Letter 348
Late Antiquity Basil of Caesarea Greek- Basil to Libanius If gaining and angling are said to be the same thing, and the word which your sophistry has fetched out for us from the inmost shrines of Plato has the same meaning, consider, my admirable friend, which of us is the harder to angle for: we, who are thus stripped bare of our stakes by the power of a single letter, or the tribe of sophists, whose art it is to levy tolls upon their words. Which of the bishops has fixed a tariff on eloquence? Which has made his pupils hired men? It is you who set out your words for sale, like the boilers of honey who set out their honey-cakes. Do you see how you have stirred even the old man to caper a little? But as for you, who parade in your declamations, I have given orders that there be furnished to you roof-beams equal in number to the soldiers who fought at Thermopylae, all of good length, and, in the words of your Homer, "casting long shadows"; which the holy Alphaeus has promised to restore.