Letter 340
Late Antiquity Basil of Caesarea Greek- Libanius to Basil If you had considered for a very long time how you might best reply to my letter about your writings, you could not, I think, have done it better than by writing such things as you have now written. For you call me a sophist; and you say that it is the mark of such a man to be able to make small things great and, in turn, great things small. And indeed you say that my letter set out to show yours to be fine, though it was not fine; and that nothing is better than the one you have now sent; and, in sum, that there is in you no power of eloquence at all—the books now in your hands not producing this effect, and the eloquence you once possessed having flowed away. And while trying to persuade me of this, you wrought even this letter, which you call bad, so fine, that those who were present with us could not help leaping up as it was read aloud. I marvelled, then, that in attempting by this letter to pull down the earlier one, by saying that this resembles the earlier, you have by this very thing adorned the earlier. Yet the man who wished to do this ought to have made the present letter worse, to discredit the former. But it was not in you, I think, to wrong the truth. And it would have been wronged, had you written deliberately worse and not used the powers you have. It would belong, then, to the same man neither to blame what it is just to praise—lest the matter, carrying you off, cast you among the sophists, as you try to make great things low. Hold fast, then, to the books of which you say the diction is worse but the thought better, and no one prevents you. But the roots of eloquence, ours always, yet yours formerly, remain and will remain so long as you live, and no length of time shall ever cut them out, not even if you water them not at all.