Letters 1 part 4/7

And having obtained my first regard on your account, in the end they thus produced in me affection on their own account.

For their character is adorned by earnestness, and nature does not know how to belie earnestness; so that, had you not happened to inform me beforehand, I might perhaps have divined—guessing from the stamp of their nature—that they were joined by birth to you.

But well done to your family, if it knows how to beget such offspring!

Know then that my disposition toward the young men is firm and steadfast;

but whether I also have the power to serve my zeal, let that lie upon the knees of the gods.

To Eusebius and Elias. I, who take pleasure in seeing you when present, and ever remember you when absent, did not think it right to let this occasion pass in silence;

for it is always a pleasure to write to you, and neither would you have approved my sending forth our common child without a letter, nor could I have done so without shame.

So then, while he was with me, on account of my devotion to him, I seemed even by nature to have become his father;

but may there arise for him some father in learning—not more well-disposed than I, but perhaps abler.

To Phaedrus. Truly, then, letters were images of the soul, and showed those who are absent in what disposition of mind they stand, no less than a painter portrays whatever he wishes to imitate.

For upon reading your letter, I seemed to have before me that very man whom I had not known by experience—so that if someone, removing the heading, had delivered me the letter, I would have thought the writing to be that of an affectionate father to a son.

Such, it seems, are the nurslings that virtue is wont to show forth as her own.

For that you, neither having seen me nor had experience of me, should take the initiative in writing and make the present blessings common with me—what praise would this not justly deserve? Yet nevertheless I have resolved never, whatever should happen, to disregard my own Ithaca; indeed I even emulate the Homeric Odysseus for this very reason, that having set aside everything else, he longed for his small island—one which no one would have mentioned for its excellences.

To Hieronymus. Again Egypt, and luxury, and we are but poor men in your eyes, and no thought whatever for those absent.

Laugh on, merely watching the Nile flow with gold.

And even should you raise your eyebrow yet higher, we shall certainly bear being despised.

For a day will come when you will see Elusa again, and will weep at the sand shifting with the winds and stripping the vine bare down to its roots,

where the nymphs are somehow both dry and of the sea, and Zeus the Rain-giver is nowhere to be found.

Then I shall laugh, and make comedy of your fortune, while you will deem blessed the man now cast aside—me.

But while the Nile still grants you the leisure to live in luxury, only write, and call us small folk, humble creatures who go about on the ground.

For thus we shall both enjoy your writing, and console ourselves for your boastfulness with the hope of what is to come.

To Zacharias and Philip. The excellent John will claim your goodwill both by kinship and by his fellow-studies with me;

for he is the son of Leontius, if you know Dionysius, the husband of our grandmother.

His father is by nature the brother of this man, so that I may remind you of him, although you already know him.

But even if these ties did not exist, you would in any case consider as your own kinsman a companion of ours, one who has helped fill out our chorus.

Do not, then, delay to do good to this young man, who has goodwill owed to him from every quarter;

for I forbear to mention how, by his very character, he wins over all who see him, knowing how to blush before he even speaks, uttering only measured words, gauging his speech by the occasion, and possessing a mind beyond his years.

But that wretched Theodore, having held out to us the promise of the voyage, has again backed away from it—perhaps condemning himself, lest, should he ever prove true to something he has foretold, he should actually bring the matter to its conclusion.

To Zacharias and Philip. He who delivers this letter to you is one of those who studied with me—not for long, yet he deems that time sufficient to secure your kindness, and thinks it enough merely to have my bare name inscribed upon his letter.

But whether he has judged rightly, the proof of experience awaits him as its teacher.

It is, then, a contest for you both not to disappoint him of his expectation, and not to shame me, who am reputed to hold such influence with you.

To Zacharias and Philip. Again a letter to you, and again another burden;

for it seems that I somehow do not know the measure of asking, but always let each new request eclipse the ones before it could be fulfilled, while you laugh with one another and say that it would have been better for me to keep silent than to pelt you with frequent letters.

Yet nevertheless, even if I give you occupation and cause for laughter, I shall not endure to keep silent, as you would put it—having obtained from Fortune, as it were, the art of endless talking, especially since the present matter concerns our own need.

For our chosen men here, by common decree, request the supreme authority to grant an easy matter—a tax-exempt ship able to supply my grain allowance;

and they also ask that the former allowances be confirmed to their successors, and that merely the name be transferred.

These things await your zealous effort; and in bringing them to their conclusion, you will grant a favour both to me and to those who have petitioned you through me.

But if you should overlook these things, it will fall to me to suffer doubly: both not to obtain what I hoped for, and not to obtain it through you—of which the one brings shame, the other loss.

—the local officers ministering to the need, while the supreme authority renders its decree.

To Zacharias and Philip. The speed of your zeal has so astonished us, that we count the days since we sent the decrees, and find you all but outrunning time itself.

So great a thing it is to be attended by the zeal of good brothers, who count as gain whatever they can procure for one another toward good cheer.

And to have exceeded the need of what was requested, and to have furnished more than the petitioner desired—what goodwill does this not manifest? May you, then, never cease doing such things, nor I ever cease taking great pride in them.

To Hieronymus. It was you, best of men, who, having set out from us, ought to have taken the initiative in writing, and to have taught us, who long to know, whether Poseidon has been gracious to you and has spread the sea smooth beneath your ship; whether affairs at Alexandria have proven favourable; whether you sailed up the great Nile in safety; whether your studies flourish; and whether your wealth is by now counted in the tens of thousands, and your house stands filled with Egyptian gifts.

These things you ought to have written, and to have fulfilled the promises in which there were to be many letters, and no forgetfulness of your friends.

But you overlook me even when I write, unwilling to respond with letters.

Therefore I have now sent a second letter as well; and if you still remain silent, perhaps I shall add a third, until some shame for what you are doing overtakes you, and we are at last blessed with the good fortune of your voice.

To Agapetus. So you were, it seems, a clever fellow at snatching up beforehand an accusation merely expected, and at levelling against others the very charges one might justly have brought against you.

For long ago you occupied Alexandria, and having left that city you fell silent, and so far as it lay with you, you escaped notice even when present among us.

But well done, Rumour, who lets nothing of the best men remain hidden!

It was she who revealed you to be there, and I was left to wonder for what reason you kept silent.

If he thinks silence a solemn and Pythagorean thing, then, I said to myself, silence at least is not proper to an orator;

but if he was vexed at Elusa, as a place hateful to the gods and an abyss, he ought to have sought consolation from his friends.

Suspecting neither of these, then, I said rather that you had grown greatly puffed up, and now count your old and dearest friends as mere nonsense—and this while dwelling at Elusa, and being schooled, well-nigh, under a brother who never laughs.

Pondering these things by myself, I would never have expected to see you suddenly turned accuser.

Whence I smiled at your letter, and marvelled that rhetoric grants such license, on account of which I, who was long ago the accuser in this very matter, now find myself seeking a defence.

Such are the solemn feats of the sophist's art—it has spared not even its fellow practitioners, sending owls, as the saying goes, to Athens.

But my children—for so you used to call my writings—blush to visit you, knowing that you know how to expose even a hidden blemish.

To Dorotheus. Already, while I was intending to write in reply to your first letter, you yourself got ahead of me and added a second.

So eager are you to win, even in the matter of letters.

But what, you will say, of the time that has passed, and the delay in not writing? It is not possible for one who is but a man to do all that he wishes; rather, he is compelled to follow along, to be a slave to necessity, and to submit to circumstance.

And it gives not what one desires, but what necessity measures out according to the need.

For these reasons, then, even until now, unwillingly indeed, yet in silence nonetheless I was grieved — although I have cause to marvel at the zeal you showed when you were with us, at the goodwill toward me that still remains since you set out to sea again, at the envy that was raised up against you and fortune's ancient plot, and how prudently you withdrew from your studies and bade farewell to the idle chatter concerning them, choosing rather to be diminished in all things, that you might win the Muses.

But may you soon enjoy your love of the Muses' arts, and obtain as much as you desire, and may you become, in regard to the earlier slander — if it was true, more prudent, but if false, more fortunate — so that your life hereafter may no longer receive even a false slander, but you may again appear to be that same man as before.

For thus, when the extremes are united, the middle is destroyed, being struck by each side.

To Stephanus. Are you still silent? Am I still among those neglected by you? And yet formerly you used to keep me supplied with frequent letters, and it was a most delightful thing to hear you speaking so often.

This, then, is the enjoyment I have had of good books!

For in seeking after those books, I think I have lost, in addition, the friend dearest to me of all.

But you, above all, send the book back, and let nothing of your former goodwill be lacking.

But if not, let at least our being friends remain.

For thus I shall seem to have suffered no loss at all.

Tell me also how your school fares, and whether a throng of pupils hems in your lecture-hall, and — what is most important — whether you are reveling in wealth, and whether some Pactolus has flooded your house.

May these things come to pass for you; and let us then reckon that we have the book back, and moreover let your money henceforth be counted in the thousands.

To Sabinus. If for lovers a single day suffices to bring on old age, you would not be quick enough to count how old we have become.

For formerly we were blessed, both seeing you and holding fast to what was yours;

and all things were good for us: a most delightful sight, discourse that enchanted the ear, a mind that lavished goodwill upon us.

And whatever good thing anyone might long for, it was enough merely to look upon you.

But now, suddenly, we are bereft of all things, wherefore I am at a loss, and I have come to love the old fables, and I could wish to become that Perseus of legend;

for perhaps it would then be possible for me, taking wing a little, to console my longing.

But why has my own dear heart spoken these things to me? For behold, longing has fashioned wings for me as well, and I have become both a Perseus and a myth, and all that a yearning mind readily wishes to fashion for itself.

Indeed, I have already delighted in seeing you in a dream, and, rising up, I was at once consoled by that vision.

By dealing kindly with the bearer of this letter, you will both do me a favour and confirm the opinion he happened to hold — that if you should receive a letter from me, there is nothing you would not readily do.

To Hieronymus. What a load of accusation we have enjoyed from you — we the boasters, we the excessive sophists, we who suffer from arrogance dressed up in a modest guise!

And I could not tell how many charges you have heaped up against us, as though you had long been seeking an occasion to raise your tongue against us.

Wherefore, though you have not even taken up a just pretext, you bring into the open what you had long been concealing without our knowledge.

For tell me, what is so terrible if, writing to you, I headed the letter 'Procopius to Hieronymus, greeting'? For that this is the ancient custom, I have no doubt you too would agree.

But, you say, there is no need to depart from the custom that now prevails.

Then go on and accuse also anyone who should wish to bring back the luxury now prevailing to the ancient dignity, and anyone who should bring back music, fallen into trivial ditties and vulgar nonsense, again to the muse of Terpander.

But whence, by the god of Friendship, do you yourself seem to us dignified, if you utter some Attic word and win the praise of men as one of ancient standing — when it is open to you instead to gorge yourself on words from the crossroads and carry these onto the platform? Or why, sitting before the youths, do you imagine you achieve some great and praiseworthy thing, worthy of Aristides himself, if you speak as he did? Or did not Polemon purge the ancient rhetoric of its Asianic monstrosity? And if fortune had granted you to have lived then, I think you would perhaps have brought a lawsuit even against him, on the ground that, disregarding customary usage, he wished to play the boaster by being led back to the ancient muse.

Would that the Laconic table now again held sway, and that our life were, as of old for the Persians, barley-cake and water and cress.

And indeed one may even now see these things prevailing in your own Elusa — not through any excess of self-restraint, but because the land scarcely provides even so much to its inhabitants.

But nevertheless you yourself, having learned Egyptian luxury, have stripped off your ancestral ways — you who make it a law that customary practice must be kept, even when it exceeds what is fitting.

As for your calling me a boaster because I placed you, bearing your name, after my own — this seems the remark of one who does not fully know that what stands first in order does not by any means always hold the first place in honour, nor is acquainted with the sayings of Demosthenes, which schoolboys are accustomed to declaim, namely that 'acting,' though later in order than 'speaking and voting,' is prior in power and superior to them.

But if you altogether accuse such things as boastfulness, it is time to wrap, together with me, in the same disease of arrogance those of old who employed the custom of such a heading — of whom, passing over the rest, I mean Socrates and Plato, who raised philosophy on high.

Or was it not you yourself to whom this happened long ago — that, the moment you stepped off the merchant-ship, the Egyptian children escorted you with a certain barbaric shout, and there was a festival no less grand than when, of old, some favourable birth gave them a new Apis? And how, being on that account lifted up on high in your mind, you called me, who dwell in a small city, worthless, while in your eyes your own homeland, your wife, and your very child were things to be cast off? And did you not think me a fool for philosophizing, because I had no great applause, being — O Zeus! — of undistinguished voice and barbarous tongue?

And, what is most important, you used to call yourself blessed if they showed you your house full of grain and meat.

Do you see how much you were puffed up over trifles — you who now accuse me of boastfulness? And I say this, by the gods, not wishing to retaliate against you for your words, for I do not judge that to accord with my philosophy, but wishing, if I somehow could, to render your tongue more moderate.

But do not, being overawed by the force of my words, become far removed from writing such things to me again.

For, by your Nile and the Graces who attend upon you, I made your letter a rhetorical spectacle, and it was read aloud to everyone in the very midst of Gaza.

And I indeed felt shame at being called a boaster by your letter, but the audience laughed at me;

but you seemed to be a fortunate man on account of your words.

To Orion. Always carrying you in my memory, I almost imagine that you are present, and by artifice I contrive to make the absent one present.

And as I remember you, all things come to me together for my delight: the steadfastness of your character, your zeal for learning, the moderation of your mind, and — what is most important — the self-restraint that checks the irrational impulses of youth.

And I sometimes reason with myself: he who showed himself such a man while all of us were watching — what would he become once he were left to himself? For he will surpass, I think, his former self, competing against himself, so as to show to us, though absent, that it was for virtue's own sake that he honoured it, and not out of reverence for us who were watching.

And if indeed he dwells in a city given over to luxury, with many examples of licentiousness before him, this will set him all the more zealously against the pleasures.

For what athlete, priding himself on victory, upon arriving at Olympia, will judge the magnitude of the contest an occasion for ease, rather than at once intensifying his training and confirming his former victories with a greater one? So you too, closing your senses and remaining unswayed by every sound and sight, will show that it is not the abundance of evils that knows how to conquer self-mastery, but that, wherever the desire for nobler things is present — name the Sirens if you will, or Circe who transforms all things — Odysseus will again prove victor: now displaying the moly, that reasoned discourse, I think, which Hermes gave him as a gift, and now binding himself fast with virtue, crying aloud, I imagine, as he sails past the pleasures.

To Apollonius. The most devout Martyrius, rich in virtue but poor in fortune, has need of your influence, having, as he says, abundant experience from past dealings, and he easily persuaded me, since I knew that you extend a hand to all who need to be set upright and who call upon you for aid;

for having with us only so much as neither gives him strength nor lets him die, he looks to you, considering such help to be a release from his troubles.

But hold fast to his cause eagerly, casting a kindly eye upon him, both for your own sake, and for mine, and for the sake of him who stands in need.

For indeed he confidently declared that if you should receive a letter from me, there is nothing you would not readily do.

And when I smiled and asked him how he knew this, he was ready even to pledge the future outcome as surety.

Therefore fulfil his hopes, lest, when need should call again, he pledge the future on the assumption that I can accomplish nothing with you.

To Diodorus. I have again received a letter from you, clear and exceedingly beautiful in its wording, but obscure in its script, and one that veils the very charm of its words.

For you seem to me, fearing lest you should ever forget your true nature by forcing it toward clarity, to compensate for the intelligibility of your words with the shape of your script, so that you might again, by your customary obscurity, retain your distinguishing mark.

Thus this matter appears to you an advantage, and you seem to me to fear falling from your reputation.

...of yours — nor indeed would I willingly deprive you of that admirable renown.

Only do not compel me to journey to Pytho, and, holding up your letter, say: 'O prophetic Pythian, what did the writer ever mean to say?' Let this be said to you in jest, as I imitate your own delightful wit.

To Nephalius. Your letter already calls me to the festival, and says that it sets your house before me, and makes what you have common to me too, and promises us the benefit of your discourse;

but I admire you exceedingly for your goodwill, and indeed I already seem to myself to have had my fill of the festival, merely by receiving your letter.

But for the journey from here, many obstacles stand in my way.

But do you fare well, and conquer whatever grieves you, and remember not only those who are present with you.

And if you should also lift up the downhearted by your letters, this would to me be more venerable than the good fortune of Polycrates.

For many worthy men assailed my ears, saying — speaking of you — that you had done something terrible, that you had been caught in the act, that you had vanished from sight.

Fabricating these tales, they produced witnesses, whom they insisted had come from there, and one told it to another, and the rumour ran through everyone.

But when I received your letter, so far removed from that unjust rumour that you were actually inviting friends to a festival, I was immediately overjoyed, and, holding proof of their falsehood, I proclaimed it everywhere, so that those who had before been so bold could scarcely blush and hang their heads to the ground, and, I think, cried out against fortune for not having let them go undetected a little longer.

To Silanus. The good Macarius, enjoying my goodwill for the sake of his zeal and character, delivered your letter to me in person; and I, recognizing your hand the instant I saw it, and having greeted the address, without any delay entered into what was written, and at once the swan sang in my ears, and, as though he had spread his wing to the West Wind, he was wholly given over to his songs and grew ever more melodious; and now I have truly come to know that your nightingale was no mere Attic fable, but that the maiden truly came from Athens, and became a bird, and still keeps her Attic tongue in her song;

such is the form which your words fashion for your letter.

And I, delighted by these things, breathed a great sigh of relief, and was carried back into remembrance of our old happiness — how we used to be together beside the Nile, how fortune allowed me to enjoy your company freely and without fear, how I grieved when deprived of it, and how I now rejoice, having received your letter.

For indeed I already seem to possess you through this letter.

And I acknowledged my gratitude to the one who had given it to me, and said: 'O child, how blessed you are in your lineage!' and I reproached myself that his kinship to you had gone unrecognized.

What then am I to do? From where could I supply him with all that I wish? But if you will measure your favour by my eagerness, there is nothing that he will not receive from us.

And having heard that you too now bear the yoke of marriage, I would pray to see your children as well, proclaiming to those who behold them the image of their father.

To Makarios: Sweet indeed has proven the very token of your goodwill toward us, and the gift, being entwined with honey, imitates your disposition.

For having become a lover of learning, and having been filled to satiety with it, you have come to know what a great thing indeed is friendship that advances together with time and does not admit forgetfulness through separation.

Wherefore, though I praised you before, now I have admired you still more, because even when absent you remain the same as when present.

But fare you well, and immerse yourself in the study of the laws, and may you complete your course the sooner, that I too may say something in a poet's phrase: 'a great joy to your father, and to the city, and to all the people.'

To Diodoros: What has happened to you, O man so mighty of tongue, and breathing great things against those who keep silent? You have been caught in the very things you accused others of, and unknowingly you accused yourself, and you have been caught, netted in your own nets.

For the very things you blamed in others, you have done yourself, and you carry the proof from your own house; and you have been caught by your own feathers, suffering the fate the proverb describes.

So that, if what was fitting were to be done, I would certainly have sent back to you your own letter in return.

For perhaps you would then have recognized that, though you rebuked as one who would never himself err, you are now at fault, having in fact accused no one but yourself.

And, greatest of all, having generously sent shoes exceedingly fine, and, as the comic poets would say, fitted well to the foot, you sent them bare of any letter, saying neither 'receive them' nor even 'farewell.'

As though bestowing marvelous golden bricks upon the Pythian god.

This makes clear that, having received these long ago from the craftsman, you kept intending to send them and were forever watching for the right occasion, so that, when the festival was coming, having received them I might go forth, proclaiming to onlookers your munificence.

Wherefore, having learned your intent, I went forth taking long strides like Homer's Ajax, and I stamped the ground, turning the onlooker's gaze toward my feet, and if anyone, seeing, did not wish to look, I deemed him insolent and forced him to look to the very end, and even when no one asked from where I got them, I proclaimed aloud, 'Diodoros is the giver!'

And throughout all this, there fell to me the laughter of poor taste, but to you the report of your goodwill.

Such was my enjoyment of your fine shoes — I very nearly walked on my head, so that the gift might be well displayed for all to see.

To Epiphanios: I think you must be greatly wondering what has come over me now, that I am already beginning a letter to you.

If you wish to learn the cause of this: Strategios makes war with words against you, proceeding copiously with abuse, stretching out a lengthy accusation, and he has turned my house into a courtroom.

And what is greatest: just like the skilled among orators, he is not content with the present charges alone, but mixes old with new, and stirs up ancient tales, and produces as witness against you the whole city of Alexander, recounting horse-races and the zeal for dice and popular talk about horses, and whatever else may occur to him to say.

But he also says that even now you are devoted to horses, and that you constantly attend upon those able to keep them, and that you have taken up the art of flatterers, indulging your belly.

I could not say at once all that he repeatedly pours upon my ears.

The cause, he says, is that in this regard I am left destitute.

Only one cloak was left to me for burial, and because of this man it has been used up.

For he says that, having taken worked linen so as to have it fashioned into a cloak by the hands of his own maidservants, he has left me more naked than Irus.

'It is a long time now,' he says, 'and I am stretched thin with hoping.'

If, then, it is a concern to you to make his tongue gentler, and to free my ears, send the cloak as quickly as possible.

But I cannot bear to recount all that a man might say who, even having nothing to charge, has made his life into idle chatter.

But if he should also gain some just cause, you would say that anger dwells in his very tongue.

To Zacharias and Philip, brothers: The change of the season, which used to charge our silence to necessity, now henceforth exposes it as a matter of choice.

Therefore vie with one another in letters, writing as much as we desire.

And what we desire is that no one come to us without bringing letters.

For whoever comes and speaks those common excuses — that they were occupied, that they were about to write, that they set sail suddenly — will depart, judged by me as a man negligent regarding friendship.

But if I blame in this way those who do not bring letters, how much more, do you suppose, do I blame you, who do not even send them? To Zacharias, brother: With what great pride you have filled me, by extolling that small letter of mine — Laconic, as you yourself would call it!

Behold, now I see myself grown haughty, and I have become a very Spartan indeed; to me everything is Lycurgus, but Solon is nothing.

I very nearly let loose a Doric accent, having come to forget that Attic speech of old.

And it grieves me too that my fatherland is walled only in part, since it is thereby no image of unwalled Sparta.

Such is the power of a good orator, drawing one toward whatever feeling he wishes.

But if you praise me again as an Attic man, see to it that I do not once more renounce Sparta — so thoroughly am I drawn about by longing for your letters.

But take care lest, wishing to jest, you praise Egypt, and by your account I become an Egyptian.

For I cannot help but admire whatever you admire too.

To Gessios, professor of medicine: I rejoiced that the good Dorotheos, whom I formerly recommended to you by letter, you yourselves now, in turn, wrote recommending to me.

...as one who grasps the art of Asclepius with his own hand, and that the graces of your eloquence have tempered the austerity that belongs to medicine.

While he was saying these things, I anticipated the praises, recounting your qualities before I had even heard his account, and, smiling, I said to him: 'You are carrying an owl to Athens.'

But he was rather contentious, and, thinking to introduce something new, found it already established with me long before, and thereafter fell silent with pleasure, saying that he was grateful to the gods to have had the good fortune of such a teacher, about whom one can say everything, yet report nothing new.

But do give yourself wholly to the young man, who, even if he has nothing else to recommend him, at least knows how to remember those who do him good.

To Stephanos: I rejoiced upon receiving your letter, beholding through your writing the very one whom I always delighted to hold in memory — if indeed words are truly images of the soul.

And, if you allow me to say it, I seemed to become greater than I am in myself, seeing how you enroll me in the chorus of your friends, and that there is talk of me with you, and that you take the lead in letters that call forth the like in return.

But by the very things through which you seemed to admire me, you let your letters reveal yourself instead, recounting your own qualities through me as the medium.

So that, smiling, I said to myself:

'How true these words are, by the gods, if they were said about the one who wrote them! But as it is, in speaking, you were unaware that you described not what I am, but what I ought to be, in order to be worthy of receiving such praises.'

May many good things come to you, both for your zeal and for the gentleness of your character and the goodwill with which you remember me, and, what is greatest, because even when absent you remain the same as when present.

To Antiochos: How greatly have I been disappointed in the hope I placed in you!

For I thought that, once you had at last been freed from the matter of medicine, you would come to us henceforth — either to pursue philosophy, in accordance with your former promises, or even merely to visit.

But you keep us waiting, longing for the city of Alexander, and clinging fast, as it were, to the land of the Lotus-eaters.

But for my part, let the city of the Macedonian surpass others in its many charms, and let it have the Nile and the sea to its advantage.