FEDERICI MORELLI, PROFESSORUM REGIORUM DECANI, NOTES AND ANIMADVERSIONS.
What the Homeric Ulysses declares regarding the faithful and inseparable companion Diomedes, A I have rightly usurped for Basil the Great: Who could ever be unmindful of great Basil, Whose heart is eager, and whose spirit is noble In all labors; and whom Christ Jesus loves?
Indeed, from forty years ago, I began to apply myself willingly to his most weighty writings; and I have not had to repent of the labor I undertook, working partly by correcting the German codex, which suffered from punction and foul typographical errors, partly by comparing it with manuscripts, and partly by applying medical hands—not unsuccessful conjectures—attempting to remove blemishes and untie knots. Even now, in my advanced age, I have willingly retraced the same path in this new and expanded edition of the Greco-Latin work, while I energetically follow the running typographic wheel.
TO THE FIRST HOMILY ON THE HEXAEMERON
Col. 8 B 15. Read *ὅτι καλή*. Our interpreter had translated it as if he had read *ὡς καλὴ ἡ τάξις* (as if adding an exclamation), just as [in] Psalm VIII: "How wonderful is your name." God brought all things that are visible into order out of disorder. A Incessant and continuous is the war, [that is,] the destruction, of those prevailing in turn, and of those being prevailed upon, of those killing and those being killed.
Col. 40 A 3. "For always of [the things that]..." In Epictetus, *Enchiridion*, the principal division: "Of things that exist, some are up to us, others are not up to us."
Col. 43 B 6. "He warmed [them] and..." In terms of nature, according to the image of the brooding bird. A fuller version: "the bird," and "on the eggs," [as] in the *Introduction to the Holy Scriptures* of Hadrian, [using] this sort of Hebrew property of character [acting] upon the intellect, [indicated] D by the movement of physical things, or by places, or by ornaments. Ausonius has cleverly emulated this in his *Ephemeris*.
...and mixed with the two Which flew above the ethereal waters. Indeed, the Hebrew word from Moses 1:2, Gen., used, has the force of stirring and warming like a bird brooding over its nest. But oh, where nowadays is that Syriac translation of the Pentateuch, whose announcer here is the Syrus Basilianus! B
Col. 44 C 2. "Let there be light." An insigne and clear testimony to the magnificence of this Mosaic oration is exhibited by Dionysius Longinus, an ancient Attic writer, in his golden book *On the Sublime*, in these words: "The lawgiver of the Jews, not an ordinary man, since he manifested the power of the Divine according to its worth, immediately at the beginning, God, he says. What? Let there be light. And it was."
TO THE FOURTH HOMILY ON THE HEXAEMERON
Col. 77 C 10. "There are some cities..." How true this assertion is, Basil’s friend and familiar, Libanius, teaches in his *Monody on Nicomedia*, and in the *Oration* which [was] edited by me in Greek and Lat. this year; and St. Augustine, *Enarrations on Psalm CIII*, where he writes: "Do you see what a city does, where spectacles C abound?" And likewise St. Hilary in *Psalm CXVIII*, octon. He, *De culis*: "Who are captives lingering in theatrical games, who serve the contests of the circus."
Col. 80 A 13. "A dream about horse battles." From Aristophanes in the *Clouds*. Strepsiades: "He who has long hair rides horses and drives a two-horse chariot, And dreams of horses."
Col. 81 D 5. "Looking toward the current..." Here Joach. Perionius, a man of outstanding erudition and eloquence, [his] notion not being understood, taught with an absurd interpretation, "how little the human nature sees at times," as Flaccus warns, who illustrates this Basilian sentiment with these verses in his *Epistle to Lollius*: "The rustic waits while the river flows; but it Glides and will glide, spinning on for all eternity." Who could more aptly and elegantly express the current of the waters?
Col. 89 A 9. "It has been obelized..." The obelus is called [so] by Horace, *Art of Poetry*. Ausonius, *Epigram to Pacatus*, [as] the obelos of the spurious...
A igmata vatum vocat. Mirum est tam insignem Basilii nostri animadversionem latuisse eruditissimos ac diligentissimos quosdam viros φιλιερογράφους.
ON THE V HOMILY ON THE HEXAEMERON.
Col. 103 C 4. Idem notatur a Jo. Chrysost. in *Panegyri in S. Thomam*.
Ibid. C 4. "That from an obscure place they may cast their [own] harmful [doctrines] upon the more simple." St. Basil, tom. II, epist. 410, calls this "to mock the more simple," not "to elude only the bad."
Col. 105 B 8. Corr. *rodoniai* [rose-beds] κ. Virgil. "rosaria." Et apud *Rei rust. script.*, ut hic, "roseta, myrthi, laurus."
Col. 108 A 3. The insect situated on the leaf, which some call *mischon* [stalk]. Hence amend Hesychius as follows: B *Mischos*: thus they speak [of that] to which is joined toward the plant both the fruit and the leaf. *Mischos* is that which is beside the leaf. "They desire the *mischum* [stalk], the grain adhering to the leaf; that is, the thing by which the fruit and the leaf of the plant are connected." Do not these things agree in a friendly way with the Basilian texts?
Ibid. A 14. "Generating wine..." XI Judges in the parable of Joathan. The vine said, "Shall I leave my wine, the joy of men?" Anacharsis may complain, if he must, that wine is "water rotten under the bark."
Col. 109 D 3. *Erepima*. Hesychius explains *stegasima* as "that which may be roofed," *tigilla*, or *tignave*. Ibid. d. 9. "The *monolopa*." The same Hesychius explains *monolopa* [as] *monoderma*, "single-skinned," or *monochitona*, "single-tunicked." To the same [author] *lopos* is equipollent to *lepismos* [peeling]. Therefore it should rather be written *molonopa*, of plants clad in a single membrane or tunic; Fabius, in *Declam. XIII Paup.*, attributes tunics also to flowers. However, any garment is called a *lotos*, properly a pallium: whence *lopodytai* [cloak-snatchers] are named.
Col. 112 A 15. "Seeds of the male..." They call those *phenas*. Hesychius confirms this, so that he would appear to have drawn it thence: Libanius in *Encomio palma*, p. 3. Gr. edit. nostra: "O Palma, it rises on high, and lifts itself up very much from the ground; and toward itself, so to speak, it hastens to go to heaven," proceeding straight on the head, [and] preserving the head. C Philo, in *De vita Mos.*, calls the heart, *cardia*: "The palm has vital power, not in its roots, as also other plants, but growing upward, after the manner of a heart, established in the very midst of the branches." And those who tie up the *olynthos* [figs], [Basil] mentions [the] *phenizon*. "The *phenas* is a species of animal similar to a gnat, which penetrates into the *olynthos* of the figs, and makes them ripen." "This insect the Greeks call *phenas*: that it is used for this purpose even now in the field of Constantinople, trustworthy eye-witnesses have reported to me."
Col. 113 A 10. "The *enteriony*." *Enteriony* is the inside of the wild cucumber, or the inner parts. "That is, the middle of the wood, the heart"; others say, "the marrow." Regarding the pith of the heart, it is used for the marrow of fruit and wood.
Ibid. C 8. Leg. *Festive* in the comic poets of Greece, because those who drink it loathe it on account of the remarkable bitterness, which he called "extreme," whence it is termed *bathypikron* [deeply bitter]; which also agrees with the scammonia, concerning which Dioscorides, *Cosmurgiæ* vers. 929, calls it: "But goats, when they eat the indigestible scammonia, As they sup, they spit out the indigestion." Which I once translated: "Goats even when they eat the difficult scammonia, With this food they soothe the pains of indigestion."
Ibid. 11. "In the Terebinths." From Theophrastus, II *De h. p.*, the Latin writer [Basil] writes "in Terebinths." Dioscorides, I, 1, uses *terminthon*. And Hesychius: "*Terebinthos*, a plant similar to flax, from which the Athenians used to weave garlands." "And it is used for garlands." "But *terimithos* is also called by Nicander: D ...But *trimithos*..."
Col. 115 C 5. Concerning that place in Jeremiah, cap. XVII, v. 6, it is not in the version of the LXX Interp., but *agriomurike* [wild tamarisk] is read: "It shall be as the wild tamarisk in the desert." Those more skilled in the Hebrew tongue receive *arar* [juniper/desert shrub], which word the Psalmist used in Psalm CI, or as the Hebrew count, CII, where in the contrary sense he calls the humble *myricas* [tamarisks], whose prayers God is wont to hear, as we once explained the verse of Statius from *Sylvia in Epulum Domiliani*: "For the souls (of the higher ones) often to hear the lesser Are said..." What, then, is the cause why our author has most accurately used the authority of Jeremiah in the sacred Scriptures, but of the Davidic hymn has made no mention? Because, forsooth, the LXX interpreters followed the Greek leaders, and they had expressed the force of the Hebrew word in Jeremiah; but in David [they had] not [done] the same, when in the place of *myricas* they had substituted *tapeinon* [humble]. Moreover, that which Blessed Basil proposed here is confirmed in my manuscript codex by a description of this kind: "Myrice, a vile plant, of the species of cypress, growing beside the rivers."
ON THE SIXTH HOMILY ON THE HEXAEMERON.
Col. 117 B. "An auditor ought to have from home..."
those reasons for keeping in mind and being prepared, while they themselves, thoughtless and unmindful of their duties, sit down to listen, just as if they had come to a dinner to enjoy themselves while others toil. A Col. 117 C. *Who has embellished [them] with flowers.* An allusion to the verse of Homer, *Iliad* Σ, "And therein all the constellations with which heaven is crowned." A Hence it is that Columella in *Horto*, I. x, called flowers "terrestrial stars."
Col. 121 A 3. *For they are not turners.* A genuine reading, which the interpreter followed. Hesychius [defines] *torenein* as to carve. The Arabs from this word name the carving and minting of coins *toreba*.
Col. 124 A 5. *When it is most crescent-shaped.* This is in Philo Judaeus, *De Septen. festor.*, p. 34 of our edition and translation. Virgil, *Aen.* [...], designated it as crescent-shaped or moon-shaped, "...like the moon, which one who rises in the first month sees, or thinks he has seen, through the clouds." Macrobius, in *Somn. Scip.*, explains the first change of the moon, "when it is born." It is read also as an adverb, *menoeidōs*, "in the manner of the moon," in the manuscript lexicon.
Col. 128 A 7. *To be attached.* Having observed the tense of the verb, I would have preferred to translate it, "our life is appended to the motions of the celestial bodies." As Aristotle, speaking gravely about God, in I. XII *Sapientia*, says: "From that principle all things are appended."
Pag. 56 A 9. *To which to gainsay.* From a poem of Evenus, an ancient poet: "For many it is a custom to gainsay regarding any matter whatsoever, but to gainsay correctly, this is no longer a custom."
Col. 132 B 12. *To use the phrase of those.* Interpret this from the preceding words, which it is certain were military, or from the eight *topoi* with four cardinal points in the diagram, where the twelve houses are placed, in which Firmicus places vices and infirmities, and Manilius, I. II.
Col. 133 B. *The royal configuration of the stars.* It understands the assimilation of the zodiac signs according to configuration. Some commonly call it "aspect." Censorinus says "conspectus." The recent Greek authors [use] *blepsis*. Manilius, in the same book, indicates the "consensus and league" of the signs. Soon, through *genitura*, it hints at birth rather than the sowing of a seed or a seed-bearing sign.
Col. 137 B. *How it has the...* Plato in *Tim.*: "Night and day were thus generated, and because of these, the period of the one and wisest revolution." Tullius in *De univ.*: "Night and day [are formed] to this measure, and on account of these causes, one circuit of the sun has rendered [the year] most wise and most excellent." Philo, at the beginning of the first book *De monar.*, illustrates this disputation with these words: "Seeing the annual seasons established by the advancements and recessions of the sun, in which the generations of animals and plants and fruits are brought to fulfillment in fixed periods of time; and [seeing] the moon as the servant and successor of the sun, having taken up the care and protection by night of those things [cared for] by the sun during the day, and the other stars, according to the sympathy [they have] toward earthly things, acting in myriad ways for the endurance of the present [state]; they conjectured that these alone were gods."
Ibid. B 9. *The moon, indeed, is...* This year was called by the Hebrews not so much a lunar year as a year of days, because its days were ascertained, being 365; no months were calculated, but the lunar months were directed toward those days as if by a plumb line. Soon he mentions the month which is also called the intercalary month, *embolimaios*; *ekbolimos* is the exact punctuality of the hours. Furthermore, regarding the accurate description of the year, it is referred to by quadrants; the Hebrews call it *Tecuphas*. It is also described in my manuscript codex in this manner: "Now, indeed, this solar year is shorter," as Plato [says] in *Tim.*, "when the sun has completed its own circuit and traveled over the whole circle."
Col. 141 B 5. *Our sight, then, is small.* This "sight" is used not so much for the faculty of sight as for the keenness or pupil, as in Aristotle: "What sight is in the eye, that the mind is in the soul." The same [author] in *Meteoris*, regarding one who suffered from a defect of the pupil: "[Sight] was thus weak and very thin from the illness, so that it became a mirror, and the nearby air [as well]."
Ibid. B 13. *If not of ants.* Clarius would translate these more clearly: "Whether of ants," etc. Seneca, in the preface of *Quaest. nat.*, writes on the same subject: "It will be pleasant to say, 'into the black field the swarm.' This scrambling of ants is of those laboring in a narrow space."
Ibid. C 6. *Wasted away in the air, the sight...* This is demonstrated by Euclid in the third theorem of the *Optics*: "Each of the things seen has a certain measure of distance, in which, when it has reached it, it is no longer seen."
Col. 141 B. *And being such a great earth...* Virgil, *Aeneid*: "The sun who illumines all works with the flames of the earth," from the first Ode of Pind. *Olympionic.*: "And seek no longer any other brighter star shining in the day." Tullius in *IV De rep.*
Col. 144 A 11. *Under the moon, moisture.* Cassius, *Question. medic. probl.* xxv: "Why [is it that] those watching in the light of the moon, even if they happen to spend much time therein, are altogether in no way..."
harmed by it; but those who sleep in the rays of the moon acquire a heaviness of the head?" A Col. 144, 11: The interpreter thought that by the word *amphyrotidos* (ebb-tide), the reciprocal motions of flux and reflux were to be understood. The Georgic poet says: *by which force the deep seas swell,* *The barriers burst, and back into themselves they settle.* AD HOMIL. VII Col. 148, 13: "The heaven [is] the flowers of the stars." We noted the same figurative words above, hom. vi. The interpreter added a Greek epithet—not "burdensome"—when he said "rose-colored flowers," as Homer sings "rosy-fingered [Dawn]." Ibid. C 3: Write "of creeping things." Homer attributes [it] to terrestrial animals: "nothing... more wretched than man / Of all things that breathe and creep upon the earth." Col. 149, 11: "To count, or to try to measure the water with small cups" [is said of] impossible things. "Since sand has escaped the number." "Habit, apart." Theophrastus, *On Fishes*, where he calls *diaitan* (way of life) also *diagōgēn* (conduct). Plutarch in the treatise *De solertia animalium*, "The life [of those] is peculiar and indigenous." For this reason, it does not even deign to be tamed—any of [those] swimming [creatures]. B [To] the all-wise [one], *Deipn.*, as happens for the most part. "For lawmakers transgress once or twice." "Be content with one's own [things]; poverty with self-sufficiency." Alphæus of Mytilene, in *Phal. epigram.*: "I desire self-sufficient living, Sabinus, For since naught [is] excessive, excess delights me." Martial emulates this in *Epigram.*, lib. IV: *I have never asked God for riches,* *Content with a little, and happy with my own.* Ibid. D 1: "In the outward appearance of godliness." Demosthenes, *Against Leptines*, [is] of almost the same mind: "It is necessary, as it seems to me, that everything one does, invoking the gods, should appear such that, even if done by a man, it would not appear wicked." C Luke 15: "They come to you in sheep's clothing, but within they are ravening wolves." The wolf is an image of the rapacious one. St. John Chrysostom, *4th orat. in Gen.*: "The wolf is an image of the rapacious." Ibid. D 5: "Avoid the manifold..." Calles says how elegant and rhythmic [this] oration is, so that from the hemistich it is easy to complete a pentameter if you write: "Proteus in spirit, / Transforming himself into all the miracles of things" (Virgil, *Georg.* IV). Ibid. D 7: "The serpent is varied." The same John Chrysostom, *ibid.* The serpent is the image of the wily and most wicked in manner. George of Pisidia, vers. 758, on the craft of Satan: *He brings forth lurid snakes from livid ones,* *Pouring out poison with the worst fiction.* Col. 156 B 10: "Know the sea-monsters." Theognis sings the "huge-monster-sea" (metonymically). In the Lat. version, one must read, "Truly they know the sea-monsters." On these, the same George Pisid., vers. 969, *Opif. mundi*: *Who gathers these portents of the sea, the ridges of the deep,* *Into the deserts of the abyss?* Ibid. C 11: Correct Gen. xxx, according to the LXX Interpr. vers., it denotes the season of impregnation. "Jacob set the rods into the [water of] the troughs." D Col. 157 B 14: Read: "lying supine beneath the [waters?], in torrents, few [coves?] and under-currents."
A The interpreter aptly explained *tractus* and *superfugia*; nor did Strigelius ineptly translate them as *recessus, in quibus tutum sit latere* ("recesses in which it is safe to lie hidden"). For they are here quasi-long structures, and covered, enclosed walkways on every side; like shadowy stadia, under which fish live and swim. Pliny the Younger, *Epist.* V.6, uses the word *hypodromi* properly, concerning a natural colonnade in the garden of a Tuscan villa—of the sort which is wont to be created by nature or art, with the branches of trees entangled and bent back among themselves. And the very famous and learned Jacob Sirmond, a theologian of the Society of Jesus, acutely observed in his learned notes on that author that Sidonius had unearthed this word from the select library of Pliny, and in *Epist.* XI, *Lib.* XIII, had transferred it. Moreover, a little later, following the prescription of the *prosopopoeia* of the law, it should be read thus: "we are propelled to the [sunlit] regions of the area, and presently we moor [the ships] in the coves."
Ibid. D 8. "Idleness is the beginning of wickedness." Hesiod. "This is a shameful thing to do; but idleness is a shame." There is an etiology in Phocylides: "The idle man earns his living by furtive craft."
Col. 160 A 5. *The sea-urchin.* Concerning this, see Oppian, *Halieutica*, II. "...and each one lifts [the stones] with its back, as much as they are heavy, around their [spines] they might easily carry..." Georgius Pisides, *hexameter* of the *Cosmurgia*, from our Latin version: "What Nereid gave sea-urchins in the depths, Eyes foreknowing the future, So that before the gust of a storm, in agile flight, They might seize pebbles, to stand firmer by their weight?"
Ibid. A 9. Punctuation should be as follows: B This and the following confirm that Lucretian line: "Only of great things can small matters Provide an example, and traces of knowledge."
Ibid. B 3. "The unsleeping eye observes all things." Hesiod had anticipated this with the golden verse: "The eye of Zeus sees all, and perceives all."
Col. 161 C 3. *Concerning the remora or remeliginis*, as it is named by Afranius and Plautus; the same Georgius Pisides, *Cosmurgia*, verse 983: "Or who placed the remora, a tiny fish in the sea, As an obstacle to ships running [their course]? It stands against the fleet swimming and gliding And resists the violent winds." *Quisve remoram piscempusillum in aequor Statuit carinis obvium currentibus? Hic classi in altum vela danti opponitur, Spirantibusque auris resistit gnaviter, etc.*
Aristotle, *Hist. animal.*, Lib. I, cap. 44; Pliny, *Lib.* IX, c. 25; Plutarch, *Sympos.*, 2, problem 7; Oppian, *Lib. Halieut.*; Philes, *Lambogr.*, "On the properties of animals." What follows in Basil should be punctuated and emended thus: that it might keep the ship for the most part, just as if it were cast down in the sea itself.
Col. 164 A 2. *Continuous and successive [waves] ...* so says Ovid [rather Horace, *Ep.* 2.2.476], "as one wave follows another."
Ibid. B 10. *Meditating by night and day*, the text is from the Psalm, verse 2: "And in his law he shall meditate day and night."
TO HOMILY VIII
Col. 165 A 7. "We consider, therefore, that the nature of swimming creatures, etc." These things look to the strengthening of that assertion concerning the wildness or stupor of fish and their untamed nature, about which it was remarked in the higher sermon.
Ibid. B. *The soul has been entrusted with the leadership.* He could have written: "the rule has been entrusted to the soul," in the Homeric manner: "The peoples have been entrusted [to him]," "The great heaven has been entrusted to the hours," etc.
Col. 166 B 4. "Hear, you heavy-hearted ones." To the Homeric prince, concerning whom Calchas, *Iliad* A: "For a king is mightier when he is angry against a man who is [inferior]," etc.
Ibid. D. "But that no bird is footless." Pliny, however, inscribed the whole of Chapter X, "On the Apodes [footless birds]," which begins thus: "Those which are called *apodes* fly the most, because they lack the use of their feet," as Basil writes below concerning the king of the bees: "...but he does not use this for defense." What if we should read in Pliny *Cacopodes*? Which word our author uses a little later, when he writes, "and few of the birds are *kakopodes* (ill-footed)."
Col. 169 C 6. *As if by certain branding irons.* C In the version there is a mistake, not of the interpreter, but of the scribes and printers; for *justis notis*, replace *inustis notis* ("branded marks"); for they are *branding irons* which are marked upon cattle and slaves and footpads for recognition and disgrace, or for those who are convalescent and sick, for a cleansing. Soon *fissipennes* or *fissipennae* are placed, as in Varro, *quassagipennae anates* ("split-winged ducks"). Nonius, *in pecudes*.
Col. 172 B 4. *Jackdaws and rooks.* Aristotle, *Lib.* VIII *De moribus, ad Nic.*, praises the Doric proverb: "Graculus assidet graculo" ("A jackdaw sits by a jackdaw").
Ibid. B 10. *Tame and gentle are most of the...* Gregory of Nyssa confirms this in *Orat. super XL martyr.*, p. 208, vol. II of our edition: "The greater danger always drives away the cowardice of lesser fears; whence birds are harbored among men; and they remain under the eaves."
Ibid. C 3. *For some of the birds are chatterers and talkative; others are silent; and some are musical and many-voiced.* The distinction of birds into garrulous, melodious, songbirds, swift-fliers, and those of ill-omen [which are] birds of chatter, concerning which clearly after Aristotle, IX, Pliny *Lib.* X. Moreover, concerning the silent ones, [he means] not those entirely mute, but only those *stridentes et gementes* ("screetching and groaning").
")—which is their only voice—so that, in the manner of ill-omened creatures, they prevent those who encounter them from acting or from being useful in life.
Ibid. D *Myriai*, as we said, etc. It seems the interpreter read or supplied *en ornisi* ("among birds"), and immediately *tina ton alogon* ("some of the irrational ones"), having restricted it to birds alone because of the following example of a *politeia* ("commonwealth"), which shines forth especially in bees, which display a civil society: even though that *politikon* ("political") [nature] is also found in elephants, just as it is certain from Aristotle, Pliny, Plutarch, and others that it is in ants.
Col. 180 B. *They say they give birth without copulation.* Our same author writes with that same warning in ch. VIII of Isaiah, in this same edition and volume; and Georgius Pisides in his *Cosmurgia*, in very elegant senarii, pursues it more fully (fol. 41 et seq. of our edition), which, being augmented by a distich, I have here the more willingly appended with our paraphrase, because they seem to unfold the mind of Basil more clearly.
Who brings forth the vultures by a seedless birth, When a male of their own race does not exist? They point to the Virgin who bore our light, Exhibiting her, as far as is possible, by a bird. For it was necessary, I think, for the greatest miracle To have obscure shadows and a nature Such that neither does it seem that the birth is being made into an innovation, Nor that the account of the birth should be examined to the extreme. For virgins do not remain, as she did, When that which was born runs forth to the exit, Breaks the locks and passes through the doors. If, then, the races of birds do indeed give birth Being impregnated by the blast of the wind, How much more will the Virgin who gave birth Possess the certainty of the seedless remaining? Thus, something is joined even in the birds, A sure enigma for giving birth without seed.
Who produced vultures without any seed, Where all are female, and no male genus exists? They hold our Virgin, who bore the lamp, Before them, as much as bird nature allows. It was necessary that the nature of such a miracle Should have hidden images: So that it neither appears new in this birth, Nor does it entirely abandon the mysteries of the sacred birth: For intact virgins do not remain as she did, And the fetus, at the mature time of departure, Breaks its own bars and leaps through the gates. But if it is true that these birds give birth in this way, And carry the womb disturbed by the breeze of Eurus, Why will it not more readily make the Virgin who brought forth an offspring, Believed as having had no sowing of the produced child, Since she was full of the spirit of the life-giving breeze? Thus nature proposed in birds An enigma of birth believable without seed.
St. Ambrose, through the entire chapter XX, maintains the same thing with an accurate elaboration, and truly triumphs, attacking the *apistous* ("unbelievers") with this invective: "Is it considered impossible in the Mother of God, that which is not denied as possible in vultures? A bird gives birth without a male, and no one refutes it; and because the Virgin Mary gave birth, do they raise a question against her modesty?"
Col. 181 A 7. *How the nightingale is 'agrypnon' ("wakeful").* Attically for *agrypnon ti* ("something wakeful"), or rather *agrypnon orneon* ("wakeful bird"). B Ambrose, c. 24: "What shall I say of the nightingale, which, a wakeful guardian, while it warms its eggs in a certain hollow of its body and bosom, consoles the sleepless labor of the night with the sweetness of its song?" Where you perceive how accurate the Ambrosian exposition is of *tou epoadzein* ("brooding"), and shortly after this statement concerning the bat: "How it alone of birds uses teeth, which you are not accustomed to find in other birds."
Ibid. A 14. *By nature, etc.* Just as a cluster of grapes. The same Ambrose ibid.: "They adhere to one another, and hang from some place as it were in the form of a bunch: and if one should loosen the very last, all are resolved." An image of this *hormathos* ("cluster"), or clump, is exhibited among us in the very spirited type of nuptial dance, in which youths, especially unmarried ones, with hands joined to one another, turn themselves in a circle as quickly as possible, whence it is called *Chorea molae* (the "dance of the millstone"). What follows, *that it is not easy for this to be accomplished among men*, is expounded by St. Ambrose concerning charity, which, he says, is found with difficulty among the men of this world: otherwise, man is properly called by philosophers a *zoon politikon* ("political animal"), born for society. The etiology placed after by Basil—*for that which is separated and distinct from the social and the common is preferred by the masses*—is omitted by Ambrose: it is criticized by Seneca in Epist. LXXIII: "The foolish avarice of mortals distinguishes possession and property, nor does it believe that anything is its own which is public. But the wise man judges nothing to be his more than that which has fellowship with the human race," etc.
C Col. 181 B 4. *Glaukos, those who spend their time on vain wisdom.* You see the very serious paraphrase by the same Ambrose of this passage, praised in the place of bees; things consistent with these are also discussed by Gorgias in Plato, by which he contends for drawing Socrates away from philosophy, also by the authority of Euripides, who in his *Antiope* introduces Zethus, who attempts to turn his brother Amphion from music and the study of philosophy to the common use of life. Thus the Neoptolemus of Ennius used to judge that one should taste of philosophy, not be engulfed in it. Plato ibid.
Col. 184 B 11. *As if a certain 'hormian' ("fishing line"), etc.* Here *hormia* is properly taken for a fishing line, and is transferred metaphorically to a thread and a fillet, as in Gregory of Nyssa in the *Life of the Blessed Macrina*, the sister of Basil and Gregory: where he narrates that that holy woman, having worn an *hormia* ("cord") hanging from her neck, held fixed by a ribbon a small iron cross with an iron ring as well, in the bezel of which, being inscribed with the sign of the cross, it enclosed a particle of the salutary wood. A little later it should be written *syllabai tines eisi mikrai* ("there are some small syllables").
Ibid. B 14. Ambrose here brings forward another reason why the swan makes use of a longer neck: namely this, because it is a little more sluggish in body, and cannot, etc. Add also that (he says) because a sweeter and more musical melody is distinguished through the long neck, and it results far purer through longer continued exercise. These things are certainly missing in Basil.
A Adi Hippolyti lib. singularem *De consummatione mundi* (Περὶ συντελείας κόσμου), edited at Paris by Gul. Morelius.
Ibid. B 9. *As the sphere*, etc. Catullus most elegantly expressed the same toward Hortalus: *As the apple, sent as a secret gift of a lover,* *Runs from the chaste bosom of the maiden,* *Which she had forgotten, placed beneath her soft garment,* *While she leaps up at her mother's arrival, it is shaken out,* *And it is driven headlong in a downward fall.*
Ibid. C 5. *For horse is generated from horse.* Horat. 4, *Carm.* Ode 4. *The brave are born from the brave and good;* *In steers, in horses resides the virtue* *Of their sires; nor do fierce eagles* *Beget the unwarlike dove.*
Col. 185 A 11. *The interpreter is thought to have read:* B 11, from Psalm CXVII, 5. The same Basil below, *Hom.* 30. And Apollinarius rendered it thus metrically: C *Rejoicing, you shall cut through all things dear to an immortal.*
Basilius of Seleucia (episc.) uses the same notion in his *Orat. in Olympia*, where he writes, *The man enriched by the gifts of the prizes of judgment*, etc.
Ibid. C 7. Such is the Ovidian line: *If you remove leisure, the arts of Cupid perish.*
Col. 188 A 11. *How did the morning table of words appear to you?* There is a wonderful consensus and agreement in the technology of this Basilian exordium with the last satire of Horace, where he mocks the tasteless luxuries of Nasidienus. *Did the dinner of the blessed Nasidienus please you?* He was the father of the feast, a poor host, but philophron (kindly), who, ambitiously desiring to be one of the epicures, exhausts the guests because of a lack of more expensive things, whence that ironic response of the guest: *The dinner so pleased me that nothing has ever been better in my life:* for it was: *First, a Lucanian boar, it was when the south wind was gentle,* *Captured, etc., with sharp things around it,* *Small turnips, lettuces, roots, such as might stir* *The weary stomach.* Those things express the ambition, *We have wonderful riches.* Here the lack of culture of the master of the feast immediately became apparent, *And with roasted sparrows* *He served me the un-tasted intestines of a turbot, etc.*
Ibid. C 2. *Dream-critics.* Cicero in *De divinatione* refutes the trifles of such interpreters, who consist of the lightest and most unlearned sort; Synesius and Philo in *De somniis*, and Artemidorus in *Oneirocritica*.
Ibid. C 9. *Whether it is a sphere, or a cylinder, or even a disk.* Anaximander wanted the earth to be like a table; other ancient philosophers thought that the breadth of the earth was the cause of its stability. Manilius proves that they are talking nonsense in *Astronom.*: *The earth therefore (for so I read) has obtained the middle of the* *Cavern of the air, and hangs equally in the deep abyss;* *Not extended in wide plains, but built into a sphere,* *Rising equally on all sides, and equally falling.*
Ibid. C 13. *Suspicions.* What follows smells of it, placed at the beginning of the period, unless the parenthesis is a defense for the repetition.
Col. 189 B 8. *Until the world is complete,* and on the very next page, *until the consummation of the whole.*
Ibid. C 8. Another Basilius, bishop of Seleucia, in the *Prooem. Or. in Olympia*, used it figuratively, where he writes, *The time is fearful for the one who secretly passes over the responsibilities of things lived*, etc.
Col. 193 A 8. *Falling short of the irrational.* August. *in psal. xcvii*: "Is a man fit for wounding himself; is he fit for healing himself?" etc.
Ibid. B 11. *He kept a land-urchin.* The same Georg. Pisid., in *Cosmurg.*, regarding the blind mouse, omnivorous, verse 1129 et seq., which we shall correct in passing. The Latin Metaphrasis which we have reviewed holds it thus: *Who is that divining triped of bright Apollo,* *Who teaches the blind gluttonous mouse,* *While it hid in the labyrinthine passages,* *To shut, before the rush of the wind breaks in,* *The opposite ways of the holes of its lair,* *And to build other contrary trenches, where* *The mound of earth might hide the breezes?*
Aristotel., *lib. ix Hist. an.*, Theophrastus, Plutarch, *De solertia anim.*, agree in the name; the Latins call it *erinaceum*: Gall. *hérisson*.
Ibid. C 8. B. Joan. Chrysost., *i in Gen.* D Regarding the example of the ant. Have you not understood how, by proposing the industry of the ant, he schooled us to tireless zeal?
Col. 196 A 1. *With its own claws*... of the fruits, the middle. What if you read: *Will it not be for the ants?* Indeed, the same Georg. Pis., in verse 1187, preferred to use *the grain*, where he says of the same ant: *Come hither, ant, grain-thief, laborer,* *Shutting the half-cut grain below,* *Lest it be moistened and rot by the damps,* *And a destructive green shoot spring up from below.*
Whatever the case, Flaccus spoke more generally of this same ant: A *He drags whatever he can with his mouth and adds it to the heap.* Soon, what Basil calls the “serene state of the air,” here the Iambographer cleverly calls a “calm fixed in the ether.” Moreover, Aratus, in his *Phaenomena*, had noted this cautious foresight of ants as one of the signs and predictions:
*Ants from their hollow hole* *Quickly carried everything out.*
Plutarch, praising these lines in his *Dialogue on the Cleverness of Animals*, notes that some do not copy *ōea* (eggs), which denote eggs, but *ēia* (food), indeed meaning the fruits laid aside—stored crops—at which place Basil’s reading is also confirmed. Col 197 C 5. I read *oupō ta kerata tō moschō* (“not yet the horns to the calf”), from Philo the Hebrew, not far from the beginning of his book *On Those Whose Names Are Changed*. Ovid in his *Halieutica*:
*The world received the law, gave arms to all,* *And warned itself: for thus the calf threatens* *Which does not yet carry horns on its tender brow.*
Ibid. C 1. *Sophoi, tas tōn syllog.* Plutarch, in the aforementioned dialogue, treats this syllogistic power of the dog more concisely in these words, which will help when compared with Basil’s: “The dialecticians say that the dog, using the disjunctive in the multi-forked crossroads, reasons to himself: ‘Either the beast has rushed this way, or this way, or this way; but clearly, it is not this way, nor this way; therefore, it is this way.’” Col 200 C 1. *Eustra.* This word denotes the large intestines according to Galen. Others are the *elytra*, which corresponds to the Hippocratic *kekryphalois*, and is common to orators as well as poets. John Tzetzes, in the beginning of his poem *On Allegories*, recently edited by us in Greek and Latin, says:
*Having placed these elytra of the scriptures.* Those who note these wrappings of the text.
Col 204 A 8. *Horas hoti phryganizomenō tō P.* From Acts of the Apostles, chap. 28: “Paul gathered a quantity of dry sticks (*phryganōn*), and laid them on the fire.” You see what force and emphasis *phryganizesthai* has here, which St. Luke expressed with so many words? Ibid. B 7. *Epignōnai.* For not only does the eye see outward things... the same is taught by Philo in the book already mentioned, which is soon added, “the mind sharply, the alien...” represented by Horace in these verses:
*When you look over your own affairs with bleary eyes,* *Why do you look so keenly at the failings of your friends,* *As either an eagle or an Epidaurian snake?*
In the Latin version, these things should be improved; it is slow and hesitant to... Ibid. C 3. *Emou, toutestin, emauton kat’.* The same explanation of this verse is repeated by our author from Psalm 138, Vol. II, Epistle 393. St. John Chrysostom and the Rabbis, regarding the admirable, arduous, and most difficult subject of the depth of the knowledge of God, B receive it; as also Apollinaris in his *Heroic Metaphrasis*:
*It is a wonder that I can fathom your counsel with my mind,* *Nor can I, with my thought, see the far-reaching depths most powerfully.*
Ibid. G 6. *Pou moi ho Ioudaios, hos en t. kat.* What if you read *hopou*? Who is this Jew? Or is it *kat’ exochēn* (“by way of eminence”)? Philo the Hebrew, the most elegant writer of the *Cosmopoeia* and of the most learned? Not at all, or perhaps the name of a Christ-fighting race: whence it follows a little later, “Do you hear, O Christ-fighter?” I do not see why the interpreter refers *en tois katopin* to the things said before, rather than what is said to be coming, as Flaccus speaks: at least he writes in the same phrase within, “Everything becomes *katopin* (“behind/after”) you.” Col 205 C 9. *Neas k. ho ton Ioudaïzmon presb. en chr. prospoiēsei.* Thus Basil of Seleucia, bishop, in his praised homily *On the Olympics*, calls the Olympic festival a Hellenism hidden behind a Christian mask.
TO THE SAME HOMILY ON PSALM 1
Col 212 A 1. *Iama gar, phēsi, katap.* The third verse of Ecclesiastes, Solomon, chap. x, reads thus: “If the spirit of the one in power should rise up against you, do not leave your place, because a remedy (*iama*) will calm great sins.” Ibid. B 5. *Tēs melōdias.* Themistius, in the exordium of his 7th oration, calls this concert of David’s psalmody an “Assyrian melody, and from Lebanon,” and adds: “Some charm you with their native harmony, and with that from abroad.” Others (he says) C sing the vernacular melody (Persius in the Prologue to the *Satires* called it *Pegaseium*), others sing the Assyrian song and that which came from Lebanon, soothing you with a domestic and a foreign concert. Ibid. B 8. *Kata tous sophous tōn iatrōn.* Lucretius:
*When they attempt to give bitter wormwood to children,* *First they touch the rims of the cups all around* *With the sweet and yellow liquid of honey.*
Here, *melion tēn kylika perichriousin* (“they smear the cup with honey”). The same Themistius in the same oration: “The wiser ones of the physicians must be imitated, who, having smeared the cup with honey, give the more bitter of the medicines to drink.” Col 213 A 11. *Mathēma ou p. par. to de meta terpseōs kai charitos eis.* Theognis once sang long ago:
*Pleasure overcomes everything with gladness,* or, by parody, *with usefulness.*
Ibid. D 9. *Hoper ho themelios en oi.* Demosthenes in the 1st *Olynthiac* (page 21): “As it is necessary for a house, and a ship, and other such things to be most strong at the foundation, so also it is fitting that the beginnings and the grounds of actions be true and just.” Col 217 A 2. *Thēly epo. au. en de hē physis mia, tout.* Plato, Book V of the *Republic*, where he lays down generally and indefinitely that the nature of men and women is the same, not different, in political governance, and therefore that women ought to be admitted to the duties of civil administration with men; yet Proclus teaches, in his commentary on this book of Plato, with how much caution that is to be admitted. Col 220 A 7. *Pōlēson s.* Matthew xix: “Go...”