Letter 334
Late Antiquity Basil of Caesarea Greek- To a calligrapher Write straight, and keep to the lines correctly; and let your hand neither rise up toward the heights nor be carried down the precipices. Do not force the reed to walk crookedly, like Aesop's crab, but go straight ahead, as though walking along a carpenter's rule, which everywhere preserves the level and removes all that is uneven. For the crooked is unseemly, but the straight is a delight to those who behold it, not allowing the eyes of the readers to nod up and down, as the well-sweeps do. Something of this sort befell me too when I came upon your writing. For since the lines lay like the rungs of a ladder, whenever it was necessary to pass from one to another, I had to set myself straight again at the end of the line I was approaching. And since the sequence nowhere appeared, I had to run back again and search out the order, retracing my steps and following along the furrow, as they say Theseus followed the thread of Ariadne. Write straight, then, and do not lead the mind astray by the slanting and crooked character of what is written.