Letter 353: I have read your speech, and have immensely admired it. O muses; O learning; O Athens; what do you not give to those who love you! What fruits do not they gather who spend even a short time with you!

Basil of CaesareaLibanius|c. 377 AD|basil caesarea
humorwomen

I've read your speech and admired it enormously. O Muses! O learning! O Athens — what gifts you give to those who love you! What harvests are reaped by those who spend even a little time in your company! Oh, to drink from that abundantly flowing fountain of yours! What remarkable men it produces in all who taste it! In your speech I seemed to see the man himself [likely a comic character], together with his chattering little wife. Libanius alone has written a living story — one that breathes — and in doing so has given his words the gift of life itself.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.

Related Letters

Basil of CaesareaLibaniusc. 376 · basil caesarea #335

I am really ashamed of sending you the Cappadocians one by one. I should prefer to induce all our youths to devote themselves to letters and learning, and to avail themselves of your instruction in their training. But it is impracticable to get hold of them all at once, while they choose what suits themselves.

Basil of CaesareaLibaniusc. 377 · basil caesarea #348

If γριπίζειν is the same thing as to gain, and this is the meaning of the phrase which your sophistic ingenuity has got from the depths of Plato, consider, my dear sir, who is the more hard to be got from, I who am thus impaled by your epistolary skill, or the tribe of Sophists, whose craft is to make money out of their words. What bishop ever ...

Basil of CaesareaLibaniusc. 377 · basil caesarea #356

I am delighted at receiving what you write, but when you ask me to reply, I am in a difficulty. What could I say in answer to so Attic a tongue, except that I confess, and confess with joy, that I am a pupil of fishermen? About this page Source.

Basil of CaesareaLibaniusc. 377 · basil caesarea #342

All who are attached to the rose, as might be expected in the case of lovers of the beautiful, are not displeased even at the thorns from out of which the flower blows. I have even heard it said about roses by some one, perhaps in jest, or, it may be, even in earnest, that nature has furnished the bloom with those delicate thorns, like stings of...

Julian the ApostateLibaniusjulian emperor #52