Letter 346: You yourself will judge whether I have added anything in the way of learning to the young men whom you have sent. I hope that this addition, however little it be, will get the credit of being great, for the sake of your friendship towards me. But inasmuch as you give less praise to learning than to temperance and to a refusal to abandon our soul...
[From Libanius to Basil]
You yourself will judge whether I have added anything to the learning of the young men you sent. I hope that whatever small addition I have made will receive credit for being great, on account of your friendship toward me. But since you give less praise to learning than to self-control and a refusal to surrender the soul to dishonorable pleasures, they have devoted their main attention to that, and have lived -- as they should -- with constant awareness of the friend who sent them here.
So welcome what is yours, and give praise to men who by the way they have lived have done credit to both you and me. As for asking you to look after them -- that is like asking a father to look after his children.
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
[Πρός: Λιβάνιος Βασιλείῳ]
Εἰ μέν τι περὶ τοὺς λόγους τοῖς νέοις οἷς ἔπεμψας προσεθήκαμεν, αὐτὸς κρινεῖς. ἐλπίζω δὲ αὐτό, κἂν μικρὸν ᾖ, μεγάλου λήψεσθαι δόξαν, διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἡμᾶς φιλίαν. ὃ δὲ πρὸς τῶν λόγων ἐπαινεῖς, τὴν σωφροσύνην καὶ τὸ μὴ παραδοῦναι τὰς ψυχὰς ταῖς οὐ καλαῖς ἡδοναῖς, πάνυ τούτου πεποίηνται πρόνοιαν, καὶ διήγαγον, ὡς εἰκὸς ἦν, τοῦ πέμψαντος μεμνημένους. δέχου δὴ τὰ σεαυτοῦ, καὶ ἐπαίνει τοὺς σέ τε κἀμὲ τῷ τρόπῳ κεκοσμηκότας. παρακαλεῖν δέ σε πρὸς τὸ βοηθεῖν, ὅμοιον ἦν τῷ πατέρα παισὶ παρακαλεῖν βοηθεῖν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg2040/tlg004/tlg2040.tlg004.perseus-grc2.xml
Related Letters
To Basil [this letter is widely considered spurious — a later forgery attributed to Julian].
The proverb says You are not proclaiming war, and, let me add, out of the comedy, O messenger of golden words. Come then; prove this in act, and hasten to me. You will come as friend to friend.
To Basil [most scholars identify this as Basil of Caesarea, later one of the great Cappadocian Fathers of the...
You have not yet ceased to be offended with me, and so I tremble as I write. If you have cared, why, my dear sir, do you not write? If you are still offended, a thing alien from any reasonable soul and from your own, why, while you are preaching to others, that they must not keep their anger till sundown, have you kept yours during many suns?
Every bishop is a thing out of which it is very hard to get anything. The further you have advanced beyond other people in learning, the more you make me afraid that you will refuse what I ask. I want some rafters.