Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Gregory his friend.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter
XIV.1892
| 1892 Placed
after Basil’s choice of his Pontic retreat. Translated
by Newman, whose version is here given (Church of the
Fathers, 126). On the topography, cf. Letters iii.,
x., ccxxiii., and remarks in the
Prolegomena. |
To Gregory his friend.
My brother Gregory writes
me word that he has long been wishing to be with me, and adds that you
are of the same mind; however, I could not wait, partly as being hard
of belief, considering I have been so often disappointed, and partly
because I find myself pulled all ways by business. I must at once
make for Pontus, where, perhaps, God willing, I may make an end of
wandering. After renouncing, with trouble, the idle hopes which I
once had, [about you]1893
or rather the
dreams, (for it is well said that hopes are waking dreams), I departed
into Pontus in quest of a place to live in. There God has opened
on me a spot exactly answering to my taste, so that I actually see
before my eyes what I have often pictured to my mind in idle
fancy. There is a lofty mountain covered with thick woods,
watered towards the north with cool and transparent streams. A
plain lies beneath, enriched by the waters which are ever draining off
from it; and skirted by a spontaneous profusion of trees almost thick
enough to be a fence; so as even to surpass Calypso’s Island,
which Homer seems to have considered the most beautiful spot on the
earth. Indeed it is like an island, enclosed as it is on all
sides; for deep hollows cut off two sides of it; the river, which has
lately fallen down a precipice, runs all along the front and is
impassable as a wall; while the mountain extending itself behind, and
meeting the hollows in a crescent, stops up the path at its
roots. There is but one pass, and I am master of it. Behind
my abode there is another gorge, rising into a ledge up above, so as to
command the extent of the plains and the stream
which bounds it, which
is not less beautiful, to my taste, than the Strymon as seen from
Amphipolis.1894
| 1894 The
hill, of which the western half is covered by the ruins of
Amphipolis, is insulated by the Strymon on the north-west and south,
and a valley on the east. To the north-west the Strymon widens
into a lake, compared by Dr. Arnold to that formed by the Mincio at
Mantua. cf. Thucyd. iv. 108 and v. 7. | For
while the latter flows leisurely, and swells into a lake almost,
and is too still to be a river, the former is the most rapid
stream I know, and somewhat turbid, too, from the rocks just
above; from which, shooting down, and eddying in a deep pool, it
forms a most pleasant scene for myself or any one else; and is an
inexhaustible resource to the country people, in the countless
fish which its depths contain. What need to tell of the
exhalations from the earth, or the breezes from the river?
Another might admire the multitude of flowers, and singing birds;
but leisure I have none for such thoughts. However, the
chief praise of the place is, that being happily disposed for
produce of every kind, it nurtures what to me is the sweetest
produce of all, quietness; indeed, it is not only rid of the
bustle of the city, but is even unfrequented by travellers,
except a chance hunter. It abounds indeed in game, as well
as other things, but not, I am glad to say, in bears or wolves,
such as you have, but in deer, and wild goats, and hares, and the
like. Does it not strike you what a foolish mistake I was
near making when I was eager to change this spot for your
Tiberina,1895
| 1895 Tiberina
was a district in the neighbourhood of Gregory’s home at
Arianzus. cf. Greg. Naz., Ep. vi. and
vii. | the very pit
of the whole earth?
Pardon me, then, if I am now set upon it; for not
Alcmæon himself, I suppose, could endure to wander further when he
had found the Echinades.1896
| 1896
“Alcmæon slew his mother; but the awful Erinnys,
the avenger of matricide, inflicted on him a long and terrible
punishment, depriving him of his reason, and chasing him about from
place to place without the possibility of repose or peace of
mind. He craved protection and cure from the god at Delphi,
who required him to dedicate at the temple, as an offering, the
precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible bribe which had
originally corrupted Eriphyle. He further intimated to the
unhappy sufferer that, though the whole earth was tainted with his
crime and had become uninhabitable for him, yet there was a spot of
ground which was not under the eye of the sun at the time when the
matricide was committed, and where, therefore, Alcmæon might
yet find a tranquil shelter. The promise was realised at the
mouth of the river Achelous, whose turbid stream was perpetually
depositing new earth and forming additional islands. Upon one
of these Alcmæon settled permanently and in peace.”
Grote, Hist. Gr. i. 381. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
