Letter 697
To Paul the Archimandrite [the abbot of a monastery].
Do not wish to pass through the few days of this wretched life untroubled by storms and free of care; for to be without care, and to be in good cheer, and to have no experience at all of grievous things, does not belong to us who contend in the arena [skamma, the wrestling-pit] against the demons who fight back against us, but to those who are negligent and take no thought for eternal life.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Μὴ βούλου ἀχειμάστως καὶ ἀμερίμνως διεξέρχεσθαι τῆς ταλαιπώρου ταύτης ζωῆς τὰς βραχείας ἡμέρας· τὸ γὰρ ἀμέριμνον, καὶ διευθυμεῖσθαι, καὶ μηδέλως πεῖραν τῶν ἀνιαρῶν ἔχειν, οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμῶν τῶν ἀγωνιζομένων ἐν τῷ σκάμματι πρὸς τοὺς δαίμονας τοὺς ἀνταγωνιζομένους, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀμελούντων, καὶ ἀφροντιστούντων τῆς αἰωνίου ζωῆς.
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