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

To the President.Letter LXXXIV. 2289To the President. 22901. You will hardly believe what I am about to write, but it must be written for truth’ssake. I have been very anxious to communicate as often as possible with your excellency,but when I got this opportunity of writing a letter I did not at once seize the lucky chance.I hesitated and hung back. What is astonishing is, that when I got what I had been prayingfor, I did not take it. The reason of this is that I am really ashamed to write to you everytime, not out of pure friendship, but with the object of getting something. But then I bethoughtme (and when you consider it, I do hope you will not think that I communicatewith you more for the sake of a bargain than of friendship) that there must be a differencebetween the way in which one approaches a magistrate and a private man. We do not accosta physician as we do any mere nobody; nor a magistrate as we do a private individual. Wetry to get some advantage from the skill of the one and the position of the other. Walk inthe sun, and your shadow will follow you, whether you will or not. Just so intercourse withthe great is followed by an inevitable gain, the succour of the distressed. The first object ofmy letter is fulfilled in my being able to greet your excellency. Really, if I had no other causefor writing at all, this must be regarded as an excellent topic. Be greeted then, my dear Sir;may you be preserved by all the world while you fill office after office, and succour nowsome now others by your authority. Such greeting I am wont to make; such greeting is onlydue to you from all who have had the least experience of your goodness in your administration.2. Now, after this prayer, hear my supplication on behalf of the poor old man whomthe imperial order had exempted from serving in any public capacity; though really I mightsay that old age anticipated the Emperor in giving him his discharge. You have yourselfsatisfied the boon conferred on him by the higher authority, at once from respect to naturalinfirmity, and, I think, from regard to the public interest, lest any harm should come to thestate from a man growing imbecile through age. But how, my dear Sir, have you unwittinglydragged him into public life, by ordering his grandson, a child not yet four years old, to beon the roll of the senate? You have done the very same thing as to drag the old man, throughhis descendant, again into public business. But now, I do implore you, have mercy on bothages, and free both on the ground of what in each case is pitiable. The one never saw fatheror mother, never knew them, but from his very cradle was deprived of both, and has enteredinto life by the help of strangers: the other has been preserved so long as to have suffered1742289 Placed in the year 372.2290 Probably Elias. cf. Letters xciv. and xcvi. The orphan grandson of the aged man in whose behalf Basilwrites had been placed on the Senatorial roll, and the old man in consequence was compelled to serve again.513