Appendix: Letters of Eustathius

ADDENDA

NOTICE

We had decided to omit the letters of Eustathius which are of an entirely profane or familiar nature; but, upon mature reflection, lest devotees of antiquity should be angry with us that we dared to excise a literary monument of so great a man, even one where he plays with familiar topics, we have added them at the end of the Eustathian volume, but in Greek only. For in our opinion anyone who might set about translating this kind of work into Latin would be taking on a very laborious task, perhaps not worth the effort. EDITOR.

OF THE MOST HOLY METROPOLITAN OF THESSALONICA, THE LORD EUSTATHIUS: LETTERS.

To . . . . . .

This cluster; but let the covering remain in the basket, and let what is inside be guarded for the present without curiosity. But I will tell you, too, whose this cluster is; that it is not of grape berries (for those have not yet even practiced darkening), but this is a cluster of apples. A large cluster. The Persian apples are a swarm of fruit, clinging to one another. But these the branch, having held fast, bore for you in clusters; but the others, weighed down by their own momentum, fell out from the swarm and were circumscribed into a beautiful, solitary form, not wishing to be bound together still, nor to press and be mutually pressed; but having run out into a loose and unique freedom, having broken the bond that was in them. These are all beautiful, and such that even if Momus should see them he would sniff in derision, and ^A should he bite his lip to close it and gulp down the inner wound, he would not gape at the fruit. These are not those apples of the Hesperides, which myth rattles about and fosters as a prize for Heracles; but you might compare each one of them to the disk of the radiant sun, at the time when that sun is adorned with clouds of gold; or rather you might say the Rosy-fingered one reached out to let her own rosy color touch them. Thus in some places they shine white, and in others are dipped into purple rose. But why should I even mention a rose in these matters—a thing beautiful for its scent—when it is necessary to point it toward the feet of Aphrodite, so that the humors of the feet might not soil the head? For one might hesitate to smell a rose, ^B contemplating that Aphrodisian ulcer. But this wound comes neither from a cut nor from the blood thereof; but from the sun above, and from that sphere,

^A a relative of that which is led from the head. And may it come, if the beauty of this fruit is indeed something noble to those who smell it, from home to home. Such is my offering: such is it? Love has authority over the gift; and lest the Loves, while kissing with fiery lips, have smeared some of the color of their lips thereon. Why does [he] speak to me of pastoral, of fountains at which the Hours wash their complexion for beauty; and do you say that this fruit is washed [therein] for the sake of becoming beautiful? It is permitted, rather, to say that beauty was sprinkled upon this fruit according to the Muse of Homer: "Fair-crowned Cytherea anoints the face." Thus far, then, our fruit was kept like a chaste bride, chambered under an ample pavilion of leaves. But now it is given to the sun; and if you wish, by drawing aside the veil for the rest, learn that we do not lie. ^B For you yourself shall find it a plaything of the Loves, a delight of the Graces, a chariot of Beauty.

II.

III.

The all-wise Comnenus: the most venerable head, the golden one, not only in his hair and the grace of his face, but especially in his soul, which is truly very sharp and gleaming with virtues; worthy not only to be heavy with gold and silver, but to possess everything else, whatever is valued and judged to be worth much in the world; therefore, he is to be honored with such things that are indeed esteemed of great value. But we, though debtors to him for many honors—yet our hand is not so filled that we can even be dutiful with some small token. For you see how the gold—those things which are ours—has become such a runaway that it has not even left the fruit named after it to be with us; but instead of it, [the fruit] has been sent to your most high magnificence: grapes indeed, and these; but not golden ones, such as were in the proposal. For they too are envious and runaways from us, according to the gold that oversees their naming. Therefore, these grapes are not golden to us, but of a different sort, which the unrefined tongue calls *koukoubai*; but to say the same thing, "grey" (glaukas). And I think because of the similarity of the color, and (as one might say) "grey-eyed" (glaukopon); for they too are slightly greyish, when one first picks them. Just as, then, those [others] turn tawny, and for this reason these inherit the name "grey," while those are named for gold because of their tawny color. Our gift is small; but that one was, in any case, according to the kind, which I indeed [promised], but [you] cherished.

^A nor of a servile disposition. Let this suffice for what has been said thus far. But to dare such things—even for the sake of nourishment and the support of the body—against that which is so fearsome to me, is not my way; but rather [for one] who is a slave to his belly, fuming with gluttony, and exchanging the danger for luxury. Or how could I be bold enough to travel [this road] again, I who even now owe great thanks to God for saving me?

For that first journey of mine, even if it took place through marshes, was at least buried in snow; and to me, the evil that I hoped for did not turn out to be great. For the snow lay soft, and was such that one who had fallen into it might have gone to sleep; and if not, according to the poets, into a gentle sleep, at least one might have been borne away into a somewhat numbing affliction, and thus have lain [there] like a man. But the recent journey was to step among pits, among chasms, among hell-gates, among gorges, among pools of destruction, among the mouth of Hades. For the most part, the ice held [me] continuously, and it stiffened into something very solid, ^B and it was neither smooth on the surface nor glittering, so that it was absolutely necessary for the poor mules to slip, having no ability to roughen or divide with their hooves that which was being trodden. For their "moon-shoes"—or, to speak more clearly, the iron plates [fixed] underneath the animals' feet—were like some iron striking against iron, and because these were smooth, they were at odds with the smooth ice; they had nothing to do, nor did they have anything to grasp. The ice shone like glass; and for a small [distance] above the iron, it had hardened. And the smooth part had slipperiness and was untouchable, while the thick part had an unyieldingness; whence the beast of burden would walk sometimes on its feet, and sometimes it would tilt its flank to either side, and it could hardly brace itself or make forward progress. And it was like a ship suffering the attack of a remora, and even more so where the terrain was uneven; but to those descending, it was driven easily, as if a sphere were rolling down a slope. And the mules were also disquieted no less by the strange sound of the thudding; for it was not the sound of earth, such as they are accustomed to in time past, but the subject beneath ^C here gave forth a newer [sound]; and the animals were terrified in their spirits by the roughness of the noise, and the rider was tossed about. Such, then for the most part, was the ice and its smoothness.

But when we had passed even this untrodden path, there awaited us here and there pits [that were] gaping wide, filled with water, with icy crags cast up on either side as if [they were] banks, and sinking the mules up to their bellies; and elsewhere, depressions—not worth mentioning in their depth, but having a circumference that was easily defined, such as the shape of vessels. You would have said, upon seeing this ice, that it was very well constructed as a snare for the feet of irrational animals; for it opened up to the extent that any horse might let down its hoof. This is a contrivance of winter, treacherous to animals, a sort of sorcery set as a trap—a cold foot-shackle trying to dispose of the beasts of burden. Here, indeed, for us, Demeter ^D was no longer a mother, but had changed into a stepmother

^A but rather a man-destroyer. Such evils were pressing upon us in the turbulent waves after our first departure, until we arrived at the beloved earth and the familiar marketplace, and the smoky houses, and the customary mud. And thence the harbor held us, and we are saved. Woe is me, therefore, for your clear sky, for your hearth free of smoke, for your pure air, for the frosts (or rather the traps) which winter has set for us! What does the abundance of snow matter to me? Or what is it to you, who perhaps reside in the city, but to us who live in the wilderness and beyond the Riphaean mountains, it has multiplied? Among such people, as one might say in skimming through poetry, heat seems to have flown away and stayed somewhere up on Olympus, while the cold has covered itself in white feathers of snow. ^B Nothing in our region could deliver us even from the burning heat of summer, as it glows at its peak; and the winter will barely settle itself before the autumn; but spring, I think, I myself shall remember by name alone. Thus has the snow piled up for us in such abundance, not only lasting where it is, but becoming even more of an evil. For part of it has melted, and frozen into a crystalline consistency, and has spread itself out like slabs of marble, keeping the ground inaccessible to beasts of burden; and some of it has not yet melted into a single slab, but has drifted and stands in crystalline lumps, while the rest still sits above, pure snow, bound to descend into a slush and increase, if it should drip beneath the cobblestones. And these are evils upon evils, according to the proverb, or otherwise, the successors of evils to evils, as the tragedy says. Spare us, therefore, not only our beasts of burden but ourselves as well. For it would not be fitting that even we should be lost for the sake of a taste of life; but if the mouth needs to be filled, we have your stored-up supplies, from which we shall satisfy our craving. For your goods have not been measured out for us for a few days, like the ancient manna, nor do you worry for us only about the morrow; but you go beyond these into the long term; and your sweetness is long-lasting, and your concern for us is for the long term of what is to come.

But, oh the wonder! While I was still writing this down for you, you sprinkled another good thing upon me; and [you who] have sated me many times with the flesh of winged birds—which is as it is written—you have now also showered upon me this flower-scented bird, swimming as if in nectar, a strange and wonderful, monstrous sweet temptation; one I do not know. ^C And it came to my eyes today for the first time, and fell upon the table. Examining this, I was partly intrigued and partly amazed; and I seemed to have an enigma in my hands, and to see this bird and yet not a bird. For as much as it bloomed into skin, and hardened into the bones of wings and feet, it revealed the bird, but in all other respects it was boneless and not at all a bird. But when I peered into its insides, it held much confusion, and its preparation was inscrutable. For it was [full of] almond [chaff?], and all the rest remained indistinguishable. For often, ^D saying this, we too—what is this?—and likening what we see to a dropsical mouth, we lay hands upon it—and the bird was torn apart. And we did not hold it, but it was pulled down into the belly; and we did not even know it beforehand, but we are still searching for it. And this "what is this?" awaits us, and the enchanter frequently invokes those who sing; but what are we even to say to these things? Nothing, except perhaps, as is also [your way], the thanksgiving and matters of prayer, which are the only things of ours that are worthy in return for your great generosity. These few birds, the ones [brought] home, might be considered insignificant alongside that great supply of birds; but if one were to calculate their breed, even these would be worthy of much, just as gold is, for toward it this [type of] creature is very well suited. The myth fashioned a golden race of men; and that is the one, first of all, [cited] in proverbs. Much more, then, would one attach the precious material to this race, having calculated the golden nature of its plumage; and if golden clouds are indeed said to rain gold somewhere, that air through which such golden birds are sent might be called golden. They possess, therefore, some dignity for this reason; and if not for that, then at least for their good nature towards our power.

B’. I am sending you this whole flock of noble swimming birds. Do you see how fat they are, as if, after slaughter and boiling, a copious supply of food was provided for them, blowing them up for fatness? How white they are, as the poet says of the sun of the ocean, [end of page]

^A the thing, which I know is the end of such digressions; but in order that it may occur to your mind, then I shall confidently test myself, as to whether I have any natural aptitude for rhetorical skill. A doughy mass, hollowed out into a deep shape and rounded into a sphere, was sheltering a fine bird inside. And it was necessary for such a sphere to be uncovered by the very lid itself, which had been turned into a hemisphere, and for the bird (a fine thing indeed!) to peek out and fall into the eyes or mouths of those seeing or eating it; fat to look upon, tender to the touch, and melting to the taste. The dough itself was also baked into a pot for the animal, for it was simmered within it, and it was molded into a small plate. For it was set upon it; so that the offering was all these things together: pot, small plate, bread, and relish. The covering was keeping the taste of such food ^B implied, as if within a shell, and it was being baked in a small pot. Inside, at least, it was treated with a gentle fire, as someone said, and the animal was prepared for cooking, except that the vessel did not grow dark and scowl at the fire, but laughed burning bright, and this gave the lie to the pot. It was also placed as if upon a plate. Upon it, then, the bird was served for eating; and the inside, hollowed out of the container, was crumbled into soft bread, made soft by the boiling broth. And the remaining bird inside was the most delicious of all relishes, whatever one might call them. And just as crumbs are to other loaves, so was the bird nestled within to the one representing the bread, enchanting the sense of smell even before the taste—breathing out a very sweet scent, and like those animals that achieve the catch that falls to them by the fragrance of their exhalation, so too did it, by its scent, hunt those who encountered it. Having smelled it, you would have said that the good thing was enough for you; so good a little bird was it. Having tasted it, you would not have desisted until you reached the very bottom with your hand; so much did that highly seasoned broth have a draw. And again, it served as food for others. For there were both the insides and the outsides, and they were edible and fine. And while history fixes in the memory of many those tables which ^C those around Aeneas, son of Anchises, who were suffering badly from hunger, feasted upon according to the oracle; those were loaves and nothing more, and nothing grander. Here, however, the object is prodigious. For it is possible for one to consider it as a table, and indeed as a pot and a plate; and by tasting this one relish, one could be said to have feasted on all these things. For it is, so to speak, a banquet; and it is necessary that this type of food be placed about, and that everything meant for the immediate meal be set around it at once; and consequently one would eat this, and eat all such things; so that one might even fashion an enigma from this, graceful to utter, but difficult to interpret. For come, if someone were to ask you: what on earth could be the same thing and in number, a plate and a pot and a relish and bread and a table? And somewhere he will even compose it into an iambic line with good rhythm: Table, plate, bread, relish, and pot; Would you not, without difficulty, reckon the thing? When ^D this idea of such food is implied. Just like the one whom your comic poet fashions, the one eating up the cheese in their baskets, so too did he fall upon this very one; with the pot itself, the plate itself, the table itself, he gulped down the bird. But if there is also a method hidden in the rhetorical shrines, which turns the ridiculous of thoughts into the serious, or even the gloomy into the more cheerful, I have, using this bird, a model of the other side of the theory. For you know what the son of Sophilus means by the "Agamemnonian feast," and you will apply the proverb also to this bird. For the craftsmen of delicacies call this child Chryso-themis, and surely you know the Chryso-themis of Agamemnon. So the affair is grand and also in name. And this is such, so that I may not have to be gluttonous enough to search for more in what follows. I am returning to the beginning and am finishing the letter, so as not to annoy you by writing more. This is a small return payment for your great gifts. And another perhaps would have hesitated to dare this; but I (whether one might attribute this to boldness or to an uneducated lack of upbringing) have both dared and done it; and if you do not melt with laughter at it, at least you will not be annoyed. For neither to mock is in my nature to do, nor is it mine to devise.

G'. To the same. How long, O master Comnenus, must I, because of your calends, train such great enemies against myself? How long must I rear against myself these fierce Earth-born ones, these accursed, huge mice? Is there no need for some Smintheus, who will remove the evil for me? I could not be besieged by such enemies, nor could I continue to fight with beasts! Such an evil has surrounded me, a sharp-toothed one; such a host of beasts, and these insurmountable. Not only the earth, as the story has it happened to the man known as Crinidas, but also the wall and the roof and the whole little house crawled with them for me, no less than the frogs long ago for the Egyptians or against them. I suffer such a plague from these mice; which not only consume the necessities of life, but also nibble at me even from my very sleep. For the enemy does not attack even by day, but they are a nightly fear to me as well. They do not assault me to take me under the sun, when one might have been able to scare them away; but they swarm at night, so that they might be able to hide from all sides, both because of the darkness of the surrounding area and because the color of their own bodies is nocturnal. Diogenes, then, seemed to have it lucky, seeing mice (a tamed evil) running under the table. For he seemed to see certain parasites under it, as if feasting and nibbling, and gathering, and enjoying his good fortune together. And with such companions he consoled the hardships of poverty. But we do not have to suffer such things, nor anything near them. For these mice of ours are not parasites; rather they are "all-eaters," if it were for us to assign a name. They swallow down

^A everything they encounter. But if so, we ourselves are more their parasites, feeding on their leavings. There is no device against them. All traps gape in vain, and they are utterly ineffective. The wooden archer, the Smintheus, is aimed in vain; and in general, all the snares we devise against them limp to no purpose. And it is truly a helpless evil, though they only amuse themselves with me by portending that my little house will remain stable. For if, as they say, they flee a failing house, they certainly wait it out in one that is standing. Nor is it excessive to reveal to you something of their clever antics. We had a wine-jar hanging from a peg, which had been there for many months; and the rope of its suspension was thick, quite equal in thickness to the span of a small finger. A mouse lowered himself onto this from above—just as that "down-goer," that night-stalker, would know how—and keeping a night-long vigil for the structure, he could not escape in the end. For the rustling heard by those who were awake startled me from my sleep, and rousing me, it got me up. And I had a lamp in one hand, and a willow-switch in the other. And the scoundrel fled, turning to escape, yet trembling, having as it were let go of the jar; for it swung for a long time, rocking to and fro. And this happened before the third hour. But yesterday, the struggle was completed by the patient-toothed one. He came down in the dead of night, and undetected, having nibbled through the rope, the gluttonous gnawer dropped the jar. It rendered it useless; but he, having startled us from our sleep, went off, moving away and muttering as if rejoicing and singing a paean for the games he played upon us, gaining nothing else from the long war and the labor of his teeth, but only, it seems, this: that he danced upon us. And this much for that.

But one might not even wish to record the following among extraordinary reports. A reed, as long as a fathom, with ends set apart; and also a piece of wood descended from a javelin, resting at an equal distance from the reed on a wall that was being annexed near us; the reed was on top, and the wood underneath the reed, at a slight vertical distance. Grapes were hung for me across these like a beam—not large, but ripening in counter-balance to time; not even knowing how to grow moldy, and resistant to decay and rot, so as to be emboldened otherwise to think that, because they were judged by their fragrance, they were announcing the spring to me. These, the common speech calls "crystal grapes," perhaps because they are gathered for the most part in the cold, or perhaps because they possess, in their appearance, a certain clarity similar to crystal. A certain one of these [mice]—I do not know how, whether a leaper or a diver—leaping down upon them from above, at first, circling them, chose the best of the berries, eating some whole, sucking all the sweetness from others, and rendering others useless with the sharpening of his teeth. And these were the first things. From then on, that wicked little beast decided he should no longer pluck his fill berry by berry, but carry off the whole fruit, ^B because he could not easily hit the mark, but rather went about the grape-cluster hanger like a fast little boat; but there were times when he would even slip downward. And the sounds from thence would signal it to us at night. He comes down, then, to a certain place, and stepping onto the aforementioned reed, and seizing a string by which two grapes were held, he wanted to lead them up to the height, wherever he pleased. But since the undertaking was monstrous, and as it were exceeding the reach of a mouse (for you will give me credit, and grant to put a hand to such a clever and active, and dare to say it—and call it [skilled in] handiwork—creature), the stolen prize became heavy below, and the little grapes (for so the devourer had previously gone over the junction of the grapes) fell from the claws of the thief; and somehow, by better fortune, they fell not to the ground, but hanging there, having gripped the underlying wood. Clamor at this, and night-waking again. And we, once again, as in the night watch, having become—with the previous lamp and the talk—witnesses, we did not find the thief (for the mouse had gone, gaping in vain, revealing his flight to us by the patter of his feet), but we saw the stolen goods, and how they had been pulled down from above, and what kinds of scratches were on each of the berries, still trembling. Such were the evils that broke down upon us: terrible to eat, skipping to the right, gluttonous, all-devouring, deserving of flight and hatred. We are no longer able to endure such things, lest they go too far and devour us as well. And thus the enemies have plotted against the grapes; but they have set upon the medlars to such an extent that one no longer eats them, but they lift them and carry them off whole, according to the right-hand burden-bearers, and thus diminish their number daily. And into the quinces, the wicked ones burrow, hollowing them out into caves for their dens. Have your own [things], then, by necessity, before the time. And enjoy the Kalends for me; and deliver us from such evils, and ward off these so gluttonous, sharp-clawed ones—the ones that, according to the proverb, almost snatch away a man. We fear, therefore, lest, being deprived of what is needed, these all-consuming beasts among us might plot against us ourselves. And a message from me ^C is coming, for they surely follow in the tracks of the beloved fruit of the season, and they will arrive at your place; and you might then learn by the deeds themselves what our battles are like; not against cranes, as you yourself might mock us, but against a race born of earth, to overcome which is a great task, and worthy to be committed to history and to be celebrated in the writings of authors, if one must pay heed to the ancient story concerning Chrysa. For it was a Trojan town at the time, which the poet says was "divine," and possessed a Sminthian [mouse] lying at its feet. It turns out, then, that Sminthéus is one interpreted according to the local tongue; but Apollo, stepping upon it, is honored because he conquered such a beast. And he is not ashamed of the victory, but even rejoices ^D at being called Sminthéus from that time on.

To the same.

Everyone nowadays celebrates the Kalends, which the Romans honor and rank among the greatest of the days that contribute to our joy. And there is no one who does not celebrate them as a sweet festival, unless he wishes to propose some seasoning for the festivities and to introduce laughter to season the cheerfulness of the revelers. ^A He himself, meanwhile, remains stern, contracting his brows into gloom, while those who are looking on—just as once the Thersites of the Greeks did—open wide their mouths in laughter. He, as though in the midst of a choir celebrating a joyful event, begins a tearful song, as someone who is not celebrating, someone unloved by the beautiful, someone who is, bluntly speaking, graceless, a chip off a block—if one may say so—of unsmiling stone.

Everyone, then, celebrates the Kalends as a festival, yet they celebrate them in different ways, as each knows how or wishes or is able. And what kind of victory the Kalends have over other days, and how great it is, the Syrian sophist has it in his power to present to you—he to whom the fire-breathing native Libanus gave its name, rising above the land of the Syrians, and perhaps lying below... ^B having released it in a hollow. But why do I seem to be wrapping around you, circumlocuting the rhetorician and handling the paronymy of the name in a sophistical manner? And how do I drag the man into the mountain of Libanus, and not lead him out of the thicket, and present to you the clever sophist Libanius?

He says, then—guiding us along quite skillfully—how many beautiful things are fulfilled around them: the times, the hymns, the paeans, the gifts, and the other goods of the day, which the mouth of Libanius skillfully chewed up and then deposited as food for those being initiated, as though they were being suckled in the things of rhetoric.

One of the fine things of this day is the giving and the doing of something for one another—not the same things for the same people (for such an exchange is not noble; it is a trick of a profit-seeking mind, merchandise of base gain, a purchase of a soul that does not think in a friendly way), but others for others; and for all to bestow something upon all sorts of people. For there is a grace that turns back around and returns to the one who initiated it; and there is at times also one that looks directly forward and proceeds in a straight exchange ^C—or rather, not an exchange—and gifts flow forth, sometimes in a circle, and (as one might say) unbound, and sometimes one presents the stream flowing directly ahead. For the proverbial necessity must be rejected here, which says, "Give something and take something." It ought to be ostracized, as it destroys the uncommercial sociability of a healthy polity and casts friendship out from among men.

We, therefore, are already receiving myriad of your goods, which you pour out upon us daily; and we, too, must, according to the favors sung of in the inscriptions of symbols, become turners of your favors—not by giving, but by giving back small things for the great things that preceded—and place hand in hand, and initiate this fine circle of the dance of the Graces. And indeed this happens according to one’s ability. Others may satisfy the season in other ways ^D of grace, or rather, of counter-grace; but we, if not truly healers, are nevertheless attendants of the Word, and perhaps diligent as well, and we shall greet your honorable head—worthy of all in our view—with a fitting word, composed so as to fall within the season; not after the sophist whom the discourse presented to you above. For he walked where he had gone, having cut and worn the path alone. But others, I think, would shrink from such a path, for it would not be possible for them to follow in the footprints of the rhetorician. We are writing by a different approach, through which we will not merely describe the hours but will interpret them, honoring the day for our own part, and by the discourse concerning the Kalends, we are sanctifying the festival held on them.

There will be for you from this, as well, some small benefit, if nothing else, at least that we take what is scattered across many pages of books and, as it were, gather up the ripe sheaves and, carrying them along, place them into the broad, all-receiving furrow of all that is beautiful—into your philological soul. We are sketching this for you as a happy summer in the middle of a winter season, which you might perhaps even inscribe and liken to a golden harvest; not that it is truly such, but that our offerings are so balanced for you and valued at a great price.

We say, then, taking it from there, that the good of the Kalends is not constrained to be bounded within a single time; it is distributed among the twelve great segments of the year, which the moving sun, passing by, divides—each twelfth part of the zodiac’s oblique circle—and thus, leading around the crown of the year, it inscribes the circle as complete. And as many new moons as rise up, providing beginnings for the chronological running of those that follow, just so many Kalends occur, leading each of the months. And perhaps the matter of the words is gathered into a polyonymy; and it is the same thing, in the nature of the matter, to speak of Kalends, new moons, or sacred months; just as, indeed, to speak of "year" and "annum," and now also "time," as the lower-lying and humbly speaking dialect might whisper.

Such a word has not fallen under a beginning, nor is it primitive; rather, it is derived from "calling," as from some beginning, or indeed from a primal matter. And the voice is truly native to the Latins, and it dwells outside the court of the Greeks. And those would know accurately the word, whatever it is that it wishes to say. However, a report is carried on that it derived the naming of the Kalends from "calling." For indeed—whether you wish to say Latin or Roman—a priest during them would call out to the crowd with a proclamation, and he would cry out the nones of the month, at what time one must celebrate, and he would also proclaim the ides in advance. And who these are, it is possible for one who wishes to hear; but for now, it is necessary to wait.

All Kalends, then, were led with honor, and they were sacred days, as were the new moons; and they thus revealed the divine nature of the Beginning. And it seemed that the Kalends of January in some way take precedence over the others, and have appropriated the primacy of the remainder, and have concealed the others by their wonder; so that the rest are silenced, and not even the name of a Kalend is in...

carried safely into another month. For perhaps, to be sure, it is not sufficient to be so lavish with gifts, as the brilliance of the days knows how to demand; and perhaps, also, because to celebrate feasts one after another was not deemed to be without a touch of satire. For it was a proof of idleness, and was judged a symbol of the continuous expansion of the festival. And here is a sign: for a certain city is mocked in stories, because it kept more feasts than working days. But however the matter may be, January apprehended all the prestige of the Kalends into itself, having gained the advantage over the others, and having appropriated it as its own. The philosopher from Chaeronea ^B has recorded that it seemed good to the Romans of old at one time to propose this month as the beginning of the New Year, and for it to be honored and to stand above the other months, because this same month was also the one when they were first established, and those who were not ruling well among them were deposed from power, and the principate of the best consuls drew its beginning from then. He further adds to the story that a certain man of grace, whom the Romans call Janus, was responsible for the naming, and also for matters pertaining to agriculture and other things which are known to build up a city and organize a political life; a man who also lends his name to the month, as a kind of solemn title, saying that January is named after Janus. And that man honors this season in another way, since the sun himself leads him back to us from the southern regions, and having ended its long exile, makes it turn back, and in some way opens up the spring for us; and by little and little unfolding and increasing the light, and making the life-giving light-bringer linger over the earth, it already yields certain fertile ^C beginnings to the earth, and quietly opens it toward birth, becoming, as it were, a door for it unto generation. And from then on, Porphyry the Syrophoenician connects the discourse for me, and as if through a certain gate—the door of this portal having run through, he himself knocks at the door of January in another way. And he does not endure to turn downwards and wear out the places of history; but having shaken off the weight of these thoughts, and (as he thinks) having winged himself up above the clouds like Icarus, he approaches the undeviating sphere. And from there he wishes to say something, but he does not have a hearer; not because the space between is too great and not commensurate with hearing, but because the discourse is extreme, and ^D of a kind that cannot slip into a soul that reasons well, but is worthy to be cast down with the Lucifer who fell from above. For supposing certain descents and ascents of souls from heaven, and that there are certain intermediate things acting together there, and the position of the star which the sun, passing by, measures in January, or is measured by it; from then on he also renames the month, having said that the door is called *janua* by the Romans; and from there, treating the name at this season as a marvel, he runs through it, as if he were a certain doorkeeper serving in the ascent and descent, to which a door is somehow also understood along with it. But let Porphyry be greeted, being puffed up beyond measure; and having loosed the present Harpya for you. The month, as a whole, was divided by the Romans into three parts; and of the parts, one, the one that began, had the name of the Kalends; but certain days defined after it fell to the Nones; and again, after the Nones, one had to wait a certain number of days, and the Ides would arrive. And thus ever in succession the one that followed underwent the same divisions; and it had, somehow, the Kalends beginning, and after a little the Nones, echoing from the youth of the light according to the moon, being still in the process of increasing and coming to its fullness; and after them the Ides, in which the lunar disk already received its own *eidos*, or beauty. And formerly they had such a sign

and thus these names were distinguished from one another. But now the conventions of that common agreement have been violated, and the tyrannical necessity of the *schedographical* concepts, having forced the ancient usage, confuses them, bringing the Ides, the Nones, and the simple days together into one. And the grammarians recently suffered the same thing, just as those who have fallen under a long siege. For they, truly, being confined in a very narrow strait, and sometimes being pressed by scarcity, indeed did not preserve the unsullied language nor refrain from the untouchable bodies, with famine playing the steward for them there; and they themselves, being caught in the labyrinth of *schedographical* meanderings, and not having words readily available, but as if starving—those words which they might use with excessive curiosity—rebelled against such things, and dancing as if indifferently, they gathered them into one. These things for you also regarding these matters.

^B Since, however (and may it come to pass, Christ the King), as a long life is meted out to you and may it be brought to the greatest possible length, such things as these may fall into your hands alongside other books of the wise, in which you will find it written beforehand that so-and-so was accomplished so many days before the Kalends of January, perhaps, or so many days before the Ides (one must posit either Nones or Ides) that such and such a person performed this and that; and there is hope that you might become acquainted with such quantities, having reached those places in the writings—I want you to know that a newer and precise enumeration has been added to such things; and I will remind you, having set before you a certain precise similarity. You know that among the Attics, up to the twentieth day of the month according to the moon, the count proceeds in order, walking in a straight and natural path, but after these, it moves by steps, and as if holding back, or like the backward-stepping oxen, turning back the course that was advancing towards the front. Yet after the twenty-ninth day, you had heard there "of the waning month"; then after that, "of the eighth day of the waning [month]"; and upon that, such and such a "seventh," and each one following it in order; and this continues thus, until you arrive at the new moon itself, walking by steps in the enumeration. And the strangeness of that calculation used to astonish you; but you attributed the matter to the custom of Attic usage. And perhaps you heard a cause that is not unscholarly, namely that such a count, having run in a straight path up to a certain point, and then having moved backwards, hints at the motion of the planets, in one way moving of their own, in another way by a different kind of motion, that is, being carried along in reverse of the revolution of the fixed stars. Thus, even in such writings of the ancient books, a custom pleasing to the Romans introduced a change in the number. For indeed, the second and third days of the month, or any other that intervenes among the Nones, they thus pronounced: "four days before the Nones," then "three days before." And so in some way they arrived at "one day before the Nones"; and from there they entered into the Nones themselves. Then shifting in an orderly fashion, and as if proceeding from the beginning of another period, maybe six days before the Ides, if it happens so, they would say; and the day immediately following it, "five days before the Ides."

^{C D} I have been almost thunderstruck, my lord Comnenus; and like someone struck by lightning, so I am disposed. But what is the noise? What is the thunder, by which I have been startled from my natural composure? The rebuke of the most noble Ducas (having heard which, I swear by your sacred head), I remained speechless immediately; and I had neither the power to speak, nor did my mind cease spinning many circles of thought. Ask that very Ducas, my wonder, the "gnomon" of nature, if it was not in this state that he caught me and struck me dumb. For he, having chanced upon me in some narrow alley, and having shaped his speech most graciously, rebuked me because, having come from outside, he had not yet seen me until now, but only now by mere chance. I, however, no longer wished to live on account of this; for nothing in all of it, if not the lack of a favorable estimation of me, did his speech gracefully hint at. What kind of pale color would have then dyed my face, or perhaps how I managed to blush, whoever saw me at that moment would know. But what I know in myself was of this sort.

^A I was looking askance, having cast my eyes to the ground. And at first I could not speak, as if I had been thunderstruck by the voice (for the blame was not without reason); but I remained saying nothing, as if I had heard nothing at all. But when the thunder was brought to bear upon me a second time, then, having suffered more in my soul (for I was conscious to myself, even if not by intent, yet nonetheless of laying myself open to blame), I spoke a little; and even that was not false. But from then on I could not find a word to say. But grieving at heart, and condemning myself for what I was suffering on account of something I desired—which, as I judge it, is simple and not tricky; but as events show, it is sluggish and difficult to manage—I was speechless, saying nothing in self-defense, but my soul was troubled, and my voice checked by the agitation within. You would have said, had you seen me then, that you were beholding the Homeric angry and senseless man. Having stood there for a short time, and with difficulty pulling myself together, and having arranged myself for a respectful salutation, and having dutifully discharged what was necessary, I took up the road ahead, remaining in that posture until I came to my friendly guide; where, having spoken of the matter, I felt somewhat lighter. But I have not yet come through; nor indeed shall I rest from this agitation until I obtain the serenity from the most compassionate Doukas, and obtain pardon for those things for which—but how can I say it safely?—I have not acted well.

But you for me, O soul most excellent and in the art of discourse most wise, bring this sympathy to pass; open the treasury of your speech, and expend something of it for our sake; allow your words to overflow; let your tongue loose upon the Doukas on our behalf; set truth as judge, and let it speak, dispensing justice under its authority. You have many avenues for this endeavor; you know how I hold a servile affection for you (which will also serve you well as a preamble); you know that I would sooner be unmindful of myself than of this your golden chain; it has not escaped you how I am a herald of your noble qualities, expansive and true. For even if I myself am silent, not only would the stones of this little house of mine cry out, but the rest of my equipment for living as well. For—if I may also play the sophist for a moment—if it were miraculously possible for the items around me to find a voice and shout, from where they encompass me, they would cry out more loudly than the good things from you that I possess, even as a clap of thunder from on high would drown out all the noises from the earth. Besides these, speak rhetorically—just as I am toward the Doukas, and how I breathe him, and have inscribed him on the tablets of my mind as memories; and how I celebrate his virtues in everlasting praises; and I call him a masterpiece of nature, a good complex in every way, and most beautiful, both within and without—within, in his soul, and without, in his body. For he is not only firm in fortitude, steady in wisdom, stable in sharpness of mind, heroic in magnanimity, and bountiful in liberality, and in the rest of the good things of the soul excellent, but he is also very well-constructed in matters of the body, and as it could not be more beautifully shaped: he is of a robust ^B stature, who knows how to draw the bow with force, and does not deceive the spear-bearer; brilliant in beauty, and as if nature had crafted a statue, having busied herself with the work, and having hit the mark of perfection; round in speech, sweet to speak of; and he abounds in the charm of diction within the beauty of his thoughts, running along together. Having gathered these and many other things, put them before the Doukas, for which, always deifying him, I would not now place the reverence I have for him in nothing. Add, if you wish, to the discourse that Eustathius is not much of a walker, nor a soldier; and that once and twice he may have hesitated and put things off, lest he be judged a burden, toiling with constant visits to doors; and he loves that which loves him, and respects that which acts with kindness, but is for the most part wary of frequent encounters. Use your speech for me even more rhetorically, and as if toward some speculative hypothesis, since he who blamed us has also aimed at ^C indifference, and has not set out from irrefutable premises. Summarize technically to yourself the place of the intention, as if it were not the good-minded Eustathius who had wished for the aforementioned fault-finding; then also remove us from this charge, and color it in a more kindly light. For you have myriad handles for the endeavor. You have also the persuasiveness of the defense from the fact that it is not reciprocated. For if even someone who is indifferent knows not how to offer obeisance, it does not immediately follow that he who has not offered it once or twice would be indifferent; and here too there lies for you great wealth of arguments. Having expanded upon these points, guard yourself only from the fact of being able—which is indeed distributed to a head for the one fleeing in a manner of counter-appropriation; but for me it is not to be dared, nor even said. For even if all things are permitted to me, yet there is something here that is not profitable. For it is not permitted to me to be foolish, and to be forgetful of those who do good. But if perhaps the Doukas, for some reason of gravity, should most cleverly put forward such a thought, and by way of irony should speak as if on our behalf, saying that it is permitted to everyone, just so also to Eustathius, to do what he wishes, there you, changing everything from the opposite, and as if having turned into an accuser, change the matter and the person according to the rule of rhetorical exchange, and say that Eustathius would never have dozed off regarding such a matter. And having wrestled thus, then indeed, in a more epilogistic fashion, attack such men, and invoke utter destruction upon those who despise their benefactors. And having arranged these things so, and having adorned them with your methods more rhetorically—either you will persuade the Doukas, and he will not await the verdict, or the judge will be truth itself, declaring its own, and the declaration will in any case be in our favor; and no appeal will boast against the ruling, which would be the same as saying, no further court. For before what greater appellant will the things of truth be appealed? Having pleaded these things most wisely on our behalf, the great reward, and one above material reward, will be laid up for you, from which your

^A other goods also spring. But if you also incline toward material things, behold ^B these clusters of grapes of those who love you, hanging [for you] from a distance. One heap [is] for the most excellent Komnenos, who has well defended my own cause here; and another for the exceeding beautiful Doukas, if he happens to be involved with us, and might absolve [us] of blame before the judge has spoken. For if he does not do this—though perhaps he does not [fail to do so], for the truth is not hidden even from him—this cluster-bearing staff will be for you as an addition to your reward. For why is there a need to feed even one’s enemies? And that the most illustrious and most beautiful and most sagacious Doukas may know both how I hate arrogant men and those who are loath to show reverence, read to him a discourse against such men, which I have just now kneaded with [the leaven of] an ancient myth; which will also provoke you to a subtle smile. For the purity of laughter has long been banished by the long [durance] of the illness. Prometheus produced man, and fashioned the body indeed from earth; but he anointed it with a divine ointment. And this was the soul. And as for the things which were also by divine action, he infused into the vessel of the body the ambrosia of wisdom. And he measured out into a [proper] measure this priceless liquid. And it was necessary that those who received it be filled with what was infused, or even for some to add a little more drops of the divine liquid to them. Prometheus, therefore, having poured out for all the ambrosia of wisdom, then sits himself down, having prepared himself for the more solemn [task]; and calls those who had received that ambrosial liquid. And it was necessary for each one, bending low, to show his vessel, the body, through the crown [of the head], whether it was full or otherwise disposed. Those, then, whose head was full of wisdom, bowed down, showing themselves to be lacking nothing; and this was to show reverence toward, and to love, the benefactor Prometheus. But those not yet full, but lacking the ambrosial inflow, were upright, and remained unbent, as though standing tall. And this was to behave haughtily, and not to know gratitude toward the benefactor. From there, therefore, also to us, [the action of] bowing the head at the proper time signifies that it is full of wisdom, and is arranged as a display of gratitude; but to stand in a posture [of defiance], and to refuse the bowing of the head, is carried away as an accusation of folly, and is inscribed as ingratitude. ^{C D} [For] this letter of ours is itinerant for you. And if it is acceptable and pleasing to your greatness, I would not yet dare to assert it as a settled matter until I have received a reply and learned from it how you were disposed toward it. But that the letter is from a friend, this is something I do not assert confidently alone, but along with myriads of others, of whom you yourself are already fully persuaded. But perhaps wonder already encompasses you, and you smile somewhat sweetly and cheerfully, if Eustathios—he who is usually silent, who shuns writings, who is even taciturn toward those nearby—speaks across such a great distance; and he who did not address by writing him who was recently girded with the ducal authority in the city of the Nikomedians, now in the [island] of the Koans ^A abiding in an island, addresses [him], and sends [this] letter as one who is an alien. And truly, my master, often and to many friends not residing [near me] I have sent the words of letters; but never yet has this winged Hermes of mine, after traversing a longer journey, unyoked his wing, not like the Homeric Hermes being sent to the fashioned island of Kalypso, whom poetic myth transformed into a white ram and cast into the waves; but in another fashion, boarding this white book as if it were a ferry, and having been just now sent to this most base island because of you. For it was an enviable thing when this island was even a dwelling place of noble men; but if it is now also piratical, it has even in this a varied history of experience. It was once even contended for by the [son] of Zeus, Herakles, when he attacked those living [there] more manfully and subdued them. But the men were Meropes, thus being known by a national name, and increasing the dignity inherent in them all the more; for they drew the name of every human being in common unto themselves. And some one would call [them] Koans, and would call [them] Meropes; and [by] in a way rebelling against the common appellation of the men who are called Meropes, they [raided it], so to speak, and made it their own. But if this land is also good for dwelling, one must pick out [a passage from] Homer, who made it well-inhabited. But if it is also apt for bearing fruits, and productive of noble animals, I grant others to record [that]; those who boasted of this Meropian island [as] Kos, and its name, because it happens to be very rich in life and good at rearing (for they posit "koon" in their dialect to be a sheep); and indeed they wish even this island, since it is nurtured by such animals, to take the homonymy with the animal. Well, then, are the other things of the island thus. But that you enrich it happily, presiding over those in it, it would have nothing lacking in happiness. And this great good will be added to it along with the others; and you will brighten it with the radiance of your beauty, no less than the beautiful Helios does the famous Rhodes, being named for it. — But I have not yet (as I said) abandoned the epistolary Hermes to be carried so far abroad, sparing my messenger. But now I have sent him, reasoning that he himself might perhaps fly to your greatness, and someone else from there will fly back to us, and will teach [us] that this Hermes of ours has succeeded in reaching you, and has not fallen in the middle of the voyage, worn out in his flight, just as the story has it of Ikaros, whose wing [was] fastened with wax and melted by the sun; for if this were not so, I would not have dared the letter. And otherwise, at other times it was easier for us to learn matters concerning your greatness, managing [your] offices very near the Great City, and there was no need then for writings; for we had from there whatever we wished. But now there is a vast gush of sea in between; and from there the report about you rises to us more slowly than the sun in Hesiod to the Panhellenes. That, therefore, ^D this letter of ours is [an] itinerant [one] to you — and if it is acceptable and pleasing to your greatness, I would not yet dare to assert it as a settled matter until I have received a reply and learned from it how you were disposed toward it. But that the letter is from a friend, this is something I do not assert confidently alone, but along with myriads of others, of whom you yourself are already fully persuaded. But perhaps wonder already encompasses you, and you smile somewhat sweetly and cheerfully, if Eustathios—he who is usually silent, who shuns writings, who is even taciturn toward those nearby—speaks across such a great distance; and he who did not address by writing him who was recently girded with the ducal authority in the city of the Nikomedians, now in the [island] of the Koans

has for a long time since no clear report come to us from there, we are inviting such a report by means of this present letter. But as for the one who ministers to this present letter, with what good thing might I honor him? With what might I reward him? By providing what good thing would I be able to attain what is fitting? Nothing at all, but by commending him to your great generosity; I consider him a benefactor and a most dear friend, because he has served me in this message. I envy his blessedness, that by meeting with you on our behalf, he will bow down and greet you, and will hear your sweet conversation, and will enjoy your good things; concerning whom I make bold. I make bold with all my soul, that you might act as a protector concerning the affairs there of the holy monastery of the Philanthropos; for he is also a holy and precious shoot of it. May you be approached by him justly for the sake of the just Judge, humanely for the sake of the Philanthropos ^B, and gently for the sake of His own meekness. These things are also joined in entreaty by the most honorable Abbot himself of the monastery of the Philanthropos the Savior, a man who is my friend and the best of all friends, whom the Philanthropos has recently acquired as a shepherd for His own venerable flock, having selected him more recently than those before him by the choice of imperial discernment. I am bound to him, so that you may cherish the present monk and the affairs of the monastery; and may you become a right hand to this stewardship, and show your own magnificence even there. May it be for us, therefore, to learn good things from this. What are these? Your health, your freedom from grief, your success in the undertakings at hand with God, and above all, the effectiveness of this our letter.

[I]

[IB]

^A let him submit his affairs to Him.

XIII.

Who am I, that the Truly All-Venerable one should even consider me in his thoughts after so long an absence? For his mind, I would not dare merely call it ethereal, but rather approaching God, like those of old to whom such a good is the object of ambition. And his tongue, perfectly ministering to such a mind and [acting as] the noble herald of its magnificent brothers, the thoughts—the mind ^B conceiving both many things and noble ones; the tongue, receiving them, meticulously midwifing them and bringing them out into the light, and shaping them, more corporeally indeed, yet not so as to put to shame the intellectual [nature], such as often happens to those for whom the tongue has often corrupted and disgraced the mind; but rather, by adding itself to it, and increasing the good, and showing forth the brilliance of the mind with those coverings which, though fashioned more stoutly, do not conceal the beauty of the body, but rather show it forth for the pleasure of the view. And the hands [are] heroic, and the performers of great deeds; and not only are they great-doers and trained and perfected toward courage for strength, but they have also mastered the art of fine writing, and do so with the all-beautiful tongue, which we rightly revere, [for it is] fitting and runs alongside [them]; so that this all-venerable head is in every way and altogether lacking in nothing good, for the mind is rich in noble thoughts, while the tongue and the hands—the one clearly heralding the thoughts to the ears, the others depositing the good in the eyes for the pleasure of the soul and a lasting memory. But who am I? I know; I know that I am nothing. But the one who remembers me would be doing this in imitation of God, whose providence extends and moves even to the most insignificant things. — But may God return you to me quickly, my all-venerable head; if you still remain to us, I pray especially for this; but if it has been otherwise decreed that what concerns us happens, then [may He return you] to all the others who breathe you in, because you are also, and by far beforehand, [dear] to the great emperor, of whom you are in truth a most faithful servant.

XIV.

In another way, I carry your all-venerable superiority inscribed upon my soul; and there is no time, whether speaking or writing, that I set it outside of my memory. But as an eye that is working has no way of working except through the air, so too the soul of Eustathius, your [servant], working according to its nature, does not set your beauty outside of itself; but when I also receive the writing of your support into my hands, then it is impossible to say how much joy is distilled into my soul. For I seem to see you yourself, your golden mouth ^C uttering sweet voices to me. And ^D I worship the paper in my hands, and I kiss it as I revere it, because it brings to me the fruits and counsels of your soul. May you therefore be long-lived. And may God, just as we pray, direct your ascents, and may He raise you from glory to the greatest glories, both for your other good qualities and because you deem my nothingness worthy of a word, doing a divine thing; for He from such a height of divinity looks upon the most lowly. — Regarding the matter about which your support wrote to us, we were concerned from the moment we received your writing; and to sum up the matter, the man, if you know him, said he was entirely of your support’s [party]; having heard these things again from us, which he had already heard and learned by experience. But I conjecture, which does not even escape your support’s notice, that perhaps it will not be permanent for you throughout, because of your stretching toward a greater foundation or change. But what is that to your authority? Let him come, let him do what you wish. Let him be useful as long as it is necessary. Let him wait for the necessary time. Let the ship be loaded with useful, rational cargo; and after that, if the captain wishes, let him rest. Let the summer be completed; and after this, let the farmer sit under the shade, if he wishes. Let the road be finished, and let the guide rest. — And these things are so; but we are again in troubles, though we have nothing. And your Calabasilio will tell you of our circumstances; regarding which we have also sent a reminder, trusting in your support. And we seek your possible and just help. But if your support, which is there and sees both the bold and the strong man who is abusing us, should remind and reproach [him] that he has not done a good thing, I am grateful even for this. For he did not merely shake [us], but plainly wronged [us], having sealed—and having immediately at that very hour departed with slackened reins ^B so that he whom the patriarch sent the next day might not manage to catch him, but learn that he was going to lodge in Selymbria. And then he even sealed it impassively, in every way liable to be plotted against, so that we had every necessity ^C to keep guards by night, lest we lose that small amount of wine. And the greater evil is that, having spared all the villagers, he singled us out alone for shaking, without giving notice, and without doing anything human; but also, [with] heavy-alb[ed] men dwelling round about the dwelling, into which he is shaking us (among whom are also the imperial ones), he kept away from the others, but against us he sat. But I would like to see him suffering what he deserves; but may God make you long-lived.

XV.

If a jealous man by chance revels against another, why should I speak of it? But to me, he has just now openly reveled. It was time for me to have breakfast; and the table, though poor, was being prepared. And we were already near completion. Suddenly someone strikes the door for me. And I myself ask: "Who is it that is knocking at the door?" And I learn who is beating, and that he has a venerable letter of mine. And I, having become ecstatic with pleasure, command both the doors to be flung open, and

^A with difficulty we have come to ourselves, and we speak. And if I should take the letter into my hands and unfold it and read through it, there happens to me, according to the proverb, "a change in the state of things." And I am no longer rapt in spirit, but have remained a man of little drink. And the suffering was to be expected. For according to your Sophilus, I rejoice in you when you are doing well; but if your fortune turns out otherwise, I feel a great reluctance and am afraid. Such a bane has some envious fortune, lying in wait, brought to my table; thus it has swarmed upon me, violent and unrestrained, and having pressed my mouth shut, it has kept me from acting, and has slackened my hands. And what on earth the myth of the Harpies signifies, it has demonstrated to me by the very deeds. For they snatch away whatever comes to hand, and right there at the table, taking away from Phineus both the hands and the food of the mouth, ^B they made us ^C (or, as one might say, something good). And may we see you faring well, just as we pray. We are already concerned about our departure for the vintage, that we may have it, if not well. For there is no one of our cell who would not follow in our footsteps; but all have drunk from the same mixing bowl as us—of whom some have found a little relief, while others are still burdened, contending, in the way of our living; even if we [are looking forward to death and in every way to those above]... and those who are such and in such a state, nevertheless, ^D even they, deemed worthy of such venerable greetings, worship with us Him who sent the greeting, and pray for the same things.

— We all greet those who know us and love us from among those in subjection; and the beloved lord Nicetas, whether he be Lacon or Timon ^A so far as we are concerned, or if he has forgotten—but the matters of the calling have failed me. For what is one to call a contemporary? Who, having flashed by like a chariot for a brief moment, was extinguished and no longer appeared to us worthy of a single word of conversation; whom may God avenge for the loss of the beloved prey to him. And may he himself wander there, doing friendly things; but may the dearest birds run around him, falling into the hands of others, and providing plenty for those there; which indeed is happening. — The monk-chanter, grace be [to him] for having beforehand, with his own person, greeted us — but from that time on ^B it is set before your venerable Excellency alone for enjoyment — never having greeted us, if for now he even still lives.

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IG'. It is sufficient for us, my venerable master, for our well-being, that we are thus held in memory by you, and that we receive such a word; which indeed, while known in other ways, now appearing through a letter, has caused us to recover from the sickness and to be restored a little bit to our former state. Know that not even until today has the good of health smiled upon us with purity; nor have the waves been completely stilled, nor has the winter quieted into spring. It is acceptable, however, that the onset of the evil ^C in this way indeed, and then again sitting in another way upon those things that pertain to life; I remember still those attacks and those losses, as the things of the grove have endured for me, and what terrible things they have suffered. But may it not be so until the end; may it be my lot to suffer something good, and for the nectar of sweet news to be distilled for me, however late, by which the things of bitterness will be stopped. And then I shall open my mouth, and I shall speak out clearly.

IZ'. — Of the same, written upon the petitions. You have, behold, my venerable master, the first petition of Eustathius; and I am happily inaugurating the office for you. For I shall make a petition, and the things of the petition will be resolved for me. And this will be for me in another way beneficial, and for your venerable Excellency, a good omen. But what is the petition? I encountered on the road the most excellent brother of your most magnanimous ^D brightness; and since I do not have very inquisitive eyes, and moreover was walking on a slippery path, I was not able to discern that it was actually Ducas, the best of men, who was a good encounter for me on the road. And the simplicity of his appearance also misled me; for he was alone and walking, and he [was] from a long distance; so that I thought him to be one of those recently dressed in splendor because of the brightness of the day. Whence I passed him by without a greeting, having bowed my head just slightly as if to one not known, and as if having performed the obeisance with indifference to a stranger. But when the small dwelling, (as you yourself would say) the small hut of mine, had me, and I reclined in the dining area, and already the hand [reached] into...

towards the table, and right there that clean-shaven John suddenly attaches himself to me like an ambush, and descending sharply, [says]: "What have you done? Why did you not speak to the Doukas?" And I (by your head, and by the salvation of my soul) was immediately struck as if by the most novel piece of news. I both threw up my hands, and was dumbfounded at the hearing. And behold, I beg you, seek for me reconciliation and compassion, and hasten to accomplish this. For God is witness, I was vexed with myself that I had acted so carelessly in the matter. However, I did not err greatly, for the reasons I have stated, and because I do not encounter other men frequently enough, so as to bear more precise marks of their countenances; so that immediately upon seeing them, ^B and at the very first meeting, one might grasp what has been seen. I bow, therefore, and I make an act of repentance, and I seek forgiveness. And let this be a mediator-gift to your all-venerable nobility, these Persian apples, my own garden-produce; of which you might apportion half to the all-beaming Doukas as a soothing offering and for my compassion.

III.

Philoctetes, son of Poeas, was cast out and lived in solitude near the uninhabited wasteland of Lemnos. And he indeed possessed a rock that served as his own roof, and he was sustained for as much as a wild beast would be; and water, he made use of, not one that was ever-flowing or ever-running, but the decaying remnant of rain, ^C remaining in a hollow, and in honeycombs, as many as he wrestled with, in those hardships; otherwise, not even being sound of foot, but crawling upon the ground, and in this very part mimicking the viper that gnaws him. But yet neither the food being hard to come by, nor the stagnant water, nor the venomous marking of the viper troubled him. Yet when someone having traveled a long time speaks to him and greets him, and finally, upon departing, is entrusted with a letter for friends, and then is negligent—but this was to Philoctetes the most terrible of all things. You knew what I am saying, and having preempted the words, you snatched them away. So sharp is your mind; and if the discourse were not comic, I would say that you devoured the speech ^D like a dog. For indeed, dogs, when a carcass is tossed into the air, anticipate its falling to the ground and devour it. But, my dear sir, allow me to tell the whole story. The remoteness of our desert, and the rationed food, and the markings of the viper among us grieve me; but it bit me more than these things, that we fared so poorly regarding the writings sent to you, and that though we write, we seem not to write. And yet to whom other than the brother of the master, of your teacher, and yours, O uncle, did I entrust the writing to you? But as it seems, counting our affairs as second, he hastened the voyage home, so that for us the whole account might be tragic. Thus we are unfortunate in the things in which we are fortunate. Do not, therefore, blame us, but shoot arrows at such heavy fortune, because of which our words are no longer winged, but having fluttered more briefly, they flutter away again, and stop in mid-flight on their journey.

11'.

To the judge of the *Velum*, the master Gregory, the Antiochene.

What indeed would a man not do? This saying is ancient in general and not mine. Yet this matter is mine—not according to his judgment, but my own. What would the active tongue, the ready mind, the common good friend, the master Michael, not accomplish? And if he was able to persuade me to have the confidence for this writing, he also plucked out the hesitation so deeply rooted in the soul, and strengthened what had sagged, and more than that, he urged, or rather emboldened [the wavering]. For did I not always love you, my greatly cherished Gregory? I would hate myself (and if I did this, I would be mad), if I were otherwise disposed toward you. Did I not have you inscribed in my soul in a higher degree? May I be blotted out of the book of the living if I did not open every fold of my heart to you. When did the discourse regarding you fly from my mouth? When did the things of memory depart? Seeing any of my acquaintances arriving before you, did I not immediately stir up words concerning you, and send greetings, and dismiss the messenger who had slipped the airy wing? Being at home, you have my soul dwelling in you; having set out for abroad, you remained in me; and somehow, inhabiting my soul, you have the intelligent lodging within me. But yet, even though you are such a one with me, I spoke to you only a little in writing; and I sent to you what I had written in a smoothed tablet (as Homer would say). For what reason? Through cowardice, which the speech just now admitted, and the master Michael pushed aside from my soul. But what is this cowardice? That the speech, which is poured into the air, and sent through other ministers' mouths, does not willingly wish to rebuke those who send it; but both the great and the clever here receive the equal share, though they differ as much as those who serve them and relay them possess in memory or rhetorical skill. And there is here, among those who serve, either the risking or the obtaining; for they attribute to themselves either the grace or the lack thereof of the address. And he who sends the talk has no witness, wherever the greetings might fall; but he who acts accepts the whole upon himself toward the one being greeted. And those things are well and good. But the speech lying in a volume is no longer carried forth by a speaking mouth, nor is it risked on the lips of others; but it is the direct offspring of the soul that sent it, a midwifery of the codex that received it, which as it were swaddles it, and guards it as it grew, and conveys it to the friend, as an image of the sender. And if such things the writings are able to do, and know how to accuse the sender, such as he is in his words, and such are the birth-seedings of his soul for him, how would he himself be bold–

^A to bring forward and strip bare a tawny lion in the arts of rhetoric, and to revel in my rusticity? We do not gainsay it, nor do we refuse to deposit our dagger-like and heirloom refutations for those who, for the time being, do not know our circumstances, and to grave accusations against ourselves, so that we may have them as examples for those who come after us. To certain others, indeed, I might perhaps have dared to write, and I would not have felt restrained in my letter. But to you—yet even now there is fear, lest the instruments of writing, having broken, should leave the work unfinished for me. So much do I stand in awe of you, so much do I fear your rhetorical furnace. And to a Roman man (to Antonius, I think) a saying was delivered from somewhere, that a demon of his was afraid of the demon of another; but for us, a fearful demon, or rather a fortune striking terror into the like, ^B has not been decreed. For how could such a fortune exist among us, to whom God is everything? Where those among the Greeks who are wiser define fortune as a more divine favor, and bring it to the same point as the good of blessedness. Fortune, therefore, does not exist for us in such a way, nor is it feared. But my discourse fears yours; and chancing upon it, it shrinks and retreats. And as the saying goes, that it is the lot of bodily impacts to yield to others, and when those resound, the others keep silence, not being able to resound in return, so also, while the intense voice of the wise Gregory sings in rhetoric, the chatter of Eustathius does not even modulate into a single unisonous echo. Still, the images of that letter—which not long ago I held in my hands—run before my eyes; and it drives me from writing, startling ^C me no less than the much-bruited counterpart drives away those terrifying images of his. Still, that sweet rhythm captivates me; still its beauty leads me about; the height of its thoughts, its density, its austerity; the sweetness tempered within them; the grace of the diction; the variety in the figures; all other things are beautiful, lest I should seem to heap together a rubbish of names. But what of that one letter of yours, even if it is very beautiful? Why do I not praise the wise Protogenes—skilled of hand—not for his great works, but for the byproduct, a beautiful partridge? I call to mind your calligraphic logography, ^D and having marveled as much as is possible, and giving up on myself, having abandoned the sophistical art, I refrain from competing against your rhetoric (if they would wish). And I wished to see such people—whoever they might be—so that I might have been filled with cheer, seeing you, whom I fear, defeated. But they, too, are afraid of you, like ewe-goats of a lion. And you, like the Homeric Hector, seat all those who are eloquent in discourse, and then seek your opponent for single combat; but they are silent, and do not dare the sally. Even if someone should shout at them, according to Homer, "But may you all become water and earth," if you yourselves are terrified of this one man, not even in this way are they sharpened to boldness, nor do all nine stand up against you; for it would be satisfactory if even one, and he not like the great Ajax, were to arise as an adversary. Thus, for you— one man brings you his second-best, another, whatever happens to be the disposition brought to this. Oh, what a pile of speeches! What wealth of arguments, poured forth like a flood of sand! Oh, what a quantity of witty enthymemes, of many forms! Oh, what a multitude of lofty thoughts, expanding into a multitude like stars, and casting light like torches, pouring down from above like rains, as if in a deluge—for one might say—of many waters. Oh, what a copious stream of discourse, flowing over like the waves of the Icarian sea, words like snowflakes. Does it occur to me to say what the Syracusan Muse said? "How great a crowd, countless ants," or rather, "an ant-hill of wise words." And then you bring forward tumults, and a pouring forth of things, and a confusion of life, and harms such as these, and such troubles, by which you have been unsettled from your friendly discourse? And you no longer say that you are the same as your speeches of long ago, nor that you have been worn thin by books, nor that you are at all that person whom we know? Oh, the staging used against us! Or is your discourse a "scene-staging"? It has been shaped, it has been flowered. You hide yourself from us—I do not know if in the manner of the Homeric Odysseus, or if anyone has staged his own concealment like him; or like someone wrapped up in sophisms, so that, having later revealed your true self, you might drive us into the straits of contradictory villainy, knowing you and at the same time not knowing you. Oh, the irony! For to call the thing "sneering" (mucter), I think, is not safe; and yet, the passion is not affectation or coy behavior. Perhaps those things, too, should be struck out by me, and set far from the discourse; for to speak ill of you in a way that is burdensome for a walk is very heavy. For neither is speaking in a theatrical manner among such things judged to be serious, and the matter of irony has been cast into the share of vice. Therefore, think of the gentle one; oh, the condescension, to which you, so high and abundant in wisdom, have brought yourself! Oh, the humble mind, by which you measure yourself with the many, a sign into the depths and to the height in another way—you yourself having requested and received from God: depth, through humility—downward; height, the ascent according to discourse. But I was asking that you know yourself, and not write such things about yourself. For I do not narrow that ancient writing, "Know yourself," but I broaden it to all men, and I divide the saying among particulars; as it is necessary that each person know himself, that neither the person who is nothing should think of himself as something highest, nor the one who is exceedingly high should drag himself down to the earth in such a way. But these things have another friction, whether it must be done in this way, or not. But you, most learned of men, what do you say? Are you faring poorly regarding the birth-seedings of your thoughts? And that which continuous sweat, and prompt, and intelligent warmth sharpened for a philosophizing mind, has the hardness of things blunted it? Has the crowd of cares conquered you? Has it prevailed over you? Has it brought you down from the height? Has it torn you away? Has it cast you down? Is that no longer the same Gregory of old? Who, having kissed some discourse even in prose, or having cast aside a casual line of verse, worked it into an inimitable and great sketch for those who wish to speak with rhetoric. Thus, might I be infinite in words—thus might I obtain wisdom—such may I have […]

1277 EUSTATHII THESSALONICENSIS EPISTOLÆ. 1278

^A ...whether one must call it a vessel, or an abyss, or even a chaos, because of the capacious nature of this place of the mind, you have set yourself up to receive all goodness, and indeed you have received all the fountains and all the rivers of the Word. And so they did not flow into a sea that knows an end, but these good streams of mine have flowed together into an ocean, and one that is fearless, and one that returns into itself in an intellectual cycle, and circles in a tireless revolution, and knows no end. Therefore, this stream would never leave you, not even if you wished it, being once granted. The heaven has received the principle of motion and does not cease its motion. Thus also your heavenly mind will not cease being moved, even if it happens to suffer at one time a slight hindrance at the highest sphere; but it is small, and becomes faster than it was before. And your sun-like mind knows a setting at times (according to the poetical ^B David, to sing) and it sets, having been sent into itself; but it rises again after not long, and regained its previous brilliance. Woe to us, for whom such a sun shines more slowly, and completes nights of many months, or rather, not six-month nights; and having shone for a short while, and as much as it might in Thule in winter, it sets again. But you (to abandon the allegorical artifice and apply myself to the plain facts), although you hasten for others, remain unassailable, and you are invincible in your ease; and when you come to a task, or even measuring something by the way, you stand above the rest; yet, measuring yourself, you surpass the things you are busy with as of secondary importance. Do not, therefore, write such things, but let go of your tongue; let our ocean flood; shine, our sun; and do what is yours. And whoever you may be, do not say so; others will say it, and they will not even judge the votes; but they will say that, compared to all rhetoricians (but let envy be far away), you carry off the victory. For you do not please me, nor do you even persuade me, by judging such things against yourself. Or does Anacharsis, while brilliantly practicing the Attic style, deceive the Scythians regarding those who listen? And does Gregory, surpassing all rhetoricians wherever they may be, not deceive the one who does not know? Did beautiful speech transform and change Tyrtaeus into Theophrastus? And shall Gregory, good at shouting, be written down as a voiceless bush, and the beautiful-voiced one be ranked in the lot of the voiceless? And who would say these things, and would agree to such dishonorable things? Socrates once said that he knew nothing; but no one paid any mind to him. For the test proved him wrong, showing him to be wise. You, therefore, have not escaped notice, even you, by falling into such wisdom. You are established for us as a faultless, square Hermes. Do not, then, fear the change; for you will remain firm-footed to the end, and not easily rolled. You are a dwelling place of the Muses; they would not, therefore, abandon you, having rested once and for all in you. Or would they not wish to abandon Helicon and the Leibethrian springs—places not worth mentioning, yet named for the Muses—and yet abandon you, having found in you such a beautiful place for speech? Not at all; but they will remain with you while you stay, and will travel with you while you are away, and they will [be] with you, just as [they were] with the wise men of old, and in such

^A a way as to provide a substitute—if, that is, they cared not only for staying at home, but also for the poets when they went away, for Hermes and the Muses. Pericles once went on a campaign; yet he was none the less active in his oratory, carrying on discussions just as much in times of peace as when he was camped in the field. The sweet-tongued Xenophon likewise labored over a war in foreign lands and measured a long distance of the earth; yet he had Hermes flying alongside him, and the chorus of the Muses was camped with him; and not a whit of his eloquence was taken away, nor, though he was among barbarians for a long time, did he fall out of Hellenic culture. Demosthenes once fled from Athens; but his rhetoric accompanied him. Why do you think the poet puts so much store by the long absence from home regarding his sonorous voice? Unless, perhaps, they also helped him with the material of his lofty speech. Nor did the concern for such things make the tongue of Themistocles barbaric. Plato, who was nearly the foremost of all others, being sent from Athens to Sicily, would have turned aside the battle. But look, handled by the word as if by a pirate, it is present to you to examine whether his absence harmed the man. And indeed, it neither obstructed the mixing-bowl of his wisdom, but rather (as one might say) blew upon the Etnean fire and kindled it more brightly. Therefore, neither will you be led astray by the affairs of the path of correct philosophy, nor, like those things that are unballasted and not laden with weight, will they be forced to sway. You walk with a fine staff. The Hermetic wand establishes your footing in safety. Therefore, may you suffer no stumbling block, even if the path is treacherous for you. You are heavy with many burdens; you have been fashioned by a good master-builder. ^B Calm the affairs, then; dance upon the waves, having spread your sail for the journey. Govern yourself with your sleepless eyes of the soul and mind, which I see in you, more numerous than those which the plastic art of the poet would have displayed around the alien Argus, the many-eyed monster; he would have opened many eyes, and made them spring forth as if with many visions, piercing it into ten thousand eyes, so that the power of vision of the whole body would flow out, just as water is shot forth in a great stream from some many-holed conduit. But these things have been played out to the end. But you, even if you are not so many-eyed, yet in another way do you not subject the Argus to your continuous and tireless contemplation? Nor does sleep lie upon your eyelids (this, indeed, is according to the Homeric Odysseus), though you look upon the Pleiades and Hyades and the strength of Orion (for while these things are rather theoretical), you are more consumed by books, and look upon the heavenly beauties within them with eyes opened wide and sleepless; from which how great a substance of light has been poured into you by the grace of the Father of lights! Do not, therefore, bring before me disturbances, you who distinguish the waves here with skill; do not bring me troubles, you who compose yourself wherever you wish; do not bring me anxieties, you who are of many minds and keen-witted; do not bring up being busy, you who are most contemplative; do not bring up matters, you who are most practical—lest, if you have something to say ^C of such a nature..., he repels the technical skill in words of all [men]. Do not be far from your books, you who are a living and animate book; or rather, you are the treasury of speeches, the precious library. For you would withdraw from yourself if you were to persuade us of this. But you will not persuade us. For not even you yourself would withdraw from this new departure. I have dared, I have spoken, I have addressed the one who is least in word—or rather, the one who is nothing in the wisdom of the very great. And I know that they will reach you in a friendly way, respectful of what is to come, even if you should share them with others and make public what concerns us, and refute as many as we are inferior to you; and thus you might lead a bright triumph over us. However that may be, farewell in Cos, remembering us for good, my friend.

On the same: A Characterization.

What words would ^D Omoikeson have said, when on the day after the death of the most holy patriarch, the lord Michael of Anchialus, who had benefited him greatly, he was being washed and was stripped, by the mission of the great steward of all crafts, of his outer garment and his tunic and the rest, which were at once wittily given to the poor.

"O longsuffering Savior, bear with me, lest I suffer a greater evil; O averter of evil, God, may this visible affliction also be driven away. But why, pray, [are] the present things [what they are]? Is it a fantasy and an illusion of some kind, or do they exist in accordance with truth? Is it a dream being formed, or does it stand before my eyes in reality? I came with dignity and dressed decorously, wearing a cloak as fine as that which lies upon a pampering body, and bringing with me a brightness that is beyond merit (but nevertheless). A flowery carpet was spread out, showing the appearance of a meadow, which shone with as many colors as the many-varied flowers. The carpet also held a mattress, not one woven by the Milesians—which are also these, smooth and good for sleeping softly—but one stuffed inside with the flowers of plants, which men sow, and then gather the wool-like bloom with toil, surpassing the use of wool for the luxuries of reclining. But the linen cloth on top, so as to roughen the mattress, ought to have been dyed in a sadder black, both because of me, a man of such a life, and because of the passion or even mourning that just then befitted me; but it was white, as the sun, in its fineness, such as the spider crafts. And the head-rest was equal to this, so as not to appear as something laid out, but to be submerged in the softness of what lay beneath, or, what I seem to be more worthy of, to be buried in some monument. These things were so solemn to me. But the sheets (the curtain of the bed) shone at the edges with silken threads, and these of purple, and such as a man who lives in luxury would not despise. One would have said, looking at them, that they lay parallel like rainbows, and the middle part to be nothing but light; so purely white was it. But the thinness—but one would not have said he was seeing a woven fabric, but air illuminated by the sun, unimpeded…

^A in its body. And the glossiness (as they say) would seem to be liquid oil. And there lay a beautiful thing upon the nice bed, the linen clothes, ^B respectful of the beholder, that he should remain somewhere far off, so as not even to touch it at all, lest he might defile things so precious. But as for that which was laid there, whether it was the carpet or if it was commonly a spread, one must honor it in thought, and I would not need a quick expression; it is enough to say this, that just as it lay above the rest, so it lay above the others. Beside these were vessels, ^C some of plain brass, and some showing the brightness of tin-plating, and others mimicking silver. One who saw them would say that the reflection still remained in them. For they were shining and even clearer than mirrors. A vessel for poured-out myrrh, such as roses exude, and which wine ^D prepares, compounded with fragrant mixtures. A beautiful container to behold, wide enough to hold much. And it was itself a case for a tunic, which one would not say human hands had fashioned, and of shaggy fabrics (so to speak) of linen texture, which a man who had already bathed must put on, in order to wipe away the moisture. All things were beautiful, and were found to be of great value. ^A Having selected these (and many things lie before me, and these too are stupendous, and such as I would not have hoped), I started on my way to the bath. And for a while the road was straight, and the downhill slope held me; and a heap of utensils lay there. And, having undressed myself, and having increased the pile to which I added the items of clothing, I went inside, and I came to the warm waters. And having wiped off the dirt, and having been restored to beauty, mimicking the sun, which itself also shines brightly, bathed in the waters of the ocean, I sought to emerge ^B from the inner lightless part, and to rise up like a beacon. And this I had there. But when I searched for the bath-towel, the covering, it was nowhere; but it too had vanished, and the rest of the baggage as well. What is this? Whence came this evil to me? Harpies snatched it away, and winged creatures could not have crept in unnoticed; but the gaping earth received it. And we are not thus unfeeling ^C toward the passion of an earthquake; but fire would have consumed it, and ash would have convicted the work of fire. But why did thieves, having escaped notice, carry off the things I sought? And how could a thief, having finished such a task so unnoticed, carry it off in the middle of the day? The carrying off was a piratical affair, a sign of a hostile incursion, a bold plunder. This was not trickery, not a covert theft; but a study, but a plan; and either a deed of violence or a jest. ^D It must be examined; and indeed not only whence the evil came to me, but also the cause. Woe is me! I have understood the impropriety from which I have been harmed. Before my eyes is the reproof. As my body is naked, so is the failing of my soul, and its condemnation is beyond rebuke. Beloved, if these are not the preludes of great struggles. I would be content if my evil were limited to this. The present state is justice from above; a recompense for covetousness; a penalty for an ungrateful soul; a repayment for injustice; a swift-moving hobbling of a sinful soul, which as a rule causes the affliction. And it itself walks not straight, but the body stumbling is torn; but to me the chastisement is more humane. A man more ungrateful is becoming [the judge]. Someone might even mockingly say that we are "naked-philosophers." It is now the time to say: "I have taken off my garment; how shall I put it on?" A bad omen is that which is present, lest the evil pass to my remaining property, and these things be the beginning of greater evils. Joseph was stripped, but in another way he was honored; but as for me, I know not how anyone might record the passion. I was putting on a precious tunic of joy; but because I have despised the one who wove it, and because I went away with head uncovered (as they say) and uneducated, I suffer this nakedness that is a mockery. It was fitting, therefore, that he who rushes to fill his ^A bosom, that he should not have done so, but in those very bosoms lose all his covering, and in this way arrive at nakedness. For not a disease but health was given in return for punishment, but the removing of the outer ornament. And perhaps also as a plant of ingratitude, shedding the things that bloom upon it, as many leaves, I have been stripped; or to say it otherwise, discarding beauty; perhaps also as worthy of being cast out of the garden of luxury. I have recognized the present nakedness; but may it not be that I shall also be restored to the former state. Lamentation yesterday and the sound of those weeping ^B and despondency; and these things concerning the whole Church of God; and this situation exists even today. But it will also remain for a long time. And we are in luxuries, when we ought to be exceedingly melted with tears. Therefore, the judgment has justly overtaken us. There lies a man—a treasure of wisdom and holiness—whose greatness was manifested not only when he was raised to the archiepiscopal throne, but it even filled the inhabited world before that. And while others, reflecting on the affliction, are bathed in tears, and sing the lamentation; we, on the contrary, ^C making haste, show only shame. We have run the course of life, which there is no one who would not resent; and we have snatched the prize, and have taken for the judge the one who stands over us by wonder; but when he went away, the theater having been dissolved, we were cast out. Therefore, do we become a theater for laughter, and we fulfill this gymnic contest of indecency. O those former days, in which we were gazed upon by the people, by those of the holy assembly, by those in imperial dignities; in a word, by all. ^D Now it is not possible to say how much we have been despised. That golden daily light, it seems, already wishes to fail us. But we had held another hope. And the honors and the ceding of thrones and the giving way on the roads, and all the other things in which we were yesterday and the day before seemingly fitting; we did not inherit them from you. You did not remain to the end, but were already departing, but seemed to be fleeing. Now I have come to my senses; now I have returned to my mind. I barely recognized of what good I have been deprived, of what prosperity I have fallen. I no longer look; rather I even look around. I was drawing many of other people's things around me; but now even the things present are gone. A saying says we are more naked than a beggar; but I do not know if we ourselves shall be thrown into a proverb, having been so mocked into nakedness. Our old nakedness had a fiction of blessedness; it colored the one in the life of serious study so as to be unencumbered. But this nakedness is becoming more ungrateful than that from the mother's womb.

^A Woe is me for the laughter, what a mockery I have endured! I consider this nakedness to be even worse than that which I laughed at and threw down. That judgment, indeed, for all is a fearful one, in which things are naked and laid bare; and I myself have just now been condemned by good judges to such nakedness. These are the punishing sorrows of gluttony; such is the way I once desired to strip those who have fallen. "You have a garment; be our leader." But those appointed by me will speak the opposite. The adornment of the Church being exchanged was transformed, and the angelic one, the one drawing near to God, the one leading to God, took up my form. Therefore, I ought no longer to remain in the same state, but to have been transformed, to have changed my appearance, so that I might not appear common, not even there, having dealings with him. And so I fell away from every covering. For what I had was no longer fitting. But to return to the former things is not easy. Because I was not naked in simplicity, but was sinking into treachery, I was condemned to the nakedness that is now seen. Naked? The painters of the Graces paint them so, and this is a sign and a mark for them. But to us, this nakedness is not graceful, but devoid of grace. It seems that this law also applies to the sea of life, for those who are stripped of their clothing in it to turn somersaults. And I, indeed, turn somersaults like those who have suffered shipwreck, for whom the covering has failed entirely. O most blessed and most holy lord, for whom this covering is available to us, as it were, alone, and a great surge of water is around us—even if it is warm, it is otherwise chilly, and by its fearful nature, cold—therefore, save me, who am at last sensible, and as if from the storm of the waves that I am suffering, do not let me be made like those whom I fall. We quickly forgot you; we quickly erased your benefits from our memory. We have not wiped away the evil deeds into our soul; grace has died faster than speech. But you, however, be slow to retaliate. In a way, I myself was also blindly ungrateful; but now, having washed and suffered what I ought, I have recovered my sight, and I call upon the one who saves and who will forgive my ingratitude. "Wash yourselves, become clean." But for me, thus washed, filth has been rubbed in and a stain that cannot be washed away. Trusting in comforting water, we found it deadly. I share the misfortune of Odysseus from Ithaca, carried naked on the sea, and fearing the danger and the invincible nature of the brine. And if that veil of Ino covered that breast, see, a small thing remains covering us as well. We are in danger in this land, just as those who sail on the sea. Oh, for the decency of before; oh, for the indecency of now; oh, for that honor; oh, for this disgrace; oh, for the old appropriateness; oh, for the current inappropriateness. The wheel of my life has rolled back on me; stripped naked, I have put on shame. What more could I suffer if I were dead, if grave robbers were to set upon me to loot the tomb? It seems to me that the one who snatched it away did not do so to obtain it for his own gain, but to distribute it to those in need, so that my own need might also be filled, and ^B in this way, I am so unfortunately managed. I foresee my clothing being distributed—a favor, even if to people against whom I have acted wickedly. For perhaps, having gained in such a way, they will soften their anger and relax their rage against me, so that, if I am not stripped (woe is me) of present things, I will not even be deprived of them in the future. What, then, shall I plan? Shall I recall my accustomed art and become one who steals? Shall I clothe myself by obtaining stolen goods from elsewhere, and perhaps, on being caught, pay a greater penalty? It is not for me. These are warm waters for a man living luxuriously and rejoicing, but for a cold one, they are like those that ward off dripping; they are Charonian baths appropriate for the dead, not sweet, but an outflow of bitter brine; they are not baths that pour out ^C joy, but rather waves, as if effectively and forcefully over my shoulders, not murmuring sweetly. I am some unfortunate castaway. Great is my sea, but I mourn past things; not only those things in which I have shivered from of old (they are gone), but also those that gave warmth a short while ago; and it is an absolute necessity to use others. And for me, this is the same as dying. For to hide a treasure and then reveal it again is the same as if someone were to show a corpse to the sun. Lest perhaps I have suffered something similar to the jackdaw in the fable; and for a time I will go about naked, stripped of the feathers that appear on the surface and to some small extent of those hidden underneath. This warm water kindles a fire in my inward parts; it seems that one who approaches these warm waters suffers the same thing as the beasts that are plunged into boiling water. The rich man, being roasted by fire after death, would not have a greater suffering than ours. These baths are near to the Agamemnonian ones, if they be but slightly fatal; except that Agamemnon had something which he would wrap around himself; but for us, everything has failed. See, we are perhaps saved against our will, and already we are surpassing the commandment, not dividing one of two tunics to give to another, but being deprived even of the whole. We are becoming fit for the narrow and afflicted way, not because we are not full of flesh; not because we are wasp-like; not because we are unrefined in fat (fat bulls might be such), but because we are stripped of what was added. Perhaps we are also being driven into an involuntary wisdom like the snake, laying aside our clothing like a slough. ^D The bathers are a crowd, and the majority depart, having gathered laughter; and the evil done to me is thus proclaimed and scattered everywhere by rumor; and on the pretext of a bath, this crowd of people gathers around me, and they scrutinize the upper parts, the lower, those on the right, and the left. The eyes of these people are fixed somewhere in the middle; the lips are biting; the face is formed in astonishment; the eyes are cast down, and they are disposed as if they are looking at some monster. And, to be sure, the fee for the bath is increased, but for me, a great throng is led in procession, and I am brought onto the stage to be mocked for my ingratitude. Would that my logic had departed, to throw myself against the... of these warm waters, so as to have changed the past and to say the proverb: I perished, since I drank water...

perhaps it was then for me to be washed. I overstepped my infant age, and no longer, but if ever, in the rivers. I flourished, and I was among them; I dragged my life thus smoothly, I did not mingle with the later life. Pactolus was entirely around me, flowing with gold. I became overly drenched with goods, and for the rest I had no satiety of washing. Therefore, shame is rightly poured over me. It is a thing to be prayed for, for me, that sorrows should stand still up to this point (as I myself even imagine the future), and that the wheel of life might not, in leading me around, bring me to the same suffering as the oft-mentioned Ixion. Many nourished abundant hatred against me; I worked intense bitterness into many; I was set as a burden upon not a few; I considered myself second to no one of all men. Those boasting of the brilliance of their birth were despised by me like hirelings; I did not deign to treat those in positions of dignity with honor. To hear the speech of a learned man, but this was to me the same as the neighing of a horse. One must endure, then, if every man, having stripped off my cloak, shall not be light, that they throw stones at me, and I shall be dressed in this—as it is said—stony tunic; and it must be considered that these present things have come to pass for my benefit. The bright bedspreads are gone; and rightly so. The raiment is gone; and well. For thus I shall run lightly, and having escaped unnoticed, I shall be off, either home, or into the abyss.

10

Why, my holiest master, do you attribute the strength of a lion to the ant? Or the virtue of speed to the worm? Or rather, why do you assign the worm to a man, and bring to equality with a being him who is nothing? And indeed you even rank among the honorable one who is held in no esteem; do you count us among men? Do you number me among those worthy of some word? Do you imagine something good about us? You should not, holiest master; but pray only for us. As for us, such as we are, God knows, and the judge within us, conscience, also knows. We do not escape even the precise examiners of our affairs. — But how much I was comforted, having received the writing of your holiness, the God who knows all things knows. For I seemed to encounter your holiness directly, and to enjoy your sweet sight and voice; of which, having been deemed worthy for a brief moment, I carry it written forever in my soul. Act thus, therefore, holy master, and comfort me through your writings; so that this also might be for us a good from God, by whom we are benefited in a myriad of ways.

20

I would have said that I hesitated to write, my sanctified master, if I did not have your great friendship urging me on, and rousing me to write. But my excuse for hesitation would have been that my affairs were not deemed worthy by your holiness of any common discourse; which, if it be well, let it rest with you as judge. But I know that I have murmured in these matters, and blamed the blameless. You have done or suffered nothing new, my master. For I myself, if [I am] in the midst of such things...

if I am in the midst of matters that have wrapped around your holiness—I would have even forgotten my own name. Therefore you are not doing anything new, but are flowing along with the nature of the matter. Fare well, then; it is well; remain free from pain; may your affairs fall out well for you. It suffices for us if we are guarded in the embers ^B and alone by the hearth of your soul, even if it is only that we are kept in memory.

Concerning the good friend, the most learned Lord George, that he has suffered terrible illness, I have learned; but whether he has been delivered from the evil, I have learned nothing. Therefore I become a sharer in his misfortune through grief, not to mention that I myself am not faring well on account of my own terrible and long-standing illness, from which I have with difficulty been able to recover.

KA'.

I seem to see your holiness, my holy master, and that you are not wishing to take into your hand this writing of mine, as if it were belated and has come to your holiness after so long a time. And perhaps you even ascribe it to me as a writing of one who forgets friendship; and being so disposed, you are as is expected of one who has remained long without greeting from one of his friends. But do not, my holy master; be accustomed to not remembering evil even now toward us; and having learned the cause, do not be angry with us, but rather be sorrowful on our behalf, and pray to God. The month of July laid us low; and until this very day (and it is the beginning of October) we have not seen pure health. What, then, do you think turns us about in this life, most holy master, in the midst of such affairs? It is certainly this alone: how we might recover, and become ourselves again, which comes about through your holy prayers. For this reason we have always remembered your holiness, and sought the aid of your holy prayers, as also the good Domestikos knows, but we were not able to write, because we were not even living cleanly. You understood, I know, because you are our holy master; you were softened and put away the melancholy toward us; and glory be to God. Pray, therefore, for what concerns us, and all will be well for us through your heaven-summoned prayer, a supplication having been made through the presence of his great holiness, the likes of which has never before been. For the world (so to say) was entirely present, in such a way that everything was crowded by the throng, and some even fainted from the intense pressure. And tears were shed like a river; and fasting was commanded and performed, and everything proceeded just as is recorded of the Ninevites; which is the same as saying, those by whom God is appeased.

KB'.

KΓ'.

KΔ'.

KE'.

toward an archetype. Even I, if I did not have your letters placed before my eyes, would not know how to write otherwise. Send, therefore, the archetype, toward which we might move the pen—for the starting-signal for us will be from nowhere else but there; nor would our brazen vessel ring out otherwise, unless you were to sketch the scribal wind from there. Breathe, therefore, and the bronze will ring out. And the sound will reach even to us, and it will wrap around our ears. If, then, it is not heavy, breathe again, and it will ring again, and again, and again. And may this not be to infinity, Christ the King; for we might quickly see one another and converse, with no letter acting as an intermediary. — But do you see for me the sharpness of the letter, which nearly escaped me? I greet both with this. And perhaps, not without reason, those whom both disposition and time and every circumstance have joined, I join also with the letter. But I honor the paper even more, and I make this a feast. For not one will toil over it, but four hands will grasp it; and as many eyes will look around; and as many lips will chat about it; and this new course in this small stadium of eyes and lips will be—and even here alone, the divine speed of the sight might somehow be equaled by the lips, leading the way and all but running around the theater, yet nonetheless accompanying and synchronizing with the lips. How fortunate you are, O paper! Now, indeed, I have joined you as I joined the Molionidae, having written; but I shall deal with you in a little while as with Orestes and Pylades. For thus, in that way, the affairs of friendship remain, even if they have worn away. ^{B C}

KG'. Man was created self-sufficient in the beginning, himself obliged to suffice for himself in the actions of life. But luxury, having fallen upon life, which is also otherwise a certain sluggishness in what must be done and weaknesses, introduced the name of "service," through which we indeed, having collapsed, lead a life of leisure, while those who take wages in our stead dragged out the wretchedness. But since it seemed well that things should be, and the serving made us bear it with patience, we contrive even slavery, so that we might have the service eternal. For slavery is a certain service, unpaid and long-lasting. Hence the evil of serving in life slipped into existence, by nature indeed unknown, but by human greed invented. Which, then, if it were pleasing to God, to restore slavery to the ancient freedom, and to equate the sin of greed with natural brotherhood. For we would not be worthy of forgiveness if God, who is by nature the Master, leads us, the slaves, toward brotherhood, and does not disdain to call us brothers; but we were desiring to bring down the brothers from the height of equality into the pit of slavery. These things, even I, pondering, the things accustomed to men by consequence and having gone around for me in a long time—dear little souls [I pity them] in that same time of slavery—considered them to be of a different fortune than my own (for by nature every man is a free animal); and whenever I were to lay aside the life among us, I would not wish for them to come to be under any master. But as long as I myself am among the living, they will be with me, and will be deemed worthy of the care customary from me; which I do not know if they would have obtained, had they been better off, from their own parents once, remaining at home. But whenever I shall depart from the life after us, freedom from then on will be granted to them, to live, as it is permitted to free Romans, wherever they might wish; and no one, neither of those related to you by blood of kin, nor of others otherwise household and acquaintances, will lay hands on them as slaves; my present document being sufficient for them instead of every security for the warding off of everyone wishing to enslave them, the one who deserves to know also this, that along with accomplishing nothing, he will also be subjected to the curse of the great God as wishing to oppose so very just and God-beloved a will; which for the sake of greater confirmation I have also wished to be made manifest to the holy court of justice, so that, having been recognized there, it will result in protection for my slaves, for so-and-so and so-and-so, if ever someone perchance after my death might wish to become a hindrance to their freedom. ^D

KZ'. I did not speak, and lo, it is accomplished. It is accomplished, however, not because I spoke (may I not be so mad as to think that affairs run along the trace of my words); but I have learned by frequent trial the things concerning me, and, surpassing prophets, I foreshadow them. Yesterday a silent wave, the surge of the disease, was shaking me, waiting for the path of a certain shrill wind; today the spirit has burst forth, and no longer a silent wave, but heavily roaring, it drives this sea of mine of the diaphragm [or: my current sea] to madness. Yesterday a certain thin shivering was running underneath, by which the depth of the humor was gently turning purple on the surface; today a deadly wave is raised, not indeed curved itself, but shaking us from a correct standing, and inclining toward the head. The disease is in its prologues just now, and the struggle is at the heels; it is analogous to the prologues, like that cloud on the day before, short in interval, not thick in composition, but it breathed forth for us a certain squall, but how great a storm it burst forth. To what end are these things for me? We are lying sick, Lord Komnenos, a tiny spark of that fever having kindled a very great pyre for us. Therefore, it is not possible to dare the move, lest we should happen to have shared the evil with those who approach; just as the legend holds regarding the *catoblepas*, that beast, whose craters of fire (one might say the eyes; which as soon as they saw above, also cast or shot fire; and the one who chanced upon [them] is no longer surrounded by optical rays, but sharp flames strike and the one struck lies there struck down). And so we are informed, how are the things concerning me, for the one who, because of the naturally good character and that of the soul, or rather the everything in every way and from everywhere noble, places in his discourse the things concerning me.

KH'. The gift is not to the multitude, Lord Komnenos.

You might perhaps say, as it pertains to a multitude. And you would certainly be clever, or you might even play the sophist against your teacher. For here is one container, that one a second, another a third; these are three. And look, a multitude. For three is either the beginning of a multitude or the base of a multitude. Since, therefore, the gift is being transformed into a multitude on account of your sophistry, I myself will say: but it is not, therefore, into a population. For in autumn it is not only a novelty if (as the proverb goes) a flower springs up, but also if, according to Aeschylus, a fresh-running fruit is gathered in its youth. I am silent, therefore, about these cucumbers; and I do not speak of them, whether they are good for seed and for those who need to eat, or whether they preserve a pure, green color; nor even if they bristle with sharp-haired thorns, such as are held out like spear-bearers against those who plot against them. ^B Do not, however, imagine that I am magnifying these figs, even if they foam over with honey; even if, having rotted into sweetness and, as it were, opening their lips, they invite the beholder to partake of them. The fruit is a foreigner, and a stranger to my land, and not indigenous; yet it is mine. For the gift is from a friend; and I am that other one. But the fruit of the Persian land, this one is indigenous, it is my own indigenous fruit; it is a product of my land; a domestic fruit, not brought from elsewhere, not having been handled by many hands; a prudent young girl, dragged away yesterday from her mother, perhaps grieving that she has been deprived of her, having just left her nurse, having just peered out from the bridal chamber; not a wanderer, not a public commodity, not a common good; it is my concern; it is the concern of my hand. This fruit, you see, how, when the down of the leaves flows down for those of the same family, it is itself sheltered by its fuzz, growing its wool first, when the old age—that which draws it down to the earth—has departed from it; becoming young when every other such fruit is in decline; or rather, it is nowhere [in decline]; flourishing in late autumn, or a forerunner of the rest if we put it just at the threshold of the year; or if it is completed while revolving, this is a late-born fruit, a late-born noble descendant, the child of the year's twilight. And if any small criticism attaches to it, yet the plant is altogether beautiful. The tree is a first-born to me; it has just now been called the mother of fruit for the first time; it has just now brought forth fruit. What then are you saying? ...or ^A of the neglectful; but certainly the most and smallest to the soul; [are] those who stand by as friends, [having] left us for a little while and having turned their gaze elsewhere, you were pained and vanished, because we did not fix our eyes upon you alone, O noble men. Why is not the neck flexible, so as to turn this way and that? And why would nature have allotted us two eyes, if we were not meant to divide our gaze toward different things, but rather to always pin the aim of our eyes upon one thing? And why do you not deem it fitting to steady your feet, or to extend them into one path, and through it to return continuously? Come now, check your hands from various actions, and turn that multi-purpose tool toward a single-purpose one. ^B Or is it that you wish to busy yourselves only with yourselves alone, playing tyrant over the conversation, and all but shouting: "Speak to us and to us alone; and let the Muse’s reed take a vacation from the others, and let it be breathed into only for our hearing." You do wrong, saying these things, not only to our association, but indeed to us as well; to him, because you leave those whom you wish unaddressed; and to us, because you pull us toward a lack of friendship. And if at any time, when you are addressed even in the writings of others, you are disgruntled, and think you are being cast aside, demanding that each one of you be addressed most specifically in writing, because you say that you also honor us in this way, not even there do you reason well. For consider the matter outside of the place. That which is for each of you comes to one privately in his own turn, namely to me; and all of you (to speak in the manner of tragedy), as archers aiming at my target, send your writings. But if I also were to divide myself toward each one in my letters, it would be for you to measure both the time and the letters. For perhaps there would be no other work for me in life than sending off letters. Let me ask you for the sake of the similarity of the work. A very large crowd surrounded someone; and one was not saying this, another something else, and another, another, and all were saying dissimilar things; but the end of the discourse pointed to one mind. Why, then, would such a man divide the discourse among each? I do not think so, unless he should choose to suffer in his lungs; ^D but in one word he will answer all. So also I; if I saw you scattering into different discourses, I would have had a necessity by all means to speak to each one privately. But because you all call out the same thing to me (grief, for that I am departing; joy, if ever you see me; prayers for health, and all the rest of this category), you curtail for me the many writings, and you shorten the verbosity. And for these reasons I gather you together by the discourse into one; and I neither write frequently, nor many things, and not to everyone; and I have no other way to speak, even if you complain a great deal. For consider how large a bundle of papers will be piled up, if I wished to send letters to each of you every day: the many Michaels, the many Johns, the Basils, the others, whose names...

^A constrain my tongue, leaping as they do from my soul and pressing to be let out through my lips as if through doors. But perhaps you will require a single-line letter from me for each person, as if that were sufficient to satisfy the craving for conversation? And so you have arrived at the same point again. For I am under a necessity, setting others aside, to write only to you in this way, because your friendship has rolled you into a very spacious chorus. If a man, on the bodies of others, often puts a small thing upon a small thing, he quickly makes a great accumulation; but here the conditions of the addition are different. And indeed, the poets—whose compositions, whether they be "orchatoi" or "ogmoi" (to use your terms), [are like] those of Calliope—by being densely composed, have spread out small meadows of verses. O commander Callimachus, how you were as nothing before such judges! You who received many arrows from the barbarians, as if they were being sent to some quiver-bearer, yet you did not shoot so many back at them yourself. And as for Achilles, what sort of man will he be judged to be by such people, when he sees a blizzard of arrows being sent down, and he himself sends back but a single spear? And then you, so-and-so, and another, and a third, and others besides, will rest after writing a little something for each one; but you will deem us worthy to stoop over writings for the rest of our lives? And you will "laconize," while we string out long speeches? Why do you not also—all of you, as if by a signal—handle your writing materials, prepare volumes of letters, and then, having packed them into a load, send them [to us], so that we, returning like for like, might prepare ourselves for similar things? It seems there is a law for you, for each to speak in his turn whenever he wishes; but for us [the law is] always to write to everyone, and to exercise ourselves in long discourse; and if we do not do so, to be mimicked. You hear the names, for which it would often have been necessary to send the requested letters to so many—it is easy to count them. Let the most honored so-and-so be greeted by us—that man whom I do not know, and I wonder when I shall ever see him face to face; therefore I did not even set out a title of address for [his] rise to honor, being ignorant of his promotion. Deem worthy of similar greetings also the most excellent among friends, so-and-so; I know that he is annoyed if he is not addressed by letter; but I ask that he be content, even as I am. For he once spoke, ^B and once he heard. We, however, being old men, have not overstepped, but have over-passed the custom. Let there be a friendly greeting also for the most pious advocate, so-and-so, who should also be deemed worthy to pray for us. By your means I send a salutation also to my sanctified master, so-and-so, about whom I ask to learn, either from him or from you, how he fares. Of the most learned scribes, of the most holy master, of those most dear to me—the Gregories—the one to whom we are even more closely related because he is a local, perhaps deemed us worthy of a brief word, signaling [his intent] to write to us (and this even as he hesitated to do the same); we, however, in his case, return this greeting by your means, doing something greater. The one whom we have perhaps just now received among us, has fashioned [a persona] for himself, claiming for himself acquaintance with a great man. But the other master, Gregory, even though he is a scion of Attic Muses and of the land from which words come, deemed us worthy of nothing of the sort, not even in appearance. We, however, greet him in the manner of a salutation; and likewise also so-and-so. Greet also the lesser domestics, so-and-so and so-and-so. This man has indeed written to us often, and has shown that he remembers us; and may he obtain divine remembrance for his good; may God have mercy on him—and let him write again, being well, and confident that we are not forgetful of friendship, as time will show; but let the other be reproached for never having remembered us. But if we are unworthy of remembrance because we do not abound in [busy] hands like that blessed archpriest who was before us, let him be reminded that for a very long time, from that time, he used to greet and acknowledge us in that same [our current] lack of correspondence. Why, then, now—unless some grief is smoldering—would I have almost forgotten to address so-and-so? Why? Because he too has forgotten us. I, however, lead the way, being ashamed on his behalf; I would have pressed him to bring a greeting from you even to his own brother, that most learned, most beneficial, and most excellent friend. But I know that the one will hesitate, being coy; and (like himself in many things) he will put off [doing it], holding out his hands quietly as he walks, tilting his head as if he were being pampered, and will even pass by his brother. Do you, however, fill up here his omission and our desire. You know what a friend to us is so-and-so; that our bosom is filled with his letters, you have now been informed. And yet it will suffice for him to be greeted by us. But you are to blame for having drawn the fullness of the writing upon yourselves. And what of so-and-so, the "all-good"? The good priest? The good rhetor? The all-wise? Of how many of our letters is he worthy, since he himself did not leave off doing this to us? But, to speak for our own procession and the same triumph, let him be content with being greeted, lest sloth also reach him regarding sending letters, as it did before. For hitherto we have greeted, and at another time we shall write at length. Greet our most excellent friend, O Cyrioannes, your master, from us, and deem him worthy to remember us; and you too, O Sir Basil, [greet] your own master, the so-and-so master. If he is reproached for his lack of remembrance of us, do not grieve us; but you will do better by speaking the usual words. I want you to tell his love that I think it is burdensome for [him] not to deem our most glorious Doukas, his friend, worthy of a letter. If he should perhaps say that he acts this way, then do you, having fallen upon him heavily, entangle him and expand the reproach, saying: "Why did the [Bishop] of Thessalonica not know this?" He would have known, had you written to the friend, and he had learned it from him. But now, either he is not writing to the friend—and that is a bad thing—

nor even is it right to omit this. May the Great Priest of the Peratic region, I pray, be well, but may his son suffer less; and let him pray both for us and for him. And if, wishing to come to us, he is afraid of the sea-vessel, we have nothing else to do for now, until someone builds us a Trojan horse, or we happen upon a four-elephant chariot. I wish that the father of so-and-so may be in good health. And let him be informed that we are likewise, God helping. I bow to my most wise and god-beloved brothers, so-and-so and so-and-so (I know not by which of these names I should address them; would that I might be taught the best ones); likewise also to my once good archdeacon. And I would not here forget the most admirable sub-deacon, but I send my submissive greetings to him also through you. Remind [so-and-so] of a friendly greeting (if only he would not loosen his tongue, and neither let us be flooded, and we shall perceive it); likewise also the brother and one-time companion of mine, so-and-so, he also from my week—for I still cherish it, and I shall not cease cherishing it, and boasting of it. Address for us the just man and those of the late Bishop of Lemnos; and my once good companions, the clergy of my benefactress, Saint Euphemia; and let them know that, just as I do not forget myself, so neither do I forget them. But if I have not been able to express this in deed, it is no wonder; for such is the time. I respected my most venerable master of the *sakellion* when I was present, and I am not otherwise disposed now. Declare this, therefore, to his honor with humility. Let him know, however, that regarding the matter [about which] we were instructed, we are not failing in our search, but what we desire we do not find; but we do not have firm hopes of finding it, and we have nothing more complete as yet. The most learned teacher so-and-so, even if he seems to have turned his back on us, hides a sense of shame in his eyes; but you, convey our greeting to him, and at the same time remark in a reproving tone that the suspicion of Eustathius does not seem entirely false, that the latest desires of the friend were for him; for he would not have remained so silent, and so quickly withdrawn from one so well known. It was necessary for me, among the first of friends, of such a learned man, not to mention at all the matter that occurred or that we did not expect, [resulting in] such forgetfulness and such silence and falling off. For what can he offer as a defense, unless perhaps he has become a native of the Great City? For this alone will stand as a sufficient apology for him. But I remember, and I shall not cease doing so; and let this be clear to his love. Perhaps you hear something about the tax official so-and-so, known to us of old. He did not hesitate to greet us by letter. We therefore reciprocate with the same and through your love. I think that ^A to my most holy masters, so-and-so and so-and-so, it is not right to omit even this. ^B Just now, [I am thinking of] their stay in the Great City, guessing from what is likely; and if the greatest of cities possesses them, I bow and declare through you, what they themselves pray for us out of love for God, [namely,] the health and patience granted by God in such anxieties and labors. But we are overflowing, behold, with friendship even here, and we speak to the friendless. We have also other Asclepiad friends. But of these, the one is rightly greeted by us, so-and-so; for he wrote often. But so-and-so is a scoundrel, for he did not even remember us, [even though he is] alive. Perhaps, if his uncle were present, he would have put him in his place. He was, however, even then without him. Him whom I left behind, the most god-beloved teacher, Radenus, I think is finding fault with us for not writing to him. But he himself, remembering that he is not like that toward us, will cease his blame; and we, renewing our love, perform [what he did not], ^C by greeting him. But what a Radenus, the best of friends, has slipped past me—one both sweet to speak to, and quick and successful in action; warm to confer benefits, and swift to helpful guidance. But upon this one we should not be worn out. But Lord Stephanos, ashamed of the brotherhood, with a faint and sparing voice, will greet [them] nonetheless, having moved the hand slightly away from our mouth. The Antiochene turns into a blackening rage at these words, having pushed forward a lot of the paleness of his face, and gathering his eyes in wild anger, and ignores the letter, where in the world it lies. And behold, let him also be well, being helped by God, and let him remember us. And if he should bow to my all-holy master, the Patriarch of Theoupolis, and request a prayer for us, we give thanks to him, as one giving back, in place of this very brief letter, a letter of sanctification. Arrange for me also, O Lord John, the prayer of the holy man, the Tetrawonites, via the friend, that disciple of his; greeting him also on our behalf. And so likewise [for] the one who was once of Xantheia; for you will find him somewhere, and you will inform him that we are well, remembering him, as he thought fit to learn through our writing. But if you are able to see so-and-so somewhere, do not hesitate to say that he himself did not hesitate to remember us in writing. You hesitate, I think, at these burdens, O most zealous ones, and you fall back; and this when they are defined by neither sports nor miles, but will be for the most part roadside [errands]. And if you are thus, who would there be who is going to etch writings to so many? But for me, the friendly names have not yet had an end, but they are flowing no less than to the Homeric Laertiades the spirits of the underworld—for I call the names in some way the shades of the substance of friends. Therefore, like him, I also draw the sword that cuts through the letter, and I reject what is coming, and I cease you from being troubled. And I, indeed, thus fearing your Circe, who so easily turns men into beasts, as many...

^A of you as have turned someone among your own people, as it were, into a pig in the swill-bowl of your home, [pray] that this may not happen to others. For the rest of them surely carry the *moly* of Hermes, and he himself takes it up. And he will not speak like the Grillus of the Chæronean sage, but like a true human being; and he will rub away the swill for us, and will bring it about that he does not speak such things. And (I suppose) you will pray that he be silent throughout his life, or [at least] be willing to write. For I saw him, according to the comedy, sharp-tongued, whetting his tooth and breathing wrath. May God keep you healthy and free from every evil. And may you write back to us, if there is anything good; and before all things, at length, the distinguished deeds of our mighty and holy Emperor, which are indeed celebrated in song, but are not yet echoed to us in a clear articulation. For you begrudge us (I suppose) this good thing, so that you alone may enjoy it; not knowing that we will hear them echoed even against your will, and that we shall owe you no thanks for it from thence. Oh, the shame of it! Oh, the oversight, if I have been caught up with other friends, but allowed the most learned So-and-so to go by unseen—he whom, when you address as 'great,' you do not lie; like as if, among the Panachæans of Homer, one were to look at the others, but the greater Ajax went unnoticed by him. And perhaps I would have passed him by too, just as on the other side of the Queen of Cities [Constantinople] one might miss those aiming at him, had I not by thought happened to catch sight of him. And behold, I hold him in my soul, and I address him with a greeting, and I ask him to remember us, sending by him my obeisance to the most honorable So-and-so. Add to the company of the brothers mentioned [in my letters] also the most learned So-and-so, that good man of ours [who will be] as far as Thessalonica. For from there, having made his arrangements, he left us. I wished, however, that he had turned back and looked towards us; for he certainly does not fear being turned to salt by a look back.

^A Δ'. To the *Autoreianus*, my lord Michael. "How good it is to have many appellations," said one you know. But for you to be forced into such a state does not seem good. For so long as you were *protonotary*, you appeared to us as one man; but since you have been adorned with other dignities and the position of *emprosopeuein* [representation] to a more venerable state, and you have been inscribed with more brilliant and numerous titles, I beg [to ask] why the friendship we shared has gone out from your presence. Why do you cast upon us such gloomy looks? Why is your face overcast with clouds? You no longer truly place us in your regard as before. And if, because of the matters that have taken hold of you, this is perhaps a discharge of the cause [of your silence], well; but if it is something else that has erased us from your soul, I am neither conscious of having offended, and that I should have been erased—it slipped from my mouth not, I think, through any volition. For I do not believe I could suffer such a thing, unless I was blotted out of the Book of the Living long before.

^B AA'. To the good *Kairos* [Time/Opportunity] of Euripus. Indeed, you are not only mindful of us, O very great one, but you are mindful of things magnificent and worthy of much—and you never cease, from the beautiful fruits of Eubœa, as many as are honored by those in Byzantium, pouring them out to us in streams. Thus do we flourish because of you; thus do you supply what is lacking to us; thus do you transform and reshape this place of ours into Eubœa; thus do we widen our storehouses because of you, and have you, against all expectation, as a yearly source of abundance, a most novel shore of Demeter. Nay, but even a Cyclopean seasonal rain breaks upon us from you, yielding to us from there all good things unsown and unplowed. What is the daily [supply] of poetry to me? The old fable speaks loftily of it sprouting elsewhere in the land, and indeed, it was about this time of year that the local people used to press libations for Dionysus. But that [legendary grape], if one is to believe the myth at all, was a cluster, and a single cluster, and this perhaps a *phalangis* [unripe grape]; and what was squeezed and flowed out from there, as much as one might drip from a cluster—so that with difficulty could one, if one wished to collect it into a vessel throughout a whole year, manage to make a single *lagenos* [flagon]. But you make us sail from there whole amphorae of Dionysian-celebrated *osoras* [seasonal fruits], and these are nothing inferior to the red nectar according to Homer, nor to that Ismarian [wine] which tamed the wild Cyclops. I pass over in silence the *kolymbades* [olives]; I leave aside the pickled things; the little vessels well-prepared with citron and seasoned for pleasure. For why should I dwell on these, when it is possible to say there that you pour out wealth upon us, and that according to the proverb of Alexander, the treasure seems to lie in you for us? I would be a person more fitting than that Diomedes to boast, or his spear-guest Glaucus, that I was fortunate enough to find such a stranger-friend, not in the midst of Argos, but in the midst of Hellas. But we, what can we do in return for this? What could we find to measure up to your good deeds? We, indeed, in no way; but may God repay you for what you are worthy of. But if [I am to speak] of the whole, you being the most noble and most generous of all men, and not lying to your companion—and indeed, what else [to call you], but child of Hermes, and interpreter of the Muses, and concern of all the Graces, and a spark of that old Hellenic nobility? We, however, will add this to you, which even one of those formerly overwhelmed by good fortunes once shouted out, [only] slightly altered: "Stay your hand at last! We have had enough of your abundance of good things." For as much as you lavish graces upon us, so much do you hold up our insignificance to public shame. ^C For we do not have anything worthy of your kind disposition toward us to show.

^D AB'. To the Oecumenicus [Patriarch]. Fresh words of God have come to me; God-breathed phrases were sent down to me as if from heaven. Divine manna was rained upon me; and this in abundance, and one after another, and it healed my former hunger. Someone radiant came, bringing me such consolation, a letter from my master; in which, being commanded concerning an *offikion* [office], at once

^A (for it happened, as if by godsent sign, to be a time for such things) I carried out what was enjoined to the best of my ability, holding the precious paper in one hand to bear it, and with the other tracing the seal. Soon another angel of joy came to me, my fellow-servant, the ecclesiastic, deacon so-and-so; and the manna of pleasure increased. From that point on, if there was any bitterness, it was there no longer. May you be preserved for me for a long time, most holy master, heavenly in virtue; and may you shower upon us your good things. If such joy comes from this brief letter to your servant, how much more from one with many lines? These are for me divine tablets. That book is what feeds me divine things; it is a shower of refreshment for me. That is an ocean of Graces; I speak of the sermon for the beginning of the fast. Oh, what a good thing I am untasting of! Oh, what wisdom I am hearing-less of! There was a time when I also spoke humanly, uttering my own things; but I also spoke with an angel's tongue, namely, prophesying the teachings of the greatest high priest. Now, however, as for my own tongue, I do not know if it remains to me, but the angelic speech has left me. And yet, the instruments of my speech are blessed in my sight, through which that sweet melody flowed, as if one were to place a pipe in a blessing, through which good water was channeled. May it be my lot to let such a good thing fall upon my hands, and for the whole to be sanctified for me: letting my hands unfold and palpate the holy thing; letting my eyes range over it, and this with both kinds of understanding—the one, by the act of reading, grasping the exterior, and the interior being illuminated by the light of divine knowledge; the lips pursing, and again opening for the reception of sanctification; the mouth being filled with the sweetness from there and the praise upon it; the whole entirely within, to be always reaching for the good things of the teaching. And this was enjoined upon me by the grammatikos, my fellow-servant; I know it well, and it is being done. And I would render thanks to him for all time, for having performed such a service for me.

But I still dare to plead. Concerning certain people before me, the most unworthy, holy high priests allowed the Hebrews to broaden their reach; I do not know whether through forgetfulness, or by their knowledge, or even by some divine commandment. This, however, is not found. And some dwelt in ruined places belonging to Christians, having been dislodged by them; and some even in buildings in which Christians dwelt; some of which dwellings were brightened and chanted over with divine icons; and until yesterday, no one was speaking. But recently, because of some contentiousness, the matter was spoken of. And, with me necessarily stirring the issue from this point on, a list was given by some; and they possess such things, not only in the metropolis, but in other persons as well. Therefore, because it will not be possible for me to set the whole matter right, unless I am instructed by your great holiness, so that I may also be heard, I dare to ask: what ought I to do? So that having made obeisance, I may set my hand to it and complete it for the good.

[AG.] Every failure of an end causes man grief, but the failure of a good end causes grief especially to one whose mind is not ^C unmanaged, or is there absolute grief that is most of all? I am willing to let go of any writing that I let pass from my hands, wherever it is destined; not least, however, that which I dare to enjoin to be carried to your great holiness. And I do not speak as a bowman who, having loosed an arrow, is eager to strike the mark (for that, in such a case, does not yet mean anything great; but rather like the one praying to God who wishes his prayer to be directed, and not to wander aimlessly into mere babble). And for me, this is what it means to be eager; but I see that I fall short of most of the good that is rightly desired. And I open my mouth for the report; and that the Harpies might not boast, throwing into the air the thin and spiritual nature of my voice, I weigh it down as much as possible, thickening it into a body and bringing it down to touch, and placing it into skins; so that it might escape being carried upward and scattered into the air, and might be borne straight, or even fly, like the storied [one-time] Thessalian girl, into the most blessed hands, through which all blessing comes to me, and to the world the God-given driving out. But I do not have what I want to the end; instead, I wander about in the majority of things. Proof of this is my fellow-servant and sometime co-deacon, so-and-so—my own nursling, and a good secretary, a cousin of a most faithful friend; whom the Lover of Mankind called while living to be a superior, and while dead [rested, I trust] in the pavilions of the saints. This, my fellow-servant, was summoned through the prayers of your great holiness to a high name, a divine decree having remembered him for bishop. And because he could not have been brought to fulfillment by us in any other way, unless your great holiness had blessed such a completion for us, we bore him up to you pleadingly, so that you might send him greater sanctification, and cause the myron upon his head to descend, flooding down upon his beard and upon all, which has been fashioned capable of receiving it. But the prayers, perhaps like the spoken litanies, lame and having struggled through themselves, fell down and I could not trace where they had been sent from us. And I, for this, three times have entreated my master, the most holy lord; but the—what shall I say?—hindrances, I do not know when exactly they will reach me; it is like if someone, having opened his mouth for a portion of food, then sits unhappily waiting for the expected [nourishment], gaping into the wind, or having bowed his head and uncovered it for the reception of a blessing. Watching it delay for a long time, he remains in that posture, having abandoned what is right. But behold, the mercy of the most holy master and benefactor is great regarding me. And what then hinders me from pleading a fourth time? Perhaps it will not prove false to me. The one, therefore, who carries this petition will be the good for us; and we shall not be suspended any longer. I dare, therefore, to entreat you again: to hear my fellow-servant, that "be blessed," and "it shall be blessed," for which he was called by God to be bishop.

^A I still entreat your great holiness, and make this heartfelt petition, that you—and indeed God himself—might remember my humility before the Most High God, whenever that saving great holiness of yours is in His presence. For I have need of such prayerful remembrance; and without it, I could not endure.

34. To the most venerable Sebastus and the one in charge of petitions.

I am, it seems, always a nuisance. And this is not because I am a "papa," as the crowd might say, but because I am confident in your support. But if the constancy of asking is simply burdensome, perhaps we might be blamed for those unceasing prayers which we offer to God on behalf of your most venerable highness. But neither does God weary of this—to whom else could such things be directed from us?—nor could your support bear it heavily, when we are the ones asking. For whom should we call upon to support us, if not you? What we seek draws us down into a heavy burden of obligation, yet it is light and very easy for your support. It is our desire to worship our most precious, powerful, and holy Emperor; to be deprived of seeing him is judged by us as if we were falling away from well-being itself. Because the sickness, having bitten us once and for all, fastens its teeth and is unwilling to let go, we regard the road with uncertainty, calculating that it will not be easy for us to reach the desired destination even in a whole month. We therefore ask to learn from your support whether our powerful and holy Emperor is expected to come to the western parts. If so, we shall take heart and endure, and we shall shorten the journey as the road allows; but if he is going to linger there, we must no longer stay, but must set out for those parts, even if it requires traveling by litter. This would be a benefit for us, if it should happen; and there is another thing, no less important than this.

35. To the master Goudeles, Lord Leo.

Just as it is granted to us to enjoy the springtime through the letter of your affection, having forgotten the winter which that most grievous sickness stirred up against us, so too were we troubled by the fact that even here the spring was not for us purely clear and cloudless. It had, indeed, the grace of a rose’s flower—your health—but there also stung us, as if by some thorny point, those things which weigh upon you, and the sharpness of the grief and the resulting pain. These are the things that act balefully and becloud even the purity of your well-being. But if, even so, the flower sufficed us for solace, we know well because there is no place here where ^B a thorn has not grown. Or who do you think, my dear master, of all those in the whole of life—not to mention those in cities, but even among those monks in the desert—travels the road of life pure of hindrances? And would that no one be rubbed by some great evils! But if some small ditch gaps open, or a small stone rolls treacherously under one’s feet, such as the Syracusan poet says one sings of under one’s boots—a caltrop or some bramble lying underneath—but these must be set at naught, leaping over them or otherwise casting aside what is in the way. You will say that your situation is not such as to be compared to pits, or likened to pebbles, or likened to thistles, such as one might overlook. But I say all other things are such, comparing them to the good of health, which, possessing it, give thanks to God, dedicating all things to the truly all-powerful Theotokos. But if you have been stripped even to such an extent of what is superfluous, so as to have even the proper state of your clothing in a useless way, then He who adorns the lilies, and who makes the rose grow in excess of the sun’s brightness, and who is generous in providing for trees—even if He deigns to give to the many things that are precious to be spun by worms ^C and from a meadow, as someone once said, making a city to be woven that not even a spider would bother with—would He not also neglect you? Because He would not neglect us, nor anyone else among our own. Therefore, farewell and be well, and may this good health of yours be guarded for you forever. All of our people greet, along with us, the lord Michael, the (as they themselves say) Teucer. Why this? Because, they say, donning your letter like some shield, just as he did the seven-oxhide shield of Telamonian Ajax, he appears from there; and appearing a little in the guise of some other old man, he hides himself, as if fearing that if seen for too long he might be envied, or struck, or suffer some great evil, or by speaking at greater length he might spill his chatter; not knowing that he disgraces the Attic tongue all the more, having come down a rhetorician, but settled into silence. The one who is present (I know not if he is sun-scorched, or, to put it otherwise, dark-skinned from the start—for I do not examine the tongue, but only what appears) has already come to us twice, and having been received as a friend, he was first honored with a "fiery-monk," and just now with a "black-hegumen." And this is the one at the gates of the Great City; and for that reason he is in our memory. But if he returns to us alive, perhaps we shall change him into an Ethiopian Moses. For in the good demagogue Moses he will not be whitened. But if you have anything else you can provide and will declare to us with him, we shall call him that. I pray that a bright day may announce him to me from you; I would not want to send you night, or to hear that he was born like a night-raven in your courtyard. May these things be as the voice of an accustomed friend, consoling both himself and you.

37. To the Hagioteodorite.

After the unceasing prayers for our holy Emperors, the good and noble work of your support enjoins us to a similar task. And this comes about from two sources: from the common duty, and from that which is fitting in private. The former, because it is necessary that those who stand closest ^D to our most God-like Emperor,

^A and who have been deemed worthy of the vision and care of him, should also dedicate our mind to prayer. For who would be more suitable for such solemn things above your own protection? If our most excellent Emperor, just as God is to Him, has so found you to be most capable of tending to his divine nature—in such a way that he, the Autocrat of Emperors, has been exalted above all, whom long time has placed within a great wonder; and that yours, being great-minded, is placed above all whom the fathers have taught us, and upon whom the eye of an eyewitness has fallen. And in this way, that which is from the common duty, and so to speak, that which is by way of a summary of prayer, comes to us. But the part that is special we possess ourselves from the good things of your protection towards us, the stream of which, as if into a fountain that flows forever, has overflowed upon us. But this, which is of prayer, happens thus forever, and will not cease ^B from happening, as long as the mind remains in its established state, and the mouth is opened for speech. And would that this were also happening at this present time. But for us, because, having honored you with letters, and having approached you through persons who do not fall outside of reason, we have not been able to learn whether our petition has entered before your protection, caution arises, and much of our confidence is cut off, lest we have arrived at the doors (as they say) of your holy soul, and fall into despondency—which may it not happen to us, my lord, may it not happen to us; may it not happen, my protector, by the breadth of that holy soul of yours, by the breadth of that goodness of yours, which it is not possible to straiten; for the sake of the memory. But woe is me! What has happened to me, that such a memory, ^C not yet having been possessed as it ought (for it should have been that while alive, one might be seen gladly by those meeting him, and for others be carried through by sweet memory, looking forward to the next encounter)? May it not be so for us, by the blessed memory of that late-lamented high priest, my master; whose tomb indeed is one according to the body; but the souls of all, upon whom—it was known—they bear what is laid upon them, not as some cenotaph and merely up to a name; but more divinely, because it is toward a living reality and in a rational way. But why, pray, do I find for myself a consoling device for him, while I have acquired a source of weeping for the one who has mercy, by the memory of a beloved name? To be deprived of which would be the same to one remembering as if one were also deprived of his soul. And what, to that which is for pleasure to me, to that which is turned toward alms, shall I crown a cup of grief ^D by wearing it down in practical encounters, the neglect of which is not characteristic of a high priest, but to attend to which is good? But beware not only of reading, but also of the address to those who love. The present writing, therefore, promised from the morning, was extended until it wished to be illuminated by a lamp in the air. Therefore it has also been constricted, and speaks but little; yet it speaks of crucial things, and things which we desire. Be well, and remember us in your prayers that lead toward God, while we ourselves also, in health, by your holy prayers, are calling upon the help from God thence. I greet the most admirable friend, the grammarian of your holiness; who does wrong, indeed, even to himself, imprisoning his tongue in silence and preventing it from speaking, as if sentenced to be silent.

ΑΖ'. To the Mystic.

God, who has established and establishes our holy emperors, and who always lifts up and increases their divine reign, of whom you are a most intimate and most faithful servant, may He add long years to your life, so that the world may have you for the common good, and you may be deemed worthy, just as here of greatest honors, so also in the life there of intimacy with the All-King God; which also have confidence in God. For even if for others there is a danger to hear that you have received your good things in your life, yet you, as doing all things in God, and looking toward Him, and desiring the glory there, for which also you do all things pertaining to the care of God; and here you have the good things from Him, and there also you will hear: "Enter, servant, into the joy of your Lord." The most admirable superior, so-and-so, your inward and most fervent intercessor and herald, having taught me that from God are the instructions of your good deeds, has increased my thankfulness. Therefore, having taken courage, I beseech you that for the sake of God, whom you desire exceedingly, and for the sake of justice, which you defend, if any of those of my cell, having a difficulty from injustice, should call upon your protection for help, you may grant him help for the sake of justice. And God will certainly give also for this the worthy reward for your protection.

ΔΗ'. To Serres.

I desired, just as to see you, so also to greet your holiness by letter. And of the first, the causes are neither I, nor indeed your holiness; for we do not have it in our power to visit one another. Of the second, your holiness—how could it be? Perhaps neither I, but the circumstances surrounding me. Be assured, for such a crowd of cares besets me, that from the morning watch until the sun not only set, but also having descended to those under the earth, it is enough to consume that which causes pain, if your cheerful face, having met us straightaway, does not stop the bitterness.

^A

TO THE METRETOPOLES

Would that you had not written to us, nor bitten our soul through your letter. For it was enough for us to remember your love, and to pray for you. God is my witness, and the truth: as soon as I learned of the death of your most excellent brother-in-law, I was so affected as if a genuine kinsman of mine had died. O my good child, O beloved, O admirable one! O consolation of my good master John; O flower withered before its time! I remember his education, his conduct, his respect and love toward you, his foresight in life, his senile wisdom in youth, the calmness of his character, and all other things beyond his age; and I myself am bitten in my soul, and I think of you, and what you must be suffering; and I double the grief, and I pity my own life and our hopes, considering what we hope for, and what we suffer from frustration. You seemed fortunate and to have met with a treasure when you found such a brother-in-law at the beginning; and things were indeed thus. But now, what you have suffered, having tasted for a little while of such great sweetness, and then having been embittered by the loss of him! I do not speak of the burden of the maintenance of that wretched woman and the rearing of the babes, but of his loss. To grieve, therefore, for being deprived of him I will not forbid, lest I seem inhuman and insensible; since I myself, not only having received your letter and learned of his death, remained speechless for a long time, but even now, as often as I recall him, I suffer the same; and in the future, I shall never forget him. For I had him inscribed in my soul as one worthy of the highest regard. I beseech you, however, not to give yourself up entirely to grief, and to be submerged by afflictions, but to sustain yourself and be relieved. For the coming time will be enough for you to grieve. Also, console his wretched wife in other ways, and by showing yourself not always crying and sorrowful. For thus she too will receive some consolation. ^B

[M']

And the Lord Constantine hesitated to reach Eustathius; and when asked why he did this, he spoke what was reasonable, and persuaded. How is it that now he does not think the same about us, but blames us for forgetfulness? We thought that responding and greetings, which we sent a thousand times, were enough. But if they were kept silent, it is a fault of the wrongdoers; we are blameless. You did not write to us about your affairs, how they are. And if well, you did not do well, by not wishing us to be sharers in your joy; but if otherwise, which we pray against, you might say that you did not send word, as not wishing to afflict us with bad news. But we will not even so absolve you of blame, as one who does not rightly distinguish the common hunger for comfort.

[MA']

TO THE MOST VENERABLE, AUGUST, AND GREAT HETAIRIARCH

One swallow, the most venerable writing of your greeting (and it is not irksome, since it is not garrulous, nor does it utter "barbarian" things as the proverb says, but is measured in sweet speech, as is the law of a letter, and refined in the nobility of the Hellenic tongue) — one such swallow, as I said, has been sent to us; but it has made a clear spring. What, then, if a second should ever appear? It certainly will announce that a golden summer is about to exist. Let it come, then, and we shall not hesitate to sing the usual song to it. Something of this kind also used to happen among those of old; and when at the beginning the swallows appeared, the first or even the second, they would greet them with words composed for melody. This will be so also for us, who neither now neglected this, but applauded and leapt for joy significantly; and we have wished health and every other good for your greeting, and in the future we shall be such; so that our tongue of the mouth shall fall short sooner than the word regarding your greeting shall fail it. The rest of the time we carry you written into the soul itself; and may you bear the first fruits of both prayers and the remaining memory with us. May God hear. ^C

[MB']

TO THE FILANTHROPIC PALATINE, LORD JOHN, WHO WAS LATER ABBOT

Being in health by the help of God, we pray that your love may also be in health; which indeed we are learning. If any sorrowful things happen to you, attribute this to the unevenness of life. For it is not possible for a man living in the world to escape, just as he cannot escape cares, nor sorrows. And this has nothing astonishing in it. But your assumption that we had forgotten you, and that we do not write because we do not love you, this seemed strange to us for many other reasons, and because to write and see one another is indeed a proof of friendship; but not yet is not writing, nor coming to an encounter, considered a proof of lack of friendship. Remember that when we were residents of the Great City, a short distance separated us from… Now I have known that my grove lies in such good things, and flourishes with noble trees, and prospers with fruits worthy of wonder, and blooms with many good things; and I lift this, my grove, above others, and I judge it the land of the blessed; since it has called out into longing the blessed one of your holiness; who indeed sends out spies, to either betray or plunder my goods, two men, terrible to plot, wise to contrive, skillful to reconnoiter. So once also Joshua, the son of Nun, attempting the celebrated Jericho, sent out two spies; who also, having slipped into the interior of the city, and everything that they wished, for the sake of craft

^A wrought, with the great general, towards what his will desired, they joined. And indeed that city was great, and it was beautiful, and it had many things to attract; and this neither escaped the notice of the ones plotting against it, nor, much earlier, those who dwelt within it. But to me alone of others (as it seems), until just now, the garden was not much in account; neither did I look so curiously into its contents, nor did it much concern me what was in it. For probably its beauty was hidden from me and did not shine forth, nor did it lay bare its graces. But it did not escape you; rather the much-talking rumor mentioned by Hesiod brought its truth to you, and ignited [your soul] toward love. And surely, having ^B prepared the plotters very well, you set them upon us; though I would not say you were envious (for envy is banished to outside the borders of the choir of virtues which surrounds you); yet I hesitate to offer testimony again on the matter, for I do not wish to be seen as feeling resentment. I judge, however, that a better zeal enflames you, and the grace of the garden attracts you. And since you do not have the power to transplant the grove for me with some hundred-handed engine, nor to move it by any necessity—it remaining, even against my will, in its place—but you meditate to draw it toward you and to fetch its happiness unto yourself in some other ingenious way; and because you cannot carry it around by itself, you wish to shift what is inside it. So beautiful is the garden to me; so lush; so fit for fruit-bearing; so suited for everything good. What then, if I, being of such simplicity, could not understand of what great and good things I was mistress, while others, imagining my good from afar, understood it better than I? Thus am I ignorant of what is necessary, and of how I ought to be ordered by someone instructing me, for I am one who has the knowledge of things always laid out by others. But why, while I am occupied with other things, should I ignore the clever spies, the interpreters of the engine, the servants of the plot, the heavy plotters of my plantation? The ones who, as for other things, are common friends, and, as if on a scale, maintain friendship in equality, but here have shifted the balance toward envious partiality, and have dragged themselves down toward the ignoble—which is a law of treachery, if it is not even too shy to say so. Why then, having passed over such people, as I said, do I wander into other speech? They nearly disposed of me as they would have. The sun was already shining, and your spies—those guided by the divine and heavenly leader whom I understand in a ^C lofty sense—came upon the grove, and were investigating its contents; the one already grey, and having gathered long experience through time; sweet to speak with, quick to accomplish; sharp to foresee, heavy to attack, violent in [his] onrush, winged in speed; like an eagle having swooped down upon us from somewhere above. And the other, the remaining one, a young eaglet, the offspring of the aforementioned; whose wings are not yet prepared for quick movement like the eagle [his] father, but who nonetheless possesses curved talons, capable of snatching whatever comes to hand. These spies of yours, not a harlot ^D of that place cast into the beautiful [garden]—for this is a sort of promiscuous friendship that seems beautiful, as Sappho might say—but pure, and according to the Justice of Hesiod a virgin, and unapproachable by many. These, having wandered through my whole garden, if there was an apple of either kind—both that which perhaps has its origin from Persia, and its name, so that it could not be ambiguous; and that which has obtained the simple naming of ‘apple’ without being joined to an epithet—but they set these at naught. They passed by for me also the noble grapes, because they were unripe; and the pomegranates shining beautifully, because they were still in their empty husks and calyxes. And they did not turn their mind to the figs; for the honey of the figs had not yet been produced, nor did they even smoulder in conversation. Why should I speak at length? All the beautiful, many, and brilliant things there, became of one and the same famed tree, the envious one; and having turned away from the other, the beautiful mother, the almond, they gaped at the fruit around its offspring, the one, the beloved, and, seeing what was desired, they did not wish to refrain, but were wholly around it. And they spoke whispers in plain words; and they held their hands no longer under [their] cloaks, but laid them bare, showing them to the sun. And they had in readiness the seizing of the fruit, however they might have it, whether by force or by being secretly superior; and then they had achieved, if I had been negligent. And they would have left, having snatched it; and the sun might have seen the robbery, and this one, which was not for me to fall into speech. But now a winged thought, having circled me like a bird, and having told of the plot, stationed itself before the plotters and warded off the attempt, [as they were] being tested, and not becoming deniers of the plot. Here, if I must boast at all, I have marveled at myself, that having become gentle-spirited and not having fought with anger and fallen away from myself, I handled the ones who had investigated this garden of mine in a way that was not at all favorable. At least these things are beautiful to me, being besieged from within, and having the plotters from my own hearth. What then, shall there be any longer for me from the expenses of others, if I have found the plotters in my own affairs? Or what, shall I myself contrive to flee the ambush, having found allies to desert against us? By no means at all, but I will fulfill your will, and what is plotted against I will send to you willingly unwilling. For thus I will both defend myself against the spies, and I will cause you to fall from [your] anger, the aim having escaped them; and I will not stand against your will, for neither was I ever before separated from your mind (this is the Sophoclean [phrase]). You have, therefore, this good of mine, the great, the unique; which perhaps the life of our time alone held, like the great and most beautiful pearl of the Peri-something. You have the adornment of the grove that is mine, the artistry of my garden, into which the whole of art has been ambitiously poured by nature; for good things flee the struggle with their own kind. Deprived of this, I

the rest were troublesome; but that the mother—the tree, I mean, that bore fruit but recently—has been lightened of much of its burden, this alone I counted as a comfort, so that, had its fruit not been severed and gone quite quickly, it might have pulled down part of the mother with its weight and rendered it useless for the next generations. ^A Yet the mother, even if it does not have its load, still has cause to lament, as Theocritus might say, having been deprived of this one sweet thing. And as this branch, a fine fruit-bearing one, was suspended, it seemed to quiver and, as if in mourning, to be shaken and to nod downwards at the shedding of its fruit. It was indeed lightened as the fruit was held, casting off much of its burden, but that was no true lightening, but rather a kind of flight and migration and restoration to a height, lest the hand of the treacherous one do it some harm by reaching out to it; for things belonging to it are no longer reliable. And in other respects, both the bearer branch and the fruit borne were of a gentle disposition; the fruit, even as it leaned downward, wished to leap upward and grasp at those passing by. And it was familiar with the heads of men, and talked with lips—for it knew that it was worthy to be loved—and fell into eyes, for it was indeed worth seeing. And in all respects, the beautiful was gentle. But when the fruit was pulled down, and the branch was deprived of its beloved load, then indeed the creature becomes shy, and as a runaway, it departs, and having dissolved its connections, it rises aloft as quickly as possible, as if by some machine, no longer loving men, nor wishing to be stroked by the hands of men by which the beautiful offspring was ^B plotted against. Thus, too, the partridge, its chick having been caught, itself flew off flapping its wings. In the same way, I suppose, does the lion, when its lion-cub is secretly captured by men, forget its strength and flee. Wonderful! How great a multitude of fruits the one that produced it crowned the tree with in past times, and it was as if it were swathed within them, so that the tree, exposed to view, seemed not a tree, but a whole hill of fruits! What a one it has now adorned itself with as a single replacement for those many, worthy instead of thousands for the artistry shown to the mother! And formerly, in bearing many fruit, it used to divide the spectator into many parts, who was at a loss as to which of the many he might choose; but now, having changed that old proverb, one might say: It bore not many, but having borne, it bore a great one. And perhaps this my fruit seems to philosophize: now by giving itself and its leaves for the mother's delight, but then, put forth as one alone, as if by shaming her, it persuades her not to be proud of prolificity, but to be turned back to the beginning, and to know herself, as she was brought forward to such a great tree from one beginning only, and of such a kind, and enriched the noble state ^C of fertility with the great and multitudinous. And lest, because of my current unjust and thus useless fruit, one ought not even to use this unit for food, nor to seek to obtain for it its natural honor, and to store it away likewise for a beginning of production, and to set out this noble seed into the ground, from which a similar one shall come, and the beautiful might be multiplied, having grown upon the earth.

^C Other trees, indeed, having borne fruit, are exhausted entirely for the year, as having spent the material for producing, and having, as one might say, expended their generation, and they have no fruit left to bring forth. And the tree remains unfinished in its fruitful nature, flourishing in leaves alone, so that it is the work of the spectator to discern whether the plant is of a gentle nature or simply an unfruitful one of gentle fruit. But this plant of mine, the beautiful almond, newly sprouted, which was both first-born and prolific last year, because it had to suffer these same things now—and especially the same things as others, and to be exhausted for generation—it does not, like those, entirely lose its seed, but instead of the ten thousand-fold of old, it now offers the unit, and gives assurance that it is for the time being fruitful. That, however, it philosophizes even here, rising up with the fruit and descending to it, and sometimes offering an innumerable multitude, and sometimes the one itself, the most elementary of all, in which we have been taught that all multitude shares; and this work is never unrecognizable in number, either in that which leads by increase into many, or that which is ^D dissolved into one. But you seem to praise the plant, which yesterday vied with ancient numbers for display, but today has forgotten the whole. What a truly noble withdrawal of offspring this is, and (as one might say) a kind of rest from generation; and not like the conclusion of the nature of lions. For with them the offspring descends from many births to the final cub; and with this cub, the generation is directly sealed, the nature having been closed. But for my tree, this one unit that descends is not the end of fruitfulness, but a solitude and a pause and (as I said before) a rest, and a promise of more ambitious fruits for the new year. For the nature of the tree has not failed, but now it begins to reach its prime, and is practicing to be prolific, and guarantees to me the prolificacy for hereafter. And having brought this one great fruit to me as an archetype of what sort, it will grant fruit for the future. It is occupied with the growth of branches, and the increase of the stem, and the thickness of the bark, and the solidity of the trunk, so that it will be able to sustain the great fruit of the coming year (but let there be a jealous ear), and to bear the weight from it. It widens into dimensions, extends into spaciousness, and stands out for its local excellence. It puts forth shoots for me, from which that fruit will be hung in abundance in the future. It makes provision for the future solidity, so that the great weight of the prolificacy might not bend it. It produces spaces that will contain the prosperity. It raises standards, upon which it will set up its beautiful product and will celebrate the triumph of the offspring theatrically. And thus it is lengthened into height, while by its extension into breadth, it is spread out into a roof, and shelters a shadow within, beautiful for one who wishes to sit beneath it, and unassailable by the suns. And these things my tree, having now devised, is preparing for another year with both much fruit and... and as the plane tree of Xerxes formerly, having prepared itself in a noble and bridal manner for growth, and...

with ornament as it were golden, it will be adorned with the brilliant fruit; as indeed at present the youthful beauty of this tree is not enough to be distributed for many things, nor is it self-sufficient by nature to be divided for weighty dimensions, and at the same time to be laden with much fruit. And the cause is time. For its generation is not measured by many revolutions of the sun, but the growth of this tree measures but five or six years. You have, therefore, most honored soul and to me a head worthy of all, the one and all of my garden, the guarantor of my abundance, the archetype of my hope for assurance, the herald to me of future fruitfulness. Keep it, therefore, stored away, and cherish it as a beginning, and hold it fast as a treasure, and protect it as a guarantor; and already also hide it away as a testimony. And when you have compared the future fruit with it in due time, and have learned if I speak truly, convict me and rebuke me. But if you should wish also to partake of it (for I know the attractiveness of such fruit), do not take the good thing and keep it for yourself alone, nor offer this great thing all in a heap (for who could boast of it as such, unless he were that very man of Bountiful-Gifts?); but distribute it by breaking it into portions, and dispense it to those who know and love the good. For it will suffice, I know, for many such persons; if not for a full meal, yet for a treat; if not for surfeit, yet for pleasure; if not for a feast, yet for a most sweet seasoning. And it will be for the lovers of the beautiful as a delight, and for the gourmands as a dish, having a certain grace. Yet it will grieve the more sensitive ones to have such precious, fruitful material cut up in this way. For they will observe it, according to the arguments above, as a beginning, and as a treasure, and as a guarantor; things for which we are not indifferent men. For the beginning is among honorable and earnest things, and the treasure is held fast, and the one who has given his word is cherished. The one who has eaten of this good thing will remember its sweetness, as if he had been filled with lotus, or indeed with ambrosia and nectar. [MΓ.]

To the Disupatos.

Do you write nothing else? Do you no longer speak? Is this the end of those frequent words, to speak not at all? It was necessary to use a ceaseless stream, and always to do this, rather than to have wandered for so long (for it must be assumed that it was long, too), and then to be hobbled and to be motionless completely. The short is good for a conduit, so that the inflowing water may be forced to remain; but if it gape wide open, it has vomited forth everything, and is no longer useful. It is a sweepings-like, yet not ungraceful, speech that loves to be good, both little and always. But if you are carrying about the Dodonaean brazen bowl for me, that sound is but prattle, and it has nothing to do with beloved letters. But if the speech from the marketplace says that one should not visit a friend, nor do this frequently; yet that is not the opinion regarding true friends, nor is it the same to visit with feet and with letters. Perhaps, therefore, you have spurned us; for surely you would not be sparing in your desire to be loaded down for the sake of a refined trade in food; a cheap supply of luxury, a merchandise transportable for luxuries, so that they might have seasonings to change for their dishes. Or why else do they willingly collect piles of letters, and yet withhold them? But the most burdensome part of the matter is this, that many of those who minister to the writings even put the matter in the category of a request, and plead to handle the letter, and exalt the absent one with their speech, and style themselves as a friend and companion; and truly they assure one that they will come to him in haste, as if out of the deep into a harbor, and out of a long journey into a place of rest. And we, at such a time, have our mind upon them, and we think we have encountered a stroke of luck, and we run toward the appearance. But they were nothing, but only the grace of the tongue, and a sound into the air, and an empty boast. And we indeed write what seems necessary, and as much as is of necessity, trusting in the kindness prevailing in the messenger; but he, leaving all those many words empty of matter, has established an unfulfilled hope for the one who sent them. For the one carries in hope the contents of the writing, expecting to behold the dearest face itself as if in a mirror; but it falls out otherwise. And both what was longed for does not occur, and friendship is maligned. By whom, then, should one judge those who have honored such people the most uprightly, or perhaps by death? And yet a single death is not enough for such a man, who so divides friends. Such people are plotters against friendship, sacrilegious to truth, inhospitable; they wrong the companion, they lie...

^B against Hermes himself, falsifying the purity of the message. Woe is me. I am not able to love even Bellerophon, who, having been ^A puffed up [by brass/air], played the fool according to Pindar. For he later had the Aleian plain, walking below and attempting the soul, and avoiding the company of those with him. Or that of Icarus, which was brought down into humility, he wrote as a proverb, as if on water. It seems that he, too, was not a man properly disposed toward elevation; hence, he did not achieve the goals of his intent. On the contrary, then, if there is anywhere a Daedalus! For it is to such a person that flight belongs. Let the Boreadae unbind the wing to the breezes, showing zeal for such a good. Nor shall I blame Perseus for daring his flight; for he was winged in his walking, or, as a certain story makes him, "boot-winged." ^C But for us, it is fated to remain below and to be sated with the good things of the earth, or, according to the earthly natures, to graze. If ever it is granted to take wing, it is acceptable if, like the Libyan ostrich, we touch the earth for the most part. And indeed, Hermes also has troubles because of his unstable wing, being now chthonic, and now again celestial. But the myth itself long ago paralyzed the Sirens of their wing and stifled them. So, Eustathius, saying these things—and long before this not having high thoughts, most holy master—would surely not be able to be puffed up, having departed from the desired life; but he would be content if, after the dear earth, heaven might someday lighten him. I have defended myself, master, already, not only sufficiently but also truthfully; and I shall add the finishing touch to the rest of my letter. If I forgot you, may God forget me. That I do not entitle anyone "friend" who is better than your holiness, God knows this too; and I do not think it escapes any of those who know this Eustathius accurately, and the most holy Metropolitan of Patras. Pray for us, my holy master. We, too, pray every good thing for your holiness; and we pray together to see you rejoicing, and to speak friendly words face to face. In the meantime, loosen your tongue and answer; and thus may the release from grief hold us together.

ME’. To the same.

You have raised us up, you who have spoken; you have resurrected us, you who have called. O the sweet word! O tongue of the Graces! How then, are you the only one among those now speaking such things as a wise man would utter? For when I saw the letter of your holiness (let the God of truth testify to my words), and had gone through its title, I was driven out of the weakness that had encompassed me. But when I unfolded it and began to read, that your holiness was surrounded by troubles did not greatly grieve me (for you are able, by the grace of God, to fly over such things most lightly); but that you were granted to be in health, this I reckoned as my own health, and may it be kept for you throughout your life for the common good. But when I had read a little, and could no longer give my eyes to the letters (for the sickness had so disposed me), I gave them to another to place under my eyes the things of the letter, as he was in the reading—

knowingly concerning the Serbians, for here I was restored ^A from lying prostrate, and could not contain myself for pleasure. O the sweetness of the thoughts! This place of the letter appeared to me as a trumpet, according to the account of that final resurrection of mine from the deadness. And if such thoughts of the letter are trumpets in another sense, according to those of Jesus, tearing down the battlements of the disease, you will grant me to say this also with confidence, that the writing of your holiness is for these things, both for a fall and for a rising; the latter being mine, the former that of the infirmity. May God preserve for long years this tongue, and the mind that presides over it, and my master in all things; my breath, my consolation, my refreshment, my only one. And may He always deliver him from the land of the Cimmerian Servians, and restore him to the Hellenic land, the sunlit, the clear one; and may He lead him to remember us, so that we may at some time be numbered among the purely living. Since now we are not even half-alive, so to say. For the bed does not always hold us, but we are relieved for a time; but as for the rest, the feet are stumbling like those of infants; not that we are heavy and dwarf-like above, so as to fall upon them from there and force the yielding (for we are girded about like those in the Comic poet who are waspish, and—as he says—would be dragged through a ring); but that the nerves are relaxed, and the natural connection has become slack. The stomach neither consents to the natural storage, but desires to cast back what is put in; and if it keeps it, it troubles me and brings pains; and this seems to do worse than that other evil. The hands—you would laugh, sweetest master, if you saw how tremulous they mark the lines, when it is necessary at all. Not even a boy who does not know his letters, playing with stylus and ink, would make such lines as mine. The head—it collapsed, something worthy of a short speech, and turned upside down all that was underlying; for to listen to a full and ingenious speech, or to handle a book, or to endure another who is doing this, we fall as far short as those of the field. Why then do we live, holy master? The greater of all evils to us: behold, three months are nearly gone, and the myrrh-streaming one is out of our sight. And all the others indeed enjoy that fragrance, but we are driven away, pigs altogether worthy of mire. Pray for us, holy master, for a release from the present evils, or at any rate for the other release. For the former is a joy to us; but if it be a danger to live thus, the latter also is a desirable thing.

[MG'.] Whatever I learned up to now concerning your love, most learned and beloved master, seemed indeed burdensome, but otherwise not altogether heavy for us. For both the disease, because of its easy recovery, held out good hopes to us; and I had an excuse for grieving at the death of a relative. And for these reasons they did not seem to us to have much burden and to be without consolation. But what I learned today—may this neither be true, nor may it be my second ^B opportunity to hear, that because of the extremity and unsociability of the grief, there is a danger of death approaching even you. What profit is there for you in fasting? And in abstaining from food altogether, but feeding on the bread of tears? And in wasting away with famine, but being satiated with unbearable grief? Or is he base among the wise, who said that those who have died should not be mourned for with the belly. Therefore those also are to be praised who hang themselves, because of whom they are vexed over the dead; and the executioner also must be dragged along, without any blame from all who are suffering because of those who have departed. But for you, a brief grief will suffice for the hated condition, as one embalmed by the disease, and not doing well. And if you also hold back food for longer, it is a matter most detestable to us by reason of the evil. We threaten you with the judgment from God, and we deprive you of your own fruitful prayers and of that praiseworthy fervor, which so persuades us, if you still stretch yourself, and do not bear the surge of the affliction in moderation. Fast, be grieved, weep; but also eat, and drink, and all things in moderation and in due season. For we do not deem you worthy to be apathetic, and to be false to brotherly love. What then, if you saw someone you love fallen into a similar state, then indeed disposing yourself according to yourself, would you have praised him? I do not think so at all. Nor would a brother love one who is thus disposed. You have been sufficiently submerged by the evil; therefore pull yourself up. You have been swallowed up; look up. Push away the great surge of the affliction; and if not into a completely calm place, at least stand in a place with little waves. Guard for yourself the ability to honor your brother for a long time with fitting mourning. But if you thus quickly exhaust yourself and waste away, you are neither sufficient for what you are doing, and you are deprived of mercy, casting yourself down willingly. Would that we could also use our feet, and come to you; for so the whole matter would have been accomplished for us. But now it seems that a part of what is innate in us has been torn away, and is enclosed in this letter, and by means of it is pleading with you. Be persuaded, then, for the sake of God, so that we may not, in addition to other things for which we accuse you, also accuse you of wanting, in cases where you should not, to grieve those who love you.

[MZ'.] To Lachanás. I will not lie, nor will I embellish things that are beyond me. I speak indeed, but neither fluently, nor sharply and sweetly; and I write for rhetoric, but leisurely, and these things to those who are utterly ignorant. For I could have shown others, and have performed my own music, to those who understand nothing of it, any more than an ass understands a lyre; and I would have enjoyed their lack of culture. But to you, I know not how I shall play, so cultured as you are, and having a mind that is sophisticated and brilliant. But since I know, in writing—and one must speak in a letter humanly, and according to the Comic poet, somewhat more ignorantly and more clearly—I recognized that I was fearing the writing in vain; and from this point I write. And if you persuade me that I am not ridiculous before you, I will play, and play a second time, and a third, and to a fourth I will commit—

myself in writing. And if there is ever need to ask for more, and to rest under a fine shade, I will proceed to write. But you will certainly persuade me—unless some "so-and-so" has misled even you, which heaven forbid. And yet, I am suspicious, and I fear that your own [opinion] may have eroded in relation to your own character. Do not let yourself be persuaded of this, lest I be compelled to say to you of each person, just as he delights in the company he keeps, that I might compare you in this respect to water because of the ^A assimilation of character that follows. For such a person also tends to be of the sort to correspond to the ground through which he travels. Not that the "so-and-so" may not, if he wishes, love me; but if he is averse to us, I love him even in his absence. I will add that I speak to him perhaps even against his will and while he remains silent, much as if one were to love a statue that knows nothing. I know only that, in writing to him henceforth, I will join [the pipe]. For there, one reed ^B stands out above the others; the second one after it is left behind in length; and the third sits below those before it. And the one after this, descending still further, nevertheless sits above the one after [it]; while it itself is contracted into a shorter form. And this continues until the whole pipe, having been drawn in a little, reaches its end. And we, at first, wrote him longer things; then, descending, we have contracted ourselves.

48 [or 49]

Your sacred and thrice-desired head, greatest of all Caesars who have ever been, and worthy of all love, I now enjoy, being holy as you are. And I now seem to have become wise, and to be numbered in the catalog of the learned, since you look upon my words. In a drought, these things are for one who loves the Muses, both of tongue and hearing. For what use is there to a flute-player if he has fine flutes, but no one wishes to hear them? Or to a lyre-player, if he strings his chords well, but those in the neighborhood turn away from his music? And if a runner were a good one, but no one wished to see him flying in the races, what benefit would he gain from his speed? Thus I, until now, was a clanging cymbal and an echoing in vain; but you, through your attentive hearing, have shown me to be more venerable. And so that I may report to you what I have suffered at your hands (but give your mind to the word), I make a sign of your desire for literature ^C from your best soul, from which desire is born. For I (to tell you the truth) have not become dry in wisdom, nor like the many who are eager only up to the point of speaking; but I have become all things to all men, and I praise every soul that loves beauty—not only the one that loves intelligible beauty, but also that which loves blooming colors, and precise art, and the pearl, and the sapphire, and the hyacinth. For I make the desire for these things a proof of a higher and better desire. And when someone loves the beauty of words, he is to me higher in the disposition of his soul. For just as a person who is altogether foolish in his mind is unmoving toward all music, and nothing of what is delightful captivates him, but he places all things on an equal level, wallowing in mire—so too is the person trained to distinguish the worse from the better, who is enthusiastic about the beauties of things; and he is charmed by rhythms, and rejoices in harmonies; he is, in fact, quite bewitched by the grace and beauty of words. For I [have] for you a word that is hidden, yet most philosophical. The soul, most excellent Caesar, is coupled with the body by intelligible beauty; but to see this in the material world is not possible. For matter cannot contain it, being wretched. But seeing emanations and traces of this in bodily beauties, it is excited and goes mad, thinking it to be that which, having become in the body, it destroyed. For these reasons [I write] concerning precious stones and fair countenances and musical harmonies, while those who are more philosophical are enraptured by the beauty of words; such as you are. But it was necessary for you to encounter such a philosopher as Alexander was to Aristotle, and Dionysius to Plato. But you are better than them (as I judge and declare), while I am much worse. But I have been so fortunate that you love me more than those men loved their philosophers; and for this reason you deem what is from me—lesser though it be—to be more than what was from them, greater and more plentiful though it was. But also know this, that those men whom I just mentioned were most ardent lovers of the philosophers at the beginning, but later, like those negligent in a race, they slackened their love for them. And for this reason Dionysius is numbered among the tyrants, because he rejected the doctrines of Plato; and Alexander was deprived of the greater encomia because he despised the wisdom of Aristotle. And concerning you, I suspect nothing of the sort, because you are by far better than them in both soul and understanding. And it was necessary for those kings to have grudges against those wise men, because neither Aristotle composed an encomium for Alexander, nor Plato for Dionysius. For this reason, as if insulted by them, each of them took vengeance for the insult from them. And so that I might reveal to you the truth about them: both had reached the pinnacle of philosophy, but they had not obtained the graces of speech. For this reason they have been lesser in their encomia; but I am lesser than them in the wisdom of those men, yet better in my tongue regarding the desire for words of your best soul, from which comes the eulogy.

49

Against cheeses and ^D Iḍna, and perhaps even ointments and pastries and spices, O most admirable Caesar, to write and to make returns I am able; but in the case of a horse so fine, so great, so tender, so fast, and so spirited, to make a letter of equal measure and equal value is beyond my power. For even if he were not such and had not been adorned with such beauties, as much as even the famous horse of Alexander—for that one was spirited in another way, spitting out the bit and, because of excessive arrogance, not accepting his rider—yet, since a gift has been sent to me by such a man, to whom no one of those earth-born from the beginning of time could contend, how could I contend...

in speech against the virtue of the sender? Since, ^A however, the sender himself sits somewhere above the clouds, and what was sent is, one might say, beyond comparison to those animals of the same kind; regarding two such great things—beauty and stature at once—that famous Heracles, as the proverb says, might have vied. But when, having closed my eyes to your superiority, I wish to admire the horse, I place Bucephalus and Pegasus somewhere far below it. For what if the one was well-fleshed, and very stout, and had a head shaped like an ox—a bull’s head—on its thigh, yet was very bold in all other respects, and would not accept the rein; while the other flew into the air and often knocked its rider from its back? But the one sent to me, in both beauty and size, competes with those, and has, along with these two virtues, that it was not born long ago, but is already at the peak of its horse-years, is tame, and [does not] grow wild at the touch of a hand, nor does it require to be coaxed, and, as it were, tamed and flattered. When, therefore, I look at the horse, I am so struck by it, and deem it incomparable to the rest; but if I shift my thought to the one who sent it, at that moment, having ceased to admire the light of a lamp, I am dazed by the brilliance of the sun. It behooved you, insofar as it concerns the superiorities of things, to be above the clouds and, as it were, to walk on air, and to scorn our ephemeral affairs; but now, that which places brows above the forehead for others, to you brings a sense of awe to the eyes and creates an unspeakable humility. I, however, am led to admire not only the great things, but I have considered even your incidental actions to be incomparable and beyond parallel; and when yesterday I was dining with your most beautiful sons, as you know, I will not hide it, but will narrate it brilliantly. For my beloved Andronicus, willingly recounting the hunt of the cranes to me, and how the smallest animal hunts the most treacherous of the kind—the crane—how, soaring with its wings, it steals underneath the crook of its arm and besieges it, and tears down a very great wall, and is torn apart by the claws of the latter—then, having brought the discourse down to me, that even a short while ago a marvelous living thing was destroyed by a crane, and you had need to be so distressed that you were even agitated, and almost danced with the tearing of the animal, saying that it was killed while fighting, and as if in war it gave up its life, as if having uttered some funeral oration for the animal; then you did not even deem it worthy to undress it of its armor, but buried it with its breastplate and the rest of its defenses—this led me, I swear by your sacred soul, to dance at this marvelous, supernatural, and noble story. For not only triumphs and feats of generalship show the man; but also a nod, and a word, and a dignified laugh, and an apophthegm full of the Graces, portray the best soul accurately. But you are clever even at hunting, and in riding you are adept, and in jumping over mounds you are noble and fearless, and to restrain in a straight line a slipping horse and ^C to stand briefly is swift and suitable.

N. Then do you not know, most supernatural Caesar, that the truffle is an imperfect product of the earth, and, so to speak, a miscarriage? For its mother does not give birth to this, nor does she bring it into the light with birth pangs; but those who know the extraction of this marvelous product, when they see the belly of the earth swollen, having torn—if one may say so—its innards, they extract the fetus; and for this reason it is unsightly in appearance and lacking beauty. But the mother, compensating for this ugliness, has instilled in it an unspeakable pleasure; just as indeed for the demagogue of the Athenians, the wise in mind and great of nature Pericles, who was born with a long head, God sowed a harmonious mind. Immediately also Aristotle was lisping of tongue, and Plato was hunched, and that Macedonian, Alexander, had a neck inclined to the side. For those whose external form is beautiful, their inner parts are diseased; but for those whose outward appearance is poor, the hidden is marvelous. A thorn, for instance, is cast before a rose; and the cypress is fruitless. Such is the truffle; the visible part is ugly, but the hidden part is edible. Let your soul alone be kept out of this argument; or rather, your mixture, that which is compounded of soul and body. For the covering of your body is truly marvelous and heroic, and the nature of your soul is full of mind and Graces. But I have forgotten my own woes because of your goods. For there lies my dying daughter, who has now for the first time been brought back to life by your gifts. But she is half-alive, and I—(I swear by your sacred head)—am lifeless, being brought back and enlivened only by your nod and spirit.

NA’. So much for this, most honor-loving Caesar. Lest perhaps the earth has played the harlot towards you, and because of the season has become shameless, so that she does not even reveal her own breasts, but even yields them to those who wish to make them plain. And if not breasts, yet hidden births, she does not blush at so many and ugly places; not in roses and the petals of other flowers, but in ugly truffles she shows her fertility. But as it seems, wrapping herself in the manner of Aesop's fox, she prides herself not on her external ugliness, but on the hidden [part] of the pleasure. For it is introduced in

^A comparison to Aesop's fables, [where] the leopard mocks the fox, saying that while she is variegated and speckled with scales, she is dry in skin and altogether ugly in color—but the fox said, "You win with what is visible, but I with what is hidden and secret." Such is the truffle: it is neither flowered nor beautiful in shape, but is cut up and roughened, as if by embankments and ravines. But if you were to cut it, or bring it to your mouth and smooth it with your teeth, you will perceive an altogether secret pleasure. But do not show us such hospitality like this, nor in such quantity; rather, show us the source of the pleasure, so that you may kindle the desire all the more. Homer, as a wise poet, makes Hera jealous of Zeus, not because she was arriving at his couch or watching his beauty; but since at one time she adorned her ^B own self sumptuously and, having put on the girdle, brought it to her husband, she was more insolent than seductive. For Zeus, having had his fill (as it seems) of love for her, did not love her as a beloved, but shamed and dishonored her as one who had deceived him. Thus, satiety begets insolence. But why are these things to me now? And why do you not (like musicians) change the melodies and the rhythms for me? For the season has brought back to you peacocks and suckling lambs; but to us, milk, cheeses, butter, and the eggs of hens. Change the string; become ambitious for me with these things. I ask of you—of you, the most beautiful and incomparable soul—and I ask, not by your sacred and most-desired head, in a needy way, but ^C royally, so that you may have [cause] to luxuriate and laugh. I ask, then: is not the celebrated Paphlagonia your fatherland, from whence the salted meats are [from]? But why did you laugh? Could it be that you presumed something? There are lions among us too, [that is to say], roasted and boiled and salted [meats], but we are almost feasting on them raw.

NB. I have sent you the precursor to the fruits. But it does not run ahead like the [maidens] of a bride, leaving behind the duty of being more venerable than those who run before; rather, it rises before the others, as if some guide dining with them and showing the way into life. And not for these reasons alone is it most beautiful, but because it is also the sweetest of the others. For it neither agitates the taste of the one who has tasted it with sweetness, nor makes one feel disgust with bitterness, nor does it compress the tongue with astringency; and its acidity is not immoderate, ^D but is mixed with that which sweetens it. It enters not only through the porous parts, but now even through the solid; and it measures itself to the eater. For just as the rose punishes the disorderly harvester with the thorn, and if one does not pluck it gently, he would certainly perceive the one who struck him—so too [the fruit], if one does not chew it wisely and take only as much as is appropriate, will prick the teeth with something grievous, and the molars will ache, as if paying the penalty for the insatiable food. It signals beforehand, then (as has been said), among all the other fruits; and it is a certain first grace of spring, and it feels the solar rays more than the others. For at the same time that the sun has arrived at the equinoctial point, this [fruit] has also met it, having bowed down from the branches. Even if the luminary is sullen and does not cast bright rays upon the plant, it remains hidden in itself, and the tree at that time flourishes only with its leaves. And of the other fruits, some have their nourishment hidden and are inedible to one who merely looks at them; others, nourishing that which is visible, do not feast one with that which is hidden. But this one suffices for all sweetness, in its visible covering no less than in the hidden one. Then, as time progresses, it shows that which is appearing to be sour and inedible, but that which is hidden, having slowly fattened, it renders perfectly edible. Wherefore you might use it as solid food, and (if you wish) as something more liquid. For it has secret springs of milk, when it is both edible and drinkable, and to the Asclepiadae it is sufficient for both.

NI. This too is a nut; and while it is otherwise similar to the principal one, it is merely smaller in that magnitude, except that it preserves the similarity in shape. But the kind is different from the rest. For that one has all circles, both internal and external, but the external covering of this one is otherwise. It resembles myopia, and the fruit [is like one] fleeing, and then slipping into the hole. I laugh, then, when I see the runaway having slipped into the cave, so that he may escape the pursuing hands. And it escaped him so much that he did not set forth a pebble for him, as the cuttlefish pouring forth its ink, so that it might escape the hunter. It is caught, then, while visible, just as the bulb by the sprout. But it does not immediately emerge, unless someone besieges its fortress; and if one attempts [it], it slips forward immediately, and even having been caught, it wishes to escape. But we have forgotten, O best of heads, to animate the inanimate. But it neither ran away nor fled, but appeared from the beginning with its connatural covering. Such is the art of nature. It does not swaddle all the embryos in the same way; but covers one with one thing and another with another, and sets others bare, having tightened them from within. We must therefore contemplate the arguments of her monuments, so that we might grind them down with the logic of logic.

NA. You perhaps will be annoyed even at the thin coverings of the chestnuts; and especially at the final one, because it clings firmly to the fruit and creeps into the embankments of it. But I, when I was plucking them from the trees, handled them gently just as roses, eyeing their thorns. For I do not know if nature, knowing such a hard fruit, thus secured it and made the fruit most difficult to ambush. Or perhaps (to say something in play), since for the most part the plant is a mountain thicket, and coarser hands were going to harvest it, for these reasons [it is] thorny.

^A It is the forming nature itself that made it. For it likens, to the unpressed grape, the one that is ^B in the hands and calloused by laborers, as you know, and which does not feel the thorn much. But not for every fruit does the inner rind grow attached to it, but only for those in which the ripening did not take place on the tree; nor is the thorn split. The shape of its outer casings is, in the one case, an exact sphere, if one were to take away the thorn; in the other, a hemisphere. Whatever manner, then, I, being odd, have likened the fruit to everything. For the heaven of this [fruit] is an exact sphere. The elements, indeed, intend to be thus; but it does not preserve the likeness, and falls somewhat short of the exact shape. This is the secret of the fruit for you. And store this in your soul, but deliver the visible part to the body.

NE'. Why in vain [is] the letter with the melon? For it suffice ^B itself for itself instead of every word and every composition—even if the poet brings forward the name as a reproach to the Achaeans. For if one were to entrust the types of fruits to my judgment, I would not for any reason dispute setting the prizes above the others to the melon. It is, as it were, a head, and in shape the same, and multiform with regards to its types. For it has moved according to a cube; it has risen according to a pyramid; it has been curved according to a sphere. But [why should one take] the from-these for the melon, and not from its own source and from itself? For there is some thing, as it were, no other, and not clear to color, but to the body. For it is entirely, through and through, a participant of unspeakable pleasure; and it is neither hard like the apple, nor altogether soft and flowing; but it is compressed insofar as is moderate, and gives way to those who soften it, insofar as is also sufficient for the long-lived. The [sensation] of pleasure is both from there and through the throat; and even up to the breast, it is a kind of perishable ambrosia, as if also ^C instead of nectar for those who are reaching. For you would not liken its pleasure to any of the fruits in season. It is according to the seasons of the universe and the graces of the elements; for it is worth almost nothing, but for two drachmas you will carry away ten baskets of the fruit. For the good is abundant, as the air, as the fire, as the sea. I believe, indeed, that not even a skeptical man would doubt concerning its sweetness, to say nothing at all against it, nor come into suspension of judgment, but declare that it prevails over all other fruits.

NG'. Both resemble one another, the letter and the grape; and no one would reasonably liken the letter to the grape, or the grape to the letter. For the word, too, is a sweet thing, like some other, to the soul; and what among the fruits would challenge the grape in sweetness? It delights, indeed, the one who receives it immediately; and as for this [grape], some of the sweetness is immediate and unprocessed, while some is more and even more drinkable [when] the grapes have been trodden; so also the form of the word (I speak of the wise one) is twofold: the one immediate and from the lips; but the other, if one should wish to divide it, and as much as might be within, to empty it out for the one who has purposed to drink; and even if one should [have] the word in pronunciation

NZ'. We, for our part, have chosen to honor this fruit equally with others by word; and we have not sent it to you unadorned, but with the letter, as you see. And this suffices for the *archigenes* [prince of sorts] for an accusation against nature; for he is raging against it, as if it does most things unreasonably. For why (he would say) did nature not wall in this fruit, being simple, from the outside? But it made secure the nut with many guards, without which the fruit itself was sufficient on its own; but has it set this one out before all, simple and naked? But, O *archigenes* (I would say to him), the safety of fruits from nature is twofold: the one from within, the other from without. And whatever of the produce nature swaddles ^C from the outside, it leaves destitute of the inside; but as for those which it makes secure on the inside, it does not care much about the outside. The kernels, at any rate, resemble hidden mechanisms holding and containing the flesh of the fruits from within. For those for whom the protection is from the heart, so to speak, for these the coat is superfluous. By all accounts, this form of the word, too, is a participant of the best. For these reasons, not even would a man who is a contemplator of the works of nature, desiring to favor friends, consider it right not to give it along with a letter. But you, whenever you eat, having placed the kernel in your palm, consider just as much, that this was the guardian of the fruit, better than those which Plato places in his own city.

NH'. A judge into the house of a judge; and the popular speech has been exchanged. And if he does not know the Bulgarian-pupillary lawsuit, nor does he know the restoration of orphans, but even among Bulgarians and Scythians and ^D orphans, and simply among all, as many as make sacrifices without speech according to the poets, his wickedness has been opened; and if you should look back to the origin of this one, you would find the race having emulated the ancient life. And marvel that he who has received everyone has himself received [everything]. And just as we marvel at the moon, that it transforms the mixtures of the elements; and more so the sun, that it imparts its light to it; and of this most of all the firmament, that it carries this [sun] around as it turns; and above all the outermost region, that it swaddles all things into itself; so indeed shall we deify you, who rolls this great *Cronus* into yourself. But it is not according to that one

^A sharp, nor cold in its mixture. But towards your sacred soul—for might I be so deranged as to fashion nocturnal lights, and change my nature, and be sweet, if anyone else is; not threatening some, nor disturbing the statutes of friendship, nor doing anything else of the more absurd sort. In a certain sense, then, you are alienated from the one who hates the produce of the vine, being himself the first *Oeneus*. But if he shall transform your nature, and offer you his own justice, having pleasingly mixed it, this is indeed a gift of fortune, and better than a prayer. But do not despise the cup; or if you wish, the flask. For with whatever a man has been nurtured, with those things he will entertain you.

[NΘ'] This bishop has both the dignity befitting a high priest, and he has a manner that is civilized and sweet; not affected, nor buffoonish, but natural and innate. If, then, you honor and cherish dignity, you will find this in the man. If you desire cheerfulness and grace, the man is rich in these as well. If, however, you desire what is blended from both, it is fashioned from both, ^B and neither would I covet any of those things which are truly good: not mind, not being, not wisdom, not the one, not God. And I, for one, have never admired beast-slaying in any other way anyway. For, in the first place, the business resembles tyranny, and is the taking away of the soul of a living creature, and is war in the open, and the unproclaimed destruction of tame natures. Then, it is not in any other way a sweet thing; with cold air, and in mud and mire, there is pursuit on foot, and mixed-up shouting and inarticulate sound. Do you see the argument conquered by the other? But our way, and the way of the philosopher, is an attainment of something better, and leisure dear to God, and a mind for things ineffable and hidden. But the yoke is not heavy, but very light, according to the voice of the Lord. For we have been set free, even when the market is full, and the crowd is surging, and there is turmoil in the midst, and whatever troubles exist in royal courts. Yet the bond is freedom from a bond; at any rate, it releases the soul from the body. And what is it to us, the withering flower, and the running water, and the falling fruit? Only that which is good is that which stands, which alone the philosophizing mind ought to desire. Let the bird caught in the air delight you; but as for me, a lofty mind, falling into contemplation, will charm me. But if you wish, let us share with one another. And you, indeed, favor me with the benefits derived from the hunt; I, however, shall answer you with my letters.

[ΣΑ'] To the judge of Opsikion. To that swine-slayer Michael, my esteemed Lord, there is here a son ^C most modest and most learned, but he has not yet grasped a glorious life; whence, having seen fortune opposed to him, he has curtailed his own life, and he lives sparingly and in need from the smallest income of his property in the Pythian region. But that evil fortune that accompanies him is wont to harass him in cities and in the fields; whence he has risen against those inhabiting his suburb, a man of extreme violence, who is his neighbor—in land, one of the nameless ones, but in violence and in hands, a second *Heracles* to no one. This man has insulted his servants; he has whipped them, and against the eldest man, who raised him, he has spared no insult or blow. The one, as they say, at the unbearable tortures gives up his last breaths; but this one, greatly caring for the old man, has fled to me, asking me to ask you to take justice concerning the one who has offended, concerning the things he has suffered. This, then, is what I ask. But as you are both a friend and a judge, as judge you will preserve the laws for those who have been wronged; as friend you will not put the matter off, but will bring a swift verdict.

[ΣΒ'] I ask, most learned one, that you neither receive me concerning those who wrong the present ones, so that the unjust might succeed, nor that you agitate others, so that they might not obtain what is just. You see what the request is, moderate and philosophical, and one which most especially happens to you

^A For he said that someone living near his house, wishing to raise up a building which had fallen into ruin, was being obstructed—not by one preventing him from attempting to alter that which had fallen, but by one altogether hindering him from rebuilding what had collapsed. I, indeed, upon hearing this, immediately laughed, thinking that what was being hindered was something else. But he insisted to me to the very end that this was the very thing which he had stated from the beginning. Is this then another thing, the new tyranny? But since he who is playing the tyrant is poor, he will not be accused for tyrannical criminal charges; but as an arrogant and violent man, or rather one who is altogether rash and insensate, he shall be brought to his senses by the appropriate punishments. But if the matter is otherwise, leave the heralds alone and blame Agamemnon.

^B This man who is present is our friend; on whose behalf, since he has requested us, we ask your Excellency to grant your cooperation to him, so that he may demand what remains that he had left behind. For if, after demanding once, he attempts a second demand again, consider the request vain; but if those who are being asked have acted maliciously in the payment of public duties, it is entirely just, on account of their malice and obstinacy, that he should sustain the penalty for the things which he did not owe. Therefore, let your nobility be a great assistance to him, and let your judicial authority be a mark of character in such a case. For there is nothing for a judge that is so much his own as to assist those who are wronged and to proceed against those who do wrong.

^C I was reminded upon seeing the fish, God-honored master; I was reminded—of whom? Of him who formerly embraced me, but now (I do not know how to say it) has pushed me away. I was reminded, from this sensible food which sweetens the throat—I mean the soul-nourishing and intelligible ambrosia of your words. I was reminded, indeed, but with difficulty, as if forgetting both the image and the archetype. This is that much-desired thing; this is that truly longed-for fish; which lingers in rivers and seas, and has obtained both allotments as dwellings, which is beautiful in part and entirely all-beautiful; similar to the rest of the fish, yet surpassing in the same way both the winged and the swimming. But if the fish is this, what kind is he who sent it, if the sensible is supernatural; what are you, the intelligible beauty, towards whom the recollection is, and to whom will you be compared? For this one dwells in the waters and has taken a part of the whole for a dwelling. But you are the master of creation, not having been confused in your form according to the image, but having kept the dignity unhumbled; or rather, are you the intelligible paradise? But how then shall I lament? How shall I bewail my own fate? For having been long within your beauty, I am now driven away. Again, therefore, the serpent, and again the deceits; and great is the poison, and the accusing tongue is fierce, not striking the chest, but casting at the back. For these things I have been pushed away, and I have been condemned, sentenced in my absence. But these things I lamented formerly, and for these things I will weep again. But the present things are serenity, festivities, paeans, brightness, and a sudden change of the things that were to be shunned. If, therefore, having seen the fish, I have so worthily directed my soul toward you, and am irresistible in my impulse; if I shall taste; if I shall be sweetened; I shall surely and immediately be inspired, and I shall fly and find rest toward you. The wall of envy is nothing to me; brittle is the partition of malice. But even if the fortifications are strong, yet all things give way and retreat before soulful zeal and mental pursuits. Thus I grasp your soul insatiably; but the serpent watches the heel and blocks the progress. But I shall step upon it one day, and I shall trample the beast, even if it is a roaring lion; even if it is a bear in distress; even if it is a basilisk, or any other of the more terrible and banished things. Why do the dogs bark at me secretly? Why do the beasts tear me to pieces in hiding? I am yours; and being a portion of your providence, and having been torn once for all, I shall roar in response to these. And then you will know what sort are the impulses of lions, and what sort are the mimicries of apes.

^D A new thing has the one present announced to me. This notary—or rather—what do I call a notary, whom it is better to call a Thracian beggar? This Thracian beggar then, being sent by me to the district under you, for the sake of finishing some service appropriate for me, asked me, after fulfilling this, to be under your protection, and to obtain some slight benefit. Consider then, what sort of friend I am to you; that I am steadfast; that I am truthful; and of what sort the request is, that it is easy and light to be executed. And examine this in relation to our friendship, and execute it without doubt. For this notary, neither possessing much property nor desiring great gains, will appear a very small part to the district. But if you see him favorably on account of our friendship, then not even this will appear small.

[EZ']. The man on whose behalf I requested you has increased the friendship toward me, by declaring in his writings how many and what kind of goods you deemed him worthy of for my sake, and how you protected him and saved him from those wishing to maltreat him; for which I both give thanks, and I confess graces to you, and I am preparing myself for exchanges of such a disposition. Or rather, I have become your debtor not only for these things, but also for many others, and I do not delay in the repayment of this debt. Add, therefore, to your disposition toward the man, and even more, increase your favor toward him; and take up his affairs more warmly. And do this in such a way so that I may not remain

^B someone seeing while not seeing. For only in this way will you escape the reproach of the judges and appear moderate and equitable to those who levy taxes.

58. To the Magistros and Judge of Thrace and Macedonia, Pothos, son of the Droungarios

Most brilliant Lord and beloved nephew. A hand against the Acheiropoietos [monastery], and servitude against that which has set us free, and injury against that which has set our nature at liberty! May you not have such a philosophy, nor may you derive profit from your ideas. If, then, the report is false, you possess your customary character; but if it is true, change your reasoning, spare those things that are divine, and do not move the immovable. If, however, you have no sparing for things more divine, then turn yourself toward things of a more human nature: golden bulls, other rights, long-standing custom, and the respect shown by judges before you toward the monastery. If you do not care for these things either, for our sake—the sake of friends and teachers—show some proof of goodness concerning the property of the monastery. This favor will not be unprofitable to you, neither from us nor from the Mother of God.

59.

The inhabitants of the village of Mamytzes are doing an injustice to the portion of the monks of the monastery of the Acheiropoietos. For a farm belonging to the monastery lies adjacent to this village—Strobylos is the name of the estate. In it, three mills stand that operate throughout the whole year, for the water that moves them is sufficient in its abundance of flow. But those who dwell in the aforementioned village, being provided with only one mill—and that a winter one—have dared to divert the water moving the three mills and to bring it to their own mill, having fabricated excuses and empty reasons. We entreat you, therefore, that for our sake, for the sake of justice itself, and for your faith and piety toward the Theotokos, you not only restore such a stream to its former course, but also that you punish those who dared to destroy it without any reasonable cause or judicial decision, and dared to open another path for the flowing water, by a punishment that is fitting according to what is proper; so that neither they nor others would dare such things, having been chastened by the example of what happened to them.

60.

^C Regarding the present man and his leaving the city, we entreated you, and now we entreat you again to support him in the collections, and to look upon him favorably and treat him like one of your own. When we heard a little while ago that you were disposed harshly toward him, we were not grieved, but we thought that you were chastising him, having found him in a minor injustice. But now change toward a more gentle state, and do not appear bitter toward him in everything. For this man, looking toward the expenditures he has met, is unable in all things to walk exactly by the rule of justice, since not even his payment would be equalized with the amount of the customary dues from just collections. But do not look toward this and allow him to be wronged; rather, overlook the many things, so that while you are looking, you might not be seeing, and [by being one who sees, you might not see,] ^D

61

I thank you, my Lord, for those things which you have deigned to hear. I asked earlier concerning my kinsman, that you might support him as you do me and cooperate with him in what is possible. And I, for my part, thought that I had obtained in part what I asked for; yet he did not make me think this, but rather that that very small letter of mine sufficed for him for the entire collection. Such is a deep and fertile soul; receiving a very small seed, it returns the fruit a myriad times over. But I asked earlier; now, however, as you see, I give thanks for what I have received; and the gratitude is greater than the petition. Measure back, therefore, even more abundant requital for the gratitude, and become a more diligent collaborator than a bailiff, so that he may write to us of the good he happens to receive, and we may make these matters a pretext for greater gratitude.

62.

Let the example of your friendship and disposition toward me be your brother—yours by nature, but mine by Spirit—in other matters, and even in this present notary and namesake of your theme. For, having set out from there, he acquired the presidency of the province under you. For about this I asked that man in a letter, and he gladly accepted the request, and has done well for him in other respects, and counted him among his most genuine men. He was also drawn to the theme to which he was transferred; but he, being very patriotic, wished to remain there. If, therefore, you wish to look to an example, having seen the brother, do similar things for the man. If you hold yourself as an example of your friendship toward us, adapt the task concerning the notary to the previous favors. And having received him favorably, become his patron in other things, and take up the case of the house befitting him. But why do I ask about many things? For if you only count him among those under you, the rest will follow automatically from this first favor.

63.

We have no small consolation for your absence in your letters; for we seem to converse through them, considering your inanimate salutations to be an ensouled association. You urge us in your letters to introduce favorable words on your behalf to the council of the great [emperor]. We are spontaneous in our praise of you. The Lord is witness, and we do not need a tongue to stir us up. And that nothing further beneficial to you has come from us, we do not ignore; but know that everything of yours has been prepared, and has become, as it were, the episodes of the benefit. For the emperor mentions your name with praise, and is disposed more kindly toward the misfortunes that have befallen you, and is, as it were, ready to recompense the worse with the better. Declare to us, therefore, which you prefer: to have entered into the ki-

- ^A ngdom, or that the sun should hold sway? But if the midday heat ever burns, the breezes from the springs suffice for all refreshment. And in winter, the whole earth seems to be transformed and its vernal beauty to have been shorn away; yet the loveliest of the seasons has never departed from you. For you are verdant everywhere, even as the stones themselves are by nature. Myrtles are poured out for you on every side, and smilax and ivy; the laurel crowns you, and the pine is ever-green; nor does the oak grow old upon you, nor does the fig tree shed its leaves, but these things grow immortal and ageless for you in your immortality. But whence, O high-hung one, do the hidden springs of water come to you from the earth? Or did the root of the matter grow upon those immortal springs which Christ gives to those who thirst? Whence those who are filled with your streams, if they are not entirely immortal, yet at least become very long-lived.

Your regions, O Olympus, are like a kingdom; and even if someone coming from there finds the life upon you difficult, yet if he should wish to run through your secret dwellings—as many as have been dug into the rocks for you, or have been hollowed out of their own accord—he will find where to delight himself. For if he should go under the shade of a tree, it will immediately lodge him; and below, the soils are soft, while above his head the Graces adorn the fruit. And the water bubbling or flowing past will serve for every kind of joy; and if it should be necessary to ascend a ladder and be at ease under a roof, he will quickly forget the brightness of those in the stars. For the stone is varied even there, and mottled with colors; and the cedar roofs do not strike one as inferior, but have been evenly divided and carved. And the hand that fashions them is more distinguished here than it is in the cities. And he will not lack any of the other things. For both the earth, and the sea, and the air—the one with forms, the other the bird, and the third with fish—will offer gifts. And if he should choose to hunt, the hare is ready; and the partridge will take to wing for him, and he will also strike at the wild boars, and the bear will not outrun his shot. And returning from the hunt, a sweet-breathing breeze will welcome him, and a makeshift bed near the murmuring stream.

74

could I see, or talk, or send another letter, or ^A worries and you will turn away, but I will persist and will accept a reply to the one sent. For I would wish, if indeed I could even once live for myself, and to be within the holy precincts, or even there beside the inmost veils. If, then, I were to live thus, and I would love it, and very much so. But if, however, you will even again remind me of the erotic [themes], I will persevere even if you are willing or unwilling; and I will send many [letters] and often, and I will praise you and will admire you again, as is my habit, both for your steady mind and for your ^B extreme intelligence, or for your most simple...

INDEX TO THE COMMONPLACES OF ANTONIUS MELISSA

The letter *a* denotes the former part, *b* the latter. The numbers do not denote pages, but the order of the sermons.

A Absurdity, hatred of, b 39. Action or work, a 46, 47. Admonition, a 49. Adulation [flattery], a 25. Adultery, a 15. Adulteress, b 54. Sick, the, a 57. Emulation, or imitation, upright, b 65. Evil, b 66. Eternal blessedness, b 93. Eternal punishment, b 94. Ambitious, the, b 74. Ambition. See Vain glory. Friends, and Friendship, a 24. Friends, evil, a 15. Love and fear of God, a 2. Its contrary, a 4, 26. Love and peace, b 67. Hatred, b 98. Love, brotherly, a 23. Charity, a 27. Self-love, b 75. Soul, a 55. Secrets, and taciturnity, a 73. Spilling them, a 74. Arrogant, the, b 74. Avarice [greed], a 34, 35.

B Blessedness, eternal, b 93. Beneficence toward the poor, a 27. Its contrary, a 28. Benefits and grace, a 29. Kindness, simple (ἀκακία), b 51. Kindness (χρηστότης), b 83. Biliose [irascible], b 72. Good or evil, or just and unjust: Republic, Kings, Princes, Magistrates, Judges, Citizens, Men, Women, Monks, Bishops, Children [Free], Son, Daughter, Youths, Old men, Masters, Servants, Parents, Friends, Rich, Creditors, Borrowers, Landlords or those hiring for wages, society of men, Heart, Conscience, Morals, Emulation or Imitation, Shame [modesty], Name (that is, fame), Measure, Weights. You shall find each of these under the substantive nouns.

C Calumny, a 22, 53. Candid and grateful, b 57. Contrary, b 58. Chastity, a 14. Caution and gentleness, (εὐλάβεια καὶ πραΰτης), b 84. Charity. See Love. Foods and diversity of tables, and concerning those who offend because of foods, b 97. Citizens, good, b 41. Evil, b 41. Supper of the Lord, sacrament, b 100. Thoughts, pure, b 87. Evil, b 88. Self-knowledge, a 59. Conversation [discourse], a 48. Concord, b 67. Those hiring for wages. See Landlords. Confession, a 17. Conscience, b 81. Pure, b 87. Impure, b 88. Counsel, and acting advisedly, a 10. Its contrary, a 11. Counsel, late, ibid. Counsel and repelling the one who does not admit counsel, is desired. Custom, b 80. Contempt of goods and holy men, b 38. Studious of contention, b 68, 71. Content with one’s lot, a 36. *Oligodeia* (ὀλιγοδεῖα), that is, need of few things, a 50. Contradiction, b 71. Continence and fasting, a 38. Contrary, a 39. Contumacy of speech, repelled, a 75. Contumely [insult/abuse], (λοιδωρία), b 69. Conversation, society, conventicle, a 48. Conversation, that it must be entered into with the good, b 55. Avoiding the evil, b 56. Heart (that is, thoughts) pure, b 87. Evil, b 88. Creditors, good, b 25. Evil, b 26. Curiosity, and distraction in affairs of the world, b 76. Tranquillity, in the same places, ibid. Guard of the tongue, a 75.

D Despair and sadness (ἀθυμία), a 72. Those not hoping in God, a 6. Piety and faith in God, a 1. Impiety, a 2. Love and fear of God, a 3. Contraries of the same, a 4. Hope in God, a 5. Its contrary, a 6. Devil does not harm the sober, b 99. Dilection [love]. See Love. Diligence, b 45. Negligence, b 16. See Industry. Discipline and philosophy, a 50. Riches, and the honest use of them, a 51. Depending on riches, and not on God, a 6. Doctrine and speech, a 48. Deceitful, the, b 86. Lords [masters], good, b 21. Evil, b 22.

E Drunkenness, a 41. Education of children, right, b 9. Neglected, b 10. Needy, the, a 53. Alms, a 27. Its contrary, a 28. Bishops, good, b 3. Evil, b 4. Erudition and philosophy, a 30.

F Fame. See Name. Familiarity. See Conversation. Haughty, the, b 74. Happiness and unhappiness, as it regards fortune, a 70. Faith, and that it shines most when joined with works, a 1, 44. Prevarication [transgression] of faith, a 2. Daughter, chaste and honest, b 15. Unchaste and dishonest, b 16. Son, prudent, b 13. Imprudent, b 14. See Children. Strong and temperate woman, b 33. Fortitude and strength, a 12. Fortune, favorable and adverse, a 70. Inconstancy of fortune. See Inequality. Brothers, and brotherly love or hatred, a 23. Fraudulent, the, b 86. Frugality, or *autarkeia* (αὐτάρκεια), b 56. *Oligodeia* (ὀλιγοδεία), a 50.

G Garrulity [talkativeness], b 70.

^A Gaudentes malis, b 40. Gloria, a 61. Gloria inanis, b 74. Grati accepto mutuo, b 27. Ingrati, b 28. Grati et candidi, b 57. Contrarium, b 58. Gratia et beneficentia, a 29. Gula et intemperantia, a 39.

H Hominum et divitiarum, non Dei subsidio freti, a 6. Quod non confitendum sit hominibus, a 6. Honor conferendus in bonos et sanctos viros, b 37. Honoranda virtus, a 68. Honorandi parentes, b 11. Humiles et pauperes spiritu, b 73.

I Ignavia, b 46. Ignobilitas et Nobilitas, b 79. Ignoscere oportere, et oblivisci injuriarum, b 55. De illis qui non ignoscunt, b 56. Illiberales, a 28. Imitatio. Vide Æmulatio. Immorigeri, b 92. Impatientia, b 90. Imperium et potestas, b 1. Impietas in Deum, a 2. Impietatis pœna, b 94. Imprudentia, b 48. Imprudentia senum, b 18. Juvenum, b 20. Filii, b 14. Impudens, b 72. Inconstantes, a 18. Inconstantes, et statim ad pravum ingenium redeuntes. Vide Mutabiles. Inconstantia fortunæ. Vide Inæqualitas. Indigentia paucarum rerum, a 50. Infamia. Vide Nomen. Ingrati, b 58. Inimicitia, b 68. Injuria. Vide Contumelia. Injuriarum oblivio. Vide Oblivio. Injusti. Injustitia, a 16, 55. Vide Boni. Innocentia morum et simplicitas, ἀκακία καὶ μνησικακία, b 54, 85. Ei contrarium, b 86. Inobedientia, et vitiosa respub., b 92. Inopia, et paucarum rerum indigentia, a 50. Insensatus, b 48. Insipiens, a 9. Insomnia, a 43. Intellectus, a 8. Invidia, b 62. Involuntarium et Voluntarium, a 65. Ira et animi fervor seu iracundia, b 53, 89. Iracundus, fervidus, biliosus, b 72.

J Jejunium, a 38. Contrarium ei, a 39. Judicandus nemo, nec offendendus, b 98. Judicium futurum, a 20. Judicia recta Deo gratissima, b 7. Judices justi, b 7. Injusti, b 8. Non jurandum temere, vel omnino non jurandum, et de proclivibus ad juramenta, b 63. Jurantes frequenter, et juramenta exigentes, b 64. Justi, et injusti diversi. Vide Boni. Justitia, a 15. Juvenes prudentes, b 19. Imprudentes, b 20.

L Laborandum esse, b 45. Laus, laudatio, a 51. Vituperium, a 52. Lex, a 67. Lenitas. Vide Longanimitas. Libertas, b 82. Libertas dicendi. Vide Fiducia. Liberorum educatio recta, b 9. Neglecta, b 10. Liberorum in parentes honor et obedientia, b 11. Inobedientes et parricidæ, b 12. Vide Filius, Filia. Linguæ custodia, a 75. Locatores operarum, seu mercede conducentes boni, b 29. Mali, b 30. Longanimitas et patientia, b 89. Pusillanimitas, b 90. Vide Mansuetudo. Loquaces et arcana effutientes, a 76. Loquacitas, a 70. Loquendi libertas, et redargutio, b 78. Loquendum non dure, nec minaciter, a 75. Luxuria, a 40. Ebrietas, a 41.

M Magistratus (et potestas) bonus et malus, b 1, 2. Rex bonus et malus, b 1, 2. Principes boni et mali, b 5, 6. Majorem partem non semper esse meliorem, a 37. Malitia facilis, virtus difficilis, a 69. Malitia punienda, a 68. Malitia. Vide Vitia. Mali, et mala diversa. Vide Boni. Malis et vitiis gaudentes, b 40. Malorum oblivio. Vide Oblivio injuriarum. Mansuetudo et cautio, πραΰτης καὶ εὐλάβεια, b 81. Vide Longanimitas. Matrimonium honestum, a 14. Medici, a 56. Memoria, a 54. Mendacium, a 22. Mensarum et ciborum diversitas, b 97. Mensura justa, b 51. Injustæ, b 52. Mercenarii boni, b 29. Merces. Vide Retributio. Mercenariorum conductores boni, b 29. Mali, b 30. Metus, a 66. Misericordia, a 27. Contrarium, a 28. Mæror et tristitia, a 72. Monachi boni, b 43. Ad malitiam redeuntes, b 44. Monachorum præfectus, b 96. Monastica vita, et mundi valedictio, b 95. Moribus innocens et simplex, b 85. Contrarius ei, b 86. Moribus malis præditi, et inobedientes, b 92. Mors, a 58. Mos et consuetudo, b 80. Mulieres bonæ, b 33. Malæ, b 34. Munera non capientes judices, b 7. Muneribus corrupti, b 8. Mutabiles cito, qui statim deserta virtute ad vitia redeunt, a 18. Mutuo accepto grati, b 27. Ingrati, b 28. Mysteriorum divinorum participatio, b 100.

N Negligentia, b 46. Negligentes in religione, b 99. Negotiosa et occupationibus distracta vita, b 77. Nobilitas et Ignobilitas, b 79. Nosce teipsum, a 39.

^B Nomen bonum, seu fama bona, b 49. Infame, b 50. Nuptiæ honestæ, a 4.

O Oblivio injuriarum, b 51, 55. Contrarium ejus, b 56. Obedientia et respub. honesta, b 92. Obedientia liberorum erga parentes, b 11. Obedientia in monastica vita, b 95. Obtrectatio et vituperium, a 53, b 59. Occupationes variæ, b 77. Odium, b 68. Odium in fratres, a 23. Odium vitiorum, b 39. Offendendus homo, nec judicandus, b 98. Offensio propter cibos, b 97. Opus vel actio, a 46. Opera bona fidei conjuncta, a 1. Oratio vel precatio, a 46.

P Parci, a 28. Parentes boni, et diligentes in liberorum educatione, b 9. Negligentes, b 10. Parricida, b 12. Patientia et longanimitas, b 89. Impatientia, b 90. Paucarum rerum indigentia, αὐτάρκεια, a 30. Pauperes, a 35. Pauperes (in) beneficentia, a 27. Contrarium, a 28. Pauperes et humiles spiritu, b 73. Paupertas, a 30. Pax et Pacifici, b 27. Inimicitia, b 28. Peccatum, a 16. Pecuniæ studium, a 34. Philosophia et disciplina, a 50. Pietas in Deum, a 1. Pietatis retributio, b 93. Impietatis, b 93. Quod plus est, non semper præstare, a 37. Plus habendi studium. Vide Avaritia. Pœna perpetua, b 94. Pœnitentia, a 17, b 25. Non pœnitentes, a 19. Pondera justa, b 51. Injusta, b 52. Potestas. Vide Magistratus. Præfectus monachorum, b 96. Precatio, a 46. Principes boni, b 5. Mali, b 6. Providentia, a 45. Proximo (de) quod onera ejus ferenda sint, communi ope juvandus, amice arguendus, et delictis ejus ignoscendum, b 35. Non ignoscentes, b 56. Prudens et fortis mulier, b 35. Prudens. Vide Senatus. Prudentia et consilium, a 8. Prudentia senum, a 17. Contrarium, b 18. Prudentia juvenum, b 19. Filii, b 13. Pudica filia, b 15. Pudor bonus, b 61. Malus, b 62. Pulchritudo, a 60. Punienda vitia. Vide Vitia. Puritas cordis, cogitationum, conscientiæ, a 87. Impuritas, b 88. Pusillanimitas, b 90.

Q Quies a negotiis mundi, et tranquillitas curiositati opposita, b 76.

R Ratio et Rationalis, a 66.

1337 78. ORDER OF MATTERS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME. Reproof and freedom of speech, [b] Reprehension. See Counsel. Republic, praiseworthy, [b] 91. Culpable, [b] 92. Retribution of a pious life, [b] 93. Of an impious life, [b] 94. King, good and just, [b] 1. Evil, [b] 2. Laughter, [a] 65. Strength and fortitude, [a] 12. S Holy men. See Men, of men. Wisdom, [a] 8. Offense. See Offend, Offense. Fornication, [a] 15. Secrets and taciturnity, [a] 73. Those who divulge them, [a] 74. Old men, good and prudent, [b] 17. Foolish and wicked, [b] 18. Sensible man, [b] 47. Senseless, [b] 48. Discourse and doctrine, [a] 47. Discourse, harsh, contumacious, threatening, [a] 75. Servants, good, [b] 23. Evil, [b] 24. Silence. See Taciturnity. Simple and innocent, [b] 85. Contrary to it, [b] 86. Simplicity, [b] 54. The devil does not harm the sober, [b] 99. Society. See Conversation. Slothful in religion, [b] 99. Sleep, [a] 42. Insomnia, [a] 43. Hope in God, [a] 8. Contrary, [a] 6. Spiritually humble and poor, [b] 73. Just balance, [b] 51. Unjust, [b] 52. Fool, [a] 9. Subjection in monastic life, [b] 95. Proud, [b] 71. T Taciturnity and secrets, [a] 73. Foolhardiness, [a] 11, [b] 71, 72. Temperance, [a] 14. Temperance and fasting, [a] 38. Contrary, [a] 39. Temperate and prudent woman, [b] 33. Testimony, true, [a] 21. False, [a] 22. Fear, [a] 66. Fear and love of God, [a] 3. Contrary, [a] 4. Tolerance, [b] 89. Tranquility, contrary to curiosity and worldly business, [b] 76. Sadness, [a] 72. V Bashfulness. See Modesty. Crafty, [b] 86. Truth, [a] 21. True testimony, [a] 22. 1338 Honor of good and holy men, [b] 37. Contempt, [b] 38. Assembly of good men, [b] 35. Of evil men, [b] 36. Good and honest men, [b] 31. Evil and wicked, [b] 32. Virginity, [a] 14. Virtue, [a] 7. Virtue to be honored, vices to be punished, [a] 68. Virtue difficult to acquire, vice easy, [a] 69. Virtue of old men, [b] 17. Contrary, [b] 18. Life, busy and distracted by occupations, [b] 77. Inequality of life, and inconstancy of fortune, [a] 71. Retribution of a pious life, [b] 93. Of an impious life, [b] 94. Vice easy, virtue difficult, [a] 69. Vices to be punished, virtue to be honored, [a] 68. Hatred of vices, [b] 59. Vituperation and calumny, [a] 53. Voluntary and involuntary, [a] 63. V Valediction of worldly things and exercise of monastic life, [b] 95.

ORDER OF MATTERS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME

EUSTATHIUS OF THESSALONICA, METROPOLITAN. CONTINUATION OF WORKS. On the capture of the city of Thessalonica by the Latins 9 Eulogy of St. Philotheus Opsicianus 141 Invocations of the martyr St. Demetrius 161 Panegyric discourse on the same 169 To a certain Stylite of Thessalonica 217 On the holy martyrs Alpheus and his companions 263 On the holy martyrs Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, cast into the furnace 289 On obedience due to a Christian magistrate 501 Prologue to Pindarics 559 On simulation 373 Against the remembrance of injuries 407 Interpretation of the Pentecostal hymn of Damascenus 501 Epistles 1245

ANTONIUS MELISSA. SENTENCES OR COMMONPLACES COLLECTED FROM SACRED AND PROFANE AUTHORS. Part I. Sermon I. On faith and piety toward God, and how they excel all goods when they shine forth most through good works 765 Sermon II. On those who prevaricate in piety and faith, and are impious toward God 773 Sermon III. On the love and fear of God 781 Sermon IV. On those who neither fear nor love God 785 Sermon V. On hope in God, and that hope in God ought not to be placed in human aids 785 Sermon VI. On those who trust in riches and men, and have not all hope and confidence in God 789 Sermon VII. On virtue 791 Sermon VIII. On wisdom, intellect, and prudence 795 Sermon IX. On the imprudent, the foolish, the ignorant, and the simpleton 797 Sermon X. On counsel, and that all things should be done with counsel and consideration 799 Sermon XI. On rash and slow counsel, and how harmful it is to act inconsiderately 801 Sermon XII. On fortitude and strength 803 Sermon XIII. On justice 803 Sermon XIV. On virginity, and chastity, and temperance, and honest marriage 807 Sermon XV. On fornication and adultery 813 Sermon XVI. On injustice, sin, and confession 815 Sermon XVII. On penance and confession 823 Sermon XVIII. On those who quickly change to a worse state, and on penance 831 Sermon XIX. On those who do not convert to penance 833 Sermon XX. On the future judgment 835

^A Sermon XXI [al. XLV]. — On truth and faithful testimony. 841 Sermon XXII [al. XLVII]. — On lying and slander, and false testimony. 843 Sermon XXIII [al. CXXXVI]. — On brothers, and love and hatred towards brothers. 845 Sermon XXIV [al. CXXXV]. — On friends and fraternal love. 847 Sermon XXV [al. CXXXVII]. — On wicked friends. 851 Sermon XXVI [al. LVI]. — On charity [or love], peace, concord, and the peaceful. 853 Sermon XXVII [al. LVII]. — On almsgiving and kindness to the poor. 861 Sermon XXVIII [al. LIX]. — On the parsimonious and ungenerous, and those who do not give alms. 873 Sermon XXIX [al. LVIII]. — On beneficence, gratitude, and ingratitude. 873 Sermon XXX [al. XXXIII]. — On destitution and the lack of a few things. 879 Sermon XXXI [al. CXLI]. — On riches and the wealthy who live well and decently. 881 Sermon XXXII [al. CXLII]. — On the wealthy who live badly, and the evils that follow them. 885 Sermon XXXIII [al. CXLIII]. — On the needy and the poor. 889 Sermon XXXIV [al. XLII]. — On avarice. 893 Sermon XXXV [al. XLI]. — On avarice, and those who are unjust and wish to have more in everything. 895 Sermon XXXVI [al. XXXII]. — On virtue, which makes the mind content with its own and present things. 901 Sermon XXXVII [al. XIV]. — That the majority is not always better. 903 Sermon XXXVIII [al. LXVI]. — On fasting and abstinence. 905 Sermon XXXIX [al. LXVII]. — On gluttony and incontinence at the table. 907 Sermon XL [al. LV]. — On prodigality and luxury. 915 Sermon XLI [al. LXVIII]. — On drunkenness. 915 Sermon XLII [al. LXIX]. — On sleep. 919 Sermon XLIII [al. LXX]. — On insomnia. 921 Sermon XLIV [al. CLIX]. — On faith. 921 Sermon XLV [al. CLVIII]. — On Providence. 923 Sermon XLVI [al. CLXVIII]. — On prayer. 923 Sermon XLVII [al. CLXIX]. — On action. 927 Sermon XLVIII [al. CLXX]. — On the doctrine which is accomplished through both speech and conversation. 927 Sermon XLIX [al. L]. — On admonition. 929 Sermon L [al. CXXXIII]. — On discipline and philosophy. 931 Sermon LI [al. LI]. — On praise. 937 Sermon LII [al. VIII]. — On adulation. 939 Sermon LIII [al. LIII]. — On vituperation and slander. 943 Sermon LIV [al. LXXXIV]. — On memory. 947 Sermon LV [al. CLXVII]. — On the soul. 949 Sermon LVI [al. CXLVI]. — On physicians. 951 Sermon LVII [al. CXLV]. — On the sick. 953 Sermon LVIII [al. CLV]. — On death. 955 Sermon LIX [al. LXXX]. — On knowing oneself. 959 Sermon LX [al. CX]. — On beauty. 959 ^B Sermon LXI [al. CX]. — On glory. 961 Sermon LXII [al. XCIX]. — On envy. 967 Sermon LXIII [al. LXXI]. — On laughter. 969 Sermon LXIV [al. XXXVI]. — On the rational and on reason or thought. 971 Sermon LXV [al. IV]. — On the voluntary and involuntary. 971 Sermon LXVI. — On the fear of the Lord, and on fear in general. 973 Sermon LXVII [al. CI]. — On the law. 975 Sermon LXVIII [al. II]. — That virtue is to be honored and vice is to be punished. 977 Sermon LXIX [al. III]. — That malice is easy and virtue is difficult to acquire. 979 Sermon LXX [al. CXLVIII]. — On good and bad fortune. 981 Sermon LXXI [al. CXLVII]. — On the inequality of life. 985 Sermon LXXII [al. CXLIV]. — On sadness and grief. 985 Sermon LXXIII [al. XCIII]. — On silence and secrets. 989 Sermon LXXIV [al. XCVI]. — On those who talk too much, speak in haste, and reveal secrets. 993 Sermon LXXV [al. XCIV]. — On those who guard their tongue and mouth, and on speech that is neither harsh nor insolent. 995 ^C Part II. Sermon I [al. CII]. — On a moderate and equitable king; and on magistracy and power. 995 Sermon II [al. CIV]. — On not admiring a king much (or on an evil king). 1009 Sermon III [al. CLXXIII]. — On moderate bishops who observe the commandments of God; that their life, being grave and such that it cannot be reproached, should be a testament to those over whom they preside. 1011 Sermon IV [al. CLXXIV]. — On wicked bishops who do not observe the commandments of God. 1021 ^D Sermon V [al. CVI]. — On moderate princes. 1029 Sermon VI [al. CVII]. — On wicked princes. 1031 Sermon VII [al. CVIII]. — On incorrupt judges who have pure hands and who exercise justice. And that to exercise judgment rightly and truthfully is acceptable to God. 1033 Sermon VIII [al. CIX]. — On venal judges who accept bribes and condemn against justice and right. 1037 Sermon IX [al. CXXVI]. — On good parents, and that it is necessary that children be instructed diligently and decently. 1041 Sermon X [al. CXXVII]. — On parents who neglect the education of their children. 1043 Sermon XI [al. CXXVII]. — On children who honor their parents, and the good things that follow those who obey them. 1045 Sermon XII [al. CXXIX]. — On patricides and matricides, and the evils that will follow them. 1049 Sermon XIII [al. CXXX]. — On the wise son. 1049 Sermon XIV [al. CXXXI]. — On the foolish, wicked, and unlearned son. 1051 Sermon XV [al. CXXXII]. — On an honest and modest daughter. 1051 Sermon XVI [al. CXXXIII]. — On a daughter who is not at all honest and is immodest. 1053

^A Sermon XVII [al. CLI]. — On old men adorned with virtue and prudence. 1055 Sermon XVIII. — On dishonest and imprudent old men. ^B Sermon XIX [al. CLI]. — On young men adorned with learning and prudence. 1057 Sermon XX [al. CLII]. — On young men living a life in imprudence and ignorance. 1059 Sermon XXI [al. CXVI]. — On good and kind masters. 1061 Sermon XXII [al. CXVII]. — On wicked masters. 1065 Sermon XXIII [al. CXVIII]. — On frugal servants. 1065 Sermon XXIV [al. CXIX]. — On wicked servants. 1065 Sermon XXV [al. LXI]. — On honest creditors. 1067 Sermon XXVI [al. LXIII]. — On avaricious and wicked creditors. 1069 Sermon XXVII [al. LX]. — On those who borrow and that it is right to be grateful to creditors. 1071 Sermon XXVIII [al. LXI]. — On the ungrateful when they have borrowed. 1071 Sermon XXIX [al. CXX]. — On hirelings, or honest masters of workmen. 1073 Sermon XXX [al. CXXI]. — On hirelings, or wicked masters of workmen. 1075 Sermon XXXI [al. XV]. — On good and honest men. 1075 Sermon XXXII [al. XV]. — On evil and wicked men. 1079 Sermon XXXIII [al. CXXIII]. — On a strong, temperate, and sagacious woman. 1083 Sermon XXXIV [al. CXXIV]. — On wicked women and adulteresses full of every vice. 1087 Sermon XXXV [al. X]. — On the congregation of good men; and that one should adhere to the most excellent, not to the wicked. 1091 Sermon XXXVI [al. XX]. — On the congregation of evil men; and that one ought to avoid the associations of the wicked as destructive. 1093 Sermon XXXVII ^C [al. XII]. — On those who honor best and holy men. 1095 Sermon XXXVIII [al. XXI]. — On those who visit holy and excellent men with ignominy. 1097 Sermon XXXIX [al. VII]. — On the hatred of wickedness, and on those who turn away from things that are absurd. 1101 Sermon XL [al. XVII]. — On those who delight in evil things and approve of wickedness. 1103 Sermon XLI [al. XI]. — On good citizens. 1105 Sermon XLII [al. XXIX]. — On wicked citizens. 1105 Sermon XLIII [al. XIII]. — On honest monks and good superiors. 1107 Sermon XLIV [al. XXII]. — On inconstant monks and those who return to vices. 1115 Sermon XLV [al. LXXXIX]. — On those who do work willingly and studiously. Item, that one must labor, so that the work may have utility. 1119 Sermon XLVI [al. XC]. — On those who hate labor and works, and on the lazy, who care for nothing and are indifferent. 1123 Sermon XLVII [al. XXV]. — On those endowed with excellent sense and intellect. 1127 Sermon XLVIII [al. XXIX]. — On those endowed with no sense or intellect. 1129 Sermon XLIX [al. CXIII]. — On one who has a good name and grace. 1129 Sermon L [al. CXIII]. — On one who does not have a bad name nor grace. 1129 Sermon LI [al. XLII]. — On weights, balances, and measures. 1129 Sermon LII. — On iniquitous weights, balances, and measures. 1131 Sermon LIII [al. LXXVII]. — On anger. 1131 Sermon LIV [al. VIII]. — On simplicity and the memory of injuries. 1135 Sermon LV [al. LXXIV]. — On one's neighbor; that the burdens of neighbors should be borne, and that they should be helped, and that it is proper to rebuke them in a friendly way if they have done anything indecorously, but not to harbor enmity with them. 1139 Sermon LVI [al. LXXV]. — On those who do not forgive and who remember injuries. 1145 Sermon LVII [al. XLIII]. — On the grateful and those who acknowledge benefits. 1147 Sermon LVIII [al. XLIV]. — On the ungrateful and those who do not acknowledge benefits. 1149 Sermon LIX. — On a counselor and those who admit counsel and rebuke, and that it is necessary to understand who is a counselor. (Missing.) 1151 Sermon LX [al. XXXI]. — On those who do not admit counsel and rebuke. 1151 Sermon LXI [al. XCI]. — On honest shame. 1153 Sermon LXII [al. XCII]. — On reprehensible shyness. 1153 Sermon LXIII [al. LXXXV]. — On those who frequent oaths: item, that it is not lawful to use an oath in vain, or strictly speaking to swear at all. 1153 Sermon LXIV [al. LXXXVII]. — On those who swear much and demand an oath. 1157 Sermon LXV [al. VII]. — On good zeal and good imitation. 1157 Sermon LXVI [al. XVIII]. — On perverse zeal and imitation. 1159 Sermon LXVII. — On charity, peace, concord, and peacemakers. 1161 Sermon LXVIII [al. LXXVI]. — On hatred and enmities, and those who sow fights. 1161 Sermon LXIX [al. LIV]. — On backbiters and contumely. 1163 Sermon LXX [al. XCV]. — On loquacity and rashness in speaking. 1167 Sermon LXXI [al. LXXIX]. — On contradiction, audacity, and contention. 1169 Sermon LXXII [al. LXXVII]. — On a rash, impudent, and angry man, ^D who flares up in rage, and is a man of extreme quarrelsomeness. 1171 Sermon LXXIII [al. XXXIV]. — On the modest and the poor in spirit. 1173 Sermon LXXIV [al. XXXV]. — On the proud, the insolent, the arrogant, and those desirous of vain glory. 1179 Sermon LXXV [al. LXXXI]. — On self-love. 1185 Sermon LXXVI [al. XXXVII]. — On curiosity, security, and quiet, and on reconciling the quiet with the knowledge of God. 1187 Sermon LXXVII [al. XXXVI]. — On the solicitude and distraction of affairs. 1191

ORDER OF SUBJECTS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME

Sermon LXXVIII [al. XLIX]. — On the freedom of reproof. 1193 Sermon LXXIX [al. CXXXIX]. — On nobility and ignobility of lineage. 1195 Sermon LXXX [al. CII]. — On custom and habit. 1197 Sermon LXXXI [al. CXXXVIII]. — On conscience. 1199 Sermon LXXXII. — On conscience. 1199 Sermon LXXXIII [al. XCVII]. — On kindness. 1199 Sermon LXXXIV [al. XCVIII]. — On clemency and modesty. 1201 Sermon LXXXV [al. VI]. — On the simple and innocent man. 1205 Sermon LXXXVI [al. XVI]. — On the cunning, deceitful, and perverse in morals. 1205 Sermon LXXXVII [al. LXXXII]. — On the pure heart and thoughts, and on those who have a pure conscience. 1207 Sermon LXXXVIII [al. LXXXIII]. — On a cunning heart and an evil conscience. 1209 Sermon LXXXIX [al. LXXII]. — On patience and gentleness, or long-suffering. 1213 Sermon XC [al. LXXIII]. — On the impatient and those possessed of a small spirit. 1219 Sermon XCI [al. C]. — On a virtuous commonwealth, and on obedience. 1221 Sermon XCII [al. C]. — On a blameworthy commonwealth, and on the disobedient and rebellious, and on those possessed of reprehensible morals. 1223 Sermon XCIII [al. CLVII]. — On the reward of those who have lived well and virtuously, in eternal blessedness. 1225 Sermon XCIV [al. CLVII]. — On the reward of those who have lived in vice and illicitly: and that for them there is an eternal and unending punishment. 1227 Sermon XCV [al. CLXXV]. — How one ought to be subject, and to bid farewell to the world, and afterwards to exercise. 1231 Sermon XCVI [al. CLXXII]. — On the prefect. 1235 Sermon XCVII [al. CLXXVII]. — On those who are offended by foods, and on the difference between tables. 1235 Sermon XCVIII [al. CLXXVI]. — On not giving offense, and judging no one. 1237 Sermon XCIX [al. CLXXVII]. — On the negligent and slothful; and that if we are vigilant, the devil can do us no harm. 1239 Sermon C [al. CLXXXII]. — On participation in the divine mysteries of Christ. 1241 Index to the Commonplaces of Antonius Melissa. 1333

THE END OF THE ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SIXTH VOLUME.