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

To Trajan. 2489
Letter CXLIX. 2488
You yourself have seen with your own eyes the distressing condition of Maximus, once
a man of high reputation, but now most of all to be pitied, formerly prefect of my country.
Would that he had never been so! Many, I think, would be likely to shun provincial governorships,
if their dignities are likely to issue in such an end. To a man, then, from the
quickness of his intelligence, able from a few circumstances to conjecture the rest, I need
hardly narrate in detail all that I have seen and all that I have heard. Perhaps, however, I
shall not seem to be telling a superfluous story if I mention that, though many and terrible
things were audaciously done against him before your coming, what went on afterwards
was such as to cause the former proceedings to be reckoned as kindness; to such an excess
of outrage and injury and actually of personal cruelty did the proceedings go which were
afterwards taken against him by the person in authority. Now he is here with an escort to
fill up the measure of his evil deeds unless you are willing to stretch out your strong hand
to protect the sufferer. In urging your goodness to an act of kindness I feel that I am undertaking
an unnecessary task. Yet since I desire to be serviceable to Maximus I do beg your
lordship to add something for my sake to your natural zeal for what is right, to the end that
he may clearly perceive that my intervention on his behalf has been of service to him.
2488 Placed in 373.
2489 The Ben. note points out that though in all the mss. the inscription is τῷ αὐτῷ, to the same, that is to
Trajan, the internal evidence points to its having been written to some one else. Trajan had had no personal
knowledge of the troubles of Maximus.
To Trajan.
600