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

To a Magistrate.Letter LXXXIII. 2286To a Magistrate. 2287I have had only a short acquaintance and intercourse with your lordship, but I have nosmall or contemptible knowledge of you from the reports through which I am brought intocommunication with many men of position and importance. You yourself are better ableto say whether I, by report, am of any account with you. At all events your reputation withme is such as I have said. But since God has called you to an occupation which gives youopportunity of showing kindness, and in the exercise of which it lies in your power to bringabout the restoration of my own city, now level with the ground, it is, I think, only my dutyto remind your excellency that in the hope of the requital God will give, you should showyourself of such a character as to win a memory that cannot die, and be made an inheritorof everlasting rest, in consequence of your making the afflictions of the distressed hard tobear. I have a property at Chamanene, and I beg you to look after its interests as thoughthey were your own. And pray do not be surprised at my calling my friend’s property myown, for among other virtues I have been taught that of friendship, and I remember theauthor of the wise saying a friend is another self. 2288 I therefore commend to your excellencythis property belonging to my friend, as though it were my own. I beg you to consider themisfortunes of the house, and both to grant them consolation for the past, and for the futureto make the place more comfortable for them; for it is now left and abandoned on accountof the weight of the rates imposed upon it. I will do my best to meet your excellency andconverse with you on points of detail.2286 Placed in 372.2287 Censitor, i.e. the magistrate responsible for rating and taxation in the provinces.2288 cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. viii. 12, 3; and Cic. Lœl. xxi. So, amicus est tanquam alter idem.512