Letter 496: Oh, for those times when we were everything to each other!
To Basil.
Oh, those former times, in which we were all things to one another! But now we have been bitterly separated and made to dwell apart, you having one another, while I, in place of you, have no one such as you are.
I hear that Alcimus, in his old age, is venturing what belongs to the young, and is flying off to Rome, having laid upon you the labor of being together with the little boys [his pupils]. But you, being a man mild in other respects as well, will bear this too without difficulty, since indeed you did not take it hard from us that we did not write earlier.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Βασιλείῳ. (356)
Ὢ χρόνων νίνων, ἐν οἷς πάντα ἦμεν ἀλλήλοις. νῦν
δὲ διῳκίσμεθα πικρῶς, ὑμεῖς μὲν ἔχοντες ἀλλήλους, ἐγὼ δὲ
ἀνθ᾿ ὑμῶν οἶοί περ ὑμεῖς οὐδένα.
τὸν Ἄλκιμον ἀκούω
τὰ νέων ἐν γήρᾳ τολμᾶν καὶ πρὸς τὴν 'Pώμην πέτεσθαι περι-
θέντα σοι τὸν τοῦ συνεῖναι τοῖς παιδαρίοις πόνοι
σὺ δὲ
τί τε ἄλλα πρᾷός τις καὶ τοῦτο οἴσεις οὐ χαλεπῶς, ἐπεὶ καὶ
ἡμῖν τοῦ μὴ γράψαι πρότερον οὐκ ἔσχες χαλεπῶς.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern libanius retranslated v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek/blob/master/volume_xml/libanius_10.xml
Related Letters
To Βασιλείῳ. (361?)
That you did not receive the letter Clematios carried — I cannot believe it.
You may conjecture from what it contains, what pleasure you have given me by your letter. The pureness of heart, from which such expressions sprang, was plainly signified by what you wrote. A streamlet tells of its own spring, and so the manner of speech marks the heart from which it came.
Epistle 17. To Eusebius, Archbishop of Cæsarea. I did not write in an insolent spirit, as you complain of my letter, but rather in a spiritual and philosophical one, and as was fitting, unless this too wrongs your most eloquent Gregory.
1. If, my true brother, you gladly suffer yourself to be advised by me as to what course of action you should pursue, specially in the points in which you have referred to me for advice, you will owe me your salvation. Many men have had the courage to enter upon the solitary life; but to live it out to the end is a task which perhaps has been ac...