Letter 216

To Eusebius. (358/59) I will not pretend that things are as they were. The world has shifted beneath us, and those of us who love the old ways feel the ground tremble daily. But there is a difference between acknowledging change and surrendering to it, and I have no intention of surrendering. The schools continue. The students come. Some of them still burn with the sacred fire of genuine intellectual curiosity, and for those few, everything we do is justified. The rest -- well, the rest have always been with us. Not every young man who enters a rhetorical school becomes an orator, just as not every seed becomes a tree. We plant, and we trust the gods with the harvest. What concerns me most is not the quality of students but the attitude of those in power toward education itself. When rhetoric is dismissed as mere word-play by men who could not compose a coherent sentence if their lives depended on it, the irony is lost on everyone except those who least need the lesson. But enough complaining. Your own work continues to inspire me, and your letters are proof that not all the eloquence in the empire has dried up. Keep writing, and keep teaching. The world needs us more than it knows.

Μοδέστῳ. (358/59) Οἱ ῥήτορες εὔνοιαν ζητοῦσι παρὰ τῶν δικαζόντων οὐ μόνον οἱ κατεγνωκότες αὑτῶν μηδὲν ἔχειν ἰσχυρόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἷς ὑπάρχει θαρρεῖν δικαίων εἵνεκα. καὶ ἐγὼ τοίνυν οἶδα μὲν ἀκριβῶς ὡς οὔτε μικρὸν οὔτε μεῖζον ἀδικεῖ Καλλιόπιος οὑτοσί, δέομαι δέ σου τὸ κοινὸν δὴ τοῦτο, Μαὶ αὐτῷ τὸ ὄμμα ἐπὶ τῆς δίκης ἥμερον. οὕτω γὰρ ἂν καὶ χρήσαιτο τοῖς οὖσιν αὐτῷ δικαίοις, εἰ μὴ ταραχθείη. εἰ δ’ οὖν οὐκ ἔξ- εστιν εὐνοίας πρὸς σὲ μνησθῆναι, ἀλλ’ εὔξασθαί γε τοῖς θεοῖς ὑπὲρ τοῦ σε ποιῆσαι τοιοῦτον ἔξεστι. καὶ δὴ καὶ εὔχομαι· Ζεῦ Μειλίχιε καὶ πατέρω·ν ἀνθρώποις ἡμερώτερε, κατάστησον ἵλεων Καλλιοπίῳ τὸν γενναῖον Μόδε- στον καὶ σαυτῷ προσόμοιον. καὶ μεμνήσθω δικάζων τοῦ Μειλιχίου Δῖός, ὅπως ἡμεῖς τε τῷ φίλῳ συγχαίρωμεν καὶ Μόντιος ὑπὸ γῆς ἥδοιτο. λέγεται γάρ τι περὶ τῶν οἰχομένων καὶ τοιοῦτον.