done, so that I might not have seen those three cursed and detestable years. Yet even then I received very many and great benefits from her. For she rendered useless the traps set for me by sorcerers, who summon souls from the lower world, revealing them to me and snatching me from them all. She also facilitated public business with me, so that it might turn out as well as possible for the cities; and she brought me alone before the emperor’s notice, as the most audacious of all the Greeks in living memory. Synesius recalls that time and his three-year embassy in his third hymn: A
To you, O mighty King of the world, Have I come to pay The debt owed from Thrace: Where for three years I dwelt in a district Near the royal Earthly palace. I bore labors, I bore torments, Most tearful, Carrying on my shoulders My motherland. B
In addition to this, Epistle 41 seems to speak of the same time of the embassy, when he orders a tapestry to be given to Asterius the notary, which he had used in Thrace as a bed-covering when he had to sleep at the great praetorian quarters—that is, at the palace. For I think these words must be understood as follows: "When I had to sleep before the great halls," with which what he wrote in that place cited just above from the third hymn is consistent:
"Where for three years I dwelt in a district Near the royal Earthly palace."
By these words he signifies that he lived near the palace for the whole three years. In the letter, however, he says that he had need of the protection of that tapestry against the Thracian cold. Furthermore, in the same letter he designates the year in which he departed from Constantinople, which was the last of that three-year period. For he indicates that Aurelian was consul then; and he says that he set sail from the port without taking leave, since he was forced to flee suddenly when everyone was struck with terror on account of a violent earthquake. Aurelian was consul with Stilicho in the year of Christ 400. From this it can be gathered that in the year 397—the third after the death of Theodosius the Elder—Synesius came to Constantinople, or in the following year, 398, and in the same period delivered this oration before the emperor. C
Synesius had this motive for that embassy (for this was the last of the three reasons I proposed): that he might seek some aid and relief from the emperor for the Pentapolis, and specifically for his own calamitous and semi-ruined fatherland of Cyrene, which could scarcely defend itself against the infestation of the neighboring savage and feral tribes. He testifies that he was sent for the sake of this very matter at the beginning of this oration, and in the third hymn, and in several other places. Nor does he signify that he was frustrated in his hope by that hymn, but rather that he obtained what he wanted not without incredible labor, study, and continuous prayers and tears to God and the saints. There are constant laments in his letters regarding the miserable state of Cyrene; he deplores the ruin of Ptolemais, however, in the mournful oration which he inscribed *Katastasis*. During the same time of the embassy, he published another oration to Paeonius, when he had presented him with an astrolabe, which is therefore inscribed by him *On the Gift*, as Epistle 153 demonstrates; in which letter he also testifies to what I have said, that he did not regret that embassy, and that the Pentapolis drew some fruit from that small gift. D
Now, the subject matter of the oration that we have in our hands is such that he rightly asserts, in his book *On Dreams*, that no Greek ever spoke to a monarch with such audacity. For he most sharply chastises the corrupt morals of the court, the luxury of the emperors, and their pride; he calls them back to the duties of continence, frugality, and civility; and he prepares to treat the envy of that time and the ulcer of the state not superficially or with a light hand, but with the scalpel pressed deeply: namely, the excessive power of the Goths, to whom everything had been permitted since the times of Valens and Theodosius, not without the peril and disgrace of the Roman name. He also adds salutary precepts for governing the kingdom excellently, drawn from the fountains of the philosophers, especially Plato; and he translated not a few things from the oration of Dio of Prusa *On Kingship*, expressed in almost the same words.
SYNESIUS ON THE KINGDOM, TO THE EMPEROR ARCADIUS
A Is it really the case that, unless someone comes from a great and wealthy city and brings with him haughty and effeminate speeches—such as those which rhetoric and poetry, those common arts that spawn common children, give birth to—he must, upon arriving here, hang his head as if he had no freedom of speech in the imperial palace, nor even the right to open his mouth, since he lacks the prestige of a great city, nor is able to offer the pleasure of the elegant and familiar performances which serve to demagogue the Emperor and those who sit with him? Or will you, for once, welcome philosophy when it arrives, and will someone recognize it, appearing here after such a long time, and, as a guest, commend it to those among whom it is proper? For it stands in need of these things, not for its own sake, but for your sake, so that it may not be despised and become useless. It will indeed furnish speeches, but not those pleasant ones which tickle the fancies of the young, for its words neither flow with soft affectation, nor are they adorned with the artifices of a false beauty; rather, in a very different way, they speak to those who are able to grasp them—a grave and, one might say, divine tone, full of manliness and majesty, which refuses to curry favor with the powerful through ignoble flattery. B Yet those who are so stubborn, and are such bold spirits—and, as it were, aliens in the royal court—say that it will not suffice for them to be permitted not to praise absolutely everything that belongs to the Emperor and the Emperor himself; but if they find an opportunity, they threaten even to sting the heart, not just on the surface, but deeply. They are austere, and not immediately pleasant, and they refrain so much from flattery that they often rebuke their audience when they perceive some fault in them. I, therefore, having been stung by one who is even more painful—and by the most painful thing a man can be stung by: for the heart, or the soul, or whatever term one must give it, having been struck and stung by the words of philosophy, which carry a sting sharper than a viper—am in a state of new soul, and not as a lamb.