Letter 41

41. Basil to Julian, in reply.

Small are the brave deeds of your present fortune, and paltry the prowess of that valour which you yourself have displayed against us — yet not against us, but against yourself. As for me, I am held fast by trembling whenever I take it into my mind that you have been clothed in the purple, and that your dishonoured head has been adorned with a crown, which, apart from piety, renders your sovereignty not honoured but dishonoured. But you yourself, having returned and become exceedingly great — as wretched and beauty-hating demons have dragged you to this — have begun not only to think beyond all human nature, but even to lift yourself up against God, and to insult the Church, the mother and nurse of all, employing a message to me, the most worthless of men, that a thousand pounds of gold be sent to you by me.

And the weight of the gold did not astound my mind, great though it is, but it made me weep bitterly over so swift a ruin of yours. For I have considered within myself that both I myself and your nobility learned together the sacred and best of letters. Each of us went through the holy and divinely inspired Scriptures, and nothing then escaped you; but in the present you have become bereft of order, encamped about by such a temper of mind. You knew us before yesterday, most serene one, that we do not order our lives by greed for money; and now, in the present circumstances, you have demanded that ten hundred pounds of gold be sent to you by us. Be willing, then, to spare us, most serene one — us who possess only so much that, if we should wish to eat today, it will not suffice us. For with us, as is fitting, the art of cooks lies idle, and their knife holds no converse with blood. The greatest of the foods among us, in which our abundance lies, are leaves of herbs with the coarsest bread and sour wine; so that our senses, not being astounded by gluttony, may not order their life in folly.

Lausus too, your distinguished tribune, who is genuine to you in your earnest concerns, reported this to me also: that a certain woman made an appearance before your serenity over the ruin of her child, who had been killed by poisoning, and that it has been judged by you that sorcerers should nowhere exist, but that, where they do exist, they should be put to death — or that those alone should be preserved whose contest is with the beasts. And this, rightly judged by you, has seemed strange to me. For it is full of all laughter, how you undertake to heal the great pains of wounds with little remedies. For, having insulted God, you make in vain provision for widows and orphans. For the one course is mad and perilous, the other belongs to a compassionate and sympathetic man.

It is burdensome for us, who are private men, to speak to an emperor, but more burdensome still will it seem to you to speak to God. For no mediator between God and men will appear. What you have read, however, you have not understood; for had you understood, you would not have condemned . . .