Letter 1565: Everyone, without exception, is utterly astonished and struck dumb when they see how quickly the great collapse and...

To Zosimos. If every human being happens to owe the debt of death, and it is impossible for this debt not to be paid out -- a debt which neither king, nor tyrants, nor satraps, nor the wise, nor the just have been able to annul (for it is a divine sentence that demands it) -- then the rest of men are to be pitied and lamented, those for whom death becomes the beginning of punishments; but those others are to be blessed and proclaimed aloud, those whose death from their contests came round to the beginning of the crowns. For having discovered the limit of the highest blessedness, and having neglected all other things, they adorned the soul alone, and they revealed that even the body is a palace of purity -- the body which, refashioned for the better at the resurrection as well, will live together with the soul the immortal life.

Εἰ πᾶς ἄνθρωπος θανάτου ὄφλημα τυγχάνει, καὶ ἀδύνατον τοῦτο [μὴ] ἀποδοθῆναι τὸ χρέος, ὁ μήτε βασιλεύς, μήτε τύραννοι, μήτε σατράπαι, μήτε σοφοί, μήτε δίκαιοι ἀκυρῶσαι ἠδυνήθησαν (θεία γάρ ἐστιν ἀπόφασις ἡ τοῦτ’ ἀπαιτοῦσα)· τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀλεητέον καὶ θρηνητέον, οἷς ἡ τελευτὴ ἀρχὴ γίνεται τιμωριῶν· ἐκείνους δὲ εὐφημητέον καὶ ἀνακηρυκτέον, ὧν ἡ τελευτὴ τῶν ἀγώνων εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν στεφάνων περιέστη. Τῆς γὰρ ἄκρας μακαριότητος εὑρηκότες τὸν ὅρον, τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἀμελήσαντες, μόνην τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκόσμησαν, ἧς καὶ τὸ σῶμα ἀνάκτορον ἁγνείας ἀπέφηναν· ὁ καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει ἐπὶ τὸ κρεῖττον μετακοσμηθέν, τῇ ψυχῇ τὴν ἀθάνατον συζήσει ζωήν.