Letter 347: 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.
ST. BASIL OF CAESAREA
Libanius to Basil.
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. Any other sophist would have called them stakes, or poles, not because he wanted stakes or poles, but rather for showing off his wordlets than out of any real need. If you do not supply them, I shall have to winter in the open air.
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Source. Translated by Blomfield Jackson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202347.htm>.
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Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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