Letter 824: Virtue must be practiced with all one's strength — not merely admired from a distance.
To Eutonios the Deacon: Just as it is easy to sing a note very high or very low, but to hit the middle note requires musical training, so too with speaking freely and rebuking...
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
ΡΚΑ΄. – ΕΥΤΟΝΙΟ ΔΙΑΚΟΝΟ.
Ωσπερ ὀξὺ μὲν ἢ βαρύ κομιδῇ φθέγξασθαι βάδιον, τοῦ δὲ μέσου τυχεῖν, μουσικῆς ἐστιν ἔξεως· οὕτω καὶ περὶ τὸ παῤῥησιάζεσθαι, καὶ μὴ, λογιστέον. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὐ τοῦ ὠφελῆσαι, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ὑβρίσαι γίνον· ται μόνον· οἱ δὲ τοῦ κολακεύειν, καὶ τὰ μὴ προσόντα ἐγκώμια ὑφαίνειν. Οἱ δὲ μέτρῳ ἀρίστῳ χρώμενοι, οὔτε ὑβρίζουσιν, οὔτε θωπεύουσιν· ἀλλὰ κεράσαντες τῇ παῤῥησίᾳ τὴν αἰδὼ, καὶ τῇ ἐπιτιμήσει τὴν προσ ἦνειαν, οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ ἰατρεύειν τοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἀγνοοῦν τας έρχονται. Οὐκοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς ταύτῃ τῇ ἀγωγῇ χρησάμενος ἦκε ἐπὶ τὴν θεραπείαν Ἡσαΐου, τοῦ ἐκ τῆς ἄγαν ἀλαζονείας, καὶ τὸ ἄνθρωπον ἑαυτὸν νομί- ζειν ἀπολωλεκότος.
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from Patrologia Graeca 78 OCR.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/PatrologiaGraeca
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