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

To Gregory his friend.Letter XIV. 1892To Gregory his friend.My brother Gregory writes me word that he has long been wishing to be with me, andadds 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 allways by business. I must at once make for Pontus, where, perhaps, God willing, I may makean 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), Ideparted into Pontus in quest of a place to live in. There God has opened on me a spot exactlyanswering to my taste, so that I actually see before my eyes what I have often pictured tomy mind in idle fancy. There is a lofty mountain covered with thick woods, watered towardsthe north with cool and transparent streams. A plain lies beneath, enriched by the waterswhich are ever draining off from it; and skirted by a spontaneous profusion of trees almostthick enough to be a fence; so as even to surpass Calypso’s Island, which Homer seems tohave considered the most beautiful spot on the earth. Indeed it is like an island, enclosedas it is on all sides; for deep hollows cut off two sides of it; the river, which has lately fallendown a precipice, runs all along the front and is impassable as a wall; while the mountainextending 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, risinginto a ledge up above, so as to command the extent of the plains and the stream whichbounds it, which is not less beautiful, to my taste, than the Strymon as seen from Amphipolis.1894 For while the latter flows leisurely, and swells into a lake almost, and is too still tobe a river, the former is the most rapid stream I know, and somewhat turbid, too, from therocks just above; from which, shooting down, and eddying in a deep pool, it forms a mostpleasant scene for myself or any one else; and is an inexhaustible resource to the countrypeople, in the countless fish which its depths contain. What need to tell of the exhalationsfrom the earth, or the breezes from the river? Another might admire the multitude offlowers, and singing birds; but leisure I have none for such thoughts. However, the chiefpraise of the place is, that being happily disposed for produce of every kind, it nurtures whatto me is the sweetest produce of all, quietness; indeed, it is not only rid of the bustle of the1251892 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.1893 Omitted by Newman.1894 The hill, of which the western half is covered by the ruins of Amphipolis, is insulated by the Strymonon the north-west and south, and a valley on the east. To the north-west the Strymon widens into a lake, comparedby Dr. Arnold to that formed by the Mincio at Mantua. cf. Thucyd. iv. 108 and v. 7.393