Theocles

Theocles is known only as a correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), who addresses five short letters to him in the collection; the address lemmata vary, naming him a scholasticus (advocate or lawyer) in one, a presbyter (priest) in another, and simply by name elsewhere, which may reflect a change in his station over time or the collection's loose grouping of letters to him. The letters are wholly spiritual direction: Nilus urges him on the saving power of repentance, consoles him for being reproached and slandered even by former friends (pointing to Job and to Christ's own endurance), explains that God chastens those He loves rather than destroying them, and answers an exegetical question on a scriptural verse about the hungry abandoning the earth. The tenor is that of a pastor counseling a literate layman or junior cleric beset by adversity and pride, encouraging detachment from earthly goods. Beyond these letters he is otherwise unattested, and can be placed only by context in the early-5th-century Ancyra (modern Ankara) milieu of his correspondent.