NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Homiletical.craftsmen, skilled in every art that can minister to necessity or to enjoyment and luxury;cooks, confectioners, butlers, huntsmen, sculptors, painters, devisers and creators of pleasureof every kind. Look at the herds of camels, some for carriage, some for pasture; troops ofhorses, droves of oxen, flocks of sheep, herds of swine with their keepers, land to feed allthese, and to increase men’s riches by its produce; baths in town, baths in the country; housesshining all over with every variety of marble,—some with stone of Phrygia, others with slabsof Spartan or Thessalian. 632 There must be some houses warm in winter, 633 and otherscool in summer. The pavement is of mosaic, the ceiling gilded. If any part of the wall escapesthe slabs, it is embellished with painted flowers.…You who dress your walls, and let yourfellow-creatures go bare, what will you answer to the Judge? You who harness your horseswith splendour, and despise your brother if he is ill-dressed; who let your wheat rot, andwill not feed the hungry; who hide your gold, and despise the distressed? And, if you havea wealth-loving wife, the plague is twice as bad. She keeps your luxury ablaze; she increasesyour love of pleasure; she gives the goad to your superfluous appetites; her heart is set onstones,—pearls, emeralds, and sapphires. 634 Gold she works and gold she weaves, 635 andincreases the mischief with never-ending frivolities. And her interest in all these things isno mere by-play: it is the care of night and day. Then what innumerable flatterers waitupon their idle wants! They must have their dyers of bright colours, their goldsmiths, theirperfumes their weavers, their embroiderers. With all their behests they do not leave theirhusbands breathing time. No fortune is vast enough to satisfy a woman’s wants,—no, notif it were to flow like a river! They are as eager for foreign perfumes as for oil from themarket. They must have the treasures of the sea, shells and pinnas, 636 and more of themthan wool from the sheep’s back. Gold encircling precious stones serves now for an ornamentfor their foreheads, now for their necks. There is more gold in their girdles; more goldfastens hands and feet. These gold-loving ladies are delighted to be bound by golden fetters,—onlylet the chain be gold! When will the man have time to care for his soul, who hasto serve a woman’s fancies?”Homily VIII., on the Famine and Drought, belongs to the disastrous year 368. Thecircumstances of its delivery have already been referred to. 637 The text is Amos iii. 8, “The632 A precious, red-streaked marble was quarried in Phrygia. The Spartan or Tænarian was the kind knownas verde antico. cf. Bekker, Gallus. p. 16, n. The taste for the “Phrygian stone” was an old one. cf. Hor., Carm.III. i. 41.633 The Cappadocian winters were severe. cf. Ep. cxxi., cxcviii., cccxlix.634 ὑακίνθους. See L. and S., s.v., and King’s Antique Gems, 46.635 i.e. she must have ornaments of wrought gold and stuff embroidered with gold.636 cf. Hexaemeron, p. 94.637 p. xxi.110