Letters

Fragment of a Letter to a Priest

1. . . . except that, if men report to the king any who are behaving disorderly, those are punished at once; but over those who do not draw near to the gods there is set the appointed tribe of evil spirits, by whom many of the godless are driven frantic and are persuaded to court death, in the belief that they will fly up to heaven when they have torn their souls violently from the body. And there are some, too, who pursue the deserts instead of the cities, though man is by nature a social and civilised animal; they have been given over to evil spirits, by whom they are led into this hatred of mankind. Many of them have even devised for themselves chains and collars: so on every side does the evil spirit drive them, to which they have willingly surrendered themselves, having revolted from the everlasting and saving gods. But concerning these men it is enough to have said so much; I shall now return to the point from which I digressed.

2. As for the practice of justice according to the civil laws, it is plain that the governors of the cities will see to it; but it would be fitting that you too should exhort men not to transgress those laws, since they are sacred to the gods. And since the priestly life ought to be more venerable than the political, men must be led toward it and instructed; and the better sort, in all likelihood, will follow. For my own part I pray that they may all do so, but I hope it of those who are by nature reasonable and earnest, since they will recognise that these teachings are properly their own.

3. Above all, then, we must practise love of mankind, for from this follow many other blessings, and in particular that choicest and greatest of all, the goodwill of the gods. For just as those who share their masters' interests in friendship and earnest pursuits and affection are loved more than their fellow-slaves, so we must believe that the Divine, being by nature loving toward mankind, loves those men who are loving toward their fellows. Now love of mankind is wide and of many kinds: it shows itself in punishing men with restraint, for the betterment of those punished, as teachers do with children; and in correcting their needs, as the gods correct ours. See how many good things they have given us out of the earth, foods of every sort, and more than they have given to all the animals together. And since we were born naked, they sheltered us with the hair of animals, and with what grows from the earth and from the trees. And it did not suffice them to do this simply or roughly, as Moses says we took coats of skins, but see how many are the gifts of Athena the Worker. What animal uses wine? What animal uses oil? None, except those to which we ourselves impart a share of them, we who give no share to our fellow-men. What creature of the sea uses corn, what creature of the land uses the things of the sea? I have not yet spoken of gold and bronze and iron, in all of which the gods have made us very rich; yet not that we may suffer the poor to wander about in reproach to the gods, especially when some of them happen to be reasonable in character, men to whom no inheritance has fallen from their fathers, and who, through their greatness of soul desiring money least of all, are poor. The multitude, seeing such men, reproach the gods. But the gods are not the cause of their poverty; rather the insatiable greed of us who possess wealth becomes the cause both of a false opinion about the gods among men, and besides of an unjust reproach against the gods. For why do we demand that the god should rain gold upon the poor, as he did upon the Rhodians? Even if this should happen, we should quickly set our servants under it and put out our vessels everywhere and drive everyone else away, so that we alone might seize the common gifts of the gods. And one might well marvel that, while we claim a thing which neither comes to pass by nature and would be wholly unprofitable, we do not do the things that are within our power. For who ever became poor by giving to his neighbours? Indeed I have often given to those in need, and have received it back from the gods many times over, although I am a poor man of business; and I have never repented of having given. As for the present, I will not speak of it; for it would be altogether unreasonable to compare the gifts of private men with the bounties of a king. But while I was still a private man, I am conscious that this often happened to me. My grandmother's inheritance came to me intact, though others held it by force, when out of the little I had I was spending and giving to those in need.

4. We ought, then, to share our money with all men, but more freely with the good, and with the helpless and the poor so far as suffices for their need. And I would even say, though it sounds strange, that it would be a holy act to share clothing and food even with the wicked; for we give to the humanity in a man and not to his character. Therefore I think that even those shut up in prison are to be deemed worthy of such care. For such love of mankind will in no way hinder justice. Since many are confined awaiting trial, of whom some will be found guilty and others acquitted, it would be a hard thing, for the sake of the wicked, not to extend some pity also to the innocent, or, for the sake of the wicked, to be merciless and inhuman toward those who have done no wrong. And this, when I consider it, appears to me altogether unjust: we call Zeus the god of strangers, and yet we prove ourselves more inhospitable than the Scythians. How then does a man who wishes to sacrifice to Zeus the protector of strangers come to his temple? With what kind of conscience, having forgotten the verse: 'For from Zeus come all strangers and beggars; and a gift, though small, is welcome.'

5. And how does the man who worships Zeus the god of comradeship, when he sees his neighbours in want of money, and gives them not so much as a drachma, think that he is rightly worshipping Zeus? When I look upon these things I am utterly at a loss; for I see that the titles of the gods have been with us from the beginning of the world, like painted images, but that in practice nothing of the kind is observed by us. Among us the gods are called kindred, and Zeus the god of kindred, yet we treat our own relations as strangers. For every man is the kinsman of every man, whether he will or no, whether, as some say, we are all sprung from one man and one woman, or whether it came about in some other way, the gods having created us all at once, together with the world at its first beginning, not one man and one woman but many men and many women together. For those who had power to create one man and one woman were able also to create many men and many women at once; for in the same way that they made the one man and the one woman, in that same way they made the many men and the many women. And one should look also to the diversity of customs and laws; and, what is greater and more honourable and more authoritative, to the report of the gods, which has been handed down to us by the ancient theurgists: that when Zeus was ordering all things, there fell drops of sacred blood, and from these, it would seem, the race of men sprang up. And so we are all kinsmen, whether being many men and women we are sprung from one man and one woman, or whether, as the gods say and as we must believe since the facts bear witness, we are all sprung from the gods. That the facts bear witness that many men came into being at once will be set forth elsewhere with precision; here it suffices to say so much, that if we were sprung from one man and one woman it is not likely that the laws would differ so widely, nor again that one man could have filled the whole earth, not even if the women bore them many children at once, like sows. But since the gods planted us everywhere at once, in the same way that the one man came forth, so also did the many men come forth, allotted to the gods who are the founders of races, who brought them forth, receiving their souls from the Demiurge from all eternity.

6. And this too is worth considering, how many discourses have been spent by men of old upon the doctrine that man is by nature a social animal. Shall we, then, who have said and ordained these things, behave unsociably toward those near to us? Therefore let each of us, setting out from such habits and pursuits, from reverence toward the gods, from kindness toward men, from purity of body, fulfil the works of piety; let him strive always to think reverently of the gods, and look with honour and holiness upon their temples and images, worshipping them as though he saw the gods present. For our fathers established images and altars and the keeping of an unquenchable fire, and in a word all such things, as symbols of the presence of the gods; not that we should regard these things as gods, but that through them we should worship the gods. For since, being in the body, it was necessary for us to render our service to the gods also in a bodily fashion, whereas the gods themselves are without body, the gods showed us, as a first race after the first gods, the images that are carried round in a circle throughout all the heaven. But since not even to these can worship be rendered bodily, for they are by nature in need of nothing, another race of images was devised on earth, in performing whose worship we shall render the gods gracious toward us. For just as those who tend the images of kings, though the kings need nothing, nevertheless draw goodwill upon themselves, so too those who tend the images of the gods, though the gods need nothing, nevertheless persuade them to defend and care for them. For zeal in what is possible is a true proof of holiness, and he who fulfils this evidently renders the gods the greater honour, while he who neglects what is possible, and then pretends to reach after the impossible, plainly is not pursuing the one but disregarding the other. For even if the god needs nothing, it does not follow that on that account we should offer him nothing; for neither does he need the praise that comes through words. What then? Is it reasonable to deprive him even of this? By no means. Neither, then, should we deprive him of the honour rendered to him through deeds, which not three years nor three thousand years established, but all the ages that have gone before, among all the nations of the earth.

7. Looking, then, upon the images of the gods, let us not suppose them to be stones or wood, nor yet that they are the gods themselves. For neither do we call the images of the kings wood and stone and bronze, nor yet the kings themselves, but images of kings. Whoever, then, is a lover of his king looks with pleasure on the image of his king, and whoever is a lover of his child looks with pleasure on the image of his child, and whoever is a lover of his father, on the image of his father. So too whoever is a lover of the gods looks with pleasure on the images and likenesses of the gods, revering at the same time and trembling before the gods who from the unseen look upon him. If, then, anyone thinks that, because they have once been called images of the gods, they must not be capable of being destroyed, he seems to me wholly senseless. For surely they ought not to have come into being by the hands of men at all. But what has come into being by the hand of a wise and good man can be destroyed by a wicked and ignorant man. The living images, however, which the gods fashioned out of their unseen substance, namely the gods who are borne in a circle round the heaven, abide for ever and are everlasting. Let no one, then, disbelieve in the gods because he sees and hears that certain men have committed outrage against the images and the temples. Have not many slain good men, such as Socrates and Dion and the great Empedotimus? Yet I am well assured that the gods cared more for these than for the temples. But you see that, knowing the body of these men too to be perishable, the gods allowed it to yield to nature and give way, but exacted the penalty afterward from those who slew them. And this has plainly come to pass in our own day in the case of all who have plundered temples.

8. Let no one, then, deceive us with words nor disturb us concerning providence. For those who reproach us on this account, the prophets of the Jews, what will they say of their own temple, which was overthrown three times and is not being raised even now? This I say not as a reproach to them, since I myself, after so long a time, intended to restore it, in honour of the god whose name is invoked over it. But in this instance I have used it because I wish to show that nothing human can be imperishable, and that the prophets who wrote such things talked nonsense, conversing with foolish old women. Yet nothing, I think, prevents the god from being great, though he did not chance upon worthy prophets or interpreters. The reason is that they did not give their souls leave to be purified by the regular course of studies, nor to open their eyes that were tight shut, nor to clear away the mist that lay upon them; but, like men who see a great light through a fog, not clearly nor purely, and who suppose that very thing to be not pure light but fire, and being blind to all that lies about it, they cry aloud: 'Tremble, be afraid, fire, flame, death, dagger, broadsword,' describing under many names the single destructive power of fire. But concerning these men it is better to show separately, in detail, how much worse than our own poets these teachers of doctrines about God have proved to be.

9. It is fitting to worship not only the images of the gods, but also the temples and sacred precincts and altars. And it is reasonable to honour the priests too, as ministers and servants of the gods, who minister to us in our concerns toward the gods, and who lend their aid in the gift of good things that comes to us from the gods; for they sacrifice and pray on behalf of all. It is just, therefore, to render to them all honour no less than, if not more than, to the civil magistrates. And if anyone thinks that we ought to assign this equally to them and to the civil magistrates, since these too in a way serve the gods as priests, being guardians of the laws, still in respect of goodwill we ought to render far more to the priests. For the Achaeans bade their king reverence the priest even when he was an enemy; but we do not even reverence our friends who pray and sacrifice on our behalf.

10. But since the discourse has come at last to the theme I have long desired, it seems to me worthwhile to set forth in order what kind of man the priest himself must be, that he may justly be honoured and may cause the gods to be honoured. For we ought not to regard or scrutinise his private conduct; but so long as a man is named a priest, we must honour and serve him; only, if he prove to be wicked, he must be deprived of the priesthood as one shown to be unworthy, and so disregarded. But while he sacrifices and conducts the rites and stands before the gods, we must look upon him with reverence and awe, as the most precious possession of the gods. For it would be absurd that, while we love the very stones of which the altars are made because they have been consecrated to the gods, since they have a shape and form fitted to the service for which they are made, we should think it right not to honour a man who has been consecrated to the gods. Perhaps someone will object: but what if he wrongs and offends in many things against piety toward the gods? I say that such a man must be exposed, lest, being wicked, he trouble the gods; but until someone exposes him, he must not be dishonoured. For it is not reasonable, taking hold of this pretext, to deprive of their honour not these men only but the worthy as well. Let every priest, then, like every magistrate, be held in reverence, since there is also a saying of this kind from the god of Didyma: 'All those who against the priests, in the wantonness of their minds, work folly against the immortals, and against their honours plot opposition with thoughts that fear not the gods, shall not pass through to the end the whole path of life, all those who have done outrage to the blessed gods, whose god-revered ministering honour those men have taken away.' And again in another place the god says: 'All my servants from baneful evil...' and he declares that for these things he will lay a penalty upon them.

11. Many such things having been said by the god, from which we may learn how we ought to honour and serve the priests, I shall speak of them more fully elsewhere. For the present it suffices, in order to prove that I am not improvising anything, to set forth the god's prophecy and command, holding the words of the god himself sufficient. If, then, anyone has supposed me a trustworthy teacher of such matters, let him, out of reverence for the god, obey him, and honour the priests of the gods above all. What kind of man the priest must be I shall now try to say, not for your sake; for, did I not know this already, with both my guide and the greatest gods bearing witness that you will administer this service well, so far at least as depends on your own choice, I should not have dared to entrust to you so great a matter. But it is that you may have wherewith to teach others, not only in the cities but also in the country districts, with the better reason and the greater authority, since you do not conceive and practise these things of yourself alone, but have me too as one who casts his vote with you, who am held, through the gods, to be supreme high priest, in no way worthy of so great an office, yet wishing to be so and ever praying to the gods that I may be. For be well assured, the gods hold out to us great hopes after death; and we must by all means believe them. For they are wont not to lie, and that not only concerning the things after death, but also concerning the things in this life. And those who, through abundance of power, are able to overcome the disorder of this life and to set right its confusion and disarray, shall they not still more, in that other state, where the warring elements are parted, when the immortal soul is separated and the dead body has become earth, be able to provide all that they have promised to men? Knowing, then, that the gods have given great rewards to the priests, let us make them in all things sureties of the worthiness of the gods; and this they must show to the multitudes by bringing forth their own life as a proof.

12. We must begin with piety toward the gods. For we ought so to minister to the gods as though they stood beside us and saw us though we see them not, and as though, with an eye stronger than any sunbeam, they reached even to our hidden thoughts. And that this saying is not mine but the god's, having been declared in many oracles, it suffices me to bring forward one, and by means of it to establish two things at once, both how the gods see all things, and how they rejoice over the pious: 'Everywhere Phoebus' far-seeing ray is spread; and through the solid rocks his swift eye passes, and through the dark-blue sea it goes, nor does the starry multitude escape him, wheeling back as it returns to the unwearied heaven by the ordinance of wise necessity, nor all those tribes of the dead below that gloomy Tartarus received beneath the darkness of Hades; but in pious mortals I rejoice as much as in Olympus.'

13. And in proportion as every soul, and far more the soul of man, is more akin and more nearly related to the gods than stone and rock, so much the more readily and effectively, in all likelihood, does the eye of the gods pass through it. Consider, too, the love of the god for mankind, when he says that he rejoices in the mind of pious men as much as in Olympus, the purest of all things. How then shall he not raise up our souls also from the gloom and from Tartarus, if we draw near to him with piety? For he knows even those shut up in Tartarus, since not even they fall outside the power of the gods; and he promises Olympus to the pious instead of Tartarus. Therefore we must cling above all to the works of piety, drawing near to the gods with reverence, neither saying nor hearing anything shameful. And the priests must be pure not only from unclean deeds and licentious acts, but also from such words and from listening to such things. We must therefore banish all offensive jesting, all licentious talk. And that you may understand what I mean: let no man who has been consecrated read Archilochus or Hipponax or any other writer of such things. Let him turn aside also from the Old Comedy whatever is of this kind; for it is better so. And in every way philosophy alone would befit us, and of the philosophers those who set up the gods as guides of their own training, such as Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle and the school of Chrysippus and Zeno. For we must attend neither to all of them nor to the doctrines of all, but only to those, and to those of their teachings, which are productive of piety and which teach concerning the gods, first that they exist, then that they care for the things here, and that they do no evil at all, neither to men nor to one another, out of envy and jealousy and hostility, of which sort the things our own poets wrote, and were despised for them, while the prophets of the Jews, who busily build up such teaching, are admired by these wretched men who have attached themselves to the Galilaeans.

14. It would be fitting for us to read histories, all those that have been composed concerning deeds actually done; but as for those fictions which have been handed down by men of old in the form of history, we must avoid them, love-stories and all such things absolutely. For just as not every road is suited to the consecrated, but these too must be appointed, so neither is every kind of reading fitting for a consecrated man. For there comes to be in the soul a certain disposition from words, and little by little it stirs the desires, then suddenly kindles a terrible flame, against which, I think, we must be armed from afar.

15. Let no Epicurean argument come in, nor any of Pyrrho; the gods, indeed, have already done well to destroy these, so that most of their books have perished. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent us mentioning these too, by way of example, of what kind of arguments the priests above all ought to keep away from; and if from arguments, far more from notions. For I do not think that an error of the tongue and an error of the mind are the same thing; rather we must tend above all the mind, since it is through the mind that the tongue too errs. We must learn by heart the hymns to the gods; and these are many and beautiful, composed by men ancient and recent. Yet we must try to know especially those that are sung in the temples. For most of these were given by the gods themselves in answer to entreaty, and some few were composed even by men, set together to honour the gods by a divine inspiration and a soul untrodden by evils.

16. These things at least are worth practising, and we must pray often to the gods, in private and in public, most of all three times a day, but if not, at any rate at dawn and at evening. For it is not reasonable that the consecrated should pass a day or a night without sacrifice; and dawn is the beginning of the day, evening of the night. It is reasonable to consecrate the first-fruits of both these portions to the gods, whenever we chance to be outside our priestly service; for as to the things in the temples, whatever the ancestral law prescribes, it is fitting to observe, and neither more nor less of them should be done; for the things of the gods are everlasting, so that we too must imitate their nature, that on this account we may the more propitiate them.

17. Now if we were souls alone, and the body troubled us in nothing, it would be well to mark off one single mode of life for the priests. But since it befits not priests in general, but the priest only at the time of his service, to practise certain things, what then should be conceded to the man who has obtained the priesthood, when he is outside the service in the temples? I think the priest ought, having kept himself pure from all things for a night and a day, and then for another night after that having purified himself with the purifications prescribed by the ordinances, so to enter within the temple and remain there for as many days as the law commands. Among us in Rome they are thirty, but elsewhere it is otherwise. It is reasonable, then, I think, to remain all these days in the temples, given to philosophy, and to go neither to a private house nor to the marketplace, nor even to see a magistrate except in the temples, but to attend to the service of the divine, overseeing and ordering everything; and when he has fulfilled the days, then to give place to another in the service. But when he turns again to the human mode of life, let it be permitted him both to go to a friend's house and, when invited, to attend a banquet, not of all men, but of the best; and at such a time it is not amiss to go into the marketplace now and then, and to greet a governor or the ruler of a province, and to help, so far as is fitting, those who reasonably ask his aid.

18. It is fitting, I think, that the priests, when they are ministering within, should wear the most magnificent attire, but outside the temples the ordinary dress, without extravagance. For it is not reasonable to abuse the things given us for the honour of the gods into vainglory and empty conceit. Therefore we must abstain in the marketplace from costlier dress and from display, and in a word from all ostentation. The gods, indeed, admiring so greatly the self-control of Amphiaraus, since they had decreed the destruction of that army with which, knowing it, he yet marched, and the doom was therefore unavoidable for him, made him a different man from what he had been and removed him to a divine portion. Of all those who marched against Thebes, who painted devices upon their shields before they had accomplished anything and raised their trophies in anticipation of the disaster of the Cadmeians, this companion of the gods marched with arms that bore no device, and his gentleness and self-control were attested even by his enemies. Therefore I think we priests too must be temperate in the matter of our attire, that we may find the gods gracious; since it is no small offence against them when we make our sacred garments common and public, and offer them simply for men to gaze at, as though they were some marvel. For if this happens, many who are not pure draw near to us, and through this the symbols of the gods are defiled. And how great is the lawlessness and contempt toward the gods, when we ourselves, not living in priestly fashion, wear the dress of priests! But concerning these matters too we shall speak elsewhere with precision; for the present I write of them to you only in outline.

19. To these licentious theatres let no one of the priests anywhere resort, nor bring an actor into his own house; for it in no way befits him. And if it were possible to drive these things out of the theatres altogether, so as to give them back, purified, to Dionysus, I should certainly have tried eagerly to bring it about. But as it is, thinking this neither possible nor, even if it should prove possible, expedient, I have wholly refrained from this ambition; but I require the priests to withdraw and stand apart from the licentiousness of the theatres, leaving it to the people. Let no priest, then, enter a theatre, nor have for friend an actor or a charioteer, nor let any dancer or mime come to his door. To the sacred contests I permit to resort only whoever wishes, that is, those from which women are forbidden to take part not in the competition only but even in the spectacle. As for the hunting-shows, what need is there to speak, all those that are held within the theatres in the cities, that priests not only, but even the children of priests, must abstain from them?

20. Now it would perhaps have been well to have said this before the rest, from what source and how the priests ought to be appointed; but it is no absurdity that my discourse should end with this. I say that the best men in the cities are to be appointed, and especially those most devoted to the gods, and next those most loving toward men, whether they be poor or rich; and in this matter let there be no distinction at all between obscure and distinguished; for he who through modesty has remained unnoticed ought not, because of the obscurity of his rank, to be barred. Even if a man be a poor commoner, if he have in himself these two things, love of the gods and love of man, let him be appointed priest. And a proof of love of the gods is if he has brought all his household to piety toward the gods; a proof of love of man, if even out of little he readily shares with those in need and gives gladly, trying to do good to as many as he is able.

21. For we must give special attention to this part, and from it must our cure proceed. For since, I think, it came about that the poor were neglected and overlooked by the priests, the impious Galilaeans observed this and devoted themselves to this kind of philanthropy, and through what looks like a good work they confirmed their worst deeds. For just as those who lure children with a cake, by throwing it to them twice and three times, persuade them to follow, and then, when they have drawn them far from their homes, put them aboard a ship and sell them, and what for a little while seemed sweet became bitter for all the rest of life, so these too, beginning in the same way with what they call their love-feast and hospitality and service of tables, for the thing, like the name, is much used among them, have led very many into atheism. . . .

22. To Eustathius

I, on receiving your letter, at once sent Archelaus, giving him letters to carry to you, and the warrant, as you bade, for a longer time. As for your wish to view the Ocean, you shall have everything according to your desire, God willing, if only you take care to guard against the boorishness of the Gauls and against the winter. But this shall be as is pleasing to God; and I swear to you, by him who is to me the author of all good things and my saviour, that I pray to live for this reason, that I may be of some use to you. And when I say "to you," I mean the true philosophers; and you, being persuaded that you are one of these, know how I loved you and love you and pray to see you. May divine providence keep you in good health for many years, most longed-for and most beloved brother. I send my greetings to the holy Hippia and to your children.

2. To Priscus

As to your goodness coming to me, if indeed you intend it, take counsel now with the gods and be eager; for perhaps a little later not even I shall have leisure. Seek out for me all the works of Iamblichus on his namesake; you alone are able, for your sister's son-in-law has copies that are in good order. And, if I am not mistaken, a marvellous sign occurred to me at the very moment I was writing this part. I beseech you, do not let the followers of Theodorus din it even into your ears that the divine Iamblichus was truly ambitious, and the third after Pythagoras and Plato; and if it is bold of me to make my own mind plain to you, since it follows those who are inspired, the pardon is not unreasonable. For you yourself are mad about Iamblichus in philosophy, and about his namesake in theosophy. And I think the rest, as Apollodorus says, are nothing compared with these men. As to the collections of Aristotle which you made, I say only this much to you: you have made me a pupil falsely inscribed as yours; for Maximus of Tyre could initiate me but a little into Platonic logic in six books, but you, by means of a single book, made me, perhaps, a very Bacchant of the Aristotelian philosophy, or at least a bearer of the thyrsus. And if I speak the truth, when you come to me you will find many proofs of it among my works of last winter.

3. To his fellow-students, on Aristotle and Plato

If anyone has persuaded you that there is anything more pleasant or more profitable for men than to pursue philosophy at leisure and without distraction, he is deceived and deceives you. But if the old zeal still abides with you, and has not, like a bright flame, been quickly quenched, then I count you happy. The fourth year has now gone by, and this is now nearly the third month upon it, since we were parted from one another. I should be glad to consider how far in this time you have advanced. As for my own case, it is a wonder if I can still speak Greek; so far have we been barbarised by the regions where we live. Do not despise the lesser studies, neither neglect rhetoric nor association with the poets. But let your care for learning be greater, and let your whole labour be the knowledge of the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato. Let this be your work, this your foundation-stone, your base, your building, your roof; the rest are by-works, yet to be carried out by you with greater earnestness than others bestow on what are truly their works. I, by the divine Justice, loving you as brothers, give you this counsel; for you have been my fellow-students and my dear friends. If, then, you are persuaded, I shall love you the more; but if I see you disobedient, I shall be grieved. And what continued grief is wont in the end to come to, I forbear to say, for the sake of a better omen.

4. To Maximus the philosopher

The divine Homer says there are two gates of dreams, and that the trust to be placed in them, concerning things to come, differs. But I think that you now, if ever before, have seen clearly concerning the future; for I myself beheld such a thing today. I dreamed that a tall tree, planted in some very large dining-hall, was leaning toward the ground, while beside its root there had grown another, small and newly sprung, very full of bloom. And I was greatly anxious about the little one, lest someone should tear it up along with the great one. And so, when I came near, I saw the great one stretched upon the ground, but the small one upright, raised above the earth. When I saw this, I said in distress: "Behold this great tree; there is danger lest not even its offshoot be saved." And one wholly unknown to me said: "Look carefully and take courage; for, since the root remains in the ground, the smaller tree will remain unharmed and will be more firmly established." Such, then, were the dreams; but God knows to what they tend.

2. Concerning that abominable creature of doubtful sex, I should gladly learn this: when did he speak these things about me, before he met me or after? Make plain to me, then, whatever you are able.

3. As for my dealings with him, the gods know that often, when he had wronged the provincials, I kept silence beyond what was fitting for me, hearing some things not at all, others not admitting, disbelieving others, and turning some of them upon his associates. But when he thought fit to make me a partner in such disgrace by sending me his foul memoranda, worthy of every shame, what was I to do? Was I to keep silence or to fight? The first was foolish and slavish and hateful to the gods; the second was just and brave and worthy of a free man, but not permitted by the affairs that held me fast. What, then, did I do? In the presence of many whom I knew would report it to him, I said: "This fellow will by all means and altogether revise his memoranda, since he conducts himself shamefully." When he heard this, so far was he from doing anything with self-control that he did such things as, by the god, no moderate tyrant would have done, and that with me so near at hand. Here what should a man do who is a follower of the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle? Was I to look on while wretched men were given over to thieves, or to defend them so far as I could, since already they were singing their swan-song because of that god-detested workshop of such men? For my part it seems shameful to me to condemn the tribunes when they leave their post—and yet those men ought to die at once and not even be thought worthy of burial—but to abandon my own post on behalf of these wretched men, when I must fight against such thieves, and that too with the god fighting at our side, the god who appointed us. And if anything should happen to me, with a good conscience it is no small consolation to depart. As for the good Sallust, may the gods grant him to me. And even if through this I should chance to be given a successor, it will perhaps grieve me not at all; for it is better to do well for a little while than ill for a long time. The doctrines of the Peripatetics are not, as some say, less noble than those of the Stoics; they differ only this much from one another, as I judge: the latter are always more heated and more headstrong, the former more worthy of prudence and more constant to their convictions.

4. To Eustathius

Just when I had recovered from a very grievous and harsh illness, by the providence of him who watches over all things, your letter came into my hands, on the very day I first bathed. In the evening, having read it, you could not easily say how I was strengthened, perceiving your pure and unalloyed goodwill; of which may I become worthy, that I may not disgrace your friendship. Your letters I read at once, though I was scarcely able to do so; but those of Antoninus to Alexander I reserved for the morrow. From there, on the seventh day, I write this to you, my recovery proceeding by degrees through the forethought of God. Be kept safe for me, most longed-for and most beloved brother, by the god who watches over all things; may I see you, my good friend. And in my own hand: By your safety and mine, by the god who watches over all things, I have written as I think. Best of men, when shall I see you and embrace you? For now I love even your name, like those who are sick with love.

6. To Eustathius

Syloson, they say, went up to Darius and reminded him of the cloak, and asked of him, in return for it, Samos. Thereupon Darius prided himself, thinking he had given great things in return for small, while Syloson received a gift that brought him grief. Consider now my case beside his. In one thing, I think, my deed is the better: I did not wait to be reminded by another; but having kept the memory of your friendship unimpaired through so long a time, as soon as God gave me the power, I summoned you back not among the second but among the first. So much, then, for the past. But concerning the future, will you grant me—for I am something of a prophet—to foretell? I think it far better than the other, and may Adrasteia be gracious. For you have no need of a king to help you overturn a city, while I have need of many to help me set right what has fallen ill. These things the Gallic and barbarous Muse plays with you; but may you come rejoicing under the escort of the gods. And in his own hand: A spoil of kids, and of the hunting of the lambs in the winter quarters. Come to your friend, who even then, though not yet able to know what manner of man you are, nevertheless cherished you.

7. To Eustathius

I had already recovered from my illness when you sent the geography; nevertheless I received the little tablet sent by you with no less pleasure on that account. For it has the diagrams better than the former ones, and you have set it to music by adding the iambics, not singing the battle of Bupalus, after the manner of the Cyrenaean poet, but such as the fair Sappho wishes to fit to her songs. The gift is such as it perhaps befitted you to give and was most pleasant for me to receive. As for the administration of affairs, we rejoice with you that you are eager to carry everything through both vigorously and gently. For to blend gentleness and self-control with courage and strength, and to use the one toward the most reasonable men and the other relentlessly, for their correction, toward the wicked, is the work of no mean nature nor of slight virtue, as I am persuaded. We pray that you, holding to both these aims, may harmonise them into the one end, the good; for this, not without reason, the wisest of the ancients believed to be the goal set before all the virtues. May you continue in health and prosperity for the longest time, most longed-for and most beloved brother.

8. To Maximus the philosopher

All things rush upon me at once and shut up my voice, not suffering one thought to come forth before another, whether these be passions of the soul or whatever else one may please to call such things. But let us assign to them the order which time itself has assigned, having given thanks to the gods, who are the authors of all good, who have suffered me thus far to write, and perhaps will suffer us to see one another also. As soon as I became emperor—against my will, as the gods know—I made this plain there, on the spot, in such manner as I could; for, having taken the field against the barbarians, that campaign of mine lasting three months, on my return to the Gallic shores I kept watch and inquired of those who came from your parts whether any philosopher, any scholar wearing the cloak or the mantle, had landed. And when I was near Besontio—it is now a small town that has been restored, but of old it was great and adorned with costly temples, and with a strong wall, and besides with the natural strength of the place; for the river Doubs runs round it, and it stands up like a rocky headland in the sea, all but inaccessible, I might almost say, even to the birds, except where the river, flowing round it, affords as it were some beaches lying before it—near this city there met me a certain Cynic, wearing the threadbare cloak and carrying a staff. Seeing him from afar, I supposed him to be no other than you; and when I came nearer I thought he had certainly come from you. The man was indeed a friend, but he fell short of my expectation. This, then, was one such dream of mine. After this, I thought you would by all means be inquiring into my affairs, and that you could nowhere be found outside Greece. Let Zeus be my witness, and great Helios, and the might of Athena, and all the gods and goddesses, how, as I came down upon Illyricum from among the Celts, I trembled for you. And I inquired of the gods—not daring to do so myself, for I could not endure to see or hear any such thing as one might suppose was happening to you then, but committing it to others; and the gods clearly showed that there would be certain disturbances about you, but nothing dreadful, nor any accomplishment of those godless designs.

2. But you see that I have passed over many great things. It is most worth your while to learn how all at once we perceived the manifestation of the gods, and in what manner we escaped so great a multitude of plotters, having slain no one, taken away no one's money, and only put under guard those whom we caught in the very act. These things, perhaps, ought not to be written but spoken; yet I think you will be very glad to hear them. We worship the gods openly, and the greater part of the army that came down with me is god-fearing. We sacrifice oxen in public. We have rendered to the gods many hecatombs as thank-offerings. The gods bid me restore their worship in all its purity, so far as I can, and I obey them, and that gladly; for they say they will give great rewards for our labours, if we are not slothful. Evagrius has come to me . . . of the god honoured among us. . . .

3. Many things, indeed, come upon me besides these, but I must reserve some for your coming. Come, then, in the name of the gods, with all speed, using two carriages or more. And I have sent two of my most trusted servants, of whom one shall escort you as far as the camp, while the other shall announce that you have set out and are already arriving. Tell the young men yourself by which of them you wish each thing to be done.

4. To Maximus the philosopher

At the beginning of the third hour of the night, having not even a secretary, since all are busy, I have scarcely been able to write this to you. We live, by the gods, set free from suffering or doing irreparable things. Let Helios be my witness, whom above all I besought to aid me, and Zeus the king, that never did I pray to slay Constantius, but rather prayed against it. Why then did I come? Because the gods plainly bade me, promising safety if I obeyed, but, if I stayed, what may no god bring to pass; and besides, because, having been declared an enemy, I thought only to frighten him and to bring matters to a more reasonable understanding; but if it should be decided by battle, I committed everything to fortune and to the gods, and awaited whatever might seem good to their loving-kindness.

10. To Maximus the philosopher

We live, saved by the gods; and do you sacrifice thank-offerings to them on my behalf. And you shall sacrifice not on behalf of one man only, but on behalf of the whole community of the Hellenes. And if you have leisure to cross over even as far as the city of Constantine, I should set no small value on your company.

11. To Zeno

The chronicler of Thurii said that the ears of men are less to be trusted than their eyes. But concerning you I hold the contrary opinion; for my ears are more to be trusted by me than my eyes. For if I had seen you ten times over, I should not so have trusted my eyes as now I trust my own ears, having been taught by a man wholly incapable of falsehood that in everything, being a man, you surpass yourself "in achievement," as Homer says, "with hands and feet." Therefore, entrusting to you the use of arms, we have sent you a full suit of armour, such as befits the foot-soldiers; and we have enrolled you in the company of our own household troops.

12. To Eustathius

It is said that Alexander of Macedon used to sleep with the poems of Homer, that both by night and by day he might commune with his warlike maxims; but we sleep with your letters as with some healing remedies, and we do not cease reading them continually, always as though they were fresh and had but now first come into our hands. If, then, you are willing to procure for us, as an image of your presence, this converse through letters, write and do not leave off doing this continually; or rather, come, the gods willing, considering that, so long as you are absent, we cannot even say that we live, save in so far as we may read what is written by you.

13. To Eustathius

Grant me to say, after the manner of the melodious orators: "Oh, beyond hope am I preserved! Oh, beyond hope have I heard that you have escaped the three-headed hydra!" By Zeus, I do not mean my brother Constantius; he indeed was such as he was; but I mean the wild beasts about him, who cast their eyes greedily upon all men, and who made even him harsher, though of himself he was not altogether without gentleness, even if to many he seemed such. Of him, then, since he is now dead, let the earth lie light, as the saying is. But for these others I should not wish that anything should befall them unjustly—let Zeus be my witness. But since many accusers have risen up against them, a court has been appointed by lot. Do you, my friend, be present, and hasten beyond your strength; for I have long prayed by the gods to see you, and now, having most gladly heard that you are safe, I bid you come.

14. To Prohaeresius the sophist

Why should I not greet the noble Prohaeresius, a man who pours forth speeches upon the young as rivers pour their streams upon the plains, and who rivals Pericles in eloquence, save in the matter of throwing Hellas into confusion and turmoil? You must not wonder that to you I have imitated Laconian brevity. For it befits you wise men to make speeches very long and great, but for us even brief words to you are enough. Know, then, that many affairs flow in upon me from every side. As for the causes of my return, if you write a history I will report them to you most precisely, furnishing the letters as written proofs; but if you have resolved to persevere to the end, even to old age, in your declamations and exercises, perhaps you will not blame my silence at all.

15. To Aetius the philosopher

To all in general who were in any way banished by the late Constantius on account of the madness of the Galilaeans I have remitted their exile; but to you I not only remit it, but, remembering our old acquaintance and intimacy, I invite you to come to me. You shall use a public conveyance as far as my camp, and one spare horse.

16. To Eustathius the philosopher

On receiving your letter I was glad, as was natural; for how should I not be, learning that a man who is my comrade and the dearest of friends is well? And how, when I had broken the seal upon it and read it over many times, I cannot put into words what manner of man I became; for, being filled with calm and gladness of heart, I embraced the letter as though I beheld in it some image of your noble character. To write of it in detail would be long, and perhaps not free from idle chatter. But what I especially approved I will not hesitate to say. First, that the outrage which the governor of Hellas committed against you—if indeed such a man ought to be called a governor and not a tyrant—you bore not heavily, deeming that none of these things had been done against you. Then, that you wished and were eager to help that city in which you made your sojourn—this is a plain proof of a philosophic mind; so that the former seems to me to befit Socrates, the latter, I think, Musonius. For the one said that it is not lawful for a good man to be harmed by any of his inferiors and worthless men, while the other cared for the people of Gyara when Nero sentenced him to exile there. Having praised these things in your letter, I do not know in what way I shall receive the third point. For you write, bidding me indicate whatever you may seem to me to do or say out of tune. But that I now think I myself have more need of such admonitions than you do, though I have much to say, I will defer to another time. The request perhaps does not befit you either; for you have leisure to spare, and you are well endowed by nature, and you love philosophy if any man ever did. And these three things, coming together, sufficed to make Amphion the discoverer of the ancient music—time, the breath of God, and love of song. For not even the lack of instruments has the power to oppose these; rather these too the man who shares in these three would readily discover. For have we not received it by tradition that this very man discovered not only the harmonies, but the lyre itself besides, whether by some more than human invention or by some divine gift through a help past finding out? And most of the men of old seem to have given especial heed to these three things, and to have philosophised, not in pretence, needing nothing else. You must, then, be present, and through your letters too exhort us eagerly as to what should and should not be done; for we see that even among soldiers it is not those who are at peace who need allies, but those, I think, who are toiling in the war; and that among pilots it is not those who are not sailing who summon those who sail, but those who are at sea call upon those who are at leisure. So from the beginning it has seemed just that those at leisure should defend and stand by those engaged in affairs and instruct them what should be done, whenever, I think, they have the same purpose. Considering this, you should do for me the very thing which you ask should be done by me toward you; and, if it please you, let us make this compact, that I shall signify to you whatever seems to me about all your affairs, and you in turn to me about my words and deeds; for nothing, I think, could be fairer for us than such an exchange. May divine providence keep you in health for many years, most longed-for brother. May I see you speedily, as I pray.

17. To Zeno

Many other things bear witness to you that you stand among the first in the art of medicine, and that in character and reasonableness and the temperance of your life you are in harmony with your art; but now the chief witness has been added: though absent, you draw the city of the Alexandrians to yourself; so great a sting, like a bee, have you left behind in her. And rightly so; for well does it seem to be said by Homer too: "One man that is a physician is worth many other men." But you are not simply a physician, but a teacher also of the art to those who wish it, so that, what physicians are to the multitude, that you are to them. The very cause of your exile sets you free from it, and that most splendidly. For if it was on account of Georgius that you were removed from Alexandria, you were removed unjustly, and most justly may you return again. Come back, then, with full honour and your former rank, and let there be laid up a common favour to us from both parties, restoring to the Alexandrians Zeno, and to you Alexandria.

18. To the high priest Theodorus

. . . is it not right to grant to men this very thing which belongs to inanimate timbers? For suppose that a man has obtained a priesthood and chances to be unworthy of it: ought we not to forbear so long, until, having recognised that he is wicked and having barred him from his service, we make the name of priest, that was perhaps rashly conferred, accountable to insult and chastisement and penalty? If you do not know these things, you seem to know nothing else of what is moderate. For what experience have you of justice at all, who do not know what is a priest and what a private man? And where is your share of self-control, you who maltreated this man, before whom you ought even to have risen from your seat? Which is the most shameful thing of all, and especially in you, having no excuse either toward gods or toward men. The bishops and elders of the Galilaeans, it may be, sit with you, if not in public, because of me, yet privately and in your house; but because of you the priest has been beaten; for otherwise the high priest among you would never by Zeus have come to this petition. But since the things in Homer seem to you mere fable, hearken to the oracles of the lord of Didyma, that you may see how of old he admonished the Hellenes well by deed, and how later he taught by words those who were not temperate: "All those who against the priests, in the wantonness of their minds, work folly against the immortals, and against their honours plot opposition with thoughts that fear not the gods, shall not pass through to the end the whole path of life, all those who have done outrage to the blessed gods, whose god-revered ministering honour those men have taken away." The god, then, declares that not those who strike or insult, but those who deprive the priests of their honours, are enemies of the gods; and he who strikes one would be a temple-robber. I, therefore, since by ancestral right I am supreme high priest, and have now obtained also the office of prophet of Apollo of Didyma, forbid you for three courses of the moon to trouble the priest in any matter; and if in this time you shall appear worthy, when the high priest of the city writes to me whether you are acceptable to us, I will then take counsel with the gods concerning you afterward. This penalty I lay upon you for your rashness. As for the curses from the gods, the men of old were wont to utter and write them; yet it does not seem to me to be well. For nowhere do the gods themselves appear to have done such a thing. And besides, we ought to be ministers of prayers. Wherefore I think it well, and I join in praying with you, that, having earnestly entreated the gods, you may obtain forgiveness for your offences.

19. To Theodorus, concerning Pegasius

We should never readily have admitted Pegasius, had we not been clearly persuaded that, even before, while he seemed to be a bishop of the Galilaeans, he knew how to revere and honour the gods. I do not report this to you on hearsay from those who are wont to speak according to enmity or friendship, since indeed such things about him had been much dinned even into my own ears, and, by the gods, I thought I ought to hate him as I hated none of the basest of men. But when, having been summoned to the camp by the late Constantius, I was journeying by this road, having risen at deep dawn I came from the Troad to Ilion about the time when the marketplace fills. And he came to meet me, and, when I wished to view the city—for this was my pretext for visiting the temples—he became my guide and showed me everywhere.

2. There is a shrine of Hector, where a bronze statue stands in a small chapel. Over against this they set up the great Achilles, in the open air. If you have seen the place, you doubtless recognise what I mean. The story, then, on account of which the great Achilles, set over against him, has taken up the whole open space, you may hear from the guides. But I, finding the altars still burning, I might almost say still bright, and the image of Hector glistening with oil, looked at Pegasius and said: "What is this? Do the people of Ilion sacrifice?"—putting him gently to the test, to see how he was minded. And he said: "And what is strange in this, that they should worship a good man, their own fellow-citizen, as we worship the martyrs?" Now the comparison was not sound; but his disposition, examined in the circumstances of those times, was honourable. What followed next? "Let us go," I said, "to the precinct of Ilian Athena." And he very eagerly led me there, and opened the temple, and, as though calling me to witness, showed me all the statues perfectly preserved; and he did none of those things which those impious men are wont to do, sketching the memorial on their impious foreheads; nor did he hiss, as they do, to himself. For the height of their theology consists in these two things: to hiss at the daemons and to draw the cross upon their foreheads.

3. These are the two things I promised to tell you; but a third, coming into my mind, I think I ought not to pass over in silence. The same man followed me to the Achilleum also, and showed me the tomb in good preservation; yet I had been told that this too had been dug up by him. But he approached it with deep reverence. I saw these things myself. And I have heard from those who are now at enmity with him that he used also to pray secretly and to worship Helios. Would you not accept me even as a private man for a witness? Of each man's disposition toward the gods who could be more trustworthy witnesses than the gods themselves? Should we have made Pegasius a priest, if we had been conscious of any impiety in him toward the gods? But if in those times, whether reaching after power, or, as he often told us, in order to save the temples of the gods, he wrapped himself in those rags and feigned impiety so far as the name—for he has plainly nowhere done any wrong to the temples, save for a very few stones taken from a covering, that he might be able to save the rest—if we take this into account and are not ashamed to do to him the very things which Aphobius did, and which all the Galilaeans pray to see him suffer—if you give any heed to me, you will honour not this man only, but the others too who have come over, that they may the more readily obey us when we call them to good things, and the others may be the less glad. But if we drive away those who come of their own accord, no one will readily obey us when we summon them.

4. To Theodorus

I have composed for you a kind of letter more peculiar than for the others, because you have a greater share of friendship toward me than, I think, the others have. For our common guide is no small bond, and you doubtless remember it. It is no short time since, while I was still spending my days in the West, having learned that you were greatly pleasing to him, I counted you a friend; though it has been my wont, through excessive caution, to regard that saying as well said: "For I never met him nor saw him," and to hold that knowledge must come before friendship, and trial before knowledge. But there was, it seems, no small weight with me also in the words "He himself has said it." Therefore both then I thought I must enrol you among my acquaintance, and now I entrust to you a matter dear to me and most profitable to all men everywhere. And if you administer it well, as it is right to hope, know that you will furnish great gladness here, and a good hope, a greater one, for the time to come. For neither are we among those who are persuaded that souls either perish before their bodies or perish together with them; and we believe no man, but the gods alone, who alone are likely to know these things best, if indeed it is fitting to call "likely" what is necessary; since it befits men to conjecture about such matters, but it is necessary that the gods should know them with certainty.

2. What, then, is this which I say I now entrust to you? To rule over all the temples throughout Asia, choosing the priests in each city and assigning to each what befits him. Now there befits a ruler, first, fairness, and after it kindness, and love of man toward those who deserve to obtain such treatment. For whoever wrongs men, and is unholy toward the gods, and insolent toward all, must either be taught with frankness or chastened with severity. As to all that must be ordained in common concerning all the priests more fully, you shall presently learn it with the rest; but for the present I wish to suggest a few things to you. And it is just that you should obey me in such matters. For I do not, as all the gods know, improvise most such things; rather, if any man does, I am cautious and avoid innovation, in all things, one might say, but especially in things concerning the gods, holding that we ought to keep the ancestral laws which were given from the beginning. That the gods gave them is plain; for they would not have been so good had they come simply from men. But since it has come about that they have been neglected and corrupted, wealth and luxury having prevailed, I think we ought to attend to such matters as from the very hearth. Seeing, then, that there is much carelessness among us toward the gods, and that all reverence toward the higher powers has been driven out by impure and vulgar luxury, I have always lamented these things in private. For those who give heed to the discipline of Jewish piety are so fervent that they choose death for its sake, and endure every want and famine, that they may not taste swine's flesh, nor what is strangled, nor what has been throttled; while we are so slack in things concerning the gods that we have forgotten the things of our fathers, and no longer even know whether any such thing was ever ordained. But these Jews, being in part god-fearing, since they worship a god who is truly most powerful and most good, who governs the world of sense, whom, I well know, we too worship under other names, seem to me to do what is reasonable in not transgressing their laws; in this only do they err, that, while they please this god above all, they do not worship the other gods also, but think them allotted to us, the nations, alone, raised to this folly by a barbaric arrogance. But those of the Galilaean impiety, as though it were some disease, their own . . .

3. To the Alexandrians

If you do not reverence Alexander your founder, and before him the great god, the most holy Sarapis, how is it that no thought even of the common humanity and decency came into your minds? And I will add, of us also, whom all the gods, and first of all the great Sarapis, thought fit to set over the inhabited world; to whom it belonged to keep for ourselves the judgement concerning those who had wronged you. But anger, perhaps, and rage deceived you, which is wont to do dreadful things, dislodging the wits; for you, having checked the first rush of your passion, afterward added lawlessness to your well-considered first resolve, and were not ashamed, being a people, to dare the very things for which you justly hated those men. Tell me, in the name of Sarapis, for what wrongs were you angry with Georgius? You will say, doubtless, that the late Constantius exasperated him against you, and then he brought an army into the holy city, and the general of Egypt seized the most holy precinct of the god, plundering thence images and votive offerings and the adornment within the temples. And when you, naturally indignant, tried to defend the god, or rather the possessions of the god, he dared to send the soldiers against you unjustly and lawlessly and impiously, fearing Georgius, perhaps, more than Constantius, who watched him narrowly to see whether he would deal with you in a more moderate and statesmanlike, rather than tyrannical, fashion. Being angry, then, for these things with Georgius the enemy of the gods, you again defiled the holy city, when you might have subjected him to the votes of the judges. For thus the deed would have been no murder nor lawlessness, but a fitting justice, keeping you wholly guiltless, punishing him who had committed incurable impiety, and chastening all others who hold the gods in light esteem and who, moreover, count such cities and flourishing peoples as nothing, but make cruelty against them a mere by-work of their own power.

2. Compare, then, this letter of mine with the one I sent you a little while ago, and mark the difference. How many praises of you did I write then? But now, by the gods, though I wish to praise you, I cannot, because of your lawlessness. A people dares, like dogs, to tear a man to pieces, and then is not ashamed to lift up to the gods hands dripping with blood. But Georgius deserved to suffer such things. Yes, and I might say he deserved worse and bitterer than these. And on your account, you will say. I agree to this myself; but if you say it was at your hands, this I no longer grant. For you have laws, which ought to be honoured and cherished above all by every man in private. Yet, since it happens that some individuals transgress, still the public order at least must be well-governed, and you must obey the laws and not transgress the ordinances which from the beginning were well established. It has been a piece of good fortune for you, men of Alexandria, that you committed such a transgression in my reign, who, out of reverence for the god, and for the sake of my uncle and namesake, who ruled over Egypt itself and over your city, preserve toward you a brotherly goodwill. For a power that will not be despised, and the sterner and purer rule, would never overlook the daring of a people without purging it, like a grievous disease, with a bitter medicine. But I, for the reasons I have just named, apply to you the gentlest remedy: admonition and words, by which I well know you will be the more persuaded, if indeed you are, as I hear, of old time Hellenes, and if even now there remains in you, in mind and pursuits, some worthy and noble stamp of that nobility.

3. Let this be published to my fellow-citizens, the Alexandrians.

4. To Arsacius, high priest of Galatia

Hellenism does not yet prosper as we would, by reason of those who profess it; but the things of the gods are splendid and great, beyond all prayer and all hope. May Adrasteia be gracious to our words; for so great and so swift a change, in so short a time, none would have dared even to pray for a little while ago. Why, then, do we think these things suffice, and do not consider how greatly atheism has been advanced by kindness toward strangers, and care for the burial of the dead, and the pretended holiness of life? Each of these, I think, ought to be truly practised by us. And it is not enough that you alone be such, but all the priests throughout Galatia without exception; whom either put to shame or persuade to be earnest, or remove from the priestly service, if they do not, together with their wives and children and servants, draw near to the gods, but suffer their household, or sons, or wives to be impious toward the gods, preferring atheism to god-fearing. Next, exhort the priest neither to frequent the theatre, nor to drink in a tavern, nor to be patron of any base or disgraceful trade or occupation; and honour those who obey, but thrust out those who disobey. Establish in each city frequent hostels, that strangers may enjoy our kindness, not our own people only, but also any other who is in need of money. As for the source from which you shall provide this, I have already devised a plan. For I have ordered that every year throughout all Galatia thirty thousand bushels of corn and sixty thousand measures of wine be given; the fifth part of which I say must be spent upon the poor who serve the priests, and the rest distributed by us to strangers and beggars. For it is shameful that, while no Jew ever begs, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, our own people should be seen to lack our aid. Teach also those who hold to Hellenism to contribute to such services, and the Hellenic villages to offer their first-fruits to the gods; and accustom those of the Hellenic faith to such good works, teaching them that this was of old our practice. Homer, at any rate, made Eumaeus say: "Stranger, it is not lawful for me, even if a worse man than you should come, to dishonour a stranger; for from Zeus come all strangers and beggars; and a gift, though small, is welcome." Let us not, then, by allowing others to outdo us in the good deeds that are properly our own, ourselves disgrace, or rather betray, by our slothfulness, our reverence toward the gods. If I learn that you are doing these things, I shall be full of gladness.

2. Visit the governors rarely at their houses, but write to them for the most part. And when they enter the city, let no priest go out to meet them, but only, when they go to the temples of the gods, within the porches. Let no soldier lead the way before them within, but whoever wishes may follow; for the moment a man comes to the threshold of the precinct he has become a private person. For you yourself rule, as you know, over those within, since the divine ordinance requires this. And those who obey are in truth god-fearing, while those who cling to their pride are vainglorious and empty of true honour.

3. I am ready to aid Pessinus, if its people render the Mother of the gods gracious to them; but if they neglect her, they shall be not only blameless but—not to put it too bitterly—shall perhaps even feel our displeasure. "For it is not lawful for me to receive into my care, nor to pity, men who are hateful to the immortal gods." Persuade them, then, if they hold to my care, all together to become suppliants of the Mother of the gods.

4. To Ecdicius, prefect of Egypt

Some men have a passion for horses, others for birds, others for wild beasts; but in me, from childhood, there has been a strong longing for the acquisition of books. It would therefore be absurd if I should suffer these to be appropriated by men for whom gold alone does not suffice to glut their great love of wealth, and who, besides, are minded to filch these too without scruple. Grant me, then, this favour as to a private man: that all the books of Georgius be found out. For he had many philosophical works, many rhetorical, and many also of the teaching of the impious Galilaeans; which last I should wish to have utterly destroyed, but, lest the more useful be carried off together with these, let all of them too be sought out with care. Let the secretary of Georgius be your guide in this search, who, if he tracks them down faithfully, may know that he will obtain freedom as his reward; but if he prove in any way a knave in the matter, he shall be brought to the test of torture. I myself know the books of Georgius, if not all, yet many; for he lent me some, while I was in Cappadocia, to copy, and received them back again.

24. An edict concerning Athanasius

He who has been expelled by very many royal and imperial commands ought to have waited for at least one imperial command before returning to his own country, and not, using audacity and recklessness, have insulted the laws as though they did not exist; since indeed even now to the Galilaeans who were banished by the late Constantius we have granted not a return to their churches, but a return to their own countries. But I learn that the most audacious Athanasius, lifted up by his accustomed insolence, has again seized what among them is called the episcopal throne; and that this is no small offence to the god-fearing people of the Alexandrians. Wherefore we proclaim to him to depart from the city, from whatever day he receives the letters of our clemency, forthwith; but if he remains within the city we proclaim against him far greater and harsher punishments.

25. To Evagrius

A little property of four fields, given to me by my grandmother in Bithynia, I give as a gift to your disposal—too little to enrich a man greatly or make him wealthy, yet not, even so, a wholly unpleasing gift, if I should describe its particulars to you. And there is nothing to forbid me to jest with you, who are full of graces and good taste. It is distant from the sea not more than twenty stades, and no merchant nor sailor, prating and insolent, disturbs the place. Yet it is not wholly bereft of the gifts of Nereus, for it has always fish fresh and still gasping; and, going up to a little hill that rises from the buildings, you will see the sea, the Propontis, and the islands, and the city named after the noble emperor, not standing among seaweed and moss, nor vexed by the unpleasant and unnameable refuse cast up upon the beaches and the sands, but among smilax and thyme and fragrant grass. There is great quiet as you lie down and look into a book, and then, resting your eyes, it is most pleasant to gaze out upon the ships and the sea. This, when I was quite a young lad, seemed to me a most dear summer retreat; for it has also springs not poor, and a bath not unlovely, and a garden and trees. And being now a man, I longed for that old way of life, and came there often, and our meeting was not without discourse. There is here too a small memorial of my husbandry, a little vineyard, bearing wine fragrant and sweet, which does not wait to receive anything from time. You shall see Dionysus and the Graces. The cluster, both on the vine and crushed in the press, breathes of roses, and the new must in the jars is already a fragment of nectar, if we believe Homer. Why, then, has not such a vine become great, nor spread over very many plethra? Perhaps I have not been an eager husbandman; but since for me the bowl of Dionysus is sober and needs much water from the nymphs, I have provided only so much as suffices for myself and my friends, who are a small company. This now I give you as a gift, dear friend, small indeed as it is, but a graceful one, from friend to friend, "from home to home," as the wise poet Pindar says. I have written this letter hurriedly, by lamplight, so that, if anything is amiss in it, do not examine it sharply, nor as one orator another.

26. To Themistius the philosopher

The proverb says: "You announce no war"; and I would add, from the comedy: "O you that announce a treasure of words." Come, then, prove it by deeds, and hasten to me; for you will come as friend to friend. The common and constant business of affairs seems indeed somewhat burdensome to those who do not make it a by-work; but those who share the care of it are, as I am persuaded, reasonable men, and intelligent, and altogether competent for everything. They give me, therefore, ease, so that I may rest without neglecting anything; for we are together with one another not with the dissembling of courts—of which alone, I suppose, you have hitherto had experience—wherein men, while they praise, hate with a hatred such as they bear not even to their bitterest enemies, but with the freedom that befits us, refuting one another when there is need and reproving, we love one another no less than the closest comrades. Hence it is possible for us—and far be envy—to be earnest in our leisure, and not to be worn out in our earnestness, and to sleep without fear. For even when I am awake, I am awake not on my own behalf rather than on behalf of all the rest, as is fitting.

2. In this I have perhaps chattered and prated to you, having suffered something foolish; for I have praised myself like Astydamas. But that I might persuade you that your presence, as that of a sensible man, will be of more use to us than it will take anything from your leisure, I have written this. Hasten, then, as I said, using the public post; and having stayed with us as long as is dear to you, you shall go wherever you wish, sent on by us, as is fitting.

3. To the people of some city, remitting their debts

To a king who looked to gain, your request would have appeared a hard one, and he would not have thought it right to harm the public revenue by a private favour to certain men; but since we have made it our aim not to gather the most we can from our subjects, but to be the authors of the most good to them, this very thing shall release you from your debts. It shall release you, however, not from all of them simply, but the matter shall be divided, part to you and part to the needs of the soldiers, from which you yourselves, of course, reap no small benefit, namely peace and security. Therefore up to the third indiction we remit to you all that is owing from the time now past; but after this you shall pay according to custom. For both to you the remission is favour enough, and we must not neglect the common interest. Concerning this I have written also to the prefects, that the favour may pass into effect for you. May the gods preserve you in health for all time.

28. To the Thracians (or a letter on behalf of the Argives)

On behalf of the city of the Argives one might say much, were he minded to glorify her, both old things and new. For of the Trojan war, as later of the Persian war for the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, the greater part of the work belongs to them. Both, indeed, seem to have been done in common by Hellas; but it is right that, as in the toils and the care, so also in the praises, the leaders should have the greater share. But these things seem somewhat ancient; while what came after them—the return of the Heracleidae, and how the privilege was set apart for the eldest, and the colony sent thence to the Macedonians, and that, dwelling so close beside the Lacedaemonians, the city kept itself ever unenslaved and free—was the work of no small or common courage. And as for those great things done against the Persians by the Macedonians, one might justly suppose that they belong to this city; for Philip and Alexander, of those most famous among the ancestors, this was their fatherland. Later, to the Romans she submitted, not so much conquered as in alliance, and shared, I suppose, like the rest, in freedom and in the other rights which the rulers for the time being grant to the cities of Hellas.

2. But now the Corinthians—for so it is more decent to put it: that the city is reckoned as belonging to them—being puffed up to ill-doing by the imperial city, compel her to contribute to them, and they began, as they say, this innovation seven years ago, having no respect for the immunity of the Delphians or the Eleans, which was granted to them for holding the sacred games among them. For of the four greatest and most splendid contests in Hellas, as we know, the Eleans hold the Olympic games, the Delphians the Pythian, the Corinthians the games at the Isthmus, and the Argives celebrate the festival of the Nemean games. How then is it reasonable that those should keep the immunity granted of old, while these, who were freed long ago from like expenses, and perhaps not even subjected at the first, should now be robbed of the privilege they were granted? Besides, the Eleans and Delphians are wont to hold their famous quadrennial festival but once; whereas the Nemean games are held twice among the Argives, as the Isthmian among the Corinthians. And in this same period two other contests of the same kind are now also set before the Argives, so that there are four in all in four years. How then is it reasonable that those others should be untroubled, performing their service once, while these are subjected besides to the contributions of others, on top of fourfold services at home, and these too not even for a Hellenic and ancient festival? For it is not for the equipment of gymnastic or musical contests that the Corinthians need their great expenditures, but for the hunting-shows that are often held in the theatres they buy bears and panthers. And they, indeed, naturally bear the greatness of the outlay because of their wealth, especially as many cities, in all likelihood, join with them in this, so that they purchase the pleasure of their pride. But the Argives, who are poorer in money, and who are forced to be laid under contribution for a foreign spectacle and for the benefit of others, how shall they not suffer things unjust and unlawful and unworthy of the ancient power and renown of the city, being neighbours of those Corinthians whom it were rather fitting that they should love, if it be rightly said that "not even an ox would perish, but for the wickedness of a neighbour"? The Argives, it seems, accuse the Corinthians of meddling not over one little ox, but over many great expenses, for which they are not justly accountable.

3. And yet to the Corinthians one might reasonably add this question: whether they think it well to follow the customs of ancient Hellas, or rather those which they seem lately to have received from the imperial city. For if they cherish the dignity of the ancient customs, it befits not the Argives to contribute to Corinth more than the Corinthians to Argos; but if it is the rights now belonging to their city, since they received the Roman colony, on which they insist in claiming to have the more, we shall moderately beg of them not to think themselves greater than their fathers, nor to set aside what those men, having decided well, preserved as customs for the cities of Hellas, and to make innovations to the harm and hurt of their neighbours, especially as they use a more recent decision, and have for a windfall to their greed the negligence of the man who was allotted to plead the cause on behalf of the city of the Argives. For if he had allowed the suit to be carried outside Hellas, the Corinthians were likely to have less strength, and justice, examined, would have appeared ill served by the many and noble advocates by whom the judge, with the added dignity of the city, would in all likelihood have been shamed into giving this verdict.

4. But the rights on behalf of the city, and those of the advocates, if only you are willing to hear, and the pleading of the suit be entrusted to them, you shall learn from the beginning, and what occurs to one from what is said will be rightly judged. But that you ought to be persuaded, through us, by those who present this embassy, a little must be added concerning them. Diogenes and Lamprias are philosophers, if any among us are, but they have avoided the honoured and gainful parts of public life; ever eager, however, to aid their country to the best of their power, whenever the city falls into great need, then they make speeches and take part in affairs and go on embassies and spend gladly of their own substance, by their deeds making answer to the reproaches of philosophy, and proving false the opinion that those who pursue philosophy are useless to the cities. For their country uses them for these things, and they try to defend the right through us, and we again through you. For this alone is left to the wronged for their preservation, to obtain a judge who is both willing to judge and able to judge well; for whichever of these be lacking, the right, deceived or betrayed by him, must perish utterly. But since now we have judges according to our prayer, and yet they cannot plead unless leave was first granted, they ask that this first be conceded to them, and that the negligence of him who then pleaded for the city, and undertook the suit, may not become for her, for all time to come, the cause of so great a loss.

5. And one ought not to think it strange that the suit should be made open again; for private men it is profitable to overlook a little the better and more advantageous, buying security for the time to come; for, their life being short, it is pleasant to enjoy even a little quiet, while it is fearful to be ruined in the courts in litigation, and to hand down to one's children a suit unfinished; so that it is perhaps better to gain the half in any way than, contending for the whole, to die. But the cities, being immortal, if someone judging justly does not free them from their strife with one another, must of necessity keep their ill-will immortal, and their hatred, strong and strengthened by time. It has been said, the orators say, this is my plea; but you yourself will judge what is right.

6. To the priest Theodorus

If I make light of your letters, then "afterward the gods themselves destroyed my wits." For what good thing is not in your letters? Goodwill, faithfulness, truth, and, before these, that without which the rest are nothing, prudence, displayed in all her parts—in quickness of mind, in understanding, in good counsel. As for my not answering—for this too you blamed me—I have no leisure, by the gods; and do not think that the matter is affectation or play. I call the gods of eloquence to witness that, except Homer and Plato, no book follows me, neither philosophic nor rhetorical nor grammatical, nor any history of those in common use; and even these very ones are like amulets and charms, for they are ever bound to me. Of the rest I have but few, and I pray, though needing them, as is natural, if ever at any other time, then now, very many and great prayers. But affairs press me, hemmed in on every side; and you yourself will perhaps see, when I am come into Syria.

2. As to the matters about which you wrote me, I approve everything, I admire all that you have in mind; nothing in those plans is to be rejected. Know, therefore, that I will also do everything, the gods aiding.

3. Set the columns of Daphne before the rest. Take those from the palaces everywhere and bring them away, and set in their places those from the houses lately seized; and if even from these they should be lacking, let us use cheaper ones, of baked brick and plaster, faced outside with marble for the time. For that holiness is better than costliness, and holds much pleasure in life and in use for the right-minded, you yourself know.

4. Concerning the affair with Lauricius I think I need write nothing to you, save only this counsel: put away all anger, commit everything to justice, lending your ears to his words with all good faith toward the right. And I do not say this as though the things written to you were not offensive and full of all insolence and contempt; but you must bear it; for it is the part of a good and great-souled man to be evil spoken of, but not to speak evil. For just as missiles hurled against solid and noble walls do not cling to them, nor strike, nor lodge, but recoil the more sharply upon those who throw them, so all reviling and slander and unjust insolence poured out upon a good man touches him not at all, but turns back upon him who pours it. This I counsel you; the rest shall be for the trial to decide. As for my letters, which he says you received from me and published, it seems to me laughable to bring them into court; for I, by the gods, never wrote to you, nor to any other man, anything which I do not wish to be set publicly before all. For what wantonness, what insolence, what abuse, what reviling, what foulness of speech, was ever written in my letters? Indeed, even if I felt harshly toward anyone, and the subject gave me leave to speak, as it were, "from the wagon," as Archilochus falsely did against Lycambes, I uttered it more gravely and more soberly than one who treats of a sacred theme. And if my letters showed the goodwill that exists between us, did I wish this to be hidden or concealed? Why? I have all the gods and goddesses to witness that even of all I wrote to my wife I should not have been vexed, had anyone published it; so full of self-control was it all. And if the letters I sent to my own uncle have been read by some one other man, by a second person, he who so bitterly tracked them down would more justly incur blame than I who wrote them, or you, or any other who read them. But, however, grant this and let it not trouble you; only consider this: Lauricius is a wicked man; deal with him nobly. But if he is reasonable and moderate, and offended against you, give him pardon; for the good, in public matters, even if privately they behave toward us not as they should, we ought to love. The wicked, in common affairs, even if they have done us a kindness, must be kept under hand—I do not say hated nor turned away from—but some guard must be set, that they may not work mischief unawares; and if they are hard to watch, then to make no use of them at all. As for the man of whom you yourself also wrote, that, being notorious for wickedness, he plays the physician, he was summoned by us as an earnest man; but before he came into our sight he was detected for what he was, or rather informed against; and by whom I will tell you when I meet you. He was held in scorn; and for this too I am grateful to you.

5. As for the lands you asked for, since I have already given those away—the gods of kindred and of friendship are my witnesses—I will give you others far more profitable, and you yourself shall perceive it.

6. To Maximus the philosopher (or to Philip)

I, by the gods, while still Caesar, wrote to you, and, I think, more than once. I often set out to do so, but was hindered, now by one cause, now by another, and then by the wolf-friendship that arose, after my proclamation, between me and the late Constantius; for I was altogether careful not to write to anyone beyond the Alps, lest I should bring upon him grievous troubles. Take it, then, as a proof of my goodwill that I did not write; for the tongue is often unwilling to agree with the mind. And perhaps there is something for the vulgar to plume and boast themselves upon in the display of imperial letters, when, like rings carried about by men of no taste, they are paraded before the unaccustomed. But true friendship comes chiefly through likeness, and in the second place when a man admires truly and not in pretence, and when the gentle and moderate and self-controlled is loved by one who is, by fortune and understanding, his superior. These little notes are full of much vanity and much trifling; and I often blame myself for making them too long and being too talkative, when I might teach my tongue Pythagorean silence.

2. I received, however, the gifts—a silver bowl weighing one mina, and a piece of gold coin. I wished to summon you to me, as you wrote. But already the spring is showing itself, and the trees are budding, and the swallows, all but expected, when they come in, drive us, their fellow-soldiers, from the houses, and say that we must keep beyond the borders. We shall march through your country, so that, the gods willing, I may better meet with you among your own people. And this, I think, will be soon, unless some divine hindrance arise; and even this we pray the gods to avert.

3. To Eustochius

That the science of medicine is salutary to men, the plain evidence of its usefulness bears witness. Wherefore the sons of the philosophers rightly proclaim that it too came down from heaven; for the weakness of our nature, and the maladies that befall us, are set right by it. Therefore, according to the reckoning of justice, in harmony with the kings on high who so decreed, we, of our clemency, order that you be allowed to pass the rest of your time undisturbed by the burdens of public service.

32. To Theodora

The book which you sent by Mygdonius we have received, and all the tokens besides that were sent to us during the festival. Each of these is pleasant to me; but pleasanter than all, be assured, was to learn concerning your goodness that, by the gods' grace, your body is in health, and that the things concerning the gods are pursued by you more carefully and more earnestly. As to what you wrote to the philosopher Maximus, that my friend Seleucus is at variance with you, be persuaded that he does and says nothing of the kind before me, by which he might most slander you; on the contrary, he says nothing but good of you, and I do not yet say that he is even well disposed toward you—for that he himself must know, and the gods who see all things. But that, before me, he abstains from all such things, I say with strict truth. It seems to me, therefore, ridiculous to consider not what is done by him but what is hidden, and to examine things of which I have no plain proof. But since you ran him down at great length, and revealed also something about yourself, making plain to me the cause of your enmity toward him, this much I say to you frankly: that if you love anyone, man or woman, slave or free, who neither now worships the gods nor whom you have any hope of persuading, you do wrong. For consider, first in your own case: if one of the servants you love should take part with those who revile and blaspheme you, and serve them rather, and turn away from and loathe us, your friends, would you not wish him to perish at once, or rather would you not yourself punish him? What then? Are the gods of less honour than friends? Reckon this too in their case, holding them as masters and us as their slaves. If, then, one of us, who say we are servants of the gods, should cherish a servant who loathes them and turns away from their worship, is it not just either to persuade and save him, or to put him out of the house and sell him, if one cannot easily despise the loss of a slave? But I would not consent to be loved by those who do not love the gods; and this I say that you, and all who lay claim to priestly functions, ought, having now thought of it, to lay hold the more earnestly of holiness toward the gods; and the priest ought to furnish from his own house a reasonable reverence, and to show it whole and pure throughout from such maladies, first of all.

33. To Theodora

All the books sent by you I have gladly received, and your letters, by the excellent Mygdonius. And scarcely having leisure, as the gods know—I say it without affectation—I have written this reply to you. May you fare well, and write me always such things.

34. To a priestess

I have received all that your wisdom sent, the good and fair tidings and gifts from the gods; and having confessed great thanks to the heavenly gods, in the second place I have rendered thanks to your magnanimity, that you are eager above all to entreat the gods on our behalf, and are zealous to make known to us speedily the good things that have appeared to you.

35. To Aristoxenus the philosopher

Ought one to wait for an invitation, and never to value coming uninvited? But take care lest we introduce a hard rule of law, if from friends one must wait for the same things as from acquaintances who are simply and casually known. Here someone will be at a loss: how are we friends, who have not seen one another? And how friends with those who lived a thousand years ago, yes, by Zeus, and two thousand? Because they were all earnest and noble and good in character. And we too desire to be such, though in being so, as far as I am concerned, we fall very far short. Yet the desire at least ranks us in some sort in the same class with them. But why do I prate longer about this? For whether one must come uninvited, you will doubtless come; or whether you wait for an invitation, behold, here too an invitation comes to you from us. Meet me, then, near Tyana, in the name of Zeus the god of friendship, and show me a man who in Cappadocia is purely a Hellene. For so far I see men who are unwilling to sacrifice, and a few who are willing but do not know how.

36. An edict concerning teachers

Right education, we hold, is not that elegance of words and tongue which is laboured over, but a sound disposition of a mind that has understanding, and true opinions concerning things good and evil, noble and base. Whoever, then, thinks one thing and teaches another to those who come to him, seems to fall as far short of being educated as he falls short of being a good man. And if in small matters the difference between thought and tongue be slight, it is an evil, yet somehow tolerable; but if in the greatest matters a man thinks one thing and teaches the contrary of what he thinks, how is not this the very mark of hucksters, and not of honest men, but of utterly worthless men, who praise most what they think most worthless, deceiving and luring by their praises those into whom, I think, they wish to transfer their own evils? All, then, who profess to teach anything ought to be reasonable in character, and not to carry in their souls opinions at variance with what they publicly handle. But far more than all, I think, ought those to be such who associate with the young in the matter of letters, becoming interpreters of the ancient writers, whether rhetoricians or grammarians, and still more the sophists. For these wish to be teachers not of words only but of morals, and they claim that political philosophy is their own province. Whether this be true or not, let it pass for the present. But, while praising them for reaching after such fair professions, I should praise them still more if they would not lie, nor convict themselves of thinking one thing and teaching their pupils another. What then? Were not Homer, and Hesiod, and Demosthenes, and Herodotus, and Thucydides, and Isocrates, and Lysias led in all their learning by the gods? Did not some of them hold themselves sacred to Hermes, and others to the Muses? It is absurd, I think, that those who expound their works should dishonour the gods whom those men honoured. Yet, though I think this absurd, I do not say that they must change their views and so associate with the young; I give them the choice, either not to teach what they do not deem worthy, or, if they wish to teach, first to persuade their pupils in deed that neither Homer nor Hesiod nor any of these whom they expound, and of whom they have condemned impiety, folly, and error concerning the gods, is really such as they say. For since they are nourished and earn their pay from the writings of these men, they confess themselves most basely greedy of gain, and ready to endure anything for a few drachmas. Now until this time there were many reasons for not frequenting the temples, and the fear that hung over us on every side gave excuse for hiding the truest opinions about the gods; but since the gods have given us liberty, it seems to me absurd that men should teach others what they do not deem to be good. But if they think those wise of whom they are the interpreters, and before whom they sit as prophets, let them first emulate their piety toward the gods; but if they suppose those men to have erred concerning the most honoured beings, then let them go into the churches of the Galilaeans to expound Matthew and Luke, in obedience to whom you ordain abstinence from sacrifices. I would that your ears and your tongues might be born anew, as you would say, into those things in which may I ever have part, and whoever thinks and acts dear to me. For teachers and masters let this common law be laid down; but whoever of the young wishes to attend is not barred. For neither is it reasonable to shut out from the best road the boys who do not yet know which way to turn, and to lead them by fear, against their will, to the rites of their fathers. And yet it were just, as we heal the frenzied against their will, so to heal these too against their will; only let pardon be granted to all for such a disease. For we ought, I think, to teach, and not to chastise, the foolish.

37. To Atarbius

I, by the gods, do not wish the Galilaeans to be slain, nor beaten contrary to justice, nor to suffer any other evil; yet I say that the god-fearing must by all means be preferred. For through the folly of the Galilaeans almost everything has been overturned, while through the goodwill of the gods we are all preserved. Therefore we must honour the gods and the god-fearing, both men and cities.

38. To Porphyrius

There was a very large and great library of Georgius, of philosophers of every kind, of many commentators, and not least among them many and various books of the Galilaeans. Seek out, then, this whole library all together, and take care to send it to Antioch, knowing that you yourself will be visited with the heaviest penalty, unless you track it down with all diligence, and, by every kind of proof and by oaths of every sort, and, more, by the torture of the slaves, compel those who are in any way suspected of having stolen the books—if you cannot persuade them—to bring everything forth into the open. Farewell.

39. To the Byzacians

We have restored to you all the senators, and the sons of senators, whether they gave themselves over to the superstition of the Galilaeans, or in some other way contrived to escape the council, except those who have already performed public services in the metropolis.

40. To Hecebolius

I have treated all the Galilaeans so gently and humanely that no one anywhere suffers violence, nor is dragged to a temple, nor is wronged in any other such matter against his own purpose. But the people of the Arian church, waxing wanton through their wealth, attacked the followers of Valentinus, and dared at Edessa such things as could never happen in a well-governed city. Therefore, since by their most admirable law they have been bidden to sell their goods and give to the poor, that they may go the more easily into the kingdom of heaven, we, helping the men of their church toward this end, have ordered that all the money of the church of the Edessenes be taken up to be given to the soldiers, and that its properties be added to our privy purse; that, being poor, they may be temperate, and may not be deprived of that heavenly kingdom for which they still hope. And to the inhabitants of Edessa we proclaim that they abstain from all faction and strife, lest, having stirred up our humanity, you pay the penalty, on your own heads, for the disorder of the commonwealth, being punished with sword and exile and fire.

41. To the Bostrenes

I thought that the leaders of the Galilaeans would feel greater gratitude to me than to him who governed the empire before me. For under him it befell most of them to be banished and persecuted and imprisoned, and already great numbers of those whom they call heretics had been slaughtered, as at Samosata and Cyzicus and in Paphlagonia and Bithynia and Galatia, and in many other nations whole villages were utterly destroyed and laid waste; but under me the contrary. For those who were exiled have been set free, and those whose goods were confiscated have received back, by law from us, all their own. Yet they have come to such a pitch of raving madness and folly that, because they are not allowed to play the tyrant, nor to do what they once did to one another, and afterward to us the god-fearing, being provoked, they leave no stone unturned, and dare to throw the multitudes into confusion and to raise sedition, being impious toward the gods and disobedient to our commands, humane though these are. For we suffer none of them to be dragged unwilling to the altars, and we expressly proclaim to them that, if any willingly wishes to share with us in the lustral water and the libations, he must first offer purifying sacrifices and entreat the averting gods. So far are we from wishing or designing that any of the impious should ever share in our holy sacrifices, until he has purified his soul by prayers to the gods and his body by the lawful purifications.

2. The multitudes, then, deceived by those who are called clergy, are plainly stirred up to faction now that this license is taken away. For those who have tyrannised over them are not content that they are not punished for the evils they have done, but, longing for their former dominion, because they are no longer suffered to sit as judges and write wills and appropriate the inheritances of others and assign everything to themselves, they pull every rope of disorder, and, as the saying is, pour fire upon fire, and dare to add greater evils to their former ones, leading the multitudes into discord. It has seemed good to me, therefore, to proclaim to all the peoples by this edict, and to make plain, that they should not join in faction with the clergy, nor be persuaded by them to take up stones, nor disobey the magistrates; but let them assemble as much as they will, and pray such prayers as they think fit for themselves; but if the clergy persuade them to raise faction on their own behalf, let them no longer consent, lest they pay the penalty.

3. This I have resolved to proclaim in particular to the city of the Bostrenes, because the bishop Titus and the clergy, in the petitions they presented, accused the multitude that was with them, as though they themselves were exhorting the multitude not to riot, while the multitude was rushing into disorder. At any rate, the very words which he dared to write I have appended to this edict of mine. They are: "Although the Christians are a match in number for the Hellenes, they are held in check by our exhortation that no one anywhere behave disorderly." These are the bishop's words concerning you. See how he says that your good order proceeds not from your own will; for, as he said, you are held in check, unwillingly, by his exhortations. Of your own accord, then, drive him from the city as your accuser, but be at concord, you the multitudes, with one another, and let no man oppose or wrong another; neither let those who err harm those who worship the gods rightly and justly, according to what has been handed down to us from of old; nor let you who worship the gods plunder the houses or rob those who have erred more from ignorance than from intent. By reason we ought to persuade and teach men, not by blows and outrage and the torment of the body. Again and often I exhort those who press on toward the true religion to do no wrong to the multitudes of the Galilaeans, nor to attack nor insult them. Rather we ought to pity than to hate those who fare ill in the greatest things; for the greatest of all good things in truth is reverence for the gods, and, on the contrary, of all evils, impiety. And it befalls those who have turned aside from the gods to the dead and to relics to pay this penalty; for as with those held by some sickness we feel pain, so with those released and set free by the gods we rejoice.

4. Given on the Kalends of August, at Antioch.

5. To Callixene

Time alone reveals the just man, as we have learned from those of old; but I would say that it reveals the pious man too and the lover of the gods. "But Penelope also," you will say, "was attested to be a lover of her husband." Then who, after love of her husband, sets in second place in a woman the love of the gods, and does not appear to have drunk much mandragora? And if one takes into account the times also, and that Penelope was praised by well-nigh all for her love of her husband, while a little while ago pious women were in danger, and, to add to the evils, that the time was twice as long, is it possible for you fittingly to be set beside Penelope? But do not make small your praises, in return for which all the gods will reward you, while we for our part will honour you with a double priesthood. For in addition to the one you held before, of the most holy goddess Demeter, we entrust to you the priesthood of the great Mother of the gods, the Phrygian, in god-beloved Pessinus.

43. To the philosopher Maximus (an invitation)

May the proem be not too commonplace: "The noble man." What follows you doubtless know. Indeed you have it; for you know, being a man of letters and a philosopher, what follows it, and you have me for a friend, if at least we are both noble men. For of you I would even contend that you are such; but of myself I am silent; may it be that others perceive me too to be such. But why, as if I were going to say something strange, do I go round in a circle when I should speak plainly? Come, and hasten, and, as the saying is, fly. A gracious god shall speed you on your way, with the Maiden of the Crossways; and the public post shall serve you, with a carriage if you wish to use one, and two spare horses.

44. To a physician

"One must love a guest while he is present, and send him on when he wishes to go": so the wise Homer laid down the law. But between us there is something better than the friendship of guest and host, both through such culture as we have and through reverence toward the gods; so that no one would justly charge me with transgressing the law of Homer, even though I judged it right for you to stay longer with us. But, seeing that your poor body needs more care, I have allowed you to go to your own country, and have taken thought for the ease of your journey. You may use, then, a public carriage; and may all the gods, with Asclepius, escort you on your way, and grant that we meet again.

45. To a leader of the people

The proverb says: "Do you tell me my dream"; and I seem to be telling you your waking vision. The Nile, they say, lifted high in its cubits, has filled all Egypt; and if you long to hear the number too, by the twentieth of September it rose fifteen cubits. This Theophilus the commander reports. If, then, you did not know it, hear it from us and rejoice.

46. To Ecdicius, prefect of Egypt

Even if for other reasons you do not write to us, at least concerning Athanasius, the enemy of the gods, you ought to have written, especially since you have long known what we have rightly resolved. I swear by the great Sarapis that, if the enemy of the gods, Athanasius, does not leave that city before the Kalends of December, or rather all Egypt, I shall fine the officials under your charge a hundred pounds of gold. And you know how slow I am to condemn, but far slower, having once condemned, to relent. And in his own hand: It vexes me much to be despised. By all the gods, there is nothing I would so gladly see, or rather hear, done by you, as that Athanasius be driven beyond the borders of Egypt—the abominable man, who under my reign dared to baptise Greek women of rank. Let him be driven out.

47. To the Alexandrians

If any of the Galilaeans had been your founder—men who, having transgressed their own law, paid such penalties as were fitting, having chosen to live lawlessly and brought in a new preaching and a recent teaching—even so there would have been no reason for Athanasius to be sought after by you. But as it is, since Alexander is the founder of the city, and your guardian god is King Sarapis, together with the Maiden who sits beside him and the queen of all Egypt, Isis . . . You do not emulate the city in her health, but the diseased part dares to claim for itself the name of the city.

2. I am very much ashamed, by the gods, men of Alexandria, that any Alexandrian at all confesses himself a Galilaean. The fathers of the true Hebrews were once slaves to the Egyptians; but now you, men of Alexandria, who have conquered the Egyptians—for your founder conquered Egypt—submit to a voluntary slavery to those who have despised the doctrines of their fathers, directly against the ancient ordinances. And there comes into you no memory of that old felicity, when there was fellowship with the gods for all Egypt, and we enjoyed many good things. But those who now have brought in this new preaching among you, of what good have they been authors to the city? Tell me. Your founder was a god-fearing man, Alexander the Macedonian, in no way, by Zeus, after the manner of any of these, nor after that of all the Hebrews, who were far surpassed by them. Why, even the Ptolemy son of Lagus was better than they; and Alexander, had he entered into rivalry with the Romans, would have given them a hard struggle. What then of the Ptolemies after the founder, who reared your city like a true-born daughter? It was not by the words of Jesus that they increased her, nor by the teaching of the Galilaeans, most hateful to the gods, that they wrought for her this good ordering by which she is now prosperous. Third, since we Romans became masters of her, having taken her from the Ptolemies who ruled ill, Augustus, visiting your city and conversing with your citizens, said: "Men of Alexandria, I release the city from all blame, out of reverence for the great god Sarapis, and for the sake of the people themselves and the greatness of the city; and a third cause of my goodwill toward you is my friend Arius." Now this Arius was a citizen of yours, and a companion of Caesar Augustus, a philosopher.

3. The benefits, then, which have come to your city in particular from the Olympian gods—to speak briefly, for such they are—I pass over for the most part because of their length. But the things given in common, every day, not to a few men nor to one race nor to one city, but to all the world together, by the gods who are manifest—how is it that you do not know them? Are you alone insensible of the light that descends from Helios? Are you alone ignorant that summer and winter come from him? Are you alone ignorant that all things are quickened and grow from him? And the Moon, who is from him and through him the fashioner of all things—do you not perceive of how many good things she is the author to the city? And of these gods you dare to worship not one; but Jesus, whom neither you nor your fathers ever saw, you think must needs be God the Word. But him whom from all eternity the whole race of men beholds and sees and reveres, and reverencing prospers—the great Helios, I mean, the living image, ensouled and intelligent and beneficent, of the intelligible Father . . . if you will be persuaded by my exhortation, lead yourselves back, even a little, toward the truth. For you will not err from the right road if you obey one who himself walked that other road until his twentieth year, and now, by the grace of the gods, has walked this one for twelve years.

4. If, then, it is your pleasure to obey, you will rejoice the more; but if you choose to abide in the superstition and instruction of cunning men, at least be at concord among yourselves, and do not long for Athanasius. There are surely many of his disciples able sufficiently to soothe your ears that itch and crave impious words. Would that, together with Athanasius, the wickedness of his impious school had been shut up. But as it is, you have a multitude not ignoble, and there is no trouble at all. For whomever of the multitude you choose, so far at least as concerns the exposition of the Scriptures, he will be in no way worse than the one you long for. But if it is for the rest of Athanasius' cleverness that you love him—for I learn that the man is a cunning fellow—and for this reason made these petitions, know that for this very thing he has been banished from the city; for a meddlesome man is by nature unfit to be the head of a people. And if he be not even a man, but a paltry manikin, like this great fellow who thinks his head is in danger, this gives the beginning of disorder. Therefore, that no such thing may happen to you, we long ago bade him depart from the city, and now from all Egypt as well.

5. Let this be published to our fellow-citizens, the Alexandrians.

6. To the Alexandrians

I hear that there is among you an obelisk of stone, raised to a sufficient height, but lying cast away upon the shore as though it were some most worthless thing. For this the late Constantius had a ship built, to convey it to my fatherland, the city of Constantine. But since it has befallen him, the gods willing, to go from here to there the appointed journey, the city demands of me the offering, being my fatherland and belonging to me more than to him. For he loved her as a sister, but I as a mother; for I was born there and reared there, and I cannot be ungrateful toward her. What then? Since I love you no less than my fatherland, I grant that there be set up among you also the bronze image. For there has lately been made a statue of colossal size, which, when you have set it up, you shall have in place of the stone offering a bronze image of a man whom, you say, you long for, a likeness and a form, instead of a four-cornered stone bearing Egyptian carvings. And the report, too, that there are some who tend it and sleep at its peak quite persuades me that for the sake of this superstition I ought to remove it. For those who behold the men who sleep there—since there is, as it chances, much filth and much licentiousness about the place—neither believe it to be divine, and, through the superstition of those who attend it, become the more unbelieving toward the gods. For this very reason it is the more fitting that you should lend a hand and send it to my fatherland, which entertains you well when you sail into the Pontus, and that you should contribute, as it were, to her sustenance and her outward adornment. Surely it will be no ungrateful thing that something of yours should stand among them too, upon which, as you sail in toward the city, you may gaze with gladness.

49. To Ecdicius, prefect of Egypt

It is worth while, if anything is, to take thought also for sacred music. Choosing, then, from the people of the Alexandrians well-born youths, order that two artabae of corn be furnished to each of them monthly, and oil and wine besides; and clothing shall be provided by the overseers of the treasury. For the present let these be enrolled by voice. And if any are able to attain to the height of the science itself, let them know that very great prizes for their labour are laid up with us also. For that they themselves, before us, having had their souls purified by the divine music, will be the gainers, we must believe those who have rightly declared this before. So much, then, for the boys. As for those who are now studying under the musician Dioscorus, make them lay hold of the art more eagerly, since we are ready to aid them in whatever they wish.

50. To Nilus, surnamed Dionysius

You were better when you kept silence before than now when you defend yourself; for you did not revile me then, though perhaps you meant to; but now, as though in travail, you have poured out all at once your abuse against me. Or must I not count it both reviling and slander, that you supposed me like your own friends, to each of whom you offered yourself uninvited—or rather, to the first uninvited, but to the second, who only hinted that he wished to take you for an ally, you submitted? But whether I am like Constans and Magnentius, the deed itself, as the saying is, will show; while you, that you praise yourself, like Astydamas, after the comic poet—"O woman," as he says—is plain from what you wrote. For your fearlessness and your great boldness, and your "Would that you knew how great and what manner of man I am," and, in a word, all such things—bah!—how great a din and clatter of words it is! But, by the Graces and by Aphrodite, if you are so bold and noble, why did you take heed not to give offence a third time, if you must? For those who incur the hatred of rulers are, in the lightest and, one might say, the pleasantest case—at least for a man of sense—quickly freed from their troubles; but if a small further penalty is exacted, they suffer in their property; and the chief part of their anger, and to suffer, as they say, the irreparable, is to give up life. Despising all this, since you have come to know the private man and the man in his common and general nature, who is unknown to us late-learners, why then, in the name of the gods, did you say you took care not to give offence a third time? For surely I shall not, by being angry, make you wicked instead of good; for he would be a man to envy who in justice could do this; since, as Plato says, he could do the contrary also. But, virtue being its own master, you ought to have reckoned none of these things. But you think it a great matter to slander everyone, and to revile all without distinction, and to make the sanctuary of peace a workshop of war. Or do you think by this to defend your old faults before all men, and to make your present courage a screen for the cowardice you once showed? You have heard the fable of Babrius: "A weasel once fell in love with a comely man." The rest learn from the book. By saying much you would persuade no man that you have not become what you are, and what many men of old knew you to be. Your present ignorance and boldness, by the gods, philosophy did not implant in you; rather, on the contrary, that double ignorance of which Plato speaks. For, since you are in danger of knowing nothing—as neither do we—you think yourself the wisest of all, not of those now living only, but of those who have been, and perhaps of those who shall be. So far, to a pitch of folly, has your conceit advanced.

2. But on your own account these things have been said by me, more than enough; only it is perhaps necessary, because of you, to defend myself before the others, that I rashly called you to a partnership in affairs. This I was not the first nor the only one to suffer, O Dionysius. Your namesake deceived even the great Plato; and so did the Athenian Callippus. For he says that he knew him to be wicked, but that he would never have hoped for so great a magnitude of evil in him. And what need to speak of these things, when even Hippocrates, the best of the sons of Asclepius, said: "The sutures in the head deceived my judgement"? If, then, those men were deceived in matters they knew, and the rule of his art escaped the physician, is it strange if Julian, hearing that Nilus Dionysius had suddenly turned brave, was deceived? You hear of that Phaedo of Elis, and you know the story; or, if you are ignorant, inquire more carefully; but I, at any rate, will say this. He thought that nothing is incurable by philosophy, and that all men are cleansed by her of all manner of lives, pursuits, desires—absolutely all such things. For if she availed only with those well-born and well-bred, there would be nothing wonderful in her work; but if she leads even those so disposed up to the light, she seems to me to be marvellous beyond measure. From these considerations my judgement about you inclined, little by little, to the better—the gods all know it. So I ranked your case neither among the first nor among the second of the best men. You yourself, perhaps, know it; or, if you are ignorant, ask the noble Symmachus. For I am persuaded that he would never willingly lie, being by nature truthful in all things. But if you are vexed that I did not honour you above all, I blame myself for ranking you even among the last, and I am grateful to all the gods and goddesses who hindered you from sharing in affairs and becoming our friend. . . . For even if the poets say much of Rumour, that she is a goddess, and let her be, if you will, at least a daemon, this Rumour, we must not give too much heed to her, since the daemonic is by nature not wholly pure nor perfectly good, like the race of the gods, but partakes somehow of the other side too. But if of the other daemons it is not lawful to say this, of Rumour I know, when I say that she reports much falsely, and much truly, I should never be convicted of false witness.

3. But do you think your frankness worth, as the saying is, four obols? Do you not know that Thersites too spoke freely among the Hellenes, and that the wise Odysseus struck him with his sceptre, while Agamemnon cared less for the drunken insolence of Thersites than a tortoise cares for flies, as the proverb runs? Yet it is no great thing to rebuke others and to keep oneself free from rebuke. If you have a share in this portion, show it to us. When you were young, did you give a fair account of yourself to your elders? But I, like Electra in Euripides, "pass over such fortunes in silence." But when you became a man and joined the camp, how did you act, in the name of Zeus? You say that, for the truth's sake, you gave offence and were dismissed. From what can you show this, as though it were not by many and most wicked men, by whom you yourself were driven out, that they too were banished? It is not the part of an earnest and self-controlled man, O most sagacious Dionysius, to depart in hatred from his rulers. You would have been better, if you had made men more moderate toward us by your company with them. But this is not in your power, by the gods, nor in the power of ten thousand others who emulate your manner; for rocks dashed against rocks, and stones against stones, do not help one another, but the stronger easily crushes the weaker.

4. Do I say this in Laconian and brief fashion? Yet I think that, because of you, I have shown myself more talkative even than the Attic cicadas. As for the wanton things you have said against me, I will lay upon you a fitting penalty, the gods willing, and the lady Adrasteia. What, then, is the penalty, and what most can pain your tongue and your mind? I will try, by erring as little as possible in word and deed, to give your slanderous tongue no great occasion for chatter. And yet it has not escaped me that even Aphrodite's sandal, they say, was mocked by Momus. But you see that Momus too burst with much effort, and could scarce lay hold even of the sandal. May it be yours, too, growing old while you rub at such things, to outlive Tithonus, and to be richer than Cinyras, and more luxurious than Sardanapalus, that the proverb may be fulfilled in you: "Old men are twice children."

5. But that wondrous Alexander—from what did he appear to you so great? Is it because, having become his imitator, you emulated all that the lad Hermolaus reproached him with? Or is no one so foolish as to suspect this of you? On the contrary, that very thing which Hermolaus bewailed as having suffered, and for which, they say, he plotted to kill Alexander—is there anyone who is not persuaded of this about you? By the gods, I have heard many who say they love you greatly making many apologies for this fault, while one even disbelieved it. But this is the one swallow; it does not make the spring. Or perhaps Alexander seemed to you great for this, that he bitterly slew Callisthenes, that Cleitus fell a victim to his drunken violence, that Philotas, and Parmenio, and Parmenio's son perished. For of the affairs of Hector, who was drowned in Egypt in the eddies of the Nile or of the Euphrates—for both are told—and of his other amusements, I say nothing, lest I seem to slander a man who, though by no means a model of right conduct, was yet a most excellent general in war. Of these things you, in purpose and in courage, have less share than fishes have of hair. Hear, then, the counsel—do not too angrily—"Not to you, my child, are warlike deeds given." What follows I do not write out for you, for I am ashamed, by the gods. Yet I bid you supply it yourself; for it is reasonable that words should follow deeds, and that he who has in no way escaped the deeds should not shun the words.

6. But you who pretend to honour the memory of Magnentius and Constans—why do you war against the living and revile those who are in any way the best? Is it because the dead are better able to defend themselves against those who grieve them than the living? But this you cannot say; for you are, as you write, most full of confidence. But if not this, then perhaps something else; for you do not wish, it may be, to mock those who would feel it. Yet of the living, is anyone so foolish or small-minded as to think it worth his while to be reckoned of any account by you, and not rather to wish, most of all, to be wholly unknown to you, or, if that be impossible, to be reviled by you, as I am now, rather than honoured? May I never be so ill-minded; may I never lay claim to praise from you rather than blame.

7. But this very thing, that I write to you, is perhaps the act of one who is stung? No, by the saviour gods, but of one who checks your excessive arrogance and audacity, and the licence of your tongue, and the savagery of your soul, and the madness of your wits, and your derangement in all things. For it was in my power, had I been stung, to chastise you by deeds, not words, in quite lawful fashion. For, being a citizen and a member of the senate, you refused an emperor's command; and this surely was not permitted to one who had no great necessity to plead. It would not, then, have sufficed me to fine you on this account with every kind of penalty, but I thought I ought first to write to you, supposing the case curable by a short letter. But when I found you persisting in the same course, or rather detected the madness that until now lay hidden . . . lest you be thought a man, when you are no man, and full of frankness, when you are full of stupidity, and to have shared in education, when you have not touched even a syllable of letters, so far as it is reasonable to conjecture from your letters. For "vanished" no one of the ancients used of what is in plain sight, as you now do; since the other faults of your letter no one could go through in a long book, nor that pandering and loathsome character by which you play the pander to yourself. For you say that we ought to choose, not those who come ready to hand, nor those who lie in wait for office, but those who use steadfast judgement, and on this account choose what is needful, and not those who obey readily. A fair hope you hold out to us, who need it not, that you will yield, if again we should call you to a share in affairs! But so far is this from me, that, while others were admitted, I never even addressed a word to you. And yet I did this toward many of my acquaintance, and of men unknown to me, who dwell in god-beloved Rome. So earnestly did I lay claim to your friendship, so worthy of esteem did I think you. It is likely, then, that what is to come toward you will be of the same kind. For even now I have written this letter, not for you alone to read, since I knew it would be needful for many; and I will give it to all, who will receive it, as I am persuaded, not unwillingly; for, seeing you graver and more puffed up than the life you formerly led, they are vexed.

8. You have from us a complete answer, so that you need long for nothing more. Neither, then, do we ask anything further from you; but, having read it, use the letter for whatever you wish; for the matter of our friendship is at an end for you. Farewell, living in luxury and reviling me, much as ever.

9. To the community of the Jews

Very burdensome to you, in times past, has been the yoke of your servitude—that you were subjected to unannounced assessments, and forced to bring in an unspeakable amount of gold to the accounts of the treasury; of which I saw much with my own eyes, and learned more by finding the registers kept against you. And further, when another levy was about to be ordered against you, I prevented it, and forced the impiety of such ill report to stop there, and gave to the fire the registers kept against you that lay in my archives, that no one might any longer be able to hurl against you such a report of impiety. And of these things he who is worthy of memory, my brother Constantius, was not so much the cause to you as the men barbarous in mind and godless in soul who feasted at his table; whom I, having taken in my own hands, thrust into a pit and destroyed, so that not even a memory of their destruction is any longer borne among us. And, wishing you to fare yet better, I have exhorted my brother Iulus, your most reverend patriarch, that the levy called the apostolē among you be stopped, and that no one any longer be able to wrong your multitudes by such exactions of tribute; so that from every side you may have freedom from care under my reign, and, enjoying peace, may make still greater prayers for my reign to him who is the highest, the Creator God, who has thought fit to crown me with his undefiled right hand. For it is natural that those who are involved in any anxiety should be straitened in mind and not dare to lift up their hands in prayer so freely; but that those who are wholly free from care should rejoice with their whole soul and make supplicating worship for the kingdom to the greater, who is able to direct our reign to the fairest ends, as we purpose. This you ought to do, that I too, when I have set the Persian war in order, may rebuild with my own labours the holy city of Jerusalem, which for many years you have longed to see inhabited, and may settle it, and with you give glory there to the Highest.

52. To the philosopher Maximus (or to a friend)

Since you have forgotten your promise—for this is the third day now—and the philosopher Priscus himself has not come, but has sent word that he is still delayed, I remind you and demand the debt. It is a debt which, as you know, is easy for you to pay, and most pleasant for me to receive. Send, then, the discourse and the sacred counsel; but, in the name of Hermes and the Muses, quickly, since you must know that you have crushed me even in these three days, if the Sicilian poet speaks truly when he says that those who long grow old in a single day. And if this is so, as indeed it is, you have tripled my old age, my noble friend. This I have dictated to you in the midst of business; for I was not able to write, having my hand less practised than my tongue—though, indeed, my tongue too has become, through disuse, less practised and less articulate. Farewell, my most longed-for and most beloved brother.

53. To Maximus the philosopher (or to Libanius)

You have rendered to Aristophanes the rewards of his piety toward the gods and of his zeal toward yourself, having changed and transformed his former reproaches into good repute, not for the present only, but for the time to come; since the slander of Paulus and the verdict of so-and-so are not like the discourses written by you. For those were hated even while they flourished, and died out together with those who wrought them; but your discourses are now loved by the true Hellenes, and, unless I am wholly mistaken in right judgement, will be loved in the time to come. You shall learn, then, whether you have persuaded me, or rather changed my mind, concerning Aristophanes. That I do not think him a slave to pleasures and money, I confess. Why should I not yield to the most philosophic and most truth-loving of the orators? It follows that I be further questioned by you on this: why, then, do we not change his misfortunes to a better lot, and do away with the reproaches that have fallen upon him through his adversities? "Let us two go together," as the saying is, "you and I, and take counsel." And it is just that you should counsel me not only that we ought to aid a man who has honoured the gods without guile, but also in what manner we ought to do it. And yet this too you have hinted at, in a way. But it is perhaps better not to write about such things, but to discuss them with one another. Farewell, my most longed-for and most beloved brother.

2. I read the discourse yesterday, almost before my morning meal; and having taken my meal, before I rested, I gave back the rest of my reading. Happy are you who can so speak, or rather so think. O the eloquence, O the wit, O the understanding, O the division, O the arguments, O the arrangement, O the openings, O the diction, O the harmony, O the composition!

3. To a man whom he made consul

Hesiod the wise thinks one should invite one's neighbours to the feasts, that they may share the joy, since they share also the grief and the anxiety whenever some unlooked-for trouble falls. But I say one must invite one's friends, not one's neighbours; and the reason is that a neighbour may be an enemy, but a friend an enemy no more than white can be black or hot cold. And that you are my friend, and have been so not now only but of old, and have continued well-disposed, even if there were no other proof, yet that we are so minded and disposed toward you would be a great sign of it. Come, then, and share the consulship yourself. The public post shall bring you, using one carriage and a spare horse. And if I must add a further prayer, we have called upon the god of the crossways to be gracious to you.

56. An edict concerning funerals

We ought, indeed, having considered the matter at home, to confirm by law what now seems good, and to take up again the ancient custom, which the men of old, who laid down the laws well, conceiving that there is a very great difference between life and death, deemed it fitting to mark each by its proper practices in our deeds. For death is a perpetual rest—and this, then, is the "brazen sleep" hymned by the poets—while life, on the contrary, holds many things painful and many pleasant, and our doing is now in one way, now better. Considering this, they ordained that the rites toward the departed be performed apart, and that the affairs of daily life be ordered apart. Moreover, they held the gods to be the beginning and end of all things, and they thought that, living, we are under the gods, and, departing, we go again to the gods. Now whether both belong to the same gods, or whether some govern the living and others the dead, it is perhaps not even worth while to make public. But if, just as the sun is the author of day and night, of winter and summer, by his going and coming, so too the eldest of the gods himself, into whom are all things and from whom are all things, has appointed rulers over the living and allotted lords over the dead, we ought to render to each what is fitting in turn, and to imitate, through our daily life, the ordering of the gods that is in the universe.

2. Death, then, is rest, and to rest the night is fitting. Therefore I think it fitting that in the night the burials of the dead be carried out, since to do any such thing by day must be avoided for many reasons. One man turns to one business about the city, another to another, and everything is full of men going to the courts, or to the marketplace and from the marketplace, or sitting at their crafts, or frequenting the temples that they may confirm the good hopes that come from the gods; and then certain persons, having laid a corpse upon a bier, force their way through the midst of those busied with these things. And the matter is in every way intolerable. For those who meet it are often filled with displeasure, some thinking the omen evil, while to those who are going to the temples it is not lawful to draw near before they have washed. For to the gods who are the authors of life, and of all things most alien to corruption, it is not lawful to draw near after such a sight. And I have not yet brought my heaviest charge against what is done. And what is this? The sacred enclosures and temples of the gods stand open; and often someone within is sacrificing and pouring libation and praying, while others pass close by the very temple, carrying a corpse, and the voice of lamentation and ill-omened cries is borne even to the altars.

3. Do you not know that, before all else, the works of the day and of the night are divided? Naturally, then, this is taken from the one and assigned to the other. For surely it is not right to forbid white among one's clothing during mourning, and yet to bury the dead by day and in the light. The other course were better, if no offence at all were thereby given to any of the gods; but this does not escape being an impiety toward all the gods. For to the Olympians men assign what they ought not, and from the gods of the underworld—or however else those who govern and are lords over souls rejoice to be named—they alienate, against right, what is theirs. I know that those who are scrupulous and exact in divine things hold it right to perform the rites to the gods below by night, or at any rate after the tenth hour of the day. But if this is the better season for the worship of those gods, neither shall we assign to the service of the dead a different one.

4. For those who willingly obey, this suffices. For having learned in what they erred, let them change to the better. But if anyone is such as to need threat and penalty, let him know that he shall undergo the heaviest punishment, if before the tenth hour of the day he dares to tend the body of any of the departed and carry it through the city. Rather let these things be done after the sun has set, and again before he rises; and let the day, pure, be set apart for pure works and for the Olympian gods.

5. To Arsaces, satrap of Armenia (a forgery, but transmitted in the corpus)

Haste to the array of the enemy, Arsaces, swifter than a word, arming your right hand against the Persian madness. For our preparation and our zeal have determined upon one of two things: either to pay the debt of nature on the borders of the Parthians, having wrought the greatest deeds and disposed of our adversaries most terribly; or, having mastered them, the gods presiding over us, to return as glorious victors to our native land, having raised trophies over the enemy. Putting away, then, all sloth and trickery, and remembering the late Constantine, and the substance of the well-born that was lavished upon you and the barbarians of your kind by the most delicate and extravagant Constantius, think now of me—of Julian, the high priest, the Caesar, the Augustus, the servant of the gods and of Ares, the destroyer of the Franks and the barbarians, the liberator of the Gauls and the Italians. But if you should plan anything else—for I learn that you are crafty, and a bad soldier, and a braggart, as my present affairs show; for you try to keep hidden with you a certain enemy of the common good—for the present I postpone this, because of the fortune of war; for the alliance of the gods suffices us for the overthrow of the enemy. But if fate should decide otherwise—for the power of fate is the will of the gods—I shall bear it without fear and nobly. But know that you shall be a mere by-work of the Persian hand, your household joined to your ruin with all its kindred, and the rule of the Armenians; and the city of the Nisibenes shall share your misfortune, the heavenly gods having long ago foretold this to us.

58. To Libanius the sophist

I came as far as Litarbae—it is a village of Chalcis—and I fell in with a road that still had remnants of the winter quarters of Antioch. Part of it, I think, was marsh and part hill, but the whole was rough, and in the marsh lay stones thrown down as if on purpose, fitted together by no art, in the way men are wont in other cities, when they build up the highways, to lay much rubble instead of mortar, and to set the stones close together as in a wall. When, having crossed it with difficulty, I came to the first halting-place, it was about the ninth hour, and I received within the courtyard the greater part of your council. What we said to one another you have perhaps heard; and you may learn it from us too, if you hear us, the gods willing.

2. From Litarbae I journeyed to Beroea, and Zeus gave all favourable signs, showing me a clear token from heaven. Staying there a day, I saw the citadel, and I sacrificed to Zeus, after the royal manner, a white bull, and I discoursed a little with the council on piety. But all praised my words, while very few were persuaded by them, and these only such as even before my words seemed to be soundly minded. They were cautious, as it were, to put off and lay aside their reverence for frankness; for it remains, O gods, among men to blush at noble things—at courage of soul and at piety—and to plume themselves, as it were, on the basest—on sacrilege, and on softness of mind and body.

3. Thence Batnae received me, a place such as I never saw among you except Daphne, which now resembles Batnae; for of late, while the temple and the statue were still preserved, I should not be ashamed to set Daphne on a level with Ossa and Pelion and the peaks of Olympus and the Thessalian Tempe, or even to prefer her above all of them together. But concerning Daphne a discourse has been written by you, such as no other of those who are now mortals, even if he set himself earnestly to toil, could produce; and I think not many of the men of old, either. Why then do I now attempt to write of her, when so brilliant a monody has been composed upon her? Would that it had never been needed! Now Batnae—a barbarous name this—is a Hellenic place, first because through all the country round vapours of frankincense rose on every side, and everywhere we saw victims made ready. This, indeed, though it pleased me greatly, seemed nevertheless too warm, and foreign to true reverence toward the gods. For things sacred and holy toward the gods ought to be done apart from the throng, and in quiet, by men who come for this very purpose and not for any other. This, then, will perhaps presently obtain the care that fits it.

4. Batnae I found a wooded plain holding groves of young cypresses; and among them there was no aged or rotten tree, but all alike flourishing in their foliage; and the palace was by no means costly, for it was of clay only and wood, with nothing of variety; but the garden, inferior to that of Alcinous, yet like that of Laertes, and in it a very small grove, full of cypresses, and along the wall many such trees planted in rows, one after another. Then in the midst were garden-beds, and in these vegetables, and trees bearing fruit of every kind. What, then, did I do there? I sacrificed in the evening, and again at deep dawn, as I am wont to do fairly every day. And since the sacrifices were favourable, we held on toward the Holy City, and the citizens came to meet me, and a stranger received me, seen but lately, but loved by me long since. The reason you yourself, I well know, share in the knowledge of, but it is pleasant to me to tell it even so; for to hear and to speak of such things is to me as nectar. Sopater, the kinsman of the most divine Iamblichus, was his connexion by marriage; for to me it seems no less a wrong than any of the basest not to love all the affairs of those men. There is a greater reason still. For, having often received my cousin and my brother by the same father, and being often urged by them, as was natural, to forsake reverence toward the gods—which is a hard thing—he was not caught by the disease.

5. These things I had to write to you from the Holy City concerning my own affairs. As for the military and civil administration, you ought, I think, to oversee and care for them yourself, being present; for the matter is greater than a letter, be assured, and so great that it is not easy to compass the precise account even in thrice the length of this. These too I will tell you summarily, in few words. I sent envoys to the Saracens, reminding them to come if they would. So much for one thing. As for another, I sent out men as wakeful as possible to keep watch, lest anyone slip away from here to the enemy to be an informer of our movements. From there I judged a military case, as I am persuaded, most gently and most justly. I provided spare horses and mules, gathering the army together to one place. River boats are being filled with corn, or rather with dried bread and vinegar. And how each of these was done, and what discussions arose over each, you can imagine of what length the writing would be. And as for all the letters and books to which I have set my hand—for these too follow me about everywhere like a shadow—why need I trouble myself now to count them up?

6. To Libanius

The fable makes the eagle, when he would test the genuineness of his young, carry them still unfledged toward the upper air and hold them up to the rays of the sun, becoming, as it were, with the god for witness, the father of a true nestling and disowning a spurious brood. So I put my words into your hands as into those of Hermes the eloquent. And if they endure your hearing, it is for you to judge of them, whether they can take wing toward others also; but if not, cast them away at random as alien to the Muses, or drown them in a river as spurious. Surely the Rhine too does no wrong to the Celts, who sinks the spurious infants beneath his eddies, a fitting avenger of an unchaste bed; but those he recognises to be of pure seed he buoys up above the water and gives back into the hands of the trembling mother, granting her the safety of her child as an incorruptible witness of a pure and blameless marriage.

60. To Libanius

They say that Daedalus dared to do violence to nature by art, fashioning wings of wax for Icarus. As for him, even if I praise his art, I do not admire his judgement; for he alone endured to trust the safety of his child to wax that melts. But if it were lawful for me, as for that Teian lyric poet, to change the nature of birds, I should not fly toward Olympus, nor for any reproach of love, but to the very foot of your mountains, that I might enfold you, my care, as Sappho says. But since nature, having shut me in the chains of a human body, will not suffer me to spread my wings toward the upper air, I come to you with such wings as I have, the wings of words, and write, and am with you in the only way I can. Surely Homer too names them "winged" for no other reason than this, that they can range everywhere, like the swiftest of birds, darting wherever they will. Do you yourself write also, my friend; for yours, surely, is an equal, if not a greater, plumage of words, by which you can pass to your comrades and from every side gladden them as though present.

61. To Libanius

There is a fuller occasion of pleasure when one may greet one's friends through a familiar man, so that you may fit the image of your own soul not only to those to whom you write, but to those who meet him. This very thing I myself do. For sending to you Antiochus, the tutor of my children, I could not bear to leave you ungreeted; so that, if you long for anything of our affairs, you may learn it more intimately from him. And if you too care anything for your lovers—as I believe you do—you will show it by never failing to write while you are able.

62. To Libanius

For when were you ever parted from us, that we should write, or when do we not behold you, as though present, with the eyes of the soul? We who not only seem always to be with you and to converse with you, but, in the present concerns of those near you, take such care of them as is fitting, as though under your presence. But if you wish to be written to by us as one absent, take care lest you yourself, by your very wish to be written to, rather reveal that you seem to be absent from us; only, if it is dear to you, even to this we willingly consent. By all means, as the saying goes, "you will be driving a running horse to the plain" by your bidding. Come, then, and render us like for like, and at our counter-summons do not be slow in the constant exchange. And yet I, for my part, do not wish to disturb the zeal you spend on the common good; rather, the more I guard you in your hunting of noble things, the more I should seem not only to do no wrong, but to benefit the whole Hellenic cause together, when, like a noble hound, I let you, undisturbed, devote yourself with whole spirit to the tracks of letters. But if you have such swiftness to spare that you neither neglect your friends nor fall short of those pursuits, come, use your speed for both.

63. To Libanius

Pindar thinks the Muses are silvern, likening, as it were, the conspicuous and brilliant quality of their art to the brightness of the metal; while the wise Homer calls silver "gleaming," and names water "silvery," as though, with the pure rays of the sun, it sparkled with the very brightness of the image; and the fair Sappho says the moon is silvern, and that for this reason it hides the face of the other stars. So one might judge that silver befits the gods rather than gold; yet for men, since silver is more useful than gold and is more with them—not, like gold, hidden beneath the earth or fleeing their sight, but both fair to behold and better in daily use—this saying is not my own, but the saying of men of old. And if, in return for the gold coin you sent, we give you another of silver of equal value, do not judge the favour the less, nor think, as in the case of Glaucus, that the exchange is to the worse; since not even Diomede, perhaps, would have given silver for gold, seeing that the silver was far more useful than the other and knew how to turn aside spear-points as though they were lead. These things we play with you, taking from your own writing the lead for frankness toward you. But if you really wish to send us gifts more precious than gold, write, and do not cease doing this continually; for to me even a small letter from you is judged fairer than whatever good thing one might name.

64. To Libanius

I both write and claim to receive the like in return. But if I do wrong by writing continually, I ask to be wronged in turn by suffering the same.

65. To Libanius

There is even in a small letter a greater pleasure, when the goodwill of the writer is measured not by the smallness of the letter so much as by the greatness of his soul. And if now too the words of greeting from us have been brief, do not, even so, judge by them the longing they carry; but, knowing how far the love we bear toward you is stretched, grant pardon for the brevity of the letter, and be not slow to repay us in kind. For everything you give, even if it be small, preserves with us the mark of every good.

66. To Libanius

Let Echo be a goddess, as you say, and a chatterer, and, if you will, the consort of Pan too; for I shall not contend. For though Nature would teach me that Echo is the answering sound of a voice, struck back from the air to the hearing in the opposite direction, yet, obeying men of old and of recent times no less than your own argument, I am put to shame to deny that Echo is a goddess. What, then, would this be to us, if by a great measure we surpass Echo in our friendly offices toward you? For she answers not to all that she hears, but rather to the last of the voice, like a stingy beloved who returns the lover's kiss only with the tips of her lips; but we both begin gladly the offices toward you, and again, at your challenge, send back the like, as it were a ball. So you would not be beforehand in being yourself liable to what you write, and in ranking yourself—you who, receiving more, give back least—rather than us, who are eager to have the advantage on both sides, as like to the image you draw. Yet whether you give in equal measure to what you receive, or not, to us whatever it is permitted to receive from you is pleasant, and is believed to suffice for the whole.

67. To Libanius

"You have come, Telemachus," says the verse; and I have already seen you in your letters, and have taken the impress of the image of your sacred soul as on a small seal the stamp of a great character. For in a little space much may be shown; since Pheidias the wise was known not from the statue at Olympia or at Athens alone, but knew also how to enclose the work of great art in a small carving, such as they say his cicada was, and his bee, and, if you will, his fly too; of which each, though by nature it was wrought in bronze, was by his art given a soul. But in those works, perhaps, the very smallness of the creatures lent something fitting to his proportioned art; but do you, if you please, consider the Alexander hunting on horseback, whose whole measure is no greater than a fingernail. So is the marvel of the art poured over each, that Alexander already smites the beast and frightens the beholder, awing him through the whole figure, while the horse, balanced upon the very tips of his feet, escaping a fixed stand, is moved, by the stealthy artifice of energy, by the art itself. This very thing, my noble friend, you too do for us. For, as one already crowned often through the whole course in the lists of Hermes the eloquent, by what you write in a few words you display the height of your excellence, and in truth you rival the Odysseus of Homer, who, by saying only who he was, sufficed to amaze the Phaeacians. And if you need from us, too, something of the friendly smoke of your own kind, there is no grudging. Surely even from the weaker something good may come, as the mouse that saved the lion in the fable sufficiently shows.

68. To Eumenius and Pharianus

I was near to weeping; and yet I ought to have spoken well-omened words when I uttered your name. For I was reminded of our noble and wholly admirable father; and if you emulate him, you yourself will be happy, and will give to the world, as he did, something to take pride in; but if you are slothful, you will grieve me, and yourself you will blame when there is no longer any profit in it.

69. To Himerius

Not without tears did I read your letter, which you wrote upon the death of your wife, announcing the excess of your grief. For, besides that the event in itself is worthy of grief—that a wife young and chaste and dear to her husband, and besides the mother of holy children, should be snatched away before her time, like a torch brightly kindled and then in a little while letting fall its flame—still further, that the suffering reaches to you seems to me no less grievous. For least of all men did our noble Himerius deserve to come to the trial of anything painful, a man both excellent in eloquence and to us the most longed-for of friends. Yet, if it were another to whom I had to write of these things, I should surely need many words for this—that what has befallen is human, and that to bear it is necessary, and that nothing more is gained by grieving the more, and all that seemed fitting for the consolation of grief, as though teaching one who did not know. But since I count it shameful, toward a man who knows how to admonish others, to make those speeches by which one must school the ignorant to self-control, come, leaving the rest aside, I will tell you the tale—whether of a wise man, or rather a true account—not strange to you, perhaps, but unknown, as is likely, to most; using which alone, as a grief-assuaging drug, you may find release from your suffering not less than that of the cup which the Laconian woman is believed to have offered to Telemachus for an equal need. For they say that Democritus of Abdera, when Darius grieved for the death of a fair wife, and he had nothing to say that would suffice for consolation, promised him to bring her back to the light, if he were willing to furnish whatever was needed for the purpose. Darius bade him spare nothing, but take whatever he might and make good his promise; and Democritus, having paused a little while, said that everything for the doing of the deed was provided him, save one thing only, which he himself knew not how to get, but which Darius, as king of all Asia, would perhaps not find hard to discover. And when Darius asked what so great a thing it was that the king alone might know, Democritus, they say, answered and said: if he should inscribe upon the tomb of his wife the names of three men who had never mourned, she would straightway come to life again, being shamed by the law of the rite. And Darius being at a loss, and unable to find anyone to whom no grievous thing had ever befallen, Democritus, laughing as was his wont, said: "Why then, O strangest of men, do you mourn without measure, as though you alone were entangled in so great a grief, you who cannot find even one of all who have ever lived without his share of a private sorrow?" But these things Darius needed to hear, a barbarian and uneducated man, given over to pleasure and passion; but you, a Hellene and one who honours true education, ought to have the remedy from yourself, since otherwise it would be a shame to your reason, if it had not the same power as time.

70. To Dositheus

Your son Diogenes, having shown himself to me after your departure, and having said that you were angry with him, as a father might be vexed with a son, begged me to become a mediator of his reconciliation with you. If, then, his fault was moderate and such as you can bear, yield to nature, and, knowing that you are a father, return in your judgement toward your son; but if he has stumbled in something too great for pardon to reach, you yourself would be the juster judge, whether you ought, having borne even this nobly, to overcome your son's purpose by a better judgement, or whether you should entrust the trial of his fault to the chastening of a longer time.

71. To Plutarchus

To me even a small letter from you suffices to court the occasion of great pleasure. And so, being greatly pleased with what you wrote, I give back the like myself, judging that the friendships of comrades ought to be repaid not by the length of letters so much as by the greatness of goodwill.

72. To Eugenius

In all respects my body is moderately well, and besides, the affairs of my mind too go well. And I think there can be no better proem to a letter sent by friend to friend. Of what, then, is it the proem? Of a request, I think. And what is the request? Of letters in return; which I would they might agree in their thought also with mine, announcing the same favourable tidings from you to us.

73. To the governor of Greece (or to a curator)

I have given order that ships be built at Cenchreae. As to how many, the governor of the Hellenes will tell you; but as to how the care of the matter should be taken, hear it from us: free of all bribe-taking, and quickly. And that you may not repent of such a service, I myself, with the gods' help, will take thought.

74. To Libanius

We ought, indeed, obeying the Delphic precept, to know ourselves, and not dare to be over-confident in face of the hearing of so great a man, against whom even to look, when merely seen, is hard, much less to come to a level with him when he sets in motion his all-wise harmony; since, even if Pan should sound a clear melody, anyone might stand aside in awe, were he even Aristaeus, and at Apollo's playing upon the cithara anyone might be still, even if he knew the music of Orpheus. For the lesser ought justly to give way to the greater, so far as it is the lesser, if it is to know what is its own and what is not. But whoever has hoped to set a mortal melody against an inspired music has not learned, it seems, the fate of Marsyas the Phrygian, nor of the river named after him, which bears witness to the punishment of the maddened flute-player; nor has he heard of the death of Thamyris the Thracian, who set his voice against the Muses with no good fortune. Why need I speak of the Sirens, whose feathers still the victorious Muses bear upon their brows? But of those each, for his unmusical daring, even now pays a sufficient penalty in men's memory; whereas we ought, as I said, to stand within our own borders, and, while we drink our fill of your music, to be still, like those who receive in quiet the oracle of Apollo as it comes forth from the holy shrine. But since you yourself woo from us the keynote of the song, and, as it were with the wand of Hermes, with your own words you move and rouse us from sleep, come, just as those who, when Dionysus strikes his thyrsus, are borne, unloosed, to the dance, so too let us, under your plectrum, sound back what is fitting, like those who attend the leader of the chorus at the recall of the rhythm. And first let us begin for you with the discourse which lately, at the king's command, we wrought upon the famous bridging of the strait—since this is what seems good to you—giving small in return for great, and in truth bronze for gold, but feasting our own Hermes with such gifts of hospitality as we have. Surely not even Theseus disdained Hecale's plain supper, but knew how to be content with little for what was needful. And Pan, the god of shepherds, did not scorn to set the herdboy's pipe to his lips. Receive, then, the discourse with a gracious nod, and do not shrink from lending a great ear to a little song. But if it has anything skilful in it, the discourse itself is fortunate, and its maker has gained the witness of Athena's vote besides. But if it needs still a perfect hand for the filling-up of the whole, do not yourself disdain to add what is wanting. Surely the god, when called upon by an archer, has stood beside him and laid his hand to the dart, and to a lyre-singer chanting the high-pitched strain the Pythian, with the help of a cicada, sounded the like for the lacking string.

75. To Iamblichus (a fictitious composition transmitted in the corpus)

O Zeus, how is it well that we should pass our days in the heart of Thrace and winter in the silos there, while from the fair Iamblichus, as from some morning spring, letters are sent us instead of swallows, and yet it is permitted neither to us to come to him nor to him to come to us? Who would willingly accept this, unless he were some Thracian, a worthy match for Tereus? "Lord Zeus, but do you deliver from Thrace the Achaeans; make a clear sky, and grant our eyes at last to see" our own Hermes, and to greet his halls and to cling to his shrines, as they say Odysseus did when, after his wandering, he saw Ithaca. But him the Phaeacians set down still sleeping, like some piece of merchandise, out of the ship, and departed; whereas us not even sleep takes hold of, until it be granted us to see you, the great benefit of the world. And yet you jest that you have transported all the East—both me and my comrade Sopater—into Thrace; but for us, if I must speak the truth, so long as Iamblichus is not present, a Cimmerian fog dwells with us. And you ask one of two things: either that we come to you, or that you come to us. For us the one is at once to be prayed for and profitable, to return to you ourselves and to enjoy your good things; but the other is better than every prayer. But since for you at least it is impossible and unprofitable, do you stay at home and rejoice and keep the quiet that you have, while we will bear nobly whatever the god grants. For it is the part of good men, they say, both to keep good hope and to do what is needful, but to follow the necessities of fortune.

76. To Iamblichus (transmitted in the corpus)

I confess that I have paid a sufficient penalty for your absence, not only by the hardships that befell me during my travels, but, more than these, by this very thing, that I have been parted from you for so long a time, though I have met with many and various fortunes everywhere, so as to leave nothing untried. For though I have endured the tumults of wars, and the constraint of a siege, and the wandering of flight, and fears of every kind, and besides the extremities of winters and the dangers of sicknesses, and from upper Pannonia to the crossing of the Calchedonian strait countless and manifold misfortunes, I would say that nothing has happened to me so painful or so hard to bear as that I, having left in the East you, the common good of the Hellenes, have for so long a time not seen you; so that, if I should say that a mist and a great cloud lie about my eyes, do not wonder. For then will calm air, and the brightest light of the sun, and as it were the truest and fairest spring of life surround me, when I embrace you, the great glory of the world, and, like a true-born son to a good father, seen against all hope returning from some war or sea-storm, and having told all that I suffered and through what dangers I came, and being, as it were, moored upon a sacred anchor, may find at last a sufficient solace for my pains. For it consoles, naturally, and lightens misfortunes, when one, making known to others what he has suffered, divides the knowledge of his trouble in the fellowship of speech. Meanwhile, with such means as I have, I attend to you according to my power; for I will not cease, during the time of our separation, to tend you with the token of letters. And if I should receive the like from you in return, I shall relax a little, holding converse with your letters as with some saving symbol. Do you receive graciously what comes from us, and show yourself the more gracious in return; for whatever you signify of good or write to us, this is judged by us in place of the voice of Hermes the eloquent, or the hand of Asclepius.

77. To Iamblichus (transmitted in the corpus)

"You have come, you have done well"; for you have come, even in your absence, by what you write; and I longed for you, and you set my heart aflame, burning with desire. So neither do I deny the love-charm, nor do I leave you in anything; but I behold you as present to my soul, and am with you though absent, and nothing suffices to bring me to satiety. Yet you do not cease both doing good to the present, ever, and to the absent giving, by what you write, not gladness only but very life. When, for instance, someone reported to me lately that a comrade had come bringing letters from you, I chanced to be on the third day of a disorder of the stomach, and was somewhat sorely afflicted in body, so as not to be even free of fever; but when it was signified, as I said, that the bearer of the letters was at my doors, I, like a man not master of himself and possessed, leapt up and rushed out before what was needful could be brought. And when I had but taken the letter into my hands, I swear by the gods themselves and by the desire for you that has kindled in me, at once my pains fled, and the fever too left me straightway, as though abashed by some manifest presence of the saviour. And when I had broken the seal and read, what soul do you think I had then, or with how much pleasure was I filled, praising and justly loving the dearest of winds, as you say, the truly amorous, the minister of fair things, because he became to me the servant of your letters, having directed your letter to us like a winged thing with a fair and conducting breeze, through which it was granted me not only to be gladdened, learning the natural tidings of you, but also, sick as I was, to be saved by you? But as for the rest—how shall I tell what I felt at first toward the letter, or how sufficiently make known my love? How often did I run back from the middle to the beginning? How often was I afraid lest, having finished, I should unawares...? How often, as in some circle and round of revolution, did I draw the close of the conclusion back to the beginning, as in a musical song giving back to the end the melody that led to the beginning of the rhythm? Yes, and by Zeus, what followed these things—how often did I press the letter to my mouth, as mothers embrace their children; how often did I cling to it with my mouth as though kissing my own dearest beloved; how often did I greet and kiss the very superscription, which had been sealed by your hand as by a clear signet, and then set it upon my eyes, as one clinging to the traces of the letters as to the fingers of that sacred right hand! Hail, then, yourself to us many times, as the fair Sappho says, and not only as many times as the time during which we have been parted from one another, but hail always, and write and remember us as is fitting. For us no time shall fail in which we shall not, everywhere and on every occasion and in every discourse, hold you in memory. But if anywhere "Zeus should grant us to come to our native land," and if again we should come beneath that sacred hearth of yours, spare us no longer as a fugitive, but bind us, if it please you, to your own dearest seats, as one who has caught a deserter from the Muses, and then chasten us with such penalties as suffice. Surely not even unwillingly shall I undergo the sentence, but willingly indeed and rejoicing, as the provident and saving correction of a good father. And if you should be willing to trust me even with the judgement against myself, and grant me to carry out the sentence I wish, I would gladly fasten myself, my noble friend, to your little tunic, that I might in no way be parted from you, but be ever with you and everywhere borne about, like those whom the fables fashion as men of double nature. Unless that too the fables tell as in play, but hint at the special quality of friendship, showing, in the bond of fellowship, the kinship of soul that runs through both.

78. To Iamblichus (transmitted in the corpus)

I perceive the sweetness of your reproach, and how you do both things at once, both honouring by what you write and instructing by what you charge against me. For my part, if I were conscious to myself of having failed, even a little, in my duty toward you, I should certainly either, by alleging reasonable excuses, try to escape the reproach, or, having erred, should not refuse to ask pardon, since I know you are not otherwise unforgiving toward your own, if we have offended in any of the friendly duties toward you against our will. But as it is—for it was neither lawful that you should be overlooked, nor we negligent, that we might obtain what, ever seeking, we long for—come, let me defend myself to you as in a written charge, and show that I have neither overlooked any of the things I ought toward you, nor even dared to delay.

2. I came from Pannonia this third year now, scarcely saved from the dangers and labours you know of. And having crossed the Calchedonian strait and halted at the city of Nicomedes, to you first, as to an ancestral god, I rendered the first-fruits of my own deliverance, sending to you, as a token of my arrival, in place of a sacred offering, my greeting. And the bearer of the letter was one of the imperial guards, Julian by name, son of Bacchylus, an Apamean by birth, to whom I entrusted the letter especially because he undertook both to come to you and to know you well. After this there came to me from you, as from Apollo, a sacred letter, making plain that you had gladly heard of our arrival; and this was to me a happy omen and the beginning of good hopes—Iamblichus the wise, and the letters of Iamblichus to us. Why need I tell how I rejoiced, or signify what I felt about the letter? For if you received what was written by us on this account—it was sent to you by a courier from those who had come from there—you fully knew, from what they made plain, how great a pleasure I had in them. Again, when the tutor of my children was returning home, I began another letter to you, at once confessing my gratitude for the former ones and asking the return in equal measure for the future. After this the fair Sopater came to us as an envoy; and I, when I knew it, at once leapt up and rushed out, and, embracing him, wept for joy, dreaming of nothing else but you and the letters from you to us. And when I received them, I kissed them and held them to my eyes, and clung to them fast, as though fearing that, in the reading of the letters, the image of your likeness might fly away from me unawares. And indeed I wrote back at once, not to you only but also to the holy Sopater, his son, as though making much of it that we had received the common comrade from Apamea as a kind of pledge for your absence. Since then, having now written to you a third time, I have myself received no other letter than the one in which you seem to reproach me.

3. If, then, you accuse me for this reason, that under the form of a charge you may procure for us more occasions of writing, I receive the reproach very gladly, and in what I receive I appropriate to myself the whole of the favour; but if you truly accuse me of having fallen short in some duty toward you, who could be more wretched than I, through the injustice or sloth of letter-carriers, when I least of all men deserve to meet with this? And yet I, even if I do not write often, am justly worthy of pardon from you—not, I would say, because of the business I have in hand; may I never fare so ill as not to count your concerns above all business, as Pindar says—but because, toward so great a man, of whom even to make mention is awe, he who shrinks from writing is more temperate than he who is over-bold beyond what is fitting. For as those who dare to look continually at the dazzling rays of Helios, unless they be in some sort divine and, like the true-born of eagles, take courage against his beams, neither can behold what it is not lawful to see, and, the more they strive, the more they show that they cannot attain it, so too he who dares to write to you, the more he wishes to be bold, the more clearly he shows that he ought to fear. Yet for you, my noble friend, who are, one might say, the saviour of all the Hellenic world, it were fitting both to write to us ungrudgingly and to allay, so far as you can, the shrinking on our part. For as Helios—that the discourse may again take the image for you from the god—as Helios, then, when he shines whole with pure rays, withholds nothing from him who comes to his radiance, but does his own proper work, so too you ought, watering ungrudgingly the Hellenic world with your fair things as with light, not to shrink, if anyone, for shame or fear, is abashed at making the return to you. For neither does Asclepius heal men in hope of recompense, but everywhere fulfils his own loving-kindness. This you ought to do, being as it were a physician of cultured souls, and to preserve through all things the precept of virtue, like a good archer, who, even if he has no adversary, none the less ever exercises his hand toward the mark. Since the aim is not the same for both of us: ours is to obtain your good gifts, and yours to meet with what is given by us. But we, even if we write ten thousand times, play like the children of Homer, who, by the seashore, let whatever they have shaped of clay be washed away; whereas from you even a small letter is better than any fruitful stream, and I, for one, would rather possess one letter of Iamblichus than the gold of Lydia. If, then, you care anything for your lovers—and you do, unless I am mistaken—do not overlook us, who, like nestlings, ever stand in need of nurture from you; but write continually and do not shrink from feasting us with your fair things. And if we fall short, do you yourself appropriate the office of both, both of what you give and of what, on our behalf, you discharge in equal measure. It befits one who is a disciple, or, if you will, a foster-child, of Hermes the eloquent, not to keep that god's wand in sleeping, but rather to choose to imitate him in moving and rousing up.

4. To Iamblichus (transmitted in the corpus)

For Odysseus it sufficed, when checking his son's notion concerning him, to say: "No god am I; why do you liken me to the immortals?" But I would say that I am not even among men at all, so long as I am not with Iamblichus. Yet I confess to be your lover, as he was the father of Telemachus. For even if someone should say I am unworthy, not even so will he take from me my longing; since I hear that of fair statues many have become lovers, who not only did no harm to the art of the maker, but, by their passion for them, added to the work a living pleasure. As for the men of old and wise, among whom you wish in play to enrol me, I would say I fall as far short of them as I believe you yourself share in those men's company. And yet you—not Pindar only, nor Democritus, nor Orpheus the most ancient, but the whole Hellenic world together, all that is remembered to have come to the summit of philosophy—you hold blended, as in a lyre, by the harmonious composition of varied notes, to the perfection of music. And as Argus the guardian of Io, the fables, having care of Zeus's darling, fence about on every side with the sleepless dartings of his eyes, so too the discourse lights you up, the true guardian of virtue, with ten thousand eyes of culture. Proteus the Egyptian, they say, changed himself into varied shapes, as if fearing lest he should unawares reveal to those who sought him how wise he was; but I, if Proteus was really wise and such as to know many things, as Homer says, praise his nature, but do not admire his judgement, because he did the work not of any lover of mankind, but of a deceiver, hiding himself, that he might not be useful to men. But you, my noble friend, who would not truly admire, that you are in no way less than the wise Proteus—nay rather greater—since, perfected to the summit of virtue, you do not grudge men your fair things, but, like pure Helios, lead the rays of unmixed wisdom upon all, not only being with the present as is fitting, but glorifying the absent, so far as you can, by what comes from you? You would thus surpass even the fair Orpheus in what you do; for he spent his own music upon the ears of wild beasts, whereas you, as though born for the salvation of the common race of men, emulating everywhere the hand of Asclepius, come upon all things with a learned and saving nod. So that to me it seems that Homer too, if he came to life again, would far more justly riddle in your case the verse: "And one still somewhere is kept back alive in the wide world." For in truth, of the old mint, a kind of sacred spark of true and fruitful culture is kindled in you alone. And may it be, O Zeus the saviour and Hermes the eloquent, that the common benefit of all the inhabited world, the fair Iamblichus, be preserved for the longest time. Surely, in the case of Homer and Plato and Socrates and any other worthy of that company, the granting of a just prayer, when it was the good fortune of those before, so increased their times to greater things. Nothing, then, hinders that in our day too a man worthy, both in word and in life, of those men, should, by like prayers, be escorted to the uttermost of old age, for the happiness of mankind.

80. To Serapion the elder (on figs and on the number one hundred)

Others keep festivals in various ways, but I send to you, as a token of a sweet feast, a pleasant gift, a hundred long-stemmed figs of our country, courting for you a pleasure small in the greatness of the gift, but, in its excellence, perhaps sufficient. Now Aristophanes thinks the fig, save for honey, sweeter than all other things, and does not even allow that to be sweeter than the fig, as he says, judging the matter himself; while to Herodotus the historian, for the showing of a true desolation, it sufficed to say: "Among whom there are neither figs nor any other good thing," as though no other good thing among fruits were of more account than figs, nor any good thing at all needed by those among whom the fig is found. And the wise Homer praises the other fruits for size or colour or beauty, but to the fig alone he grants the title of sweetness. And honey he calls "green," fearing lest unawares he should call sweet what often befalls to be bitter; but to the fig alone he renders its proper praise, as to nectar, since it alone of all is sweet. And honey, Hippocrates says, is sweet to the taste, but altogether bitter in the digestion; and I do not disbelieve the saying; for all agree that it is productive of bile and turns the humours to the contrary of the taste. And this the more accuses its nature of an inborn bitterness; for it would not change into what is bitter, unless this had altogether belonged to it from the beginning, from which it passed over to the other. But the fig is sweet not to the taste only, but is better also in the digestion. So beneficial is it to men that Aristotle says it is even an antidote against every deadly poison, and that for this reason at banquets it is set out before the other dishes and eaten after them as a relish, as though, in place of some sacred safeguard, it embraced the wrongs done by foods. And further, that the fig is dedicated to the gods, and is the offering laid on the altar at every sacrifice, and that it is better than all frankincense for the preparing of incense, this is no peculiar saying of mine, but whoever has learned its use knows that it is the saying of a wise man and hierophant. And the fair Theophrastus, in his precepts of husbandry, setting forth the generations of grafted trees, and what yield to graftings of one with another, praises, I think, above all plants, the tree of the fig, as being receptive of varied and diverse generation, and alone of the rest easily bearing the growth of every kind, if one, cutting off each of its branches, and then breaking it, should fit into the several stocks another sprouting growth, so that often the sight of it alone suffices in place of a whole garden, as though, in some most graceful meadow, it sent back from itself a varied and manifold splendour of fruits. And the other tree-fruits are short-lived and do not endure to be kept; but the fig alone may be carried over the year and meet the generation of the coming fruit; so that Homer too says that in the garden of Alcinous the fruits grow old upon one another. With the others, perhaps, this would seem a poetic fable; but with the fig alone it would agree with the plain truth, since it alone of the other fruits is more lasting. Such, I think, being the nature of the fig, far better is its growth among us, so that, while it is more precious than the other plants, that of our country is more wonderful than the fig elsewhere; and that, while it surpasses the others in its generation, it is itself, in turn, surpassed by ours, and again, by its inclusion under both heads, is preserved—like to the victor, while in the things in which it seems to be surpassed, again, on the whole, being the victor. And this not unreasonably befalls among us alone; for it was fitting, I think, that the city truly of Zeus, and the eye of all the East—I mean the sacred and greatest Damascus—which surpasses all other places in everything, in the beauty of her temples and the greatness of her shrines and the temperate blending of her seasons and the splendour of her springs and the multitude of her rivers and the fertility of her soil, should alone suffice, even with such a plant, for the surpassing of the marvel. For the tree endures no transplanting, nor passes beyond the bounds of its native growth, but, by the law of an indigenous plant, refuses generation from abroad. And gold, I think, and silver, the same, grow in many places; but our land alone bears a plant unable to grow elsewhere. And as the imports from the Indians, and the Persian silks, or whatever is born in the land of the Ethiopians—born and so reported—pass everywhere by the law of commerce, so too our fig, growing nowhere else of the earth, is sent everywhere by us, and there is neither city nor island which it does not visit with the marvel of its sweetness. Nay, it adorns even a royal table, and is a stately ornament of every feast; and neither cake, nor twist, nor any newly-baked bread, nor any other kind of seasoned dainty, is its equal wherever it comes; so great is its excellence over the other dishes and over the figs of every place. And the other figs either are eaten in their autumn season or, when dried, go into the storehouse; but ours alone serves both uses, and is fair upon the tree, but far fairer if it come to the drying. And if you should take in with the eye its beauty upon the trees, and how it hangs from each of the stocks by long stems, as it were after the manner of buds, or how the tree runs round in a circle with its fruit, one upon another in a row, forming a circular variegated splendour, you would say it contrives this as it were a necklace upon a throat. The plucking of them from the trees, too, and the contrivance for their long keeping, hold an ambition not less than the pleasure of their use; for they are not, like the other figs, thrown together all at once, nor dried in a heap or loosely in the sun, but first they are gently plucked from the trees by the hands, then hung upon the walls by twigs or thorny rods, that they may whiten as they come into contact with the pure sun, and remain unmolested by beasts and birds, guarded, as it were, by the protection of their thorns. And concerning their generation and sweetness and season and preparation and use, these things our letter plays out to you.

2. As for the number one hundred, that it is more honourable than the others and circumscribes within itself the perfection of numbers, one might learn by considering thus. And I am not ignorant that it is the saying of men of old and wise, that the odd is set before the even, nor that they say the beginning of increase is the uncombined; for the like, abiding with the other, remains such as the other is, but when two have come to be, the third is the oddness. But I, even if the saying be too bold, would say nevertheless: the numbers are altogether dependent upon a beginning, and would carry continually their successive increase; yet I think it far juster to assign the cause of increase to the even rather than to the odd. For the number one could not be odd, having nothing in respect to which it might become odd; but the conjunction of the dyad gives birth to a twofold oddness, and from the two numbers the third reasonably comes to increase. And again, in the mixture of another dyad, it takes the excess of the tetrad; and in general the fellowship of the numbers with one another, showing the oddness from each, is enclosed within the number of the dyad. This being granted, I would say, I think, that, the first decad rolling round its revolution into itself, the whole passes over into the number of the hundred, so that, while the increase from the one would extend to ten, again the decad, ascending through itself, is completed into the number of the hundred. And thence again, from hundreds, the whole reaps the power of numbers, the one never resting, unless the dyad in the mixture ever begets the odd and recalls it again into itself, until once more, by another hundred, it shut up the gathered sum of the numbers, and, attaching to it perfection, creep again from it toward the other, by the appellations of hundreds ever carrying up the whole to the infinity of comprehension. And it seems to me that Homer too, neither simply nor idly, in his verses set about Zeus the aegis with its hundred tassels, but riddled this with some higher and unspeakable meaning, saying, as it were, that to the most perfect god he attached the most perfect number, and that with which alone, beyond the others, he might more justly be adorned; or because the whole universe, which he comprehended into the figure of the aegis by the roundness of the image, no other number circumscribes than the number of the hundred, fitting to the comprehension of the whole intelligible the hundred that runs in a circle. This same argument also seats the hundred-handed Briareus beside Zeus as his assessor, and allows him to contend against the power of the father, giving him, as it were, in the perfection of the number, the perfection of his strength. And further, Pindar the Theban, proclaiming in his epinicians the slaying of Typhoeus, and attributing the conquest of this greatest of giants to the greatest king of the gods, confirms the surpassing greatness of his eulogy from no other source than this, that he sufficed to bring down the hundred-headed giant with a single blow; as though no other giant were thought to have come to the hand of Zeus as an antagonist than him whom his mother alone of all armed with a hundred heads, nor any other of the gods more worthy of victory for the overthrow of so great a giant than Zeus alone. And to Simonides the lyric poet, for the praise of Apollo, it suffices to call the god "Hekatos" (god of the hundred), and, as it were in place of some other sacred token, to adorn him with the name, because, they say, he subdued the Python, the serpent, with a hundred arrows, and that he rejoices to be called Hekatos rather than Pythian, addressed, as it were, by the symbol of some perfect appellation. And the island that nursed Zeus, Crete, as though having received the nursing in return for her reception of Zeus, has been honoured with the number of a hundred cities. And Thebes too, the hundred-gated, Homer praises for no other reason than this, that in its hundred gates there was a wondrous beauty. And I pass over the hecatombs of the gods, and temples a hundred feet long, and altars with a hundred steps, and the men's halls that hold a hundred, and the fields of a hundred plethra, and all the other things, divine and human, that are comprised under the appellation of this number. This number, indeed, knows how to adorn both the military order and the order of peace, and it brightens the company of a hundred men under their captain, and honours, too, the bench of judges that comes to the same equal number. And though I have more than these to say, the law of the letter turns me back; but do you grant pardon to my discourse, because even these things have been said beyond what is sufficient. And if the attempt has any moderate beauty, in your judgement, it shall by all means be made open to the rest also, receiving the witness of your vote; but if it needs another hand for the filling-up of the aim, who could better than you, having refined the writing to beauty, polish it to the pleasure of the beholder?

3. To Sapor, king of the Persians (a forgery, transmitted in the corpus)

Showing, as I have until now, my inborn calm and love of mankind from childhood, I have received as subjects all who dwell beneath the sun. For behold, every race of barbarians, even to the borders of the river Ocean, has come bearing gifts to my feet; and likewise the Sagadares, reared by the Danube, and the Goths of varied and shaven aspect, who have no appearance like to men but a savage form: these in the present time grovel at my footsteps, promising to do whatever befits my empire. And not in this alone am I drawn on, but I must with all speed overtake the land of the Persians and put to flight that Sapor, the descendant of Darius, until he become tributary and subject to me; and thence to lay waste the dwelling-places of the Indians and of the Saracens, until they too all become, in the second rank of my empire, tributary and subject. But you have thought beyond their power, alleging that you have clothed yourself in piety, while you put forward shamelessness, and everywhere proclaim that I have proved unworthy of the empire of the Romans. Or do you yourself not know that I am the descendant of the most mighty Constans? And though these things are thus known to us, on your account I have not departed from my former disposition, in which, while still young in years, I and you together shared. But with calm mind I decree that ten times a hundred pounds of gold be sent to me by you at my passage by Caesarea, while I am still upon the highway, being about with all speed to march upon the Persian war, ready, if you do not do this, to overturn every place of Caesarea, and to raze to the ground the fair-wrought monuments long since raised in it, and to set up temples and statues, that I may persuade all to yield to the king of the Romans and not be lifted up. The gold above named, therefore, having weighed and measured it out by number on the Campanian balance with security, send to me by some servant trusty to you, sealed with your own ring, so that, when I have recognised the inexorableness of the occasion, even though it be late, I may be made calm toward you concerning your offences. For what I have read, I have learned and condemned.

82. To Eustathius (a letter on piety, transmitted in the corpus)

The nearness of your land—I mean Ionia—has brought us very great gain. For when we were grieved and distressed at the first reports, it consoled us. What it is that I mean, you shall learn. It came to our ears that you had revolted from your former religion, handed down from your forefathers, and had driven on toward a vain superstition, lured to this by some evil counsellor of a gadfly. And what was I likely to suffer in my displeasure? For as, if I should learn that some good thing of yours was being proclaimed, I count it my own gain, so too any grievous thing—which I do not believe—I likewise reckon rather my own loss. Being grieved, then, at these things, the presence of our father Aetius gladdened me, announcing the contrary, things to be prayed for by us; for he said that you were earnest about houses of prayer, and were not far drawn away from the remembrance of those athletic men, and altogether he affirmed that you hold to the god-fearing ways of our own. And I would say to you, after the Homeric manner: "Strike thus," and by such remembrances gladden those who love you, remembering that there is nothing higher than reverence for the gods. For virtue at its summit teaches us to hate falsehood as deceitful, and to cling to the truth, which is shown most of all in the worship concerning the divine. For the multitude is altogether contentious and unstable; but that which alone, with one, is the minister and rules over the whole, not from a portioning-out and a lot, like the children of Cronos, but being its own beginning, and ruling over all, neither having received it by force from another, but being before all things—this is truly God, whom, with the worship that is owing, one ought to adore. Farewell.

83. To a friend (or to Libanius)

How profitable to us was the delay of the warrant! For instead of trembling and being afraid as I was borne along on the public carriage and fell in with drunken muleteers and with mules, "barley-fed," in Homer's phrase, through idleness and surfeit, and instead of enduring dust and strange cries and the cracking of whips, it has befallen me to journey at leisure, by a way overarched and shady, holding many springs and many resting-places suited to the season, in which to relieve my weariness; so that there appeared to me a halting-place, airy and ample, beneath certain plane-trees or cypresses, with the Phaedrus in my hands, or some other of the discourses of Plato. These things, then, dear friend, while I enjoy the freedom of my travel, I thought it strange not to share with you also and signify to you.