Select Orations (2/40/43) 3-1 part 1/5

For I think that if anyone, making trial of his power in oratory, should then wish to judge it by a standard, setting before himself a single theme out of all—just as painters do with their archetypal models—he would, taking this one alone as surpassing speech, choose it as the first of all the rest;

so great a task is the praise of the man—not only for us who long ago laid aside all ambition, but even for those whose very life is oratory, who have made this their one and only zeal, to win renown in such themes!

Thus then I hold concerning these matters, and, as I persuade myself, quite rightly.

But I do not know to what other use I could put my powers of speech, if I do not use them now;

or with what I could rather gratify either myself, or the praisers of virtue, or oratory itself, than by admiring this man.

For to me this will be a debt sufficiently discharged;

and a debt, if any other thing, is oratory—owed by good men to the good, both in other respects and in the matter of oratory.

And to them oratory would be at once a pleasure, and at once an exhortation to virtue.

For of those whose praises I know clearly, I know also their advancements;

in nothing at all, then, is there anything which is not of all.

And for oratory itself the matter would stand well on both sides;

if it should come near to the worth, the speakers having displayed their own power;

but if it should fall very far short—which must necessarily be the experience of all who eulogize that man—they will have shown by the very deed their defeat, and that the one being praised is greater than the power of speech.

These, then, are the things which have moved me to speak, and for the sake of which I have entered upon this contest.

But if I have come so far behind the occasion, being second and after so many praisers, who both privately and publicly have extolled his deeds, let no one marvel.

But let that divine soul forgive me, in everything reverend to me both now and before.

And altogether, as when he was with us he corrected many of my faults, both by the bound of friendship and by a higher law (for I am not ashamed to say this, that to all he was a law of virtue), so also now that he has become exalted above us, he will be forgiving toward my doings.

And let those of you also forgive me who are more ardent praisers of the man—if indeed anyone is more ardent than another, and not rather all alike in honour, in the praise of the man.

For it was not through neglect that we fell short of what was fitting;

may we never be so careless either of virtue or of the duty of friendship;

nor through thinking that the praise belonged to others more than to us.

But first, I shrank from the discourse—for the truth shall be told—like those who approach holy things before they have been purified both in voice and in mind.

Next—to those who are not ignorant, yet I will remind them nonetheless—of those things wherewith in the meantime we were occupied, contending for the true word, being rightly constrained, and perhaps having become exiles for God's sake, and not even against the mind of that noble champion of the truth, who breathed nothing else save a godly word, saving to the whole world.

For as to the things of the body, perhaps one ought not even venture to speak of them to a man so noble and above the body, before he departed hence, and who deemed nothing of the soul's good things should be hindered by the bond of the flesh.

Let the matters of the apology, then, rest here;

[I leave them] to those who clearly know our affairs.

But now we must proceed to the praise itself, setting forth as the patron of our discourse his God, that we may not insult the man by our eulogies, nor come far behind the others, even though we all fall equally short of him, as those who look toward the heaven and the sun's ray.

If, then, I saw him priding himself on family and on his ancestry, or on any of the small things altogether, and on those things that grovelling minds look to, another catalogue of heroes would have been displayed.

How many things of those before him in time we could have contributed to him, and we should not even have yielded to the histories the claim to have anything more than we—yet having this advantage altogether, that we adorn ourselves not with fiction nor with myths, but with the very facts, and with things of which there are many witnesses.

For Pontus presents us with many narratives from the father, and these no less than the wonders of old concerning that region, of which every history and poem is full;

and many, this soil of mine, the noble Cappadocians, no less a nurse of young men than of good horses.

Whence we set the mother's line over against the father's.

Generalships and popular leaderships and power in imperial courts;

and further, abundance of wealth, and the heights of thrones, and public honours, and the splendour of oratory—of whom were they either more or greater? Of these, if we wished and were free to speak, the Pelopidae and the Cecropidae and the Alcmaeonidae would be nothing to us, the Aeacidae and the Heracleidae and those than whom there is nothing loftier—who, being unable to speak plainly from their own domestic resources, take refuge in the obscure, ascribing to their forefathers certain demons and gods and myths, of which the most august thing is unbelief, and the thing believed is an outrage.

But since our discourse is concerning a man who deems that nobility should be judged man by man, and that not as forms and complexions are tested by themselves, and the noblest or basest of horses, but we are to be painted by externals; having spoken of one or two of the things belonging to him from the beginning—and these proper to his life, and such as he would most delight to hear spoken—I will now turn to him himself.

To one belongs one mark and narrative, and to another another, both of family and of the individual, whether small or great—just as some paternal inheritance, begun either far back or near at hand, descends to those who come after;

but in his case, of both his parents the distinguishing mark is piety, as the discourse will now show.

I speak to those who know—of the time of Maximinus, who, fastening upon many who lived near him, made them all lovers of mankind, while he himself flowed with much insolence and strove to bind upon his brow the crown of impiety.

Many of our champions surpassed this man, having contended even unto death, and a little before death, falling short only so far as to survive their victory and not to depart together with their struggles, but to be left behind as trainers in virtue for others—living martyrs, breathing monuments, silent proclamations—and among the many who are numbered were also this man's forefathers on the father's side, to whom, when they had practised every fair path of piety, that crisis brought the crowning point;

for they were so disposed in preparation and in mind as to bear all things readily, by which Christ crowns those who imitate His combat on our behalf.

But since their conflict too had to be lawful;

and the law of martyrdom is neither to go to the conflict of one's own accord, out of consideration for the persecutors and the weaker ones, nor when present to draw back;

for the one is of rashness, the other of cowardice;

and they, honouring the Lawgiver in this, what do they devise? Or rather, whither are they led by the providence that directs all their affairs? They flee to a certain thicket of the Pontic mountains—and many such there are among them, both deep and stretching far—using very few as helpers both of their flight and as ministers of their food.

Let others, then, marvel at the length of the time;

for a very long while, as they say, their flight was prolonged—about the seventh year, and a little more;

and the manner of life, for bodies well-born, was both narrow and changed, as was natural; and to be afflicted by frosts and heats and rains in the open air, and the friendless solitude, and the lack of fellowship and society—how much it tended to hardship for those who had been attended and honoured by many.

But I come now to say what is greater and more marvellous than these things;

and no one will disbelieve it except one who thinks the persecutions and perils for Christ's sake nothing great—judging wrongly and most perilously.

These noble men longed also for some of the things that minister to pleasure, being wearied by the length of time and surfeited with the necessities;

and yet they did not utter the words of Israel;

for they were not murmurers like those who suffered in the wilderness after the flight from Egypt, as though Egypt were better for them than the wilderness, supplying the abundance of pots and flesh, and of the other things which they left behind there;

for the brick-making and the clay were then nothing to them, by reason of their folly;

but other words, as more godly and more faithful!

'For what,' they said, 'is there of unbelievable things, if the God of wonders, who richly fed in the wilderness a strange and fugitive people, so as both to rain bread and to make quails gush forth, nourishing them not with necessities only but also with superfluities;

if He who cut the sea and stayed the sun and stopped a river,' and adding besides all the other things He has done (for the soul loves in such matters to dwell on the story, and to hymn God with many wonders);

'this God,' they urged, 'will He not also nourish us today, the champions of piety, with the things of luxury? Many wild beasts that have escaped the tables of the rich—which once also were ours—lurk in these mountains;

and many edible birds fly over us who desire them; of which what is not yours to hunt, if only you will it?' These things they said, and the hunt was at hand—a self-supplied dish, an unlaboured banquet—deer appearing suddenly all together from somewhere over the hills.

How well-grown they were, how fat, how eager for the slaughter!

One might almost conjecture this also—that they were vexed at not having been called sooner.

Some they drew on by their beckonings, others came of themselves.

Who was pursuing or constraining them? No one.

What horsemen? What kind of dogs? What barking or shouting or young men beforehand seizing the outlets, by the laws of the hunt? They were prisoners of prayer and of a righteous request.

Who of those now or ever knew such a quarry?

They themselves were the stewards of the quarry.

As much as was wanted was kept by their will alone;

as much as was over was sent away to the thickets for a second table.

The cooks were improvised, the meal was ready, the guests were thankful, having already in the present wonder a foretaste of the things hoped for.

Whence also they became more eager for the contest, for the sake of which these things befell them.

But you, tell me of your deer-slaying women and your Orions and your Actaeons, those ill-fated hunters—you, my persecutor, who admire the myths and the deer given in exchange for the maiden, if there is anything in this to your boasting, even granting that the tale is no myth.

How exceedingly shameful are the things that follow in the story!

For what profit is there in the substitution, if it saves a maiden in order that she may be taught to slay strangers, having learned inhumanity as the recompense of humanity? This one thing, then, out of many—one in place of many, as my discourse runs.

And this I have related, not in order to add anything to his good repute;

for neither does the sea need the rivers that flow into it, even if they flow in ever so many and so great, nor does he who is now being praised need those who would contribute anything to his renown;

but in order that I might show of what sort were the things belonging to him from the beginning, and toward what pattern looking, how greatly he overshot the mark.

For if it is a great thing for others to receive something from those above unto their honour, it was a greater thing for him to add to those above out of himself, as of a stream running upward.

Of the wedded union of his parents—no less in the equal honour of virtue than in their bodies—there are many other tokens: feeding the poor, hospitality, purification of the soul through self-control, a portion of their possessions consecrated to God (a thing not yet then zealously pursued by many, as now it has been increased and honoured from the first examples), and the other things which, when Pontus and the Cappadocians divided them, sufficed to fill the ears of many;

but to me the greatest and most conspicuous thing seems to be their good children.

For the same persons being both prolific in children and blessed with fair children, myths perhaps possess;

but to us experience presented these, who had become such themselves that, even if they had not been the parents of such children, they would have sufficed of themselves for good repute;

and they were shown to be parents of such children that, even if they themselves were not so great in virtue, they would surpass all in the blessing of fair children. For that one or two of those praised should be born, one might perhaps grant to nature;

but the excellence running through all is a clear eulogy of those who brought them forth.

Who does not know his father, Basil, that great name among all, who obtained a father's blessing, so that—not to say he alone, if any of men—being supreme over all in virtue, he is hindered from holding the first place by his son alone? For prevailing over all in virtue, he is hindered from holding the primacy by his son alone.

Who does not know Emmelia—she who was called to be what she became, or became what she was called, truly worthy of her name 'Melody'—who showed herself to be among women, if one must speak briefly, what he was among men;

so that, if it were altogether necessary that the one now being praised, being subject to nature, should be given to men, like one of those given of old by God for the common good, neither would it more fittingly be that he should be born of others than of those, nor that they should be named parents of any other rather than of him;

which indeed, acting well, also came to pass together.

But since, obeying a divine law which bids us render all honour to parents, we have rendered to those mentioned the firstfruits of our praises, let us now go on to him himself, having said only this much—which I think would seem to all who knew him to be truly said—that we needed only his voice in eulogizing him.

For he is at once a brilliant theme for those who praise, and alone worthy, by the power of his eloquence, of the theme.

As for beauty and strength and stature, in which I see the multitude rejoicing, we will yield them to those who wish;

not that even in these he came off worse than any of the petty-minded who wallow about the body, while he was still young and had not yet by philosophy mastered the flesh;

but in order that I may not suffer the same thing as the less experienced of athletes, who, having spent their strength in idle and incidental wrestlings, are found weaker in the decisive moments, and in those things by which victory is won and one is proclaimed a crowned victor.

But those things which I think I could in no way speak and seem superfluous, nor shoot the discourse beyond the mark, these I will praise.

And I think it is agreed by all who have sense, that education is the first of the good things that are among us;

not this alone, the nobler and our own, which, despising all that is elegant and ambitious in oratory, holds fast to salvation alone and to the beauty of the things conceived by the mind;

but also the external education, which many Christians spit upon, as treacherous and dangerous and casting one far from God—knowing it ill.

For just as we ought not to despise heaven and earth and air and all such things, because some have wrongly apprehended them, worshipping the things of God instead of God;

but reaping whatever is useful of them for life and enjoyment, while we flee whatever is perilous, not setting the creation up against the Creator like the foolish, but apprehending the Creator from His works, and, as the divine Apostle says, bringing every thought into captivity unto Christ;

and as of fire and food and iron and the rest we know nothing to be in itself most useful or most harmful, but according as it seems to those who use it;

and already there are even some of the creeping venomous beasts which we have mixed into medicines for salvation;

so also of these things we have received the part that is critical and contemplative, but as much as leads to demons and error and the depth of perdition we have spat out;

for from these things too we have been profited unto godliness, learning the better from the worse, and making the weakness of those things the strength of our own teaching.

Therefore education is not to be dishonoured, because this seems good to some;

but rather we must suppose those who are so disposed to be clownish and uneducated, who would wish all to be like themselves, that their own case might be hidden in the common lot, and that they might escape the proofs of their lack of education.

But since we have laid down and agreed upon this, come, let us contemplate the things concerning him.

Under this man, then, the wonderful one is educated, his life and his learning growing up together and ascending together with one another;

not boasting of some Thessalian and mountain cave as a workshop of virtue, nor of some braggart Centaur as the teacher of the heroes of his day;

nor being taught by him to shoot hares or run down fawns or hunt deer, or to be most mighty in warlike matters, or best to break in colts, using the same colt both as pupil and teacher, or being nourished, in the manner of the myths, on the marrows of deer and lions;

but being instructed in the regular curriculum of education, and being trained in godliness, and, to speak briefly, being led toward the perfection to come through the lessons of the beginning.

For those who have succeeded in life only, or in learning only, but are lacking in the other, differ nothing, in my opinion, from the one-eyed, whose loss is great, but greater the disgrace, both to those who see them and to those who are seen.

But to those for whom it is granted to be approved in both, and to be ambidextrous, to them belongs both to be perfect, and to live with the blessedness which is from yonder.

Which indeed had happily befallen him, having from home the pattern of virtue, looking toward which he was straightway most excellent.

As we see the colts and the calves at their very birth gambolling beside their mothers, so he too, running close beside his father with a colt-like high spirit, and not falling far short of the highest motions of virtue;

and, if you will, even in the sketch foreshadowing the future beauty of virtue, and before the time of exactness already pre-tracing the lines of exactness.

But when he had sufficiently profited from the education here, and since it was needful that he should let slip none of the noble things, nor be left behind by the industry of the bee, which gathers from every flower the most useful things, he hastens to the city of the Caesareans, to share in the schools there;

and I mean this renowned city, our own, since it was also the leader and teacher of my own oratory—the mother-city of eloquence no less than of the cities over which it presides and against which it holds dominion;

and if anyone should deprive it of its primacy in eloquence, he will have taken away that very thing which is fairest and most peculiarly its own.

For other cities exult in other adornments, whether old or new, in order, I suppose, that they may have something of which to tell or to show;

but for this city eloquence is its distinguishing mark, just as the insignia upon arms or in the dramas.

But what followed, let those themselves relate, who both educated the man among them and enjoyed his education;

how great he was to his teachers, how great to his fellow-students, equalling the former, and surpassing the latter in every kind of education;

how great a renown within a little time he carried off among all, both among those of the common people and among the chief men of the city, displaying an education greater than his age, and a fixing of character greater than his education;

an orator among orators even before the sophistic chairs, a philosopher among philosophers even before the doctrines of philosophy;

and what is greatest, a priest to Christians even before the priesthood;

so great was the concession granted him by all in all things!

But to him eloquence was the by-work, gathering from it only so much as to have it as a help toward the philosophy that is according to us, since one needs also the power that is in these things for the setting forth of the things conceived by the mind;

for a mind that cannot utter itself is the stirring of those who are benumbed.

But his zeal was philosophy, and to be sundered from the world and to be with God, busying himself with things above while among things below, and gaining the things that stand and abide amid the things that are unstable and flowing.

Thence to Byzantium, the city that presides over the East;

for it was renowned among the most perfect of sophists and philosophers, of whom in a short time he gathered the best, by the swiftness and greatness of his nature.

Thence to the very floor of eloquence, to Athens, he is sent by God and by his noble insatiability for education—Athens truly golden to me, and the procurer of good things if to anyone!

For they made this man known to me more perfectly, though he was not unknown to me even before;

and seeking eloquence, I gained happiness;

and in another manner I experienced the same thing as Saul, who, seeking his father's asses, found a kingdom, gaining the by-work as greater than the work itself.

Thus far, then, our discourse has run well for us, and has carried us along a smooth and most easy and truly royal road of the man's praises;

but from this point onward, I know not what to do with the discourse, and whither to turn;

for the discourse has for us something even of the steep.

For I long—having come to this point of the discourse and laid hold of this occasion—to add also something of my own to the things that have been said, and to dwell a little longer upon the narrative: whence and how, and from what beginning, this friendship of ours came together—or rather this concord and kindred-growth, if one ought to call it more fittingly.

For neither is the eye wont easily to withdraw from delightful sights, but, even if one drag it away by force, to be carried toward them again;

nor is speech wont to withdraw from the sweetest narratives.

I will try, then, to do this with moderation, as far as is possible.

But if indeed we are somewhat constrained by longing, let there be forgiveness for the passion, which is the most just of all passions, and not to feel which is a loss to those at least who have understanding.

Athens held us, who like some river-stream had been parted from one fountainhead, our fatherland, into diverse exile out of love for learning, and again had come together to the very same place, as though by prior agreement, God moving us so.

It held me a little earlier, and him right after me, received with great and conspicuous hope.

For he was on many lips before he arrived, and to each it was a great thing to lay claim beforehand to the man so eagerly sought after.

Nothing serves so well to add a kind of seasoning to a discourse as a little narrative—a reminder to those who know, instruction to those who do not.

At Athens the greater part of the young men, and the more foolish, are mad for the sophists;

and not only those of low birth and obscure name, but already even the well-born and more distinguished, being a mixed multitude, young and ungovernable in their impulses.

This very thing one may see happening at the rival chariot-races among those who love horses and love spectacles:

they leap, they shout, they fling dust to the sky, they drive chariots while sitting still, they beat the air, yoking and re-yoking the horses with their fingers as with whips;

and though masters of nothing, they readily trade with one another charioteers, horses, stables, and commanders;

and these—who are they? Often the poor and destitute, men who could not even procure provisions for a single day.

Just this very thing the sophists' followers undergo, quite without art, on behalf of their own teachers and rivals, being eager that they themselves grow more numerous and that they make those teachers more prosperous through their own zeal;

they seize beforehand the cities, the roads, the harbors, the mountain-tops, the plains, the borderlands—no part of Attica or of the rest of Greece is left out—most of the inhabitants themselves;

for they have these too divided up according to their various partisan loyalties.

Whenever, then, one of the young men arrives and falls into the hands of those who would capture him—whether he comes willing or by force—this is their Attic custom, a sport mixed with seriousness.

First he is led about as a guest by one of those who got him first—a friend, a kinsman, a fellow-countryman, or one of those who excel in sophistic matters and are bringers-in of fees—and from these especially comes honor for those teachers;

since this too is a reward for them—to obtain such enthusiasts.

Next he is teased by anyone who wishes;

and this, I suppose, is meant to humble the pride of the newcomers and to bring them under their hand from the very start;

and he is teased—by some more boldly, by others more cleverly—according as one has more of boorishness or of urbanity.

And the affair, to those who do not know it, seems exceedingly fearful and savage, but to those who know it beforehand, quite pleasant and kindly;

for the show is more than the substance of the threats.

Then he is led in procession through the marketplace, brought forward to the bath.

Drawing themselves up in a line, paired off at intervals, those who are initiating the young man escort his advance toward the bath.

And when they draw near, they break into loud shouting and leaping, as though possessed;

and the shout bids him not to go forward but to halt, as though the bath would not receive them;

and at the same time, while the doors are being banged, having frightened the young man with the din, then granting him entrance, thus at last they give him his freedom, receiving him from the bath as an equal and as one of themselves;

and this is for them the most delightful part of the initiation—the swiftest release and dissolution of all that vexed him.

At that time, then, I held my own and great Basil in reverence—not only I myself, observing the steadfastness of his character and his timely command of speech, but I also persuaded the others to feel likewise, as many of the young men as happened not to know the man;

for to most he was at once worthy of respect, his reputation having gone before him by hearsay.

From this, what follows? Almost alone of those visiting the city he escaped the common custom, being deemed worthy of greater honor than befits a newcomer.

This was the prelude of our friendship;

from here the spark of our union;

thus we were wounded with love for one another.

Then something of the following sort also occurred;

for this too is not worth passing over.

I find the Armenians to be no simple race, but exceedingly secretive and underhanded as well.

At that time, then, some of those who had long been his acquaintances and friends—from his father's circle and from the older fellowship, for they happened to belong to that same school—approaching him with a friendly pretense (yet it was envy, not goodwill, that prompted them), began questioning him more contentiously than rationally, and tried through their first onset to bring him under themselves, knowing both the man's inherited natural gifts and not bearing the honor he then enjoyed;

for it seemed an outrage that they, who had got the philosophers' cloaks beforehand and had practiced to bawl loudly, should not have the advantage over a stranger and a newcomer.

But I—the Athens-lover and the vain one, for I did not perceive the envy, trusting their pretense—when they were already giving way and turning their backs (for I was jealous lest the glory of Athens be brought down in those men and most swiftly despised), undermined the youths and brought the argument round to their side;

and lending my own weight—and in such matters even a small addition can decide the whole—I made, as the saying goes, the heads equal in the fray.

But when I recognized the hidden design of the disputation, and could no longer hold back, since it was now plainly being laid bare, suddenly changing course I backed water, took my stand with him, and made the victory turn the other way.

And he was at once delighted with what had happened;

for he was quick-witted, if any man was;

—to put it wholly in Homeric style—"he pressed on, routing" with his discourse those noble fellows, and "smiting" them with syllogisms, nor did he let up before he had utterly turned them to flight and bound the victory cleanly upon his brow.

This was for us the second—no longer a spark of friendship, but already a beacon kindled, conspicuous and reaching to the sky.

Those men, then, departed thus baffled, blaming themselves much for their rashness and resenting me much for what they called a betrayal, so that they confessed open enmity and charged treason—not against him only but against Athens itself, as being convicted and put to shame through that first trial by a single man, and that too one who had no occasion yet for confidence.