Letter 355: Are you living at Athens, Basil? Have you forgotten yourself? The sons of the Cæsareans could not endure to hear these things.
Basil, are you still living in Athens? Have you forgotten who you are? [Athens: still the prestigious center of Greek rhetoric and philosophy]
The young men of Caesarea couldn't bear to hear what I'm about to tell you. My own tongue wasn't used to saying it either. It was like stepping onto unfamiliar ground — startled by something it had never heard before, it turned on me and said: *Father, you never taught us this. This man is Homer, or Plato, or Aristotle, or Susarion.* [Susarion: credited as the founder of Greek comedy] *He knows everything.*
That's what my tongue said.
I only wish, Basil, that you could praise me the same way.
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
[Πρός: Λιβάνιος Βασιλείῳ]
Ἆρα, Βασίλειε, μὴ τὰς Ἀθήνας οἰκεῖς, καὶ λέληθας σεαυτόν; οὐ γὰρ τῶν Καισαρέων οἱ παῖδες ταῦτα ἀκούειν ἠδύναντο. ἡ γλῶττα γάρ μοι τούτων ἐθὰς οὐκ ἦν· ἀλλʼ ὥσπερεί τινα κρημνὸν διοδεύοντος, πληγεῖσα τῇ τῶν ὀνομάτων καινοτομίᾳ, ἐμοί τε τῷ πατρὶ ἔλεγε· Πάτερ, οὐκ ἐδίδαξας· Ὅμηρος, οὗτος ἀνήρ, ἀλλὰ Πλάτων, ἀλλʼ Ἀριστοτέλης, ἀλλὰ Σουσαρίων, ὁ τὰ πάντα ἐπιστάμενος. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἡ γλῶττα. σὲ δὲ εἴη, Βασίλειε, τοιαῦτα ἡμᾶς ἐπαινεῖν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg2040/tlg004/tlg2040.tlg004.perseus-grc2.xml
Related Letters
(Written about the same time, in a more serious vein.) What I wrote before about our stay in Pontus was in joke, not in earnest; what I write now is very much in earnest. O that one would place me as in the month of those former days, Job 29:2 in which I luxuriated with you in hard living; since voluntary pain is more valuable than involuntary d...
(Written about the same time, in reply to another letter now lost.) I do not like being joked about Tiberina and its mud and its winters, O my friend, who are so free from mud, and who walk on tiptoe, and trample on the plains. You who have wings and are borne aloft, and fly like the arrows of Abaris, in order that, Cappadocian though you are, y...
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...
To Basil [this letter is widely considered spurious — a later forgery attributed to Julian].
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.