you have prevented [them] from suffering. And they, having not even advanced far into the contests, but having been tripped up from the very starting-blocks, one might say, and at the starting line itself: you, however, having circled the final turn six hundred times, have snatched the prize in every race, having displayed varied forms of wrestling and contests, and most justly so. For the contests of virtue are found neither in age nor in body, but in the soul and the mind alone. Thus even women have been crowned, and men have been tripped; thus even children have been proclaimed victors, and old men have been put to shame. It is always necessary to admire those who pursue virtue, but especially when, while many abandon it, some are found clinging to it. For this reason, it is B worthy in the highest degree to admire your refinement, because while so many men, women, and old men—those who seemed to hold the greatest reputation—turned away, and while all were in plain view, having fallen not from a great rush of war, nor from a fierce battle line of enemies, but having fallen before the clash and having been defeated before the engagement, you, after so many battles and battle lines, have not only not been softened, nor have you been embalmed by the multitude of evils, but you behave with even greater youthful vigor, and the addition of contests gives you an addition of strength. For the memory of those things already successfully accomplished becomes for you a cause of gladness, of joy, and of even greater zeal. For these reasons we rejoice, we leap for joy, we are glad; for I will not cease speaking of this continually, and carrying everywhere the cause of my joy. So that if our separation disquiets you, yet this is for you the greatest consolation for your successes; since we, too, although living at such a great distance of travel, derive no small gladness from this—I mean from your courage.
On the same letter VII.
1. What are you saying? Have you not set up a trophy, nor attained C a brilliant victory? Have you not bound your head with a crown that blooms forever? But is this not what the whole inhabited world says, which everywhere on earth sings of your successes? For even if the sports grounds and the contests are located in one place, and the laps of your races, and your wrestling matches filled with blood instead of sweat took place there, yet their glory and their fame have reached the boundaries of the inhabited world. You, wanting to make them greater and to earn more prizes, have added to them the crowns of humility, saying that you are as far from these trophies as the dead are from the living. For that these words are of humility, I will try to prove to you from the events themselves. You were exiled from fatherland, home, friends, kinsmen; you were transported to a foreign land; you did not cease dying every day, and fulfilling what was lacking in nature by the abundance of the intention. For since it is not possible for a human being by experience to die many deaths, you have done this by your will. And the greatest thing, D while suffering some things and expecting to suffer others, you did not cease to offer up glory to God who permits these things to happen, and by doing so, you dealt a vital blow to the devil. For that he indeed received a vital blow, he showed by the way in which he armed himself, approaching with greater fury: therefore the later trials became worse than the first. For just as a scorpion or a snake, when it receives a deeper wound, raises its sting higher and rises up against the one who struck it, providing evidence of the great pain by the violent rush against the one wounding it: so too that shameless beast, since it received wounds into the depths from your admirable and lofty soul, leaped up more fiercely and brought on more temptations. He brought them on, indeed, not God; but God permitted it, increasing your wealth, making the commerce greater, providing a larger reward, and a more bountiful recompense. Do not therefore be troubled, nor dismayed. For who has ever labored while being rich? Who has been confounded when rising to the highest offices? But if those who gather these human things—things that are short-lived and more fragile than shadows, and more withered than rotting flowers—leap for joy, dance, and fly about, driven by a pleasure that both appears and flies away at the same time, and which mimics the course of river currents; it is all the more fitting for you, even if you were previously in discouragement, to make the present time a cause for the greatest joy. For your treasure, which you have gathered, is inviolable; and the dignity, which was built up for you through these sufferings, knows no succession, nor does it await an end, but it is infinite, and not to be interrupted by the difficulty of times, nor by the plots of men, nor by the assaults of demons, nor even by death itself. And if you wish to mourn, mourn for those who do such things, the authors of these evils, the servants, who have laid up for themselves the greatest punishment for the future, and who have already paid the final penalty here, with so many turning away from them, holding them as enemies, cursing them, and condemning them. But if they do not perceive these things, and for this reason especially are they miserable and worthy of tears, just like those possessed by the disease of phrenitis, kicking and striking those they meet at random and in vain, and often even those who have benefited them and their friends, yet not perceiving the madness with which they are mad. Therefore they suffer from incurable diseases, neither admitting physicians nor enduring medicines, but rewarding those who wish to heal and benefit them with the opposite. So that for this reason too they are miserable, if they do not perceive such great wickedness. But if they do not turn toward the condemnation of others, it is impossible for them to escape the judgment of their own conscience, that inescapable one, that incorruptible one, that which yields to no fear, which is not corrupted by flattery, nor by the giving of money, nor is it withered by long time.
2. For that son of Jacob, who said to his father that a wicked beast had devoured Joseph, and who acted out that wicked drama, and by the—