Letter 770

Nilus of AncyraDemetrius|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted

To Demetrius the Monk.

The pleasure-loving demon, the inventor and teacher of fornication, brings into the soul of the one who struggles [in the ascetic contest] women supposedly beautiful, or comely boys, urging the mind to picture them in fantasy and inciting it to commit the sin. And by this fabrication he will often be able to engrave upon the mind a passion both abominable and utterly shameless.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Ὁ φιλόθρυπτος τῆς πορνείας εὑρετὴς καὶ διδάσκαλος δαίμων εἰσφέρει τῇ ψυχῇ τοῦ ἀγωνιζομένου γυναῖκας δῆθεν εὐμόρφους, ἢ παῖδας εὐειδεῖς φαντασιοῦσθαι παρακαλοῦντας τὸν νοῦν, καὶ προτρέποντας πρᾶξαι τὴν ἁμαρτίαν. Καὶ τούτῳ τὴν ἀναπλασμῷ πολλάκις δυνήσεται ἐγγλύψαι τῷ νῷ πάθος ἐβδελυγμένον καὶ ἀναισχυντότατον.

Revision history

  1. 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

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