Letter 974
To Heortasius the Deacon.
When the memory of the person who grieved you comes to you, and you are able, by struggling, to snatch yourself away from it, you have done what David did; for you have snatched the prey from the mouth of the lion [cf. 1 Samuel 17:34-35, where David rescues a lamb from the lion's jaws]. And let us understand the lion to be wrath. But if you also strike down the unwalled thing--I mean evil desire--without doubt your soul will lodge among the good things of the Lord [echoing Psalm 24:13 LXX: "his soul shall lodge among good things"].
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Ὅταν σοι μνήμη ἔλθῃ τοῦ λυπήσαντός σε προσώπου, καὶ δυνηθῇς ἀγωνισάμενος ἐκ ταύτης ἑαυτὸν ἀφαρπάσαι, τὸ τοῦ Δαυῒδ πεποίηκας· Ἤρπασας γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ στόματος τοῦ λέοντος θήραμα. Λέοντα δὲ τὸν θυμὸν, νοήσωμεν. Ἐὰν δὲ καὶ τὴν ἄφρακτον τύπτῃς, τὴν πονηρὰν λέγω ἐπιθυμίαν, ἀναμφιβόλως αὐλισθήσεται ἐν ἀγαθοῖς Κυρίου ἡ ψυχή σου.
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