Letter 358: Oh, for the old days in which we were all in all to one another! Now we are sadly separated! You have one another, I have no one like you to replace you.
Those were the days — when we meant everything to each other. Now there's this sad distance between us. You have each other there; I have no one here who can take your place.
I hear Alcimus [a mutual colleague] is pulling off something remarkable for a man his age — rushing off to Rome like a young man on an adventure. And in doing so, he's left you stuck managing the students. [Basil taught rhetoric before becoming a bishop] You, generous as ever, probably won't hold that against him. You didn't even hold it against me that I had to be the one to write first.
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
[Πρός: Λιβάνιος Βασιλείῳ]
Ὦ χρόνων ἐκείνων, ἐν οἷς τὰ πάντα ἦμεν ἀλλήλοισϲ νῦν διῳκίσμεθα πικρῶς, ὑμεῖς μὲν ἔχοντες ἀλλήλους, ἐγὼ δὲ ἀνθʼ ὑμῶν οἷοί περ ὑμεῖς οὐδένα. τὸν δὲ Ἄλκιμον ἀκούω τὰ νέων ἐν γήρᾳ τολμᾷν καὶ πρὸς τὴν Ῥώμην πέτεσθαι, περιθέντα σοι τὸν τοῦ συνεῖναι τοῖς παιδαρίοις πόνον. σὺ δέ, τά τε ἄλλα πρᾶός τις, καὶ τοῦτο οἴσεις οὐ χαλεπῶς, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἡμῖν τοῦ γράψαι πρότερον οὐκ ἔσχες χαλεπῶς.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg2040/tlg004/tlg2040.tlg004.perseus-grc2.xml
Related Letters
While showing up to the present time the gentleness and benevolence which have been natural to me from my boyhood, I have reduced all who dwell beneath the sun to obedience. For lo! every tribe of barbarians to the shores of ocean has come to lay its gifts before my feet.
Will you not give over, Basil, packing this sacred haunt of the Muses with Cappadocians, and these redolent of the frost and snow and all Cappadocia's good things? They have almost made me a Cappadocian too, always chanting their I salute you. I must endure, since it is Basil who commands.
(Perhaps about a.d. 357 or 358; in answer to a letter which is not now extant.) I have failed, I confess, to keep my promise. I had engaged even at Athens, at the time of our friendship and intimate connection there (for I can find no better word for it), to join you in a life of philosophy.
Twice cabbage is death, says the unkind proverb. I, however, though I have called for it often, shall die once. Yes: even though I had never called for it at all!
You have not yet ceased to be offended with me, and so I tremble as I write. If you have cared, why, my dear sir, do you not write? If you are still offended, a thing alien from any reasonable soul and from your own, why, while you are preaching to others, that they must not keep their anger till sundown, have you kept yours during many suns?