Letter 433
To Alexander the Monk.
Saving, save your own soul [echoing the angel's command to Lot at Genesis 19:17]; do not look around at the evils behind you, just as you also rightly renounced them; run up to the mountain of dispassion [apatheia, the goal of ascetic life: freedom from disordered passion], lest you be carried off together with the sinful world into the eternal fire.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Σώζων σῶζε τὴν σεαυτοῦ ψυχήν· μὴ περιβλέπου
εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω κακά, ὥσπερ καὶ καλῶς ἀπετάξω· εἰς
τὸ ὄρος τῆς ἀπαθείας ἀνάδραμε, μήποτε συμπαρα-
ληφθῇς τῷ ἁμαρτωλῷ κόσμῳ εἰς τὸ πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern nilus ancyra workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: project source import
Related Letters
Pray that many people travel through Bithynia, for then you will have many to sing your praises.
It was not, then, Bithynia's fate for her misfortune to last forever.