599for although I even lit a fire, and endured most grievous smoke, and was kept shut up in a chamber, and wrapped myself in six hundred coverings, and did not dare even to cross the threshold, nevertheless I suffered extreme torments: for vomiting arose continuously, headaches, loss of appetite, and sleepless vigils. I passed, then, a sea of night so long without sleep. But, not to wear out your mind by lingering longer on the mention of troublesome things, we are now released from all these. For as soon as spring arrived, and some slight change in the air occurred, all things departed of their own accord. Nevertheless, there is still need for great care from me in the matter of my diet; and therefore I take pains to impose a light burden upon my stomach, so that it may be able to digest it easily. That, however, affected me with no ordinary concern, that we understood you were struggling at the last breath of life. Although, because of my great love for you and my care and solicitude for your affairs, even before I received your letters, I was released from this worry: for very many came to us from there, and announced that you were in comfortable health.
The calamities of the present life are a mere fable.
And now I rejoice and am glad in a greater measure, not only because you have been freed from the disease, but most of all because you bear the things that happen so bravely and generously, naturally calling all these things a fable; and also, which should be considered greater, because you have even imposed such a name upon your bodily sickness, which is indeed the mark of a strenuous soul and one abounding in the fruit of fortitude. For not only to bear inconvenient and adverse things with a brave mind, but not even to perceive them when they are present, indeed to consider them as nothing, and with very easy exertion to obtain the crown of patience—not laboring, not sweating, not having business, nor causing it for others, but as it were leaping and dancing—this at last is the argument of the most perfect and in every respect faultless philosophy. A For this reason I rejoice and exult, and I fly with pleasure, and I am not affected by the sense of my present solitude and other hardships, but I am glad and am suffused with pleasure, and I vehemently glory in your greatness of soul and frequent victories, not only for your own sake, but also for the sake of that great and very populous city, to which you have stood in the place of a tower and a harbor and walls, emitting a brilliant voice through the deeds themselves, and in your calamities instructing both races of men, so that they may gird themselves promptly and diligently for contests of this kind, and may descend into the arena with all strength of mind, and may easily bear the toils collected from contests of this kind. B And what is wonderful is that you do not cast yourself into the forum, nor have you progressed into the midst of the city, but sitting in a small chamber and bedchamber, you add courage to those who are present, and you sharpen them for the contest, and with the sea so raging, and with the waves so swelling, and with crags and rocks and stones hidden under the wave, and with truculent beasts C showing themselves on every side, and with deepest night occupying all things, you, as if in a meridional and tranquil time, with the wind blowing at the stern, thus navigate with sails of patience expanded with the greatest ease, and you are so far from being overwhelmed by this heavy storm that you are not even lightly sprinkled: and that, indeed, deservedly: for such are the rudders of virtue. And indeed, merchants and helmsmen, and sailors, and travelers, when they see the concurrence of clouds, or the onset of fierce and savage winds, and the rapid waves foaming in a greater measure, keep their ships within the harbor. But if they happen to be tossed at sea, they do and contrive everything, so that they may D bring the ship to the shore, or to an island, or to some bank. But you, when six hundred winds, when so many savage waves collide with each other from every side, when the sea erupts upward from its deepest abysses because of the bitterness of the storm, and some have perished, others extinguished stand out above the waves, and the rest are carried naked on a plank; you, leaping into the midst of the sea of evils, call all these things a fable, navigating with a prosperous course in the storm: nor is that a marvel. For ship-captains, however much they hold that science, yet do not possess the art by which they might resist every storm: and hence it also happens that they often flee the contest with the waves. But to you, there is a science superior to every storm, namely the strength of a philosophical soul, which is more powerful than innumerable exercises, and more potent than any weapons, and safer than towers and walls. For soldiers indeed, weapons and walls and towers are a help only for the preservation of the body, and that even not always, nor perpetually: for sometimes all those things are conquered, and they leave those who flee to them destitute of their protection. But truly your weapons, not barbarian arrows, not the machines of enemies, have not broken such onsets and wiles, but have worn down the very necessities of nature, and have abolished a tyranny, and have prostrated their citadel to the ground. And although you have been struggling continually with demons, having obtained innumerable palms, you have received no blow; but you have stood unharmed among the densest arrows, and those weapons which are cast at you, rebound again upon those by whom they were sent. Such is the wisdom of your art, that through those evils which are inflicted upon you, you avenge yourself upon those by whom they are brought, and through the snares which are prepared for you, you afflict with grief those who declare war upon you, having of course the greatest harvest of winning greater glory from their wickedness. Which, [alt-version omitted] since you both know them and feel them in very truth, not without reason do you call all these things a fable. For why, I pray, would you not call it a fable, when you have obtained a mortal body, and yet despise death just as those who hasten to desert a foreign land, and to return to their own fatherland? when you are involved in a most bitter disease, and yet live more sweetly than those who are in the best health and a vigorous body, so that you are neither cast down by insults, nor lifted up by honors or glory, that which has been for many the cause of innumerable evils, who, when they had also been failing in the office of the priesthood, and had arrived at extreme old age and gray hair, have at last fallen thence, and are proposed to anyone as a kind of common theater? But for you, who are both a woman, and of a very slender body, and have sustained such and so great onsets, not only nothing of such things