Roman Letters

Letter 26: Evagrius does not want to leave the desert for the city.

Evagrius Ponticus→Unknown civic correspondent of Evagrius Ponticus|c. 390 AD|Evagrius Ponticus|From Kellia, Egypt|AI-assisted
Evagrius Ponticus; city; desert; withdrawal; world; temptation
Recipient identification follows the Evagrius CPG 2437 parallel edition where named; uncertain labels are recorded conservatively. Source text is Frankenberg's Greek retroversion from the Syriac transmission, licensed CC BY 4.0; source Syriac length 284 chars, Greek retroversion length 356 chars.
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Others perhaps welcome the people who call us back to our city, because they do not know what things are like here. But I marvel at you: though you have seen the places where we are, you still agree with those who call us and wait for us.

Since many choose the stumbling blocks of the world as their model, I beg you to stand firmly against the world. I have withdrawn from the desert until now, and I do not wish to leave it.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

Greek retroversion from Syriac transmission (Frankenberg 1912, TAN/TEI CC BY 4.0):

αλλοι ισως παρ' ημιν δεχονται εκκαλουντες ημας εις την ημων πολιν, ου γαρ ισασι τα ενθαδε, επι σοι δε θαυμαζω οτι ορων εν οις εσμεν τοποις τοις καλουσιν ημας και αναπειθουσιν συγκατατιθεσαι οτι ουκ κατα την παροιμιαν πολλοις το εξουδενωμενον του κοσμου αιρετον· κατεχε την οικουμενην χρατερως δεομαι σου εγω γαρ εκ της ερημου αποχωρειν εως αρτι ου βουλομαι

Syriac transmission available in the linked TAN/TEI source. The complete corpus is Syriac-transmitted; Greek survives only fragmentarily, so this display text is a retroversion witness.

Text source →View original manuscript →

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern evagrius ponticus tan tei 13 32 v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Arithmeticus/TAN-Evagrius/master/cpg2437/cpg2437.syr.1912.frankenberg.xml

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