Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To Martinianus. 2261
Letter LXXIV. 2260
1. How high do you suppose one to prize the pleasure of our meeting one another once
again? How delightful to spend longer time with you so as to enjoy all your good qualities!
If powerful proof is given of culture in seeing many men’s cities and knowing many men’s
ways, 2262 such I am sure is quickly given in your society. For what is the difference between
seeing many men singly or one who has gained experience of all together? I should say that
there is an immense superiority in that which gives us the knowledge of good and beautiful
things without trouble, and puts within our reach instruction in virtue, pure from all admixture
of evil. Is there question of noble deed; of words worth handing down; of institutions
of men of superhuman excellence? All are treasured in the store house of your mind. Not
then, would I pray, that I might listen to you, like Alcinous to Ulysses, only for a year, but
throughout all my life; and to this end I would pray that my life might be long, even though
my state were no easy one. Why, then, am I now writing when I ought to be coming to see
you? Because my country in her troubles calls me irresistibly to her side. You know, my
friend, how she suffers. She is torn in pieces like Pentheus by veritable Mænads, dæmons.
They are dividing her, and dividing her again, like bad surgeons who, in their ignorance,
make wounds worse. Suffering as she is from this dissection, it remains for me to tend her
like a sick patient. So the Cæsareans have urgently appealed to me by letter, and I must go,
not as though I could be of any help, but to avoid any blame of neglect. You know how
ready men in difficulties are to hope; and ready too, I ween, to find fault, always charging
their troubles on what has been left undone.
2. Yet for this very reason I ought to have come to see you, and to have told you my
mind, or rather to implore you to bethink you of some strong measure worthy of your wisdom;
not to turn aside from my country falling on her knees, but to betake yourself to the
Court, and, with the boldness which is all your own, not to let them suppose that they own
two provinces instead of one. They have not imported the second from some other part of
the world, but have acted somewhat in the same way in which some owner of horse or ox
might act, who should cut it in two, and then think that he had two instead of one, instead
2260 About the same date as the preceding.
2261 A dignitary of Cappadocia otherwise unknown, whom Basil asks to intercede with the Emperor Valens
to prevent that division of Cappadocia which afterward led to so much trouble. Basil had left Cæsarea in the
autumn of 371, on a tour of visitation, or to consecrate his brother bishop of Nyssa (Maran, Vit. Bas. Cap. xix.),
and returned to Cæsarea at the appeal of his people there.
2262 cf. the opening of the Odyssey, and the imitation of Horace, De Arte Poet. 142: “Qui mores hominum
multorum vidit et urbes.”
To Martinianus.
499
169