Thyrsus

Thyrsus is known only as a correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), to whom Nilus addressed at least eight surviving letters in the early-5th-century Ancyran milieu of Galatia. The varying honorifics in their addresses present him as a record-keeping official (scriniarius and primicerius) who simultaneously led an ascetic and monastic life: letter 349 marvels that he combines "the ascetic habit with public military service," praising a diligence that "vies with the best of the monks," and elsewhere he is styled both monk and archimandrite (head of a community), with "young persons enrolled in your community" under his charge (letters 821, 820). Nilus writes to him chiefly to expound scriptural passages (the bound robber as the devil, levirate marriage as a figure of the written law, the talent that must not be buried) and to give pastoral direction, including stern warnings against indiscreet curiosity and against granting freedom of speech to the young. Beyond these letters he is otherwise unattested.