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

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

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

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<strong>Basil</strong> to Libanius.Letter CCCXLVIII.<strong>Basil</strong> to Libanius.If γριπίζειν is the same thing as to gain, <strong>and</strong> this is the meaning of the phrase whichyour sophistic ingenuity has got from the depths of Plato, consider, my dear sir, who is themore hard to be got from, I who am thus impaled 3281 by your epistolary skill, or the tribeof Sophists, whose craft is to make money out of their words. What bishop ever imposedtribute by his words? What bishop ever made his disciples pay taxes? It is you who makeyour words marketable, as confectioners make honey-cakes. See how you have made theold man leap <strong>and</strong> bound! However, to you who make such a fuss about your declamations,I have ordered as many rafters to be supplied as there were fighters at Thermopylæ, 3282 allof goodly length, <strong>and</strong>, as Homer has it, “long-shadowing,” 3283 which the sacred Alphæushas promised to restore. 32843281 With a play on χάραξ, the word used for stakes.3282 i.e. three hundred.3283 Hom. iii. 346.3284 Non illepide auctor epistolæ fluvium obstringit restituendi promisso, ut gratuito a se dari ostendat.” Ben.note.915

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