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

To Martinianus.Letter LXXIV. 2260To Martinianus. 22611. How high do you suppose one to prize the pleasure of our meeting one another onceagain? 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’sways, 2262 such I am sure is quickly given in your society. For what is the difference between169seeing many men singly or one who has gained experience of all together? I should say thatthere is an immense superiority in that which gives us the knowledge of good and beautifulthings without trouble, and puts within our reach instruction in virtue, pure from all admixtureof evil. Is there question of noble deed; of words worth handing down; of institutionsof men of superhuman excellence? All are treasured in the store house of your mind. Notthen, would I pray, that I might listen to you, like Alcinous to Ulysses, only for a year, butthroughout all my life; and to this end I would pray that my life might be long, even thoughmy state were no easy one. Why, then, am I now writing when I ought to be coming to seeyou? Because my country in her troubles calls me irresistibly to her side. You know, myfriend, 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 herlike 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 howready men in difficulties are to hope; and ready too, I ween, to find fault, always chargingtheir 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 mymind, 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 theCourt, and, with the boldness which is all your own, not to let them suppose that they owntwo provinces instead of one. They have not imported the second from some other part ofthe world, but have acted somewhat in the same way in which some owner of horse or oxmight act, who should cut it in two, and then think that he had two instead of one, instead2260 About the same date as the preceding.2261 A dignitary of Cappadocia otherwise unknown, whom Basil asks to intercede with the Emperor Valensto prevent that division of Cappadocia which afterward led to so much trouble. Basil had left Cæsarea in theautumn 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 hominummultorum vidit et urbes.”499