor "rejoice." And yet, as is likely, you were more puffed up over these things than that famous Croesus when he gave his wondrous bricks to the Pythian. This makes clear that you, having long ago received these from the craftsman, intend always to aim at the right moment, so that when the festival comes I may take them and go forth shouting my generosity to those who see. Therefore, having learned of your suffering, I went forth striding with long steps like Homer's Ajax, and I beat the earth, turning the spectator's attention to my feet, and if anyone seeing did not wish to, I considered him insolent and finally forced him to look, and when no one asked where I got what I had received, I proclaimed, "Diodorus gave it." And through all this there was laughter at my vulgarity, but report of your goodwill. Such is what I enjoyed from your beautiful shoes, having all but walked on my head, so that the gift might be displayed in a fine place. To Epiphanius: I think you are greatly amazed at what has happened to me now that I am beginning a letter. If you wish to learn the cause of this, Strategius campaigns in words against you, and advances far with abuse, and stretches out a long accusation, and has made my house a courtroom for me.

And the greatest thing is that, just like the cleverest of the orators, he is not satisfied with the present accusations alone, but mixes old with new, and stirs up ancient myths, and brings against you as a witness the whole city of Alexander, recounting horse races and the zeal for dice and vulgar dialogues about horses and whatever else may ever occur to this man to say. But even now he says that you are devoted to horses and always sit beside those able to feed them, and that you have taken up the craft of flatterers, gratifying your belly. I could not say in one breath how many things he pours into my ears again and again. And the cause—"I am," he says, "the naked part of this man." One single cloak was left to me for burial, and because of this man it has been used up. For he says that, having taken woven linen, as though to prove it a cloak by the hands of his own maidservants, he looked past me as more naked than Irus. "Long is the time," he says, "and I am stretched out in my hopes." If, then, you care to make that man's tongue gentler and to free my ears, send a cloak with all speed. But if not... but I cannot bear to say all that he would say, who, having nothing to accuse, has made his life a babble. And if he should also take up something just, you would say that anger dwells in his tongue. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers. The change of the air, bringing on silence as a necessity, now exposes the silence that comes from choice. Therefore compete with your letters, writing as much as we wish. And we wish that no one come to us without bringing a letter.

For whoever comes and says these common things—"I was busy," "I was about to write," "I suddenly sailed away"—departs judged by me as negligent concerning friendship. But if I blame those who do not bring such things, how much do you think I blame you who do not give them? To Zacharias my brother, you have filled me with such ambition by elevating my little letter and making it, as you yourself would say, Laconian. Behold, I see myself as solemn and have become a Spartan outright, and everything to me is Lycurgus, and Solon is nothing. I nearly even let out a Doric utterance, having come to forget that Attic one. And it grieves me that my homeland is partly walled, because it is not an image of unwalled Sparta. Such things can a good orator do, drawing one to whatever emotion he wishes. But if you praise me again as an Attic writer, see that I do not again deny Sparta, so drawn am I by longing for your letters. But take care lest, wishing to jest, you praise Egypt, and in word I become an Egyptian. So spare me, by Zeus; for I cannot help but wonder at as many things as you do. To Gessius the physician-sophist: I was pleased that you wrote to me yourselves recommending in turn the excellent Dorotheus, whom I previously commended to you by letter. For what greater proof could there be that my letters proceeded according to my hopes? And when he came to us, he wished to say nothing but your name, both wishing to gratify me and rejoicing in the memory of you, and he kept you much on his tongue as kindly disposed, as good, as with a tongue

And with the hand of Asclepius wrapped around him, and that indeed the severity of medicine was soothed by the graces of your tongue. While he was saying these things, I was anticipating the praises before hearing them, recounting your own qualities, and I was saying to him with a smile, "You are bringing an owl to Athens"; but he was more contentious, and thinking he was introducing something new, he found it long established with me, and thereafter he kept silent with pleasure, saying that he gave thanks to the gods if he had been fortunate in such a teacher, about whom one can say everything and report nothing new. But present yourself whole to the young man, who, even if nothing else, at least knows how to remember those who do good. Stephanos, I was pleased to receive your letter; the man whom I always took pleasure in remembering, I now beheld through his writings, if indeed words are truly images of the soul. And if you allow me to say it, I seemed to have become greater than myself, considering how you count me among the chorus of friends and there is speech of me with you, and you command letters that summon similar things. And through those things by which you seemed to admire me, you were offering yourself to be seen in your writings, narrating your own qualities through me as a medium. So that I said with a smile to myself: "How true these words are, by the gods, if they were spoken about the writer." But now, in speaking, you were unwittingly not such as I am, but such as I ought to be to obtain such praises. May many good things be yours, both for your zeal and for the gentleness of your character and for your remembrance of goodwill, and the greatest thing of all, that even when absent you have stood by as such a one. To Antiochos: How greatly I have been disappointed in my hope for you.

For I thought that you had at last scarcely been freed from the material of medicine and were coming to us, either to pursue philosophy according to your former promises, or merely to see us. But you stretch us out in longing for Alexander and cling, as it were, to the land of the Lotus-Eaters. Yet for my part, let the city of the Macedonian win by many graces, and let it fare well with the Nile and the sea. And if the Muses also dwell in it, you have me too to praise it. But what have these things to do with the quiet we have here and with your philosophy, which we have often hoped for? Therefore, shaking off everything else as so much nonsense, imitate Odysseus looking toward the true Ithaca, and let nothing hinder you—neither lotus nor Circe nor Calypso—but by as much as you are hastening after greater contests, by so much let us surpass the son of Laertes. To Stephanus: When I saw your brother, I thought I had you yourselves, and by the kinship of the sight I was led up to you. So amorous am I in every way, and if I see anything akin to my beloved, I consider this sufficient to console my passion. I also received my book, which ought to have been brought long ago; but having received it now, I was no better disposed than if at the beginning. While I needed it, I let loose every voice and perhaps seemed troublesome. But when I had at last recovered it—that I received it, I remember; that it was at last, no longer. So if you have supposed that I am grieved or have suffered something terrible, may the breezes carry that too away. To Stephanus: Nothing, it seems, do you see except gold, and it leads you and makes you buoyant, and has filled your mind with golden images.

For when I had written to you about leisure, that the present circumstances do not grant us everything, but only as much as necessity measures out for our need, and when I said "need" I did not mean a shortage of money, but that to which we are led by fortune, you rushed wholly toward the gold and seemed to share my distress as though I were in want, and you sought to console me, setting philosophy against money, as if I were actually groaning because I do not luxuriate in the talents of Croesus. So loudly does it ring in your ears, and you seem to hear everyone saying "gold." For why, by Zeus, did this folly lead you away? Or how could I defend myself for not writing letters by putting forward a shortage of money, as though one who writes letters ought to be flooded with abundant gold? And yet, if anything else, writing itself is autonomous and free from the dominion that comes from wealth. Thus the workings of your mind are exposed by your passion; for having inclined in that direction, it transforms everything to this end, and it has its hearing deceived along with it. And I fear that if I mention a lyre or name a horse, you will again think you are hearing "gold," and

While you console others, you will yourself need someone to care for you. I was led to jest with you about these things and to put into my letter the laughter that I experienced when I read your letter. But do you, yielding a little to the feeling, write from now on a sensible letter. To Sosianus and Julius: What happened to me when I received your letter, it is not worse to relate to you. For the other day a certain man who wished to be wise in heavenly matters and who had the skill, as he said, of foretelling the future from the stars, suddenly encountered me and, placing the pebble on his fingers, said, "You were fortunate without knowing it; something great and splendid, as never before, will come to you beyond expectation." When I heard this, I imagined Wealth himself, I filled my mind with offices, and I held my thought more haughty than the fortune I hoped for. So when, being in this state, someone came forward and handed me your letter, "This is that," I said; "the word has come to fulfillment; for having learned to announce good things, they hasten before all others to report them to me. For what could they have suffered that they should now write to me so beyond expectation?" But when I met with what was inside and read a cast-off pen and a most dishonorable trade, "Alas, alas," I said to myself, "I have prospered beyond expectation. As the saying goes, 'from horses to donkeys' we have changed. All things, alas, fortune knows how to make new, but I never would have hoped to become a seller of pens, sitting under a hut. These are the gifts, as it seems, that Zeus bestows on me at his rising." And laughter ran through those who heard at my expense, and "Receive the man," they said, "and the bird of the god.

To Nephalius: You have filled us with no ordinary anxieties, since you were neither present according to your former promises, nor did you make the reason clear by letter, so that we are now carried even into unreasonable thoughts, wondering whether something of what you pray against has happened to you. And now a certain rumor has disturbed us too, saying what it does indeed say. May it be only a rumor and carry nothing more. If, then, you care at all to bring us to good cheer, at least give us the consolation that comes from your letters. To Silanus... instead of chastity there was licentiousness, instead of the bridal chamber there were lamentations, instead of lawful persuasion there was force and a sword lifted up. If, then, the one who dared these things had been someone of wealth or of power... it would have been terrible even then—for how is it not terrible, by Zeus, when we who rule are taken captive in a state and under laws? Yet there would still have been some consolation in the matter. But now this is the crowning point of the calamities: the one who dared these things is not even easily known as to where he is from, yet he has made the suffering very well known to us. But stop, O most wise one, the lamentation of those who have suffered; give back the daughter to her mother's bosom, so that those who are drunken with insolence may know that there is Justice and that she pursues those who do wrong. Show those who honor chastity that there is benefit in laws, when men in office know how to take command against wickedness.

To Diodorus: You mock our silence, but I cannot bear your boastfulness, through which perhaps you think you are someone august if you appear to us after a very long time, and perhaps you often throw a word into our minds: when will the fine fellow come to us, pleasant to behold, the one who hides the Sirens by his pleasures, the one who overlooks his fatherland in order to save Caesar's? You think we fabricate such tales, always stretching out by your delay, and you surely philosophize to yourself that rarity always intensifies the longing of those who seek. Hence you overlook us. And this is not the terrible thing, although it is such, but you also hold our ancestral festivals in no account. But often having cast hopes that you will come, then again you slipped away and we have been deceived. So it has been decided that we send an embassy and summon the benefactor. For thus you rejoice to be called. But appear at last, O excellent one, to celebrate the festival with us. But if you are waiting for the embassy, it is time for you to remain there. For there is no one to summon you. To Diodorus: The most reverent Timothy his habit calls to quiet, but the sorrows of fortune, bringing necessity, also command him to go to you. For he has a father who has fallen into poverty through a change of fortune, and brothers who grieve in number and time; for being many and short in age, they look to their father's hands. Hence there are many uses, but besides

All men are humane in one respect, but this man joins forces with fortune. For the house which the deity scarcely left them, subject as it is to so many creditors, he alone deems himself worthy to take, since it exceeds his debt—when he ought either to bring the buyer and receive what is due from the whole price, or to accept a portion of it that will fill up the measure of the debt. But he regards the present inability of the buyers as a windfall and is more bitter than fortune. But give your tongue to the man who needs it for alliance, furnishing him with a humane judge. And let the man who grieves him try just compulsion and a gentler disposition of his own, or else wait for the buyer or receive a portion of the house as much as the debt demands, so that we may admire both you for your alliance and the judge for his vote. To Nonnus: You denied your beloved to us, longing for greater things and hastening toward the priesthood; but I, who always admired your beautiful hair, now fear lest it become a hindrance to your zeal. For when you see the opportune moment present and your celebrated locks about to fall, you will weep, I think, at the misfortune and flee away, and you will seek to be seen as a handsome bridegroom instead of a priest. And again, if it so happens, you will court a girl, and when the marriage is at hand you will shift your love back to the priesthood. But cease at some point from being carried in a circle, having experience as your teacher, so that I may not again hear of † secret plots and your eunuchs and all that has now taught us.

To Hieronymus and Theodore. I knew long ago that your wisdom shone forth everywhere in speech, and what sight did not provide, fame at least bestows, proclaiming with a common herald's cry that your grandfather was inscribed by the teaching of the laws, and your father, by the grace of his tongue, drew the ear toward the austerity of the laws, and from these you carry all that those who came before you received and distributed in part. The man whom I first knew by his speech, now learning of by experience, I said, "Blessed is the city in which there is a lineage so august, and a son receives the office from his father; and blessed are the children of blessed fathers, as many as have placed the hopes of their life in you." But would that I were somehow able to be with you and to be filled with your instruction. But a great thing for men unto longing is their fatherland, and Odysseus is a witness, who passed by Calypso in order to behold Ithaca; and it seems to me that it is not lawful for me to appropriate a place belonging to another beside the word of the just man. Therefore may you be preserved, receiving from me the customary salutations.

To Hermeias. Having seen your greatness through the letters written to me, I rightly marveled at your judgment, and I rejoice with the city of the Berytians if it has such a man set before it, one who takes thought for virtue and letters, and this while the times drive in the opposite direction. But may you profit both yourself and your city by your forethought. For me, it is burdensome to look down upon my fatherland, having received from you an example. For if you contrive to adorn in every way the land that bore you, thinking it right, how could it be well for me not to do these things for which I praised you when you did them?

But also, in trying to install myself in a place where another has succeeded, I seem to be a stranger to a rational disposition. But may you fare well, best of men, in your goodwill toward me and the city itself. To Orion. I think it superfluous to write to a man who for the rest dreams of the journey down to us, so that you may sing the wedding hymn and become the bridegroom of a beautiful maiden; for it is right to gratify a lover with the praise of his beloved, for whose sake, absent in body, you leap with erotic desire in your heart and have flown eagerly toward us, and the present circumstances are small tokens to you of true happiness among men, and the city alone seems to you to be the place of your pastimes and perhaps more august than Byzantium. And I fear that, since your longing flows abundantly, you may not even bid farewell to your friends but suddenly set out toward us, complaining of the length of the voyage. But let these things be said in play; may you one day return with sober reasoning, hastening to the begetting of children. To Anatolius. Many and splendid are the things that commend the young man. First and greatest are the letters of your piety, then a good father, from

Drawn by my first experience toward goodwill. And besides these things, the law of the craft threatens exact accountings if I overlook any of the things that are fitting; and perhaps the zeal of the young man will also furnish me no small share. It remains for us to ask for the divine inclination, with which alone it is possible for the purpose to reach its end. To Dorotheus: A dread thing, then, you were, to wrap wings around whomever you wish and show him aloft. For, winged by your letters, I seemed to be everywhere, as you said, by report, and I went about as many cities as men inhabit, and I went on even to the barbarians, carried by a light mind, and every nation seemed to crown me for my words, and, to speak simply, because of your letter I did not know what I was even becoming, until one of the gods snatched me away from your wings. And having scarcely ceased from my wandering, "Why do I suffer these things?" I say; consider the one who wrote, and reckon the goodwill, and you will marvel at how many things the longing of friendship knows how to persuade. For it makes one consider even things that are not, and honor false things as truth. From this, I think, you are insatiably disposed toward praises, and speaking everything readily, you think even these things less than what exists. But the measure of praises for you is your judgment, which thinks nothing is sufficient for praise. But stop, by Zeus of Friendship, writing such things to a man who is small in his own eyes and ashamed of his writings. To Diodorus (?): Again there is a season for piety, and again the race is toward your wisdom.

For a certain man among those who have dedicated themselves to God and are known for their philosophy has, as it seems, through unjust slander fallen into the anger of the judge, as though he had raised his hand as an enemy against those who serve the laws. But those who reported these things, as they say, transferred to this man the wrongdoings of others. And the judge is full of anger, and he summons him to himself and hastens toward punishment, and there is a time present, if ever there was one, and now, to seek humanity. Appear then and utter something of your own, and you will release the judge from his anger. For if some terrible thing has been done—which has not even happened—turn the one casting his vote toward forgiveness, honoring, if nothing else, the garb that surrounds him. Appear with many who are suitable for petition, but rather even before the others, so that you may seem to contribute something of your own. But in any case you yourself will receive the praise of all, as both first and having asked exceedingly and having become a model of noble humanity for the others. To Pancratius. For Aeschylus says, wishing to praise someone, that he wishes not to seem the best but to be. Such you have appeared to us, not displaying that common friendship merely up to the point of being present, nor measuring your goodwill by place, but hastening to be better and to conquer yourself. Reasonably, then, forgetfulness does not know how to steal you from my mind, but something Socratic always comes to me to say, that if I do not know Pancratius, I have forgotten myself, whose tongue dances with the Muses, and virtue, like a precinct inaccessible to vice, has made its home in his sacred soul.

Therefore you yourself are blessed, bearing such marks, and you dwell in the city that is the common mother of letters, which the Seasons, longing for it, pledged to one another, which the sea gently washes, and the Nile embraces as though pouring itself over a beloved, and from every side groves and trees and grain fields, and varied graces strike the eyes. But God will increase your blessedness and, having granted the reward of virtue, will do so. "Share your good fortune with your friends," gladdening us with the good things that come from your tongue, and sending us your poems from home to home. For it is not right that things which, when shown to others, will bring the greatest benefit should remain hidden. To Pankratios: Those who once sailed past the Sirens and drew their songs into their ears no longer longed for their fatherlands, nor remembered their children, but it seemed noble to them to suffer anything rather than depart from these, whose pleasure they had experienced. But we, having tasted your Muse, as the saying goes, with the tip of a finger, have been so frenzied with longing for it that we choose to be not even a little apart from it, even if necessity separates us in body. And as you set sail in your mind, we sail along with you and

We now dwell in the city of Alexander, fashioning in imagination the state of being with you. Such a disposition do the Loves engender in me. And if, recovering a little, I become myself again, I revel in your narratives. And all men, each in turn, remember your qualities—one the gentleness of your speech, another the dignity of your character. Others have called you sweet; one speaks of the moderation of your mind; another says that you carry the Muses on your tongue; and everyone strives to be the first, alone, to recount your praises. But do you write, tending your absence with letters, and deem worthy to see with pleasure the bearer of the letter. To Nephalius: As much as you long ago inflamed our spirit with your letters, so much now by your kindness you have surpassed our hopes. For to correct what has gone before and to console one who is persuaded that he has been wronged in friendship—how is this not the mark of a wise man who knows how to heal what grieves? One thing alone among your actions distressed me: that you think I have been so affected as even to need gifts that change one's mind, as perhaps Agamemnon did the Thessalian soldier. Nevertheless I have received the gifts eagerly, not so much desiring these as the intention of the one who sent them. And let the bearer of the letter, needing your goodwill, obtain it in matters where his asking does not cause distress.

To Gessius the physician-sophist. The bearer of the letter, raised by a widowed mother and blaming the lack of necessities, nevertheless was not elated by youth nor, having come into the power of doing whatever he wished, did he incline to laziness, but wishing to correct his fortune he loves letters and hastens to your tongue, drawing from it a sufficient starting point for a respectable life, so that it is enough for him to see you and to have the release of his troubles, correcting his hopes for the future by your teaching. Therefore, knowing your judgment and how you are disposed toward those who need to be well treated, I bring the young man to you with confidence, providing you as material for a great gift—the ability to cultivate again. To Philip his brother. You barely changed us in our perplexity, writing that you wish to sing the wedding song and to become the father of children. For a great rumor, rushing about, brought different accounts from different sources, and while all were telling them we listened in silence, ignorant of our own greatest matters and seeming to those who inquired to be joking, as though pretending deliberately not to know. But now, pleased by what was written, I would gladly have become straightway Perseus winged, and having flown over the sea and arrived at your house, I would have seen the sacred bridal chamber and the sweetest sight of all, a bridegroom erotic from philosophy—even if someone calls him material—answering philosophically that one ought to adorn the birth, providing a contribution in place of himself and duly rendering what is fitting for it.

You have been caught at last, my excellent friend, though late, learning the arrows of the Loves; and the bride, they say—by the Graces—is fair and able to divert the lover from philosophy. “Only become the father of legitimate children by the plough,” as the comedy says, and may I sooner see from you a child proclaiming his father through the spectacle, or rather one like him in gentleness and magnanimity and the other virtues. To Hieronymus. How greatly you pride yourself on the Nile, and you bring Egypt out against us into the middle, as though you had forgotten our dearest Elousa. Your letters too seemed sophistic, and I thought I saw the bombast of Gorgias. For you said that the Nile rains from the earth, unless some of your words escaped me, and makes navigable what was formerly passable on foot. But what is this to you who dwell by the Hermus, which neither Zeus the rain-giver looks upon nor the Nile in passing hastens to another? And why do you say that autumn fruit is falsely gathered? Unless you call snakes autumn fruit, and scorpions—as great a multitude as there is. Stung by one of them, as it seems, long ago, and having cried out “iou iou,” as they say, then in the midst seeing a luxurious table, you rushed upon it wholly, bidding farewell to the scorpion, perhaps saying to him that comic line: “May I never be apart from you even in death.” These things ought you to write, not [boasting] in others' goods

To be adorned with beauty. But you write to me of silence, uttering nothing at all to us. Otherwise you would have found us saying more, and you would not have said that Kothokides was mocking the sophists with the suffering of the flutes. Farewell, and the child, and the wife. And do not press heavily upon the child Alexander, forcing his young age for a long time. To Gessius the physician-sophist: How bitter are the counsels of fortune against us, and sufficient for a dreadful tragic plot. We have not yet ceased from the most pitiable burial of a child, and suddenly it draws on the mother—doing perhaps what is pleasant to her, if she has been joined to her dearest children, but for us joining sufferings to sufferings and making a burial heavier by a burial, and it has deprived us, alas, of the mother, little children still hanging from their mother's breast. These are truly matters of tears and beyond the stage, and such as would confirm the myth that a wretched woman was turned from a human being into stone. For she was, it seems, Phrygian and barbarian, and had not beforehand fortified her soul against the cup of fortune with the drugs of philosophy. As indeed the story is told of that great Anaxagoras, when someone announced to him the untimely death of his son, he said at once, as one long prepared and not greatly affected by the hearing, "I knew that I had begotten a mortal." And I think, inferring from what has been said, that if someone had reported that his wife was lying dead upon her child, he would certainly have added, "I knew that I lived with a mortal." Whence I praise those first inventors of tragedy, because they understood that fortune stirs human affairs up and down.

They devised for us the stage, forestalling the misfortunes of their own with the very great evils of others. For what is there terrible among us that time has not already brought to light? Or what could be new that is not referred to a similar image? But if it is dear to us to appear superior to fortune, let us run for shelter to the harbor of our accustomed philosophy, considering who we are and whence we have come, and what the accounts of our circumstances are, and that those who have been bound must by all means be loosed, whenever it seems good to the one who bound them, and must put off the mask which the poet of the great drama has placed upon us. For this is truly the exhortation "Know yourself." This is your work, O most wise one, as you continually unroll the accounts of providence, as I think, and offer yourself as an example of endurance to those uninitiated in wisdom. Wherefore let us return to ourselves, saying, "But what then should I do?" and "God brings all things to their end." For by considering these things you will do what is worthy of yourself and will prepare the divine to look upon our affairs with kindly eyes at some time. To John. I have received your letter, dear and truly full of charm, which in Socratic fashion blames the divine sign for our long silence, and blames me, who lie on the ground and cannot look up to the height of virtue—and what else is that but a sophist, as you yourself would mock?

leading them by praises into philosophy itself, or rather dragging their hearing along, so that, stolen away by praises that in no way belong to it, it might endure gently when rhetoric is accused and bear these customary twitterings, "the image of a political part" and "conversing with the masses" and all that the words of those who jest wish for—for I would not say, of those who envy out of shame, philosophy and Plato. And I myself think, O wisest one, that you, holding the opposite opinion about the art, are, as it seems, for the sake of jests, as they say, bringing a charge about the shadow of a donkey, rolling in upon us Thrasymachuses and Poluses and all the graces that Plato's followers have molded. But cease now, O excellent one, from speaking ill of the greatest of matters. But if not... but I hold back the threat for a better occasion. To Diodorus: Having encountered your letters, I came to the memory of ancient prosperity, picturing in my mind that Nile and the enjoyment of your company beside it, and it came over me to weep at the turning of fortune, how it is spun up and down. Now it gathers people together as no one would hope, and now again it separates those whom it gathered beyond hope. But they devised something wise against it

...sharing our longing through letters and in some way contriving their presence by means of writing. To Diodorus: Having received the much-bruited command, about which I long ago let loose all my utterances, I kept silence, not forgetting the favor after obtaining it, nor inheriting the Muse of Gerontius; for to you alone has fortune granted the advantage. And who, without seeing that man, will fulfill his longing through you, being well led up to the model as through an accurate image? In silence I honored the favor, lest by speaking I obtain less than I wish by having spoken. And this favor shall be recorded in writing for you, honored by me more than by the Persian king, who knows how to honor betrayal and Pausanias medizing, even if, desiring above all to obtain it, O best of men, and having brought your mind to action, you let fall a pitiable cry on our behalf and very far from our own mind; for before the judge himself you called us poor. At which I was most indignant, if you have gaped so much after material things, having fallen from the height of philosophy, as to bring forward base and lowly words for the sake of money, and neither to consider my worth nor the most wise Diogenes, who defined the greatest wealth in a bare wallet. But become free at last, considering the whole inhabited world a small thing in comparison with virtue. To Diodorus: I think that for those who are earnest about friendship, goodwill is sufficient, and readiness to serve the needs of one's acquaintances; but to spend one's own resources besides is neither otherwise just nor honorable for the one who receives the favor. For one who has once suffered loss has become more hesitant about a second need.

Even if you should not experience this, being always confirmed by the law of friendship, nevertheless I am restrained by shame from writing about matters that seem best left unsaid. Therefore, if you wish me always to take pleasure in frankness toward you, you will not hesitate to receive a debt that is owed. To Marcellus: It is not boldness that is the cause of the present letter, nor the knowledge of not remaining within one's proper bounds, but a man dear to God and filled with every virtue, whom it has not persuaded to overlook his promises to you—not the fact that he has now scarcely come from Egypt, not a handsome monastery, not a threatening winter, not a sea standing in the way, not a long journey—but knowing one virtue, namely to fulfill his promises in deed and to be alike toward all equally, he looks wholly toward you. But he is also announced to be coming to us more quickly, and I am easily persuaded, having received the proof from his promises to you. It remains, then, for you to prevail, and it would be fitting not to wish to prevail over a man who considers nothing so dreadful as the necessity of transgressing what he has announced. Send the man quickly, then, to report your kindness to us. To Sabinus: You bring up poverty against me as if by way of reproach, and the matter seems to you to be a most accursed beast, and—what is the greatest point—I am an Irus in your eyes and perhaps in need of daily necessities. And what would you not say, having fallen away from virtue and philosophy at once, pitying what one ought to admire, and thinking that certain great things have been lost by the man who is lofty and light and not borne downward by the weight of matter?

For in measuring happiness by the belly and clinging to the opinions of men, you hire out your tongue for things that are not lawful, you throw the courts into confusion, and the executioners are a sideshow to your deceit. You knock at the doors of the rich, and if anyone knows how to feast well, he has renounced it, being admired by you. Your festival is bright embroidered clothing and a haughty gait and a gaze poured this way and that, and everywhere your ears, like Midas, if some woman should utter something, marvelling at your tent. But until when, fettered by long sleep like some Endymion, will you not rise up toward virtue? Cease henceforth gaping at your little body and nourishing your prison against yourself. Cease dreaming of gold and always imagining a multitude of silver and revolving many offices in your mind. Your inner matters are such as to no one of your friends. But desert to us if you please, and worship the common goddess Poverty and recognize her as loving. For she cherishes you more than us, and

has promised to love you still. To Dorotheus: How much you pained me by departing I would not have hoped to foresee, had I not had experience as my teacher. For since you went away leaving us, I did not cease roaming with you in my mind and sketching harbors and sea within myself. And "Hear me, Poseidon, holder of the earth," I often said, and I kept asking him to make the sea favorable to you, and I placed the days of the voyage on my fingers, and I was so wholly in your company that, attempting to call someone, I often unawares addressed him as Dorotheus. And he laughed, while I was vexed at my mistake. But you perhaps did not know how much affection you implanted in us.

Often, when I caught sight of someone approaching from far off, I thought, by the gods, that I was seeing you, since the eyes are easily deceived in accordance with the wish of the mind. But I have scarcely been freed from the delusion, having received a letter from you and so cured my longing. To Diodorus: I have received your fine figs, and better, I think, than the Attic ones, on account of which they say the great war was stirred up, when the king was marching against the land, casting [his forces] upon the sea and cutting a mountain through to the sea; and I have received sandals too, and very fine ones. Nevertheless, "the dog-thorn and the anemone are not to be compared with roses"; for the long raisin, tempering its natural sweetness with a moderate astringency, has proved itself better than what Attic figs, better than what cakes, toward which you always stretch out your tongue. I have also sent you birds from the brine, a comfort for a gluttonous belly. Are not my offerings far better? Any gourmand, I think, would say so as a judge. Except perhaps you will mention the slippers that are still to come. I, for my part, have gaped in anticipation of them; but when you send them... but I do not wish to say what sort of thing I shall try to jest about. To Stephanus: Your splendor is proclaimed by all that is able to make good men known. But, as the testimony of those who have made trial shows, the word is defeated by the deeds, and it seems to lag behind the reality. Having always consigned your zeal for me to the greatest admiration, I do so now not least, when it has persuaded so great a man to run so very short a stretch of road for my sake, so that even if he had used bare letters, I would not have been able to argue against him when he gave the command.

So heavy a burden did he place on me, since I respected both his arrival and the virtue of his whole life and all that report, having been confirmed by experience, proclaims beforehand, that I almost followed him just as I was, without even bidding farewell to my own people. But a certain thought scarcely restrained me as I was rushing, as I reasoned that one should not look down on one's fatherland, in which I first saw the sun, and that it is better to preserve one's just obligations toward it than to possess much gold, and that one should not overlook so many strangers present on my account. To Peter: The noble Epiphanius, bringing with him the greatest goodwill from your letters, thus attached himself to me, and displayed every earnestness of reason, showing none of the things that youth brings, but giving himself wholly to letters and persevering in study. This indeed seems to be a proof that the accusation has been fabricated and that what has long been bandied about is false somewhere. For those things belong to the idle and to a mind carried by irrational leisure toward what it should not. And anyone persuaded by Isocrates and spending the leisure of his life on the love of hearing speeches does not give the sycophant grounds to say that he accuses with good reason. For even if he himself is silent, he has a life sufficient for his defense. May it be that the young man too does not fall short of hope in this matter. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: The admirable Timothy, who carries this letter, is for the present a beginning of writing to one another, and being the son of a gentle and very peaceable father, he carries his begetter within himself, displaying the good birth of his character on his face; at any rate, he blushes readily, whether someone praises him or merely wishes to look at him.

For whatever reason he has occupied the imperial city, and he asks for your support, supplying an alliance free from annoyance in whatever ways you can. And by doing this you will be pleasing to good men, than which there is nothing greater for those who have resolved to honor virtue. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers. The present year, as it seems, will carry frequent requests from us, though just and having a commendable pretext, on behalf of which a fair-minded man, even one of Greek character, would gladly give thanks whether giving or receiving from others. Such is the need of the present circumstances. Neilos, the most learned man, having dedicated his life to God, lives in the city, his mother being agitated on his account, tending at once his old age and the weakness that comes from it, yet no less is he known for piety, perhaps as much as many who live in the desert. Having acquired a house whose adjacent place was bare ground, he experienced a wicked neighbor, who, having innovated certain windows facing the bare ground that did not belong to him, at the time acknowledged that these would be no hindrance to one wishing to build. But when now the matter came to action, he puts forward the windows as an obstacle, as if demanding justice because he was overlooked when he was innovating. Seeing himself pushed out from all sides by what is just, he devises for himself an intrusion of power, and—what is most serious—of a man who has resolved always to rejoice in what is just. For he is pushed toward that great Nestorios, confident because the man is not present. For having used those related to him for alliance, he fabricated a purchase against him for mischief, giving the name of justice to it, and taking material for injustice and attempting to slander the praises of him from all sides.

But once he has learned these things through you, he will use threats to prevent the wrongdoer, through a man who honors justice. To Dorotheos: So then, for those who long for spring, it was not a change of season and the brightness of the hour and singing swallows and earth dappled with flowers, but the voice of a beloved that changes the winter of silence, which troubles the soul of lovers, into clear and sunny hearing. Such a one have you appeared, granting letters sweeter than every pleasure. For the winter that rode past came upon nature in full force, but while you were silent it seemed more grievous. To Orion: Your uncle thinks he will grant some great favor to your education, if indeed letters must be brought from me, and saying this very thing he is led to write. I, for my part, have admired the man for his goodwill toward you, sparing not even the smallest things by which he knows he will gratify you, but I loved my silence, blushing at myself and though having wisdom, sending nothing. For as it seems also to Plato the most wise, it is not possible to know what virtue is without being urged toward virtue by deeds. But that which it is not possible to know, I would blush even to speak about it and to do the same as if someone who does not know music even in a dream should then say he is an Orpheus subduing wild beasts with his lyre. But if one must touch the strings, the boast is immediately laughter, and all things are easily refuted. From where, then, am I thought by your uncle to be what I am not by nature?

You often said something to him, solemnly magnifying me under the law of friendship, as it were; but he, not considering the desire, but thinking that words are judged by deeds, demands that I become such a person as you molded me to be in your words, and now I am exacted the penalty for your lie and I refute your words, since I do not have it in me to become a teacher of virtue? However, since my letter is addressed to you, suppose again that you are admired, so that you do not convict yourself of lying. To Diodoros: You have filled my house with obols' worth of Euripides' rags, sending rhythmless adonaria, as you like to call them, and unmusical slippers and Iphicratian torches, over which the general Iphicrates would greatly lament, since they bear no token of Attica. For they offer neither any grace nor proof of Hymettian honey, nor do they proclaim Attica by their appearance, in which are Marathon and Salamis and men who are lovers of freedom and high spirit—not, by Zeus, initiated in the Muse that is among you; for your things... but let them lie in silence, lest I unwittingly say something. [To Kyriakos] Such are your gifts; but you yourself would praise mine too, gratifying your belly as you do. For being a glutton and having made a practice of gorging and measuring great happiness by foods, if ever you hunt down something sweet, you immediately thrust out your tongue, like some Ajax with his great shield. And the occasion is witness, in which you snatched the cake from others, sending it whole straight to your mouth.

To Cyriacus: How much gratitude children owe their fathers it is impossible to know worthily, unless one is himself also a father of children. For then, from the affection he has toward his children, he will fully know what sort their begetters were toward him. Except that all who are devoted to the Muses discern the truth by reason even before experience. Hence it is fitting that you be such toward your parents, who perhaps contribute more than others to goodwill. For this reason they have also moved me to the present letter, asking from you a paternal wage—that you not disgrace them, having become such a person as they themselves wish and as God may bring to fulfillment. For then even death will be easier for them, knowing what sort of successor of their line they have left behind. To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: The one who has received this letter to you is by nature the son of Agathus, who honors what is good and is known in all righteous matters. Having studied with me, the young man displayed both strength of nature and the most unhesitating eagerness. And now he has been brought up before the emperor, wishing to take up the laws, so that he may come forth as an orator, carrying the commonwealth in his body and holding his words before him with his tongue. It is not right, then, to consign his arrival among you to silence, since you, regarding those who have been perfected by me as equal even to your own children, will also show no ordinary goodwill toward him. To Orion: Experience knows how to test good friends more when they are absent. For the judgment of goodwill is not to honor what is present; for this one might sometimes do, like an actor on the stage wearing the mask of good men and playing a part he is not by nature.

But if someone, though separated by place, comes together into one by his zeal and is joined in purpose, this is that man who knows how to cherish the law of friendship. Such a one you have come forward as to us, surpassing what came before by the excellence of what followed. And if children are also images of their fathers, then reasonably indeed report carries me aloft through a good son, making a small father seem greater and everywhere, as you said, escorting him through the cities. But may you continue to cultivate virtue for me, displaying toward the laws that same zeal and natural disposition which you have from me in the matter of words. To Eudaimon: The most learned Hierius, appointed among us over the language of the Italians and adorned more by good character than by learning, I did not think I ought to send on to you in silence as he comes your way. For it would be fine always to enjoy your presence; but, as they say, the second voyage is for the absent to converse through letters. Indeed, truly blessed are those for whom you administer justice, hanging as it were from your voice like some tripod and seeing a truly new sight—Justice returned to them, whom time, having overtaken her, had dimmed. It is superfluous to say that you will do well in the matters in which they need you, and also for the one who has brought the letter to you. For how will he who has words for his livelihood not honor the fathers of words when he sees them? Let him come, then, announcing what we pray to hear—that you surpass report by experience and give greater things than those who receive them wish. To Nephalius: You lament your poverty amid abundance of money, but I look down on money and the wealthy, though I am held fast by a wondrous poverty. So it is, then, that purpose makes poverty and wealth, not money wandering here and there at the hands of fortune.

Therefore stop lamenting to us in a petty-minded way, and consider nothing great except what leads to virtue. For whatever is not of that sort is alien and draws one toward deception. Hence those who know how to think, shaking these things off as a kind of drunkenness and nonsense, leaving the earth to the earth, with uplifted mind traverse the heaven, having swum across the senses and matter and the place of error as though across some harsh sea. For Musaeus I have received the book, which has become more desirable to me because, taken up by your hands, it has perhaps drawn in something musical too, so that the one who uses it thereafter, I think, perceives his thought to be sharper, no less than Socrates when he sat by the Ilissus, where there was both a sanctuary of the Nymphs and a dwelling-place of Pan. But would that you might also take the other books and work them up to be such that I, applying myself to each in turn, might always perceive the inspiration as more divine. To Epiphanius: Well indeed did the proverb know the passion of lovers; even if they wish to swear falsely, it promises them forgiveness from the gods. For behold, I have written to you, although I had promised not to write. Thus we are led by longing, and I become a lover's liar. But write often and give the lovers at least the imprint of an image in place of a sight. To John: I have envied you your offspring, if you know how to beget such children; for you show the children of blessed fathers to be blessed, wisely bringing forth divine things with some musical stream. Such a one has come to us—the most learned Muselius—whom, wishing to praise but unable to tell of his qualities, I consider silence alone sufficient for praise.

But if you would heed me in anything, I will adapt Agamemnon's speech to your case: "Strike thus, dear Teucer, and do not spare to speak." To Nestorius: Are you still silent? Are you still becoming heavier than fortune? For she has for now deprived us of the sight of you, but you have begrudged us even a few syllables, not even imitating this common custom of friends. But I long for you even when you are absent, and I take pleasure in remembering, and now, having found the opportunity, I do not know how to honor silence, since it is fitting to address you. But do you, if you have not also enjoyed this from your homeland—namely, not remaining with the things I recently taught you—above all stand by those who long for you. But if not, imitate the sight of you with letters, and you will persuade us that the abyss of the country has in no way conquered my teaching. Thus I am carried toward a man, holding fast to a teacher's mind. To Sozomen: The wise Caesarius did not produce ordinary pleasure for us when he reported your zeal. For as a good man and one brought up in letters, he gave us praise that was without envy and pure, smiling at the same time and rejoicing with me over your offspring. And I called you blessed for the praises, him for his purpose, and myself for my fortune, if a good man has testified that those who attend us are well esteemed. But go forward toward virtue, adorned with self-control, and give those who report greater occasions for praise. To Pancratius: Do you so disregard those who long for you? Do you so check the streams of your tongue? But longing also sketches your appearance for me, and now I have realized that I am dreaming while my body is awake. But give yourself to us at least by means of letters.