Letter 365

365. Basil to the great emperor Theodosius

A calamity has befallen our region, not from any bodily mischance, but from an overflow of waters. From what cause this came about, I shall make plain. A great fall of snow occurred upon our lake. But before it had yet frozen over, a warm wind came on, and a south-bringing rain fell together with it. The thaw therefore being sudden, streams beyond all reckoning were set moving, mingling with the ever-flowing river, the Halys — itself swollen — and overpassing both tongue and eye. This is the river that has fallen to us as our neighbour: gushing forth from the land of the Armenians, and emptying into the most holy lake of the people of Sebaste, into which the rightly named and noble forty soldiers of Christ, when a terrible north wind blew, were plunged. And from there — receive me as one speaking the truth, most mighty one — this river, encircling us like a hostile nation among the things to be feared, terrifies us not a little. For, never to be crossed on foot at any time or in any manner, it does not allow the homelands necessary and profitable to us to bring over the goods that are traded. I mean those of the Galatians and the Paphlagonians and the people of the Hellenic Pontus, through whom and from whom what is necessary comes to us — above all an abundance of bread, since the surrounding land is frost-bound, and is bound fast by the surrounding air, by a rage of lightning, thunder, hail, flood, and untamed onset. No small threat, too, comes from the contempt of Argaeus, the grief of our fathers.

You, then, being moved to compassion, most mighty one, be willing to be munificent toward the land that is your tributary, so that thus, having fitted it out to be crossed by a bridge in plenty over this river, you may show it to be a new Red Sea, passable on the journey. For the Lord too, taking pity on the much-groaning life of the Jews, was pleased that they should walk with unwetted feet, as upon dry land, in the Red Sea, having given them Moses as their guide. So the manner of the river has become great for us, a destruction to men; for, flooding above like a sea, and squeezing out every grass-bearing land, and covering the ploughland with mud, of necessity the ploughing ox goes hungry, and all the beasts of burden of the surrounding land. And if it were a man wronging a man, we would not cease to make use of the courts. But what should anyone do to bend to his will a mighty river that obeys no laws? It is for you, then, most mighty one, to pray — you who in a single turn of the moment are able to hold back the danger of travellers.