Letter 2: (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...
Gregory to Basil.
You make fun of me about Tiberina and its mud and its winters -- you, my friend, who are so far above the mud yourself, walking on tiptoe and trampling the plains beneath you! You who have wings and soar aloft, flying like the arrows of Abaris, all so that -- Cappadocian though you are -- you may escape from Cappadocia. Have we done you some injury? While you are pale and breathless and measuring the sun, we are sleek and well-fed and not lacking for room. And yet that is your situation: you live in luxury and wealth, and you go to market. I cannot approve of this. So either stop mocking us for our mud -- since you did not build your city, and we did not create our winter -- or for our mud we will match you with your petty merchants and all the other nuisances that infest cities.
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
Original text not yet available in this corpus.
This letter still needs a Latin or Greek source-text backfill. The source link, when available, is preserved so the text can be checked and added later.
View sourceRevision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3103b.htm
Related Letters
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?
(Gregory was not able, owing to the serious illness of his Mother, to carry out the promise at the end of Ep. LIX.; so he writes to explain and excuse himself.) The Carrying Out of your bidding depends partly on me; but partly, and I venture to think principally, on your Reverence. What depends on me is the good will and eagerness, for I never y...
(The division of the civil Province of Cappadocia into two Provinces in the year 372 was followed by ecclesiastical troubles. Anthimus, the Bishop of Tyana, the civil metropolis of the new division of Cappadocia Secunda, maintained that the Ecclesiastical divisions must necessarily follow the civil, and by consequence claimed for himself that th...
1. After some little time a young Cappadocian has reached me. One gain to me is that he is a Cappadocian.
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?