25 surviving letters between Basil of Caesarea and Libanius, spanning c. 376–378.
I am really ashamed of sending you the Cappadocians one by one. I should prefer to induce all our youths to devote themselves to letters and learning, and to avail themselves of your instruction in their training. But it is impracticable to get hold of them all at once, while they choose what suits themselves.
1. After some little time a young Cappadocian has reached me. One gain to me is that he is a Cappadocian.
Lo and behold, yet another Cappadocian has come to you; a son of my own! Yet my present position makes all men my sons. On this ground he may be regarded as a brother of the former one, and worthy of the same attention alike from me his father, and from you his instructor — if really it is possible for these young men, who come from me, to obtai...
I know you will often write, Here is another Cappadocian for you! I expect that you will send me many. I am sure that you are everywhere putting pressure on both fathers and sons by all your complimentary expressions about me.
What could not a sophist say? And such a sophist! One whose peculiar art is, whenever he likes, to make great things small, and to give greatness to small things!
Had you been for a long time considering how best you could reply to my letter about yours, you could not in my judgment have acquitted yourself better than by writing as you have written now. You call me a sophist, and you allege that it is a sophist's business to make small things great and great things small. And you maintain that the object ...
You have not yet ceased to be offended with me, and so I tremble as I write. If you have cared, why, my dear sir, do you not write? If you are still offended, a thing alien from any reasonable soul and from your own, why, while you are preaching to others, that they must not keep their anger till sundown, have you kept yours during many suns?
All who are attached to the rose, as might be expected in the case of lovers of the beautiful, are not displeased even at the thorns from out of which the flower blows. I have even heard it said about roses by some one, perhaps in jest, or, it may be, even in earnest, that nature has furnished the bloom with those delicate thorns, like stings of...
IF these are the words of an untrained tongue, what would you be if you would polish them? On your lips live fountains of words better than the flowing of springs. I, on the contrary, if I am not daily watered, am silent.
I am dissuaded from writing often to you, learned as you are, by my timidity and my ignorance. But your persistent silence is different. What excuse can be offered for it?
It is, I think, more needful for me to defend myself for not having begun to write to you long ago, than to offer any excuse for beginning now. I am that same man who always used to run up whenever you put in an appearance, and who listened with the greatest delight to the stream of your eloquence; rejoicing to hear you; with difficulty tearing ...
You yourself will judge whether I have added anything in the way of learning to the young men whom you have sent. I hope that this addition, however little it be, will get the credit of being great, for the sake of your friendship towards me. But inasmuch as you give less praise to learning than to temperance and to a refusal to abandon our soul...
Every bishop is a thing out of which it is very hard to get anything. The further you have advanced beyond other people in learning, the more you make me afraid that you will refuse what I ask. I want some rafters.
If γριπίζειν is the same thing as to gain, and this is the meaning of the phrase which your sophistic ingenuity has got from the depths of Plato, consider, my dear sir, who is the more hard to be got from, I who am thus impaled by your epistolary skill, or the tribe of Sophists, whose craft is to make money out of their words. What bishop ever ...
Will you not give over, Basil, packing this sacred haunt of the Muses with Cappadocians, and these redolent of the frost and snow and all Cappadocia's good things? They have almost made me a Cappadocian too, always chanting their I salute you. I must endure, since it is Basil who commands.
Your annoyance is over. Let this be the beginning of my letter. Go on mocking and abusing me and mine, whether laughing or in earnest.
Many, who have come to me from where you are, have admired your oratorical power. They were remarking that there has been a very brilliant specimen of this, and a very great contest, as they alleged, with the result that all crowded together, and no one appeared in the whole city but Libanius alone in the lists, and everybody, young and old, lis...
Behold! I have sent you my speech, all streaming with sweat as I am! How should I be otherwise, when sending my speech to one who by his skill in oratory is able to show that the wisdom of Plato and the ability of Demosthenes were belauded in vain?
I have read your speech, and have immensely admired it. O muses; O learning; O Athens; what do you not give to those who love you! What fruits do not they gather who spend even a short time with you!
Now I recognise men's description of me! Basil has praised me, and I am hailed victor over all! Now that I have received your vote, I am entitled to walk with the proud gait of a man who haughtily looks down on all the world.
Are you living at Athens, Basil? Have you forgotten yourself? The sons of the Cæsareans could not endure to hear these things.
I am delighted at receiving what you write, but when you ask me to reply, I am in a difficulty. What could I say in answer to so Attic a tongue, except that I confess, and confess with joy, that I am a pupil of fishermen? About this page Source.
What has made Basil object to the letter, the proof of philosophy? I have learned to make fun from you, but nevertheless your fun is venerable and, so to say, hoary with age. But, by our very friendship, by our common pastimes, do away, I charge you, with the distress caused by your letter...in nothing differing.
Oh, for the old days in which we were all in all to one another! Now we are sadly separated! You have one another, I have no one like you to replace you.
You, who have included all the art of the ancients in your own mind, are so silent, that you do not even let me get any gain in a letter. I, if the art of Dædalus had only been safe, would have made me Icarus' wings and come to you. But wax cannot be entrusted to the sun, and so, instead of Icarus' wings, I send you words to prove my affection.