Letter 456

To Eulampius the Sophist. Why do you bring forward to me the sages of the Greeks, those who let their beards grow long, who are instructed in how to wear their cloaks [the philosopher's mantle], and who puff themselves up greatly, thinking to win solemnity by their staff and their whiskers? For Paul the tentmaker, a man held in contempt, turned both Greece and the whole barbarian world toward God; whereas your Plato, paraded about and carried around among you, going a third time to Sicily [to the court of the tyrants of Syracuse], with all the pomp of those phrases of his, with his brilliant reputation, did not get the better of a single tyrant; rather, he came off so wretchedly that he even fell from his own freedom [Plato was reportedly sold into slavery]. But the tentmaker overran not Sicily only, nor Italy, but the whole inhabited world with the proclamation of true religion.

Τί μοι προσφέρεις τοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων σοφούς, τοὺς βαθεῖς τοὺς πώγωνας ἕλκοντας, καὶ ἀναδιδασκομένους τὰς ἐπωμίδας, καὶ μέγα φυσῶντας τὸ δοκεῖν σεμνύνεσθαι τῇ βακτηρίᾳ καὶ τῇ ὑπήνῃ; Παῦλος γὰρ ὁ σκηνοποιὸς κατηυτελισμένος, τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ τὴν βάρβαρον πᾶσαν ἀπέτρεψε πρὸς Θεόν· ὁ δὲ παρ’ ὑμῖν ἀγόμενος καὶ περιφερόμενος Πλάτων, τρίτην εἰς Σικελίαν ἐλθών, μετὰ τοῦ κόμπου τῶν ῥημάτων ἐκείνων, μετὰ τῆς ὑπολήψεως τῆς λαμπρᾶς, οὐδὲ ἓνς περιέγονε τυράννου· ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἄθλιως ἀπῄλλαξεν, ὡς καὶ αὐτῆς ἐκπεσεῖν τῆς ἐλευθερίας. Ὁ δέ γε σκηνοποιὸς οὐ Σικελίαν μόνον, οὐδ’ Ἰταλίαν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν τῷ κηρύγματι τῆς εὐσεβείας τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐπέδραμεν.